Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 19, 2023: 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41; Psalm 23
Today’s readings all circle around what we see, and how we understand what we see. We are repeatedly reminded that, in the words of 1 Samuel, “the Lord does not see as mortals see”.
“Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” The disciples see a man who has a disability, and assume it was rooted in sin. While few today would express the same direct link between disabilities and sin, we live in a world that treats disabilities as deficits, and assumes physical deficits are matched by cognitive ones. Those who are hard of hearing, for instance, are often treated as if they have lost their intelligence along with their hearing. We make it very difficult for those with disabilities to be full members of society. We may not talk about sin, but we often act as if those with disabilities are less than fully human.
Jesus pushes back against the notion that blindness was a result of sin, but his answer is also troubling. “He was born blind that God’s works might be revealed in him.” Would God make someone suffer so that Jesus could demonstrate God’s greatness? Yet in the rest of the story, only the formerly blind man recognizes God’s greatness. His earlier suffering seems a high price to pay!
Jesus heals the man born blind. He uses saliva to make mud, spreads it on the blind man’s eyes, and tells him to wash in a certain pool. The rest of the Gospel reading explores how the blind man, his neighbors, and the Pharisees understand what has happened to him. His neighbors are not sure he is the same person: they have no way to understand how his blindness was cured. They hear the story, but it doesn’t make sense. The Pharisees repeatedly ask how it happened, and criticize Jesus for healing on the sabbath, thus breaking the law. They cannot imagine God working in the world as God had in the time of Moses. The formerly blind man just tells his story; when he is driven out, Jesus finds him, and he becomes one of the followers of Jesus: he sees.
Who sees, and who sees what? We see with our eyes, but we also use “I see” to say we understand. Sight and understanding are linked. But we need to learn to see: when those who have been blind for many years regain sight as a result of surgery, they only slowly pick up distinctions in the world. It is very hard to see things, in either sense of the word, if we do not know they exist. The blind man’s neighbors, and the Pharisees, could not grasp how the man had regained sight because it was something they did not think could happen.
“The Lord does not see as mortals see.” In Samuel, we learn that rather than choosing Jesse’s eldest son, the Lord chooses David, the youngest. He was not considered important enough to be brought to the sacrifice; he has to be brought from the field where he is watching the sheep. But the Lord chooses David. The Lord, the scripture tells us, “looks on the heart”.
We are left with a question. If seeing is learned, we have all learned what to see and what not to see. How can we look on the heart? What are the things we do not see? What do we not see accurately? Are there forms of suffering we miss? Or forms of healing? What does God see in the world today? How does God act? Are we able to see it?