Richard Mallory
Dear Friends of Christ,
Today’s gospel story is full of humor and pathos. Humor over misdirected communication and pathos over the world’s rejection of Jesus and his way. Misdirected communication arises out of certitude of fixed assumptions about reality.
The story begins with the disciples’ certitude. They “just know” that this man born blind sinned or his parents sinned. Jesus corrects them and we do not know if they accepted the correction. Perhaps they went quiet in shock and cognitive dissonance.
The blind man accepts Jesus’ invitation and dares trust the directives he’s given.
Enter stage left “neighbors” and “pharisees.” Both groups are upset. Rather than simply join the man in his joy and healing, they take exception. Oh how tempting to stick with fixity and status quo ways of doing things. Neighbors interrogate. For most of this story the formerly blind man is put on the defensive. He is hauled off to the pharisees who seem to initiate a court room scene. They clearly do not want what just happened to have happened. The parents are hauled in to testify. Feeling the heat and threat of the “authorities,” they backpedal and back off from giving their son their full-hearted support.
Done with the parents, the pharisees demand that the healed one reappear. He must now denounce his healer as a “sinner,” but he gains backbone just as his parents lost theirs. He gets downright feisty and no longer allows himself to be on the defensive. He is clear and bold in affirming that Jesus gave him sight. Jesus gave him vision. Jesus gave him enlightenment. His interlocutors were incensed and excommunicated him from the synagogue: “And they drove him out.”
I see the pharisees as archetypal figures who appear in every generation and are unable to bend, reconsider and reassess what “everybody knows to be true.” Everybody knows that Jesus is uncertified to heal anyone. After all, he is not one of us. Everybody knows that nothing of worth comes out of Nazareth. They remind me of Peter Ens little book, The Sin of Certainty. The shadow side of certainty is that everything gets locked in, nailed down, and settled once and for all. No fresh air. No sunlight.
Jesus heard of his expulsion, rejection and shunning. He went to him. He put the main question to him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man, the Son of Humanity, the Human One?” The now sighted man answers with a resounding “Yes.” Jesus closing statement is his articulation of his purpose and mission: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind,” which describes the results of how people respond differently to him. Those who are so certain that they see are blind to the ways they do not see. Those who do not see and know that they are not getting everything all sorted out and known, have a much better chance of finding “sight.” The pharisees and all of their descendants congratulate one another on their superior status which blocks enlightenment.
It is a charming story. Rich in human interaction. Forever inviting all of us to return again and again to identify with the blind man who allows Jesus the Christ to enter ever more deeply again and again into our lives and hearts. Another way of putting it is allowing oneself to inhabit the space of “beginner mind,” which sounds like “Ye must become as a little child.”
Your fellow traveler,
—Richard
