The Gospel for Monday, February 16, 2004
John 9:1-17
As he went along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should have been born blind?’ ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned,’ Jesus answered, ‘he was born blind so that the works of God might be revealed in him. ‘As long as day lasts we must carry out the work of the one who sent me; the night will soon be here when no one can work. As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world.’ Having said this, he spat on the ground, made a paste with the spittle, put this over the eyes of the blind man, and said to him, ‘Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam’ (the name means ‘one who has been sent’). So he went off and washed and came back able to see. His neighbours and the people who used to see him before (for he was a beggar) said, ‘Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some said, ‘Yes, it is the same one.’ Others said, ‘No, but he looks just like him.’ The man himself said, ‘Yes, I am the one.’ So they said to him, ‘Then how is it that your eyes were opened?’ He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made a paste, daubed my eyes with it and said to me, “Go off and wash at Siloam”; so I went, and when I washed I gained my sight.’ They asked, ‘Where is he?’ He answered, ‘I don’t know.’ They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. It had been a Sabbath day when Jesus made the paste and opened the man’s eyes, so when the Pharisees asked him how he had gained his sight, he said, ‘He put a paste on my eyes, and I washed, and I can see.’ Then some of the Pharisees said, ‘That man cannot be from God: he does not keep the Sabbath.’ Others said, ‘How can a sinner produce signs like this?’ And there was division among them. So they spoke to the blind man again, ‘What have you to say about him yourself, now that he has opened your eyes?’ The man answered, ‘He is a prophet.’ -- The New Jerusalem Bible. 1995, c1985. Doubleday: Garden City, N.Y.
A Study
"... he was born blind so that the works of God might be revealed in him." There's no better way of translating this. No way to rearrange the verbs and the nouns to make the meaning of the words different. He has lived as a sightless beggar, squatting by the side of the road, near the temple, where people might be more inclined to be charitable to him.
As shown by the words of Jesus' disciples, the Jewish cultural assumption was that either the fetus or his parents must have sinned greatly for him to be born blind. Thus, this blind beggar is stigmatized from the womb, sentenced to a life of darkness. For those who believe that his blindness is the wages of sin, there's not even pity for him.
There are symbols strewn over the landscape of this story like sand on the desert. Jesus creates sight from the dust of the earth as his Father created Adam in one of the creation stories in Genesis. The man is sent to wash in the pool at Siloam, where newly-received Jews are baptized. Siloam means "sent" as in Jesus' case. The waters from Siloam were considered especially blessed at the time of the Festival of Booths, being used in all manner of ceremonies.
Finally, Jesus had just escaped with his life from a crowd intent on stoning him for blasphemy, and was presumably trying to put some distance between them and him. Yet Jesus saw the blind man. And Jesus stopped, without being asked, and healed the blind man.
Jesus also produced a crack in the mental inflexibility of some of the Pharisees. "How can a sinner produce signs like this?," they asked, in opposition to those who had decried Jesus' activities in defiance of the Sabbath.
A Reflection
I confess to being horrified that God would cause blindness in someone so that his son could work a miracle. Until I understood that each of us is born flawed, not caused by God, but as part of our nature. Some flaws are more physically grievous than others. Some flaws are moral. All can be healed by the love of Jesus. Some "flaws" are misnamed; they are only a part of a hidden balance of nature in which a strength is given (sometimes not seen) that more than compensates for the apparent loss of some other faculty.
Are we not all born so that the works of God might be revealed in us? It is not my place to say why or how the works of God are revealed in a horribly deformed baby that dies within hours of birth. Is this manisfestation the downside of the genetic combinations that produce an Einstein or an Edison or a Yo-Yo Ma?
God created us with a lively intelligence and a questioning nature. To think that He would create the system that produces such remarkable and interesting evidence, and then expect us blithely and naively to accept it all and ignore it -- that is to limit God.
So far, no good answers have arrived for me that explain the moral or spiritual goodness of juvenile cancer, or people like Adolph Hitler. The Human race does not think like a seer of its age. It has to restart and build on what's recalled from the last generation in every new one. When it shoots itself in the foot by burning libraries as in the Dark Ages, there's little learning left on which to build anew.
"... so that the works of God might be revealed ...."
Within every chunk of marble lies either a building-block for a temple ... or a magnificent sculpture ... or fragments with which we can stone Jesus.
6:33:43 AM 
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