“If you were blind, you would not have sin.
But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”
—John 9.41
In the ninth chapter of his gospel
John tells a hilarious story
full of slapstick comedy
and subtle and not-so-subtle irony—
a sort of Jesus and the Three Stooges—
that on Sunday thousands of preachers
will read with a perfectly straight face.
In the story people whose eyes work fine
ask a man who was blind
to describe what he saw.
He sees clearly, though they do not.
They contort themselves
and trip all over themselves
with comic awkwardness
to avoid seeing what they see.
Despite the storyteller’s straight face,
intoning this tale as if it’s
a recipe for fish stew,
we’re supposed to laugh out loud,
first at those goofy Pharisees
and then even more seriously
at ourselves, since the real joke is on us,
because we too keep putting bags on our heads
and stumbling over God’s grace,
avoiding seeing what we see.
We don’t want to see grace
where we don’t want to see it.
We don’t want to see God
in people we judge.
‘Till we open the eyes of our hearts
the angels will just keep laughing at us.
But Jesus will sit down on the curb
with those who have been rejected
for seeing what they see,
and day after day work with us
to open our eyes.
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Click here a script for a four-scene dramatic reading of John 9.
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Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
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