Will the real blind person please stand up?

Lent 4, Year A; John 9:1-41

The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

Is it just me, or does that saying of Jesus make you a little uneasy, too? All of our readings this morning are about light and darkness, about seeing and being blind. And they’ve been paired in the lectionary to lead us to ask ourselves a question this morning: Can I see? Well, can you? Now, maybe you don’t want to answer this question too soon, maybe you should take some time to really think about it, because, as Jesus tells us at the end of our Gospel reading, “I came… so that… who do see may become blind.” That makes me hesitate to answer that question: Can I see?

I know that not everyone is a baseball fan, but tomorrow is Major League Baseball’s opening day, so there was no way that baseball wasn’t going to make it into this sermon. So, if you’re not a baseball fan, please bear with me. The fact is, if the Gospels were about baseball, they wouldn’t be written from the perspective of the New York Yankees. No offense to those of you who are Yankees fans, but most fans of other teams love to hate the Yankees. The Yankees are the top dogs, the big, rich, powerful team, and the Gospel is the story about how God came and lived as a human being so that the last could be first and the first could be last. Still, the Gospel wouldn’t be written from the Orioles’ perspective either. I know that the O’s are beloved in Baltimore, and as a Rangers fan, I can certainly sympathize with loyal O’s fan, who have supported a team that had fourteen straight losing seaons. But the O’s aren’t at the bottom; they’re solidly in the middle of the pack. No, if the Gospel were about baseball, it would be written from the perspective of the Chicago Cubs, who haven’t won a World Series since 1908, whose fans are the most long-suffering of them all. The Cubs are a team who know what it is to be on the bottom, and the Gospel is the story of how God sided with the people on the bottom.

But the reason why Jesus makes me nervous in this Gospel story is that you and I aren’t Cubs fans. If we keep extending our baseball metaphor, we citizens of the most powerful nation on earth, we nice, respectable Episcopalians, we’re the Yankees. There’s a prayer practice that I love called Ignatian meditation, where you imagine yourself as part of a Bible story. And generally, I find myself picking a “good” part: one of the disciples, or someone who gets healed by Jesus. I never pick a Pharisee. But the fact is, if I’m looking for myself in this story from John’s Gospel, I’m most like the Pharisees. I’m one of the religious insiders, and I’ve got the collar around my neck to prove it. All of us gathered here this morning probably have more in common with the Pharisees than the blind man, and this story doesn’t end all that well for the Pharisees, does it? Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

This Gospel story doesn’t sound like good news for us Pharisees at first, but it really is, I promise you. We just have to admit that we’re blind. And, luckily, our readings this morning remind us that we are. We don’t see as God sees. Jesus isn’t the king who we’d have picked out for ourselves. We’d have picked Eliab, like Samuel did. Once we get to the point of admitting that we’re blind, of admitting that we are powerless to save ourselves, the Gospel can become good news for us Pharisees, for us Yankees. Jesus can take us back to the beginning and teach us how to be Cubs fans.

There’s freedom in admitting our blindness. Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber says: “Every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it.” Drawing lines is what Pharisees do. It’s what I do. But when I admit that I am blind, that I am incapable of drawing the lines that signify who God loves correctly, Jesus can heal my blindness by helping me draw a line that excludes no one, because no one is on the other side of God’s love: not even me.

The good news of this Gospel story is that it leads us to ask: Who is the real blind person in this story? Jesus gives each of us the answer: Me. And then he opens my eyes.

Amen.