“whether this man is a sinner I don’t know-one thing I know, once I was blind, and now I see.”
Jesus is remarkably uninterested in sin in the gospel today. It’s not that Jesus does care about sin, or put another way, doesn’t orient his whole work and being toward destroying our bondage to those things that hinder and harm God’s creatures, and turning our hearts to be renewed in God’s image and likeness. It’s just that in this gospel he is just not very interested in the various people’s registers of debits and credits, their merits and demerits, who sinned and how much in our family. He is remarkably interested, indeed his gaze, his countenance shines graciously upon this blind man and his heart.
Christ has established a work of healing and grace in the entire cosmos, we receive the way to eternal life from it. We might call it a new kind of sight, that energizes us to live differently from grounded and powerful currents of God’s lovingkindness. Practically speaking, we receive a certain and growing sense, and the inner sight of the way to go amidst the confusions of life day to day. Sight, clarity might be a felt sense of trust that burns with a light brighter than our intellects can grasp. So we can grow in this sight, or discernment or discretion, about how to go about things each day. To what do we pay attention? Into what and in what way to we pour out our lives.
And the townspeople ask variations of: Who sinned? This boy or his parents? Jesus says ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned. He is blind that the works of God may be revealed.” He is remarkably oriented toward looking upon the man who is said to be blind. He turns to him, he listens to him, he touches him with earth, like God taking clay and breathing into it, and renews his humanity, present tense. Jesus’ heart is single, and the young man’s heart has grown in that direction. “Whether this man is a sinner or not I don’t know; one thing I do know. I was blind, and now I see.”
Maybe you could imagine he is one of those millions of people in the US weighed down with student debt in the US. A professional, a tradesperson, someone just trying to take some classes to get better work prospects, now indented to payments that impinge upon their ability to move, leave a job or challenge their employment conditions, or perhaps most treacherously, their inner sense of hope, of seeing a way forward. Walking down the street today, you might meet younger persons who has been weighed down, said to lack motivation, suffer general depressedness, lack trust in others, parents, schools, institutions, lack trust profoundly in themselves. What are their stories?
I encourage us all to consider that Jesus came to free and forgive us from what the Lords’ prayer calls quite straightforwardly ‘debts’, and from all those things we rightly count as sins, for these are the things that keep us from the sight, the taste, the grounded and powerful lovingkindness of God. Jesus really doesn’t care all that much about our sins, but instead yearns that we might see, and turn around, and find new hope and strength to live anew this day, each day.
So while the lawyers on the supreme court sit in judgment of millions of young Americans and their future of debt indenture, and the town square is all a fuss and out of our minds hollering about who sinned and when and how, there might be someone sitting along the way of your daily life, to whom you can turn your heart, share your renewed humanity, kindly inquire about their life, what weighs them down, what lifts them up. You might learn ways to remove their burdens and help their hearts to see the way God is making in them.