WHO SINNED

The opening of Matthew 9 shows Jesus' disciples looking at a blind man and asking who sinned, the blind man or his parents. That can seem a bit weird to us that they'd see blindness as proof of sin, but it was clearly a Jewish assumption that physical defects were caused by sin.

Jesus tells his disciples that neither sinned, heals the man, and the crowd goes wild... not with excitement, but with a petty hullabaloo about the legality of healing on the sabbath.

No one in this passage expresses something positive about the fact that this man, born blind, could suddenly see. Including his parents. In fact they won't even back their son's story about who healed him because the pastors of their church would throw them out of the church (ok, it was pharisee's and it was a synagogue...).

What follows is astonishing. The Pharisees try to prove that the blind man wasn't ever blind, they cross examine his parents (who are too intimidated to talk), and eventually throw the man out of the synagogue. For being healed! Interestingly, the man had no say in being healed. Jesus has a conversation with his disciples and then just heals the guy and moves along. (The blind man doesn't even get a good look at Jesus cause he isn't able to see until he washes the mud out).

The Pharisees tell him: "This guy that healed you isn't from God, obviously, because he healed you on the sabbath." To which the blind man responds
33 [blind man] "If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
34* To this they [pharisees] replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

When a good thing happens to someone, not being glad for them is sinful.

Really what happens in this story is that the Pharisees see the blind man as an ISSUE, not a person. They see him as a sinner (from birth), and then they see his sight as a lawbreaker because they see Jesus' power as illegal if it involves making mud on the sabbath.

The beginning of the story starts with the question, "Who sinned that this man was born blind." and ends with Jesus saying that the sinning blind ones are the pharisees (who are so blind they don't even know they are blind).

The pharisees are so focused on issues that they bring a naked woman into the temple to force Jesus into a question on capital punishment. They don't care how humiliating it will be for the woman (guess they don't really care about how she feels cause they want to kill her anyway). And they are furious at cripple for being healed on the sabbath. I think that Jesus sees their focus on issues as a form of blindness.

Christians are prone to that same blindness we are tempted to see ISSUES instead of people. Of seeing gay people as THE HOMOSEXUAL ISSUE, undocumented immigrants as THE IMMIGRATION ISSUE because they crossed the border (which was made by stealing land from the original owners), homeless people as THE HOMELESS ISSUE instead of people with lives, skills, and a story worth listening to. Seeing ISSUES instead of people is just another form of self-righteousness, after all we don't usually like it when people see us as issues instead of people.

So when our first question is "Who sinned!" and not, "What does this person need" then we know we're in trouble.