Today’s scripture: (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (David Zier):
According to Bruce Malina in Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, in Jesus’ culture, people thought of light as a substance that radiated out, a kind of fire that, when present in the human body, could flow out of a person’s eyes and allow them to see. Someone who couldn’t see just didn’t have the substance in them. This would imply that their body had darkness in it instead of light. This almost comes across as if people who were blind were viewed as someone with no imagination — no mind — no inner light — no soul.
The disciples speak of the blind man as if he wasn’t there. They wonder, “Is he blind because of something he did or blind because of something his parents did?” In Biblical times, conventional wisdom held that if you had something wrong with you, it was the result of someone’s sin. How could he have sinned before he was born, in the womb? Or, had his parents done something so awful that the result would be a child born blind? Both of these were thought to be possibilities in Jesus time.
After Jesus assures the disciples that no one sinned, Jesus begins a very personal encounter with the blind man. Jesus spat on the ground mixing his saliva and dirt to form a mud which he places upon the man’s eyes. In Jesus day, it was thought that saliva from a holy man had curative powers, and even mud was thought to have curative powers.
Quantum physicist Dr. Arthur Zojanc, current professor of Physics at Amherst College, writes in his book, Catching the Light, of what he describes as the “entwined history of light and mind” described by some as the “two ultimate metaphors of the human spirit”. Dr. Zojanc writes of studies which investigated recovery from congenital blindness. Thanks to cornea transplants, people who had been blind from birth could suddenly have functional use of their eyes, but success was very rare. While surgery gives the patient the physical structures needed to see, the whole process that constitutes the act of seeing still has to be acquired from the beginning, something the mind has to learn. To give back sight to a congenitally blind person is more the work of an educator than a surgeon, and vision requires far more than a functioning organ. Without an inner light, without a formative visual imagination, we are blind.
After Jesus healed the man, the neighbors and those that had seen him before as the beggar thought they may have recognized him, but some were not so sure. There were doubts about whether the man was healed, as they could not recognize him.
Think about it — this man had been blind, sat and begged daily, and every day, people walked by him. When the time came to identify him, they couldn’t be sure who he was. They even had to fetch his parents to ask. Perhaps he was identified solely by the darkness they thought was inside him. They’d never looked him in the eye or really noticed his face. He was not recognized because no one really ever saw him. Perhaps Jesus touches this blind man in ways he had never known, in ways no one else had dared. Perhaps it was everyone else who could not see this man that walked in darkness.
Prayer for today: Jesus, heal my own vision, places in my life that lack light, so that I notice others all around me, so that I can love others better than I did yesterday.
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.