March 30, 2014 | 8:00 a.m.

Claiming the Gift of Sight

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 23
John 9:1–41

Only those who own their own blindness can ever learn to see; only those who confess their sin can ever be forgiven; only those who recognize their weaknesses can ever be honestly strong.

Wlliam Sloane Coffin

Mrs. Jackson is a retired school teacher, fair-skinned with light red hair. Years ago the family of one of her fourth grade students was facing challenges because the mother became seriously ill. Mrs. Jackson supported the family by taking their three children out one day for lunch and a movie. She was eating with them in Taco Bell—her fourth-grade student, a brother in sixth grade, and a sister in preschool, all African American. At one point the preschooler asked, “Mrs. Jackson, do you claim to be white or black?” Mrs. Jackson responded, “What do you think?” And the preschooler said, “I think black.”

Her older brother and sister were very embarrassed and scolded her for asking what they deemed an inappropriate, if not ignorant, question. Are you blind? Can’t you see she’s white? Just look at her skin color! To this day they still hassle her about this incident. But I think what the little girl said reveals something amazing. That preschooler was not blind to Mrs. Jackson’s skin color. But she saw beyond that. She saw how this teacher treated her and her family as if they were Mrs. Jackson’s own family. She felt like they were of the same race. She identified Mrs. Jackson as one of her own people.

When Jesus’ disciples saw a man blind from birth, they did anything but identify with him. All they saw was someone who was a sinner, because they believed that blindness was a punishment for sin. They asked Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus replied, “Neither,” and proceeded to heal the man of the ailment that forced him to be an outcast. Jesus saw the man as a person and brought forth his wholeness.

It’s interesting that Jesus’ healing only takes two verses to describe, followed by thirty-eight verses of others’ reactions! The neighbors are so amazed at the man being able to see that they question his identity as well as integrity. He tells others repeatedly, “I am the man you once knew to be blind. I am that man who now sees! I am the man!”

The Pharisees are perplexed. The fact that this man born blind was healed by Jesus, on the Sabbath, challenged their beliefs, in fact, their whole worldview. First of all, they believed that if someone suffered from illness it was due to either that person’s sin or their parents. But Jesus debunked that belief. They also believed it was a sin to heal on the Sabbath, but here healing had happened. They also believed that healing could only come from God. The Pharisees became divided among themselves. If Jesus was a man of God, it challenged their assumption that it was a sin to heal on the Sabbath. If Jesus was a sinner, it challenged their belief that healing can only come from God. Their only other option was to question whether the man had truly been blind in the first place. So that’s where they went.

In the past few decades, church people have become divided among ourselves in relation to persons who are gay and lesbian. Some such persons have been experiencing calls to become ordained ministers for some time. But that challenges some people’s beliefs. Surely God wouldn’t be calling unrepentant sinners to the ministry. So either homosexuality is not a sin, or these folks don’t really have a call from God, or maybe these people aren’t truly homosexual.

In our state legislation this past week, a bill passed in committee called the Conversion Therapy Prohibition Act. If passed, it would prohibit mental health providers from engaging in any effort to change the sexual orientation of anyone under the age of eighteen. So-called “conversion therapies” for youth purport to supposedly “cure” people of being gay. But medical practitioners deem such efforts harmful and inappropriate. Those who hang onto the belief that sexual orientation can be converted are blind to reality.

There may be no deeper hurt for someone than not being seen for who they truly are. Persons who are African American, Hispanic, or Arab are often assessed just on their appearance. They are far more likely than Anglos to be pulled over by police when driving, detained going through airport security, arrested and even jailed because of their ethnic background. Gay and lesbian people are talked about as if they are not even in the room but are an “issue” that people debate.

Others who go unseen are people who have little or no income. People who are homeless have said that one of the hardest parts of being poor is becoming invisible. When they are on the streets, others usually avoid making eye contact or acknowledging their existence. We are surprised to learn that many persons who are living on a low income have at least some college education. How challenging to our beliefs, in which we thought education was the key to getting out of poverty. We may cling to our belief that the poor are poor because they don’t know how to navigate life very well or they don’t really want to have a steady job or get more education. Perish the thought that there may be something very wrong with our economic system! We would have to come to grips with the fact that the American dream of social mobility doesn’t work for everyone. We would have to see the reality that some people who work full-time still don’t earn enough to support a family above the line of poverty because their wages are not high enough.

Many people in the United States are hungry but not because there is a shortage of food. They are hungry because support through food stamps has been slashed by the government. They are hungry because the gap in pay scale between many companies’ CEOs and their workers has increased exponentially. For example, at McDonalds, the typical employee would need to work a million hours in one year to earn what the CEO makes. A typical Walmart worker would have to work 785 years to earn one year’s salary of their company’s CEO. Any belief that poverty is a result of an individual’s weaknesses just doesn’t hold up. We have an unjust economic system. But if we are blind to this, we tend to no longer see people who are poor as the full persons they truly are.

The Pharisees hauled the man who had been healed of his blindness off to his parents to see if they would attest to his identity and whether he had, in fact, been born blind. His parents did attest to that much but beyond that wouldn’t touch the situation. At the time, Jews were throwing out of the synagogue anyone who claimed Jesus was the Messiah. The parents didn’t want to risk saying anything about how their son had been healed. They left their child on his own: “Ask him—he is of age.”

Some parents of children who are gay or lesbian have said that when their children come out of the closet, they go into it. They don’t want to talk about their child’s sexual orientation for fear of judgment or rejection by their friends or their church. Or if a child is imprisoned or has struggles with school, depression, drugs, or divorce, the parents don’t want to acknowledge it to others for fear of disapproval. They keep others in the dark about their child.

The Pharisees are faced with a dilemma, for the man who can now see was, in fact, once blind. He has been healed by Jesus. Again they turn to the healed man and question how this could have happened. By now the man has had to explain his healing numerous times. He was no doubt getting frustrated. But he is also growing in his faith in Jesus. When he first explains what happened, he refers to Christ as “the man called Jesus.” Later he says, “He is a prophet.” Later still he says, “Isn’t it astonishing! You—the Pharisees—don’t know where Jesus came from, yet he opened my eyes. God listens to one who worships and obeys him—if a person is not from God, he could do nothing!” Such an affirmation about Jesus was too threatening for the Pharisees. They drove out the man who could see.

Notice that when the Pharisees persecute the man and his parents desert him, Jesus comes back to find the man. What the writer of the Gospel of John wants us to see is that if you are true to Christ Jesus, he is even truer to you. When Jesus came back to him, the man given sight was able to fully recognize Jesus as the Messiah and worshiped him.

It’s a wonder that people who have been belittled, ostracized, and treated as invisible have stayed in the church. They have not been fully embraced nor have their gifts for ministry been engaged. And yet whether it’s a guest of the Social Service Center or someone who’s gay or someone who cannot read or someone who struggles with mental health issues or someone who is darker-skinned, many still show up in a church. Why? Because they have met Jesus the Christ. They know Christ sees and accepts them fully as God’s beloved. They know Christ is the light of the world

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.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

That’s not what the Pharisees wanted to hear. With such teachings as these, Jesus put himself at risk with the religious leaders of his day. He was cast out because he showed compassion for outcasts. But amazingly, the power of Jesus never stopped. The One rejected—Christ of the cross—is the very one who continues to reach out to those who are rejected in our day. He is the one who continues to heal people from their blindness and judge those who claim to see.

Imagine yourself being asked by a preschooler, “Do you claim to be blind or to see?” Or as William Sloane Coffin posed the question, “What do we do when the light of the world offers to cure our blind spots? Will we finally let go our pride, bare our souls, take criticism from Christ and our friends, surrender . . . to grace so amazing as to enable us one day to say, “I was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see”? . . . Only those who own their own blindness can ever learn to see” (William Sloane Coffin, “Jesus and the Man Who Was Born Blind,” sermon preached at Riverside Church, New York, 29 March 1987).