We are still in our series about the seven signs of Jesus in the Gospel of John, and today was about John 9 and the man born blind. It is curious at the end, and the pastor admitted that what Jesus said is a little puzzling, though he offered an explanation. 41 "Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."
Unlearning is harder than learning. The Pharisees were in worse shape because they thought they knew it all, and even when confronted with the amazing refused to reconsider their priors. We saw the same thing about the healing on the Sabbath. But...but...but it's the Sabbath, Jesus! Don't you know the rules? Aslan would say that he knew the Deep Magic before the dawn of time.
Political liberals and conservatives in the church both accuse each other of refusing to reconsider their priors for cultural and tribal reasons. Reconsidering my priors is one of the things I reliably bring. For me, the difficulty might be changing my mind a third time, believing that I have heard it all. I suppose it's turtles all the way down.
I attended the second service, at which the pastor again said the punchline was tricky and asked for suggestions. I didn't shout from the balcony, but, for what it's worth, here's my take on it.
ReplyDelete"Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."
I think it's tricky because of the combination of the Hebrew fondness for rhetorical questions ("Why do you answer every question with a question?" "And why shouldn't we?") and Jesus' way of skipping freely back and forth between physical blindness and spiritual blindness. These are rabbinical debate kung-fu masters, so of course it's going to get tricky. Translating to man-in-the-street, I think Jesus' punchline amounts to, "Physical blindness is, of course, guiltless, but you claim to be free of spiritual blindness when you are not, and this kind of blindness is not guiltless, but comes from vanity and results in nitpicking, lack of compassion, and a failure to recognize that me being able to heal a man born blind is a sure sign of my authority from God."
You said, "For me, the difficulty might be changing my mind a third time, believing that I have heard it all. I suppose it's turtles all the way down." Well, that's why there's grace and stuff.