The man born blind

A word for the week

Whose fault is it? That is the question the disciples ask when they see a man blind from birth, and it is one of the oldest and cruelest questions there is: Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? They assume, as people have always assumed, that suffering must be someone's punishment, that if a man is born blind, somebody must have done something to deserve it. And Jesus's answer sweeps the whole cruel assumption off the table.

Neither this man nor his parents sinned, he says. Just like that, he refuses the entire premise. The blindness is not a punishment. It is not a verdict on anyone's secret sin. Jesus will not let his disciples treat this man's suffering as a puzzle to be solved by finding the guilty party, which is what religion so often does, and which only ever heaps shame on top of pain. How many suffering people have been told, in one way or another, that their suffering must be their own fault? Jesus says no. Stop asking whose fault it is. That is the wrong question.

And then he gives them a better one. This happened, he says, so that the works of God might be shown in him. He turns their gaze from the past, from blame and cause, to the future, to what God might do. He is not saying God caused the blindness to make a point. He is saying: do not waste this man's suffering asking who to blame; look instead at what redemption can come out of it. Then, instead of debating, he acts. He makes mud, puts it on the man's eyes, sends him to wash, and the man comes back seeing.

But the story does not end with the healing, and this is the part to watch. The healed man gets dragged before the religious authorities, interrogated, badgered about who Jesus is, and he will not deny what happened to him. He does not have fancy theology; he just keeps saying the one thing he knows for sure: I was blind, and now I see. They throw him out for it, and it is only then, after everyone else has rejected him, that Jesus comes and finds him a second time. And this second finding is the real point. The first time, Jesus opened his physical eyes. Now he opens the deeper ones.

Do you believe in the Son of God, Jesus asks him. And the man, who has just lost everything for this, says, who is he, Lord, that I may believe? And Jesus says, you have seen him; it is the one speaking to you. And the man says, Lord, I believe, and worships him. There is the second, greater healing. He was given his eyes at the pool. He is given his sight of who Jesus is on the road, after his suffering, after his rejection. And he ends the story seeing far more than the people with working eyes who threw him out, because they, seeing, were blind to the one standing in front of them.

So the story answers the disciples' cruel question and replaces it with hope. When suffering comes, and it comes to everyone, the useful question is never whose fault is this. It is: what might God do here, even here? The blindness was real. The pain was real. And out of it came a man who saw Jesus more clearly than anyone in the story. Do not ask who to blame. Ask what light might come, and keep saying the one thing you know: I was blind, and now I see.