Scripture Daily

Context No. 250 of 4322 · John

Context · Reflection

John 9:1-7: in context

1As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3Jesus answered, “This man didn’t sin, nor did his parents, but that the works of God might be revealed in him. 4I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work. 5While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6When he had said this, he spat on the ground, made mud with the saliva, anointed the blind man’s eyes with the mud, 7and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So he went away, washed, and came back seeing.

Jesus and his disciples come upon a man who has been blind since the day he was born, and the disciples react the way people have always reacted to suffering. They ask whose fault it is. Rabbi, they say, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Behind the question is an assumption most of us carry quietly, that suffering is a verdict, a punishment you could trace back to somebody's sin if you looked hard enough.

Jesus rejects the whole frame. Neither this man sinned, he says, nor his parents. He will not let the man's blindness be read as a sentence handed down on anyone. Instead he moves the question from the past to the present, from blame to work: this happened so that the works of God might be shown in him. Then, rather than explain further, he acts, and the action is strangely physical. He spits on the ground, makes mud with the saliva, smears it on the man's eyes, and tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. John stops to translate the name of the pool, because it means Sent, the same word he uses for Jesus himself. The man goes, washes, and comes back able to see.

The disciples wanted to settle who was at fault. Jesus was not interested in the question. He turned it from who sinned to what God is about to do. Whose suffering, including my own, have I been busy assigning blame for, when the question worth asking is what God might do in it?

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