This account of the healing of a blind man begins with the all too
familiar question: who is to blame?
The disciples ask the Lord if the responsibility for this man's
tragedy rests with the man himself or with his parents. In fact they
put it very pointedly. They ask: whose sin has resulted in this
blindness?
It is only an ancient response to affliction to see it as the fruit of
some hidden guilt! We ourselves often think about misfortune - the
misfortune of others, our own misfortune - in just this very way.
Someone must be guilty of something. Someone somewhere must be to
blame.
In this story, our Lord contradicts this kind of thinking. For while
the disciples ask out of the conviction that bad things are the result
of blameworthy actions, they are in fact completely wrong. The Lord
says: neither the blind man nor his parents sinned. The blindness is
not a punishment, not a consequence of someone doing something wrong
and blameworthy.
The disciples' attempt to pin blame on someone is similar in attitude
to that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees are very quick to judge, to
'connect the dots', to condemn. They pass judgement not only on the
blind man - you are a sinner through and through, since you were born
- but on the Lord Jesus Christ - we know that this man is a sinner.
These are people skilled in blame and put-downs. They are
mean-spirited.
But of them the Lord says: your guilt remains. They are guilty
because wilfully spiritually blind and mean-spirited.
In short, in place of affirming misfortune and tragedy as the guilty
and just consequence of sin, the Lord's offers a liberating judgement,
a miracle of healing and forgiveness, a gift of reconciliation, a new
life.
But the self- righteousness of the Pharisees, so thick with
condemnation of others, is revealed as guilt. They respond to
suffering by heaping on more suffering - they punish, humiliate,
drive away, and make miserable with with doubt and guilt.
Their attitude is so very, very far from the example of the Lord, who
came not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved
through him. (John 3:17).
Sunday, June 9, 2013
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