Who Sinned?
John 9:1-41
March 19, 2023
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ns4A0fFak
The man in our story is not named. I’m going to call him Dan for convenience, but that is not his real name. Dan knows who he is. He is an adult, able to think and act for himself. He is the son of faithful people, church members. He does not have the gift of sight and because of this, sometimes he has to beg for coins or food or whatever someone is willing to share. This is his life. We are not privy to his internal thoughts. Has he made peace with his situation? Or is he angry, depressed, sad? We don’t know.
The people around him know who is he too. Dan was born blind. Some of them remember when he was born. They have watched him grow up. Some of them may pity him or pity his parents. Some of them may admire his ability to get from place to place, to accomplish the tasks of daily life without being able to see.
Some may know him personally and some may avoid knowing him, but everyone knows one dominant story about him. The story they know is that his blindness is God’s will. His blindness is God’s punishment for sin. They’re not sure whether he sinned, which he would have had to have done before he was even born, or whether his parents sinned, but they know that someone sinned. When Jesus’ disciples ask “who sinned, this man or his parents?” they’re just asking out loud what everyone else is already wondering.
I spent last weekend at a conference on storytelling. Maybe that is why I am noticing at least three stories swirling around within this chapter.
The first one is the blame story. It is the story that the community tells. The neighbors, the religious leaders, even Jesus’ disciples, -- they all know that someone is to blame, someone is at fault, someone is responsible for Dan’s lack of sight.
Why do we need to assign blame? Because we understand cause and effect. If we know what caused the problem, we tell ourselves, then we can control ourselves or our lives so that we will avoid having it happen to us. Who sinned? Who can we blame? It’s the kind of question people ask all the time in the face of tragedy or crisis.
Who sinned that this person was killed in a car accident?
Who sinned that a gunman showed up in that movie theatre, at that middle school?
Who sinned that that person has cancer?
Dan’s community doesn’t know exactly why Dan is blind, but they have narrowed it down. It is either his fault or his parents. This is the blame story.
The second story is shame. It’s not quite as obvious as blame, but it’s there. We catch a glimpse of it in Dan’s parents. When they are questioned by the religious leaders, they say “We don’t know. Dan is a grown-up. Ask him.” The gospel writer explains that they are afraid if they say what they believe to be the truth, they will be kicked out of the church, ostracized even further than they already are. They know that people blame them for Dan’s blindness. They accept some or all of that blame. They feel the shame of it.
This is not just a first-century phenomenon. Today’s parents face the possible narrative of shame any time their child seems different, any time the child doesn’t meet some arbitrary academic standard, or colors outside the lines, wears the wrong clothes, makes a mistake, chooses an unexpected career path or life partner – the parents may wonder “What did I do wrong?” They feel inadequate and hope that no one else will find out.
Dan may also be telling himself the shame story. In a culture that blamed him for his own disability, it is likely that he would have internalized that story. Everything wrong in his life is his fault. There’s no point in even trying to change. It’s just who he is and always will be.
Under blame and shame is fear. The blame story and the shame story are actually just two versions of the fear story. The neighbors, the religious leaders are afraid that it might happen to them, that they might not be able to see, They’re afraid of not being able to make a living, not being able to cope with being blind. Dan and his family are afraid of being banished, excluded from communal relationships.
And all of that fear is being laid on God. If God causes blindness, then really God is the one to be feared, right? That’s the only explanation they know for the blindness, but they don’t really want to put it all on God. What kind of God would strike a baby blind? The explanation has to make sense. It has to be something they can live with. And what they can live with is the notion that God only withholds the gift of sight from people who deserve it, people who sin in the womb or their parents.
To me, that God seems harsh. That God is not consistent with the God of Genesis who stoops to create humans and animals and water and trees and who delight in the goodness of that creation. That God is not loving . . .
but that God is worthy of fear. And fear is something we understand. Sometimes we choose the fear narrative because a fearsome God is predictable and if we can predict, we tell ourselves that we can control or avoid. We think that being afraid keeps us safe.
The fear narrative is powerful. It is so much a part of our story that we often don’t realize it. Some of us have been taught that God is fearful, that striking a human being blind is exactly the kind of punishment God might do. That is not something I believe at all, but I know some of us do. I would just point out that Jesus disputed that. The disciples’ unconscious assumption was that God was, in fact, punishing Dan for someone’s sin and that Jesus’ response was very matter of fact “No, no, this is not about sin. You are asking the wrong question.”
When bad things happen, some of us might think that it is God’s punishment. But that is not the only way the fear story plays out. We don’t always blame God. Sometimes the fear story plays out in the myth of scarcity. We tell ourselves that there is not enough for everyone, so we have to get ours by any means necessary. Sometimes fear gets located in “them”, the identified boogeyman. “They” are against “us”. “They” are the media or the opposing political party or non-Christians or citizens of another country or drag queens. The fear story says that if we can just control “them” or get rid of “them,” then everything will be fine. But until then, we keep telling the fear story, thinking it keeps us safe.
Fear can be a good thing. It reminds us to look both ways, keeping us from getting hit by a car or standing too close to a fire. But if the fear story is the one we tell over and over again, it robs us of the joy of life. It drags us down to the level of sheer survival. It causes us to devalue and disregard others who bear the image of God. It is not the abundant living Jesus came to share.
There is one more storyline that develops in this chapter. It emerges from Dan, the man who was born blind. It is his testimony.
As Dan tells his story over and over again, his self-understanding changes. He says,
“I was blind, but now I see.”
“I could not do that before, but I can now.”
“I am a person who sees!”
I imagine that Dan doesn’t really have words to describe this huge change. He may not trust at first that it is even real. But as he keeps telling the story, he believes it a little more each time.
As he tells the story over and over again, he also understands more and more about who Jesus is. First, Jesus is a stranger who he cannot see, a man who touches his eyes with mud and tells him to go wash. Then, Dan tells his story another time, to the religious authorities and this time he concludes that Jesus is a prophet. The next time, they interrogate him, Dan says that Jesus must be from God. And finally, when he gets to see Jesus in person, he calls him Lord and he worships him.
This is not the fear story. We might call this the courage story or the trust story. Dan trusts his experience. Dan trusts the new thing God is doing in him. His story is no longer one of shame and self-blame.
Dan believes that change is possible. Not just for himself, but for his neighbors. When they doubt that he is the same person, he repeats his story “yes it’s me. I used to be blind, but now I see.”
He believes change is possible, not just for himself, but for the leaders. “Surely this man is from God. Don’t you want to follow him?”
The clergy try to bully him “You don’t know anything, you’ve been a loser since you were born.”
He refuses to listen to their fear story any more. He pays a price for that. The clergy drive him out. Losing his community is undoubtedly painful, but I suspect it is a trade he is willing to make—giving up the illusion of control for trust.
James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. From birth, he was black and gay. There were and still are narratives of blame and shame about being black or being gay in our culture. Baldwin knew those narratives well, but he did not let them define him. He claimed the power of defining himself. He said many insightful things about trust and courage. One thing he said was "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."[1]
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Jesus changes the life of this man and in the process, the man faces his fears and his life changes even more dramatically. He trusts his own experience with Jesus. He trusts the new thing that God is doing in him. The more he tells that story, the more trusting and courageous he becomes.
Friends, this is the kind of insight and vision Jesus offers, to free us from the fear that constantly whispers blame and shame, to help us lay down recrimination and scapegoating and to step forward with trust and courage.
God is at work within us and among us. May we receive that with trust and courage, held by the love that casts out fear. Amen.
[1] 1962 January 14, The New York Times, Section: The New York Times Book Review, As Much Truth As One Can Bear by James Baldwin,.