They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees. [V.13]
St. John does not specify why the man’s neighbours, who had been rejoicing with him, would suddenly take him to the Pharisees, the religious authorities. It may well have been fear, since it was the Sabbath and they might have been afraid of being punished, by association, for violating the Sabbath. Many Muslim countries have religious police, many nations have secret police, many people living in such places of terror will betray their neighbour to save their own skin.
It is only now that St. John specifies it was the Sabbath: Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a Sabbath. [v.14]
Making clay, healing the eyes, two acts of prohibited work on the Sabbath. We might wonder why repeatedly Jesus does things which clearly violate the Sabbath law, granted a law made dangerously complex by all the picayune additions made by generations of religious leaders.The answer is very clear: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” [Mk.2:27,28]
If satan cannot tempt us to obvious evil acts then he will see to trick us by seducing us to overdue what appears to be good, hence likely all the add-ons to the Sabbath law of it being a day of rest may well have appeared as a good idea: in the end the religious leaders turned a holy day of rest into an exhausting day of endless avoidance of violating the minutiae of the almost innumerable sabbath prohibitions.
In each of His challenging words and actions Jesus is seeking to point out and separate what is from our loving Father and what originates in our own efforts to shape things in life, in our relationship with God, each other, self, creation, according to our own egos.
Then the Pharisees also asked him how he was able to see. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.” [v.15] There is a clinical coldness, the coldness of hate, for hate is cold and dark, in the Pharisees questioning of the man, for their end goal is not humble openness to a miracle of healing, but to build a case against Jesus. The man who had been born blind does not name Jesus. He simple, concisely states the obvious facts.
So some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a sinful man do such signs?” And there was a division among them. [v.16]
Obsessed with their own interpretation of things in their arrogance they presume to know who is and who is not from God merely by external observation, an observation biased by their own blindness to the miracle, itself an example of Divine Love, of which they are also ignorant because they are intellectually stunted by pride.
It is paralleled, in our own day, by the rationalists, relativists, subjectivists, that is by those who, like the Pharisees, apply their own methodology to evaluating, in our day the Church and Her teaching, thus Christ Himself, in the Pharisees case the entire history of the Chosen People and the Scriptures, like the psalms and words of the prophets pointing to the Messiah. They refused and we have lost the humble wonder and truth of the psalmist: …..Where can I go from Your Spirit? From Your presence, where can I flee?..... I praise You, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works! My very self You know…….[cf. Ps. 139]
Humility is the key which opens our beings to the God of Love, otherwise our hearts are tight shut like some cemented over mouth of a cave where neither sound nor light can penetrate and to be in that place of loneliness is a living hell.
Their hatred of Jesus and determination to kill Him is there too in other Sabbath healings as noted by St. Matthew: 12:10-14 and St. Luke: 13:10-14.
Again, it is important to remember before Whom they were blind: The Incarnate One, the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Beloved of the Father, Jesus who loves us.
It can be as challenging for us as for the people, not just the Pharisees, who need to open their eyes of heart and soul to see the real Jesus and not just the carpenter’s son, for likewise to open with eyes of faith and heart of love for the Beloved, to see Jesus in what appears to be bread and wine, what appears to be a mere man at the altar, what appears to be an ordinary person, perhaps a person who is homeless, of a different race or religion, perhaps someone not a friend but an actual enemy. There too we encounter Jesus and what gifts, if we welcome the Jesus of many disguises, we will receive, when we come with our little gifts, more! He comes with lavishness.
We would do well to meditate again, to contemplate the Prologue of the Gospel, for the very One St. John, through the Holy Spirit, reveals to us there is the One we are blind before, with closed hearts, if we insist Jesus, and all Jesus reveals, teaches, be in accord with our preconceptions and prejudices.
In a sense Jesus, even though promised throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, still arrives among us, two millennia ago and in this very moment of encounter with Him, as the Divine-Surprise-Gift of the Father.
The joy of a gift is as much the expectation of what is hidden within the wrappings as the discovery of what is therein once unwrapped.
The wrapping of the Father’s gift, in a sense, is everything from Genesis to the fiat of Mary. Her fiat is the beginning of the Father’s gift being revealed. Hence the excitement of St. John the Baptist leaping in the womb of his mother, for the Holy Spirit opened his eyes, heart, soul and the entire leaping is his own yes to discipleship.
Relentlessly pursuing their determination, the Messiah should be neither surprise nor gift as God intended, but rather be their version, the challenge unfolds: So they said to the blind man again, “What do you have to say about Him, since He opened your eyes?” [v.17]
How stunned they must have been by the answer: He said, “He is a prophet.” Another humble person, this time Jesus opening the eyes of her heart, restoring her dignity to her, also said of Jesus: “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet.” [4:19]
A prophet is not a foreteller per se of the future, rather an authentic prophet illuminates the will of God in the moment and Jesus is the primary and last prophet sent by the Father. Jesus is Himself the Father’s Word-Gift, the Father’s complete Word, a word containing within His Very Person all we need and Jesus, through suffering, is the absolute fulfiller of the Will of the Father, the template, the path, for us to follow with Jesus the into the will of the Father, where we live, live out, the gift of love, for it is love which is the purpose and meaning of our existence: love between the Holy Trinity and us, between we and all others, with self, all the return of love we give to the Holy Trinity.
All this love, beauty, light, truth, hope, path of life and meaning, purpose of life, redemption, mercy, grace, joy is missed, if we insist with our puny brains, we are smarter than God.
© 2019 – Fr. Arthur Joseph
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