I listened to this reading today in mass. Today, in it, I heard nuances in the story that never really struck me before, and it made me reflect.
The story begins with a man, blind from birth. As was the common belief then—and I would guess remains for many still, even when left unspoken—such condition and misfortune was believed to be a judgment and consequence for sin by either parents or man.
Seeing the blind man in his condition, the disciples ask, “’Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
Next, Jesus spat on mud and rubbed it over the blind man’s eyes and told him to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. Doing so, the man was healed as testament to the works and miracles of God.
“Who sinned, this man or his parents?”
How often do we still ask that question looking as a third party—or maybe interiorly upon our own lives or families—upon the misfortunes of another? Maybe we change the words, softening with removal of word sin and simply ask: What happened? What went wrong? Why is it this way?
We don’t have a solution, not even a beginning answer, and so we look for person or reason to blame so that, absent our ability to help, we might feel more noble in labeling cause we might identify and avoid for our own sake and preservation of better state.
But maybe this is the wrong question, and the wrong spirit to approach such conditions. Maybe bad, and undesirable, conditions are not damnations; and maybe to endure them do not make us victims. Maybe such, when encountered or experienced in our own lives, are not curses at all; but waiting blessings that are opportunity—possibility—to witness the capacity of God to work and gift miracles.
Maybe, from this story, we might find a paradigm shift when encountering our own unexplainable misfortunes. What opportunity, even miracle, is waiting in what world would call misfortune?
And when gifted opportunity for the miracle, do we do our part, and act as we are called—just as the blind man washing in the pool?
I’d never thought about that story before, the way the world saw the blind man—and his family—wondering what they did wrong to be given such an undesirable condition.
“He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
And so it lived, and two thousand years later—the blind man who wisdom of the world deemed judged and damned for sins of he or his family—speaks still as testament to God’s works revealed in him.
This was the first thought that rose in me as I listened to the Gospel: the paradigm shift in perception from curse and judgment as misfortune into possibility for adversity to enable God’s works to be revealed through us.
After this comes lesson in the rest of story.
*****
The second part of the story speaks more on the culture of man than of Jesus or the blind man given sight. It speaks to the blindness of those who refuse to accept what they clearly see and, by fact, cannot deny: but wish to be different and so refuse to accept the truths that disrupt and upend perceptions of authority—especially on behalf of who can speak for God.
When the blind man returns, everyone knows the seeing man is the blind man they have known all their lives—but they disbelieve.
IMPOSSIBLE!!!!
He is an imposter! It isn’t him! It can’t be!
…But it is.
The blind man tells his story, who healed, and how it happened, but the Pharisees attack, say his story cannot be…but it is. They call Jesus a sinner, because that’s what you call one you wish to attack on character without any real grounds. It’s a label where—label alone—is enough. Our world still has such labels and our powers that be have little reticence to their employment in aspersion. Watch any news, read any paper: they are everywhere and no truer today than then—but still effective.
Why would the Pharisees be so adamant to discredit a witnessed miracle?
Very simple: it wasn’t their miracle; and to have a good, miracle, manifest apart from them is to disrupt their authority and place of power within society and culture of man. How many leaders in our present world would rather raze something good to the ground because it wasn’t their good; and in driving a good beginning to failed end state—by interjection and usurping of antagonistic partisans—label good intents, and even successes with labels of aspersions.
Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity; and with enough time; perhaps the nihilists of all self and partisan absorbed will collectively achieve the destruction and nothingness such philosophy—that becomes religion without, and hostile to, God—professes.
I believe, in greater and lesser degrees: we all manifest elements of our religions: Heaven, Hell, and nothingness.
To allow acceptance of a miracle was to disrupt the established power structure in Jewish society. For the son of a carpenter to work miracles no Pharisees or priest can match, was to upend the hierarchy that kept order in society: which mainly meant to entrench prosperity in the established, and keep low—and obedient—the rest.
Determined not to believe the man’s story, the Pharisees next question the man’s parents; asking the same questions. The parents are aware, should they credit Jesus with the miracle and tell their son’s story true, they would be expelled from the synagogue. Not wanting this, the parents skate around the answer and attribute to the miracle. They say plain, “Yes, this man is our son; and yes he was born blind; but we do not know how he was healed…why don’t you ask him…”
Returning to the son, the blind man, the Pharisees pressure him to change his message. They speak, “Give God the praise. We know that this man is a sinner.”
The man responds, “If he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see…” The Pharisees pressure him more, determined to disbelieve, and the man answers, “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?…This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where is is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.”
To this, the man—just healed from his blindness—is cast out of the synagogue and ostracized from his society. Why? Because he was blessed beyond what societal leaders could imagine, by a source that usurped and showed the professed world-power (claimed on behalf of God) to be hollow. From the greatest blessing in this man’s life comes a new and darker trial: where he is ostracized not for misfortune but now for an incredible blessing he will not deny, and the world will not accept as real.
The exchange in the synagogue ends with the same label cast to the blind man as was used against Jesus: sinner! They cannot disprove the story; nor will they accept it; so character must be destroyed in order to preserve power and place which is not religious, or spiritual, but human self-interest, pure and simple: vanity, nothing noble. When there is nothing that exists to counter truth; aspersions that cannot be questioned are the weapon of choice to end argument and discourse when there is nothing beyond stubbornness and force of will to carry an argument.
What has changed in our world today?
How often does our world ask us to deny what we see and know first-hand through our own eyes and hearts? How often do powers, influence, leaders in this world seek to coerce opinions to attack and discredit an innocent seen as a threat to order? How often does God STILL usurp and upend the powers, order, culture of the world through individuals the world sees as having no right to voice or influence—and yet these instruments are the ones who re-interject God’s spirit into cultures that have become blind to the true spirit and Wonders of God.
This is why, throughout humankind, world powers treat God in one of two degrees: either God supports and anoints leaders’ position over their fellow men, or God and religion must be destroyed entirely: for a culture of believers, who believes in something greater than their own immanent fears and survival, will carry their culture war against modern (whether today or upon any living page now written as history in the story of man) societies and cultures that, in drift, have lost reverence for a Creator and what is holy.
What, in our present day, is decried and attacked by labels of aspersions? What good does world seek to discredit? What Godly intent does such denied good seek to change in our present culture? How might we, too, live with better opened eyes and less blind by the purposeful shaping of immanent powers obfuscating the greater clarities that come in Wisdom that transcends?
Our world is little different. How often, still, does world seek to silence, and make blind, the masses from the miracles and glory of God made manifest—every day—by sources and people powers that be deem unworthy of such gift: because it’s not from the powers that be; and therefore becomes threat to order and power that keeps men obedient and in fear.
There is nothing new under the sun. In what ways today are we, as individuals and culture, determined to stay blind? How will God restore our sight? Will we testify to, or deny, the miracle?