John 9: Was Blind, But Now I See

Some people just can't help but be critical.  Give them a free trip to Disney World, and they'll complain about the humidity in Orlando.  Take them out for dinner, and they'll get upset about having to wait for a table.  In this chapter, Jesus performs the unheard-of miracle of giving sight to a man born blind, and the Pharisees get all constipated because He did so on the Sabbath.

The disciples instigate this miracle by pointing out the blind man and asking Jesus, "Who sinned?  This man or his parents?"  This question makes perfect sense to me, as we often want to assign blame when a misfortune occurs. Playing "Whose at fault?" has been a popular pastime for human beings since the days of Adam and Eve.

Jesus instructively replies, "Neither."  And then, to prove His point that the man's condition is an opportunity for the work of God to be displayed, Jesus heals him.  (I will pass over the gross way that Jesus chose to do this, other than to say I wouldn't need to be told twice to go wash after someone had put mud spit on my face.)

While any of us would be properly awestruck at witnessing such a miracle, the Pharisees truly cannot get past it.  But this stupefaction isn't to their credit.  It simply does not compute for them how Jesus could perform an incredible work of  God on the one hand while on the other disdaining their sensibilities about the propriety of healing on the Sabbath.  Apparently it did not enter their minds that the problem lay in their being legally insistent about something that God had never been legally insistent about.

In closing, I notice two more ironic qualities of the Pharisees:

First, they simply cannot get over their fixation about Jesus' origins.  After all the talk about "where did He come from" and "where is He going" in the previous chapters, they apparently forgot that they dismissed His Messiahship on the basis that they knew He came from Galilee.  But now they feign ignorance.  "As for this fellow, we don't even know where He comes from." (9:29)  Wasn't a mysterious origin one of the qualities they felt they had to look for in the Messiah?

Second, the Pharisees have no problem in answering the disciples' original question.  They've met the man's parents, and they seem an alright sort with the proper healthy respect for the Pharisees' spiritual authority. If anyone is a sinner around here (besides Sabbath-breaking Jesus, of course) then it is this scoundrel of the man born blind.  They confidently assert to him, "You were steeped in sin at birth!" (9:34)  I suppose it's easy to conclude who the sinner is when you have already decided who your opponent is.