John Chapter 9 and Our Need To Tell A Better Story
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Season 1; Episode 6. John 9.1-41. Lectionary A, Lent Week 4
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
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John Chapter 9 and Our Need to Tell A Better Story
Herb Montgomery | March 17, 2023
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
We don’t need to assign moral value to the ways we each encounter our world. All in all, John chapter 9 is a reminder to me that today, as Jesus followers, we need to tell the Jesus story in better ways than this chapter does. As Jesus followers today, we should be about shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone. A world that big enough for all of differences, where each person can “sit under their own fig tree” (Micah 4:4), and no one—no one—has to be afraid.
The lectionary reading this week is from the Gospel of John:
“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.” But he himself insisted, “I am the man.” “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked. He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.” “Where is this man?” they asked him. “I don’t know,” he said.
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided. Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” The man replied, “He is a prophet.”
They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?” “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.” He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?” Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” (John 9:1-41)
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone!
Our reading this week is interesting and there’s a lot here to cover in this story. We won’t get to it all but we’ll cover what we can.
Most academic scholarship agrees today that Gnosticism has both Jewish and Christian starting points. It evolved in the late 1st Century CE out of nonrabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects during the time that the Gospel of John was being written in the Johannine community. I believe that the author or authors of John’s gospel looked at the world similarly to the community that would later come to be known as Christian Gnosticism. Some things in John are different from later Gnosticism, and they have many things in common. A couple weeks ago, I shared from the works of Irenaeus how later Gnostics only valued the gospel of John out of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The Pharisees and the proto-Christian Gnostics would have deeply disagreed about how to look at the world, and we bump into this division in our story. These worldview disagreements were very similar to those that later Rabbinical Judaism, which grew out of Pharisaical Judaism, had with Gnostic Judaism. These were not primarily a struggle between Christianity and Judaism. Only insofar as Christianity or Judaism took Gnostic forms would it have conflicted with Rabbinical Judaism.
Anti-Judaism was already present by this time among Gentile Christians, but this story and stories like it in the gospel of John have a long history of inspiring Christians to see all of Judaism as negative through negative stereotyping and the label Pharisees. The schools of the Pharisees that followed Hillel had much in common with early Christian communities that looked more like the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This is important because atrocities Christians have been responsible for against the Jewish community that can be traced back to interpretations of stories like this week’s. With stories like this, Christians have characterized the struggle as between Christians and Jews rather than between the Pharisees of that time and all forms of Gnosticism, Christian or Jewish.
The very first thing we bump into in the story is how the Gnostics explained so much concrete suffering in our world. The question “Who sinned?” betrays a worldview that assumes that all misfortune is somehow deserved. Many forms of early Jewish and Christian Gnosticism were not purely monotheistic but dualistic: they believed the material world was made by one God who had done the best they could but still created a world that involved suffering and pain. Christian gnostic sects framed Jesus as a Gnostic savior who came from a second Divine entity and saved the world through gnosis or knowledge (see John 17:3).
If John’s gospel was not written by those who were themselves proto-Gnostics, they definitely wrote a gospel that was especially vulnerable to being valued and interpreted by Christian Gnostics later.
Our story this week includes other binaries such as day and night, which we’ve spoken about the last two weeks. We even have a debate between the Pharisees and Gnostics over the Sabbath. Remember that the Gnostics were all about liberating our good souls/spirits from our material world of pain and suffering. The Sabbath was about a physical, enfleshed, material resting of bodies from physical labor each seventh day, and therefore would have fallen under the category of the material/physical, which Gnostics did not particularly value or prioritize.
Something we should mention here is the implication in the story that miracles are the sign of whether someone’s teachings are true. Our sacred texts aren’t monolithic on this topic. They include multiple warnings that even if miracles are performed, we should not trust that alone.
In the end, though, the Johannine community declares that the school of the Pharisees should be rejected because their spiritual understanding is blinkered. I could not disagree with this more. There is much Jewish wisdom that we Christians would do well to listen to.
Lastly, the narrative uses blindness as a metaphor and the way to describe the Pharisees as worthy of rejection by those seeking gnosis. I’ve said this repeatedly: using blindness to negatively characterize an opponent, adversary, or story nemesis is very ableist. It’s also harmful to those who live with physical blindness. We don’t need to assign moral value to the ways we each encounter our world.
All in all, John chapter 9 is a reminder to me that today, as Jesus followers, we need to tell the Jesus story in better ways than this chapter does. As Jesus followers today, we should be about shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone. A world that big enough for all of differences, where each person can “sit under their own fig tree” (Micah 4:4), and no one—no one—has to be afraid.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How would you answer the disciples question at the beginning of our story this week? Share with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
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Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
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Damage Mitigation Versus Changing the System
Herb Montgomery | October 22, 2021
“It’s not enough to remove the basis for people being treated as less-than. We must also challenge the very systems the create less-thans and greater-thans. Jesus didn’t just give Bartimaeus his sight. He continued on the road to challenge a system that made a blind man a beggar to begin with.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark,
Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. (Mark 10:46-52)
At the very beginning of our reflection this week, I want to say: I understand the original cultural context of this story, and I still find it deeply ableist. Gospel stories like this one have repeatedly been the seed of society perceiving people with disabilities or different abilities as either less-than or associated with evil. In stories like the one we read this week, blindness is associated with being sinful and at least is a condition that one must be saved from.
Consider the lyrics to one of Christianity’s most famous hymns, Amazing Grace:
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind but now I see.”
(Italics added for emphasis)
The writer, John Newton, associates being blind with being wretched and lost. For him, being able to see is synonymous with being saved and found.
So to all my blind friends, I’m deeply sorry. To my friends who do not have disabilities but are tempted to imagine I am making too much of this connection, consider how you would feel if you had a disability that your society repeatedly attached a moral value to . How would it feel having your disability associated with being sinful, lost, and wretched?
The story’s immediate solution doesn’t resonate with me much either. This man, Bartimaeus, is trying to survive within a system that marginalizes him because of his blindness. He is nether privileged nor benefitted by the system, and he is left to scrape out his own survival.
Jesus is about to go to Jerusalem and overturn the tables of the Temple State to protest a system that leaves so many impoverished and marginalized, but on his way there, his solution is to make Bartimaeus “not blind.”
This is comparable to not changing a patriarchal system but instead making all women men, or not changing a White supremacist system but reclassifying people of color, including Black people , indigenous communities, and immigrants as White. It’s comparable to not challenging a cisheterosexist system, but transforming LGBTQ folx into straight, cisgender, and/or gender conforming. This kind of conversion therapy would really be a kind of genocide.
I don’t believe the solution to a system that treats blind people as inferior is to remove everyone’s blindness. Rather the solution is to challenge and change the system so that blind people are not marginalized or excluded.
My critique may create more questions than it answers. Nonetheless, I believe these are the questions Jesus followers today need to wrestle with. Can we follow the values we have found to be life-giving in the Jesus story while acknowledging many of the ableist ways the Jesus story is told in our sacred text?
I believe we can. We can do better.
Some of the most progressive, historical Jesus scholars see in this story a reflection of actual deeds the historical Jesus did. Jericho, where this story happens, was the last stop before the Temple State’s capital, Jerusalem, and there’s an economic thread to this story as well. As I said earlier, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to flip the tables of an economic, social, political and religious system that privileges a few at the expense of many.
Jesus meets Bartimaeus at what would have been a popular location for Jericho’s beggars to gather. With the holiday coming up, many people would making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate. The holiday would have put them in the spirit of giving, and their tithes and offerings would have given them the means to give to so many of the begging people.
Bartimaeus’ name in this narrative also holds meaning. It could mean either “son of him who is honored or highly prized” or “son of the unclean or uncleanness.” In this story, he is both.
This story offers a repeated theme within the gospels: the crowd obstructs Bartimaeus’ attempts to get at Jesus and Bartimaeus’ increased efforts in response. I think of women pastors who belong to religious traditions that oppose women’s ordination, and how much harder they must work to follow their calling. I think of how hard people of color have to work to survive within historically White churches. And I think of the deep homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia present in most of Christianity still today, and how my LGBTQ friends who love and follow Jesus must work to stay in their faith traditions, even on the edges. Then and now, the crowd closest to Jesus is often the biggest obstacle to those on the margins of society who desire an audience with him.
I also love how our story has the poor beggar Bartimaeus “throwing his cloak aside” when he is finally able to get up and go to Jesus. This cloak, which would have been his only one, was also his most prized trade tool. He would have spread out his cloak to collect coins from those passing by: it was his own meager means to get his small livelihood, and he just tosses it aside. Consider the rich man in the last chapter who was called to make reparations and couldn’t let go of anything.
Jesus asks Bartimaeus the same question he had asked of James and John:
“What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51 cf. Mark 10:36)
The disciples wanted Jesus to grant them positions of privilege and honor in their own erroneous definitions of what the reign of God would look like. They assumed the reign of God would still mean privilege some at the expense of others.
But Bartimaeus is not asking to be made greater than others. He’s asking to be placed on the same level ground with others in an ableist society that economically, socially, religiously, and politically evaluates him as “last.” He just wants to see. So many disenfranchised and underprivileged people just want to be able to live and thrive on the same level ground as those who are privileged in our present system. For my LGBTQ friends, LGBTQ Pride month doesn’t mean they desire to be better than others: pride for them is the opposite of shame, not the opposite of humility. It is to celebrate being of equal worth to everyone else in a world that continually strives to make you feel inferior.
Bartimaeus just wants to see, and experience all that his sight would enable him to have in his society.
I’m glad the story doesn’t end with Jesus just giving him the ability to see. That wouldn’t go far enough. Fortunately the story doesn’t end with “Immediately he received his sight.” It ends with “Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.”
What road was it that Bartimaeus joined Jesus on?
The road to Jerusalem.
That road ended in a temple courtyard with the tables of money changers being overturned. It ended in actions that so threatened the system that they landed Jesus on a Roman cross with other political rebels within the week.
What’s my takeaway from this story?
On our way to creating another world, we are to engage in damage mitigation. While we are working toward a world that a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone, we are to work to mitigate damage that our present world is doing by not being just, or safe, or compassionate for everyone. And yet, damage mitigation isn’t enough.
It’s not enough to remove the basis for people being treated as less-than. We must also challenge the very systems the create less-thans and greater-thans. Jesus didn’t just give Bartimaeus his sight. He continued on the road to challenge a system that made a blind man a beggar to begin with.
And we must do the same.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. Damage mitigation, while necessary, doesn’t challenge nor change systems of harm. What are the differences between charity and justice? Why are both necessary? Why does the church seem to excel at charity, but often fail at justice? What are both the risks and rewards of working for a more just world?
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week
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