Being Seen
THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT
1 Samuel 16:1-13 • Ephesians 5:8-14 • John 9:1-41
A classic way for an adult to mortify a child is to lovingly lick a finger or thumb and then to rub away some smudge of dirt or trace of food on that child’s otherwise perfect face. From an adult perspective, it’s embarrassing to have dirt or food on your face. “How long has that been there?” we ask, catching sight of our reflection. But from a child’s perspective, it’s even more humiliating to be rubbed with spit.
The loving power of saliva plays an important part in the miracle of today’s gospel. Because this story so strongly portrays the miracle of giving sight to a man born blind, it’s easy to miss that this story is at least as much about being seen as it is about seeing. The story begins, “As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.”
Apparently, this was a man who other people barely noticed. Those who did notice him saw him either as a sinner, or as the evidence of his parents’ sinfulness. But perhaps Jesus sees the man the way some adults see their beloved children: as more beautiful than the rest of the world could possibly appreciate. If it’s in our power to wipe away some mark that keeps that child from full belonging and thriving, we’ll use our own saliva to remove it if we have to.
The nature of this story as an account of being seen by Jesus gets eclipsed not only by the miracle that follows, but also by the story’s insistence on seeing Jesus the correct way. After Jesus performs the miracle, John’s gospel tells us that a “division” arose. The word used for “division” is “schism.” The people in today’s gospel appear to have only two lenses with which to see Jesus. From one perspective, Jesus is a sabbath-violator and therefore not from God. From the other perspective, Jesus is a miracle-worker and therefore truly from God. Those who think Jesus is a sabbath-violator call themselves disciples of Moses. Those who think Jesus is a divine miracle-worker are disciples of Jesus. In the world of John’s gospel, you can’t be a disciple of both, and being a disciple of Moses isn’t considered good enough.
The people in today’s gospel also are divided over the man who now sees. Some people say that the man who can see now is the very same person as the man who used to sit and beg. But others say it can’t be the same guy; the two just look alike. This debate reminds me of a schism that arose a few centuries after today’s gospel, over whether Jesus was God the Father or just seemed like God the Father. The victors professed that Jesus was God—not the same person as God the Father, but of the same substance as God the Father. They also said that the Arian Christians who believed Jesus was only similar to God the Father had no part in the true Christian Church.
But the stark, either-or choices in John’s gospel may reflect later schisms rather than the world in which Jesus himself lived. This particular Jesus story may have been shaped to maximally offend faithful Jewish people and to accentuate later schisms between Christians and Jews.
In Mark’s earlier gospel, we have a story of Jesus using saliva to heal a blind man (Mark 8:22-25), and we have stories of Jesus healing on the sabbath, but these stories weren’t one and the same. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus miraculously heals a man’s withered hand on the sabbath, but without so much as lifting a finger himself (Mark 3:1-6). In earlier gospels, Jesus plucks grain on the sabbath (Mark 2:23-24) and heals a woman on the sabbath (Luke 10:10-17), but Jesus defends these actions with examples from Scripture and by proclaiming that the sabbath is the most appropriate day to free people from whatever constrains them, for the sabbath honors the God who delivers people from bondage.
But John’s gospel combines a healing-on-the-sabbath story with a saliva-based cure story. In John’s story, Jesus doesn’t heal with saliva alone, but with “mud” or “clay”—a paste Jesus makes by mixing saliva and dirt. The Greek word for “mud” here (πηλὸν) most commonly means “mortar.”
Making mortar is pretty much the last thing someone faithful to the God of Israel should do on the sabbath. The book of Exodus tells us that before the deliverance of the Israelites, their Egyptian taskmasters made the lives of the Israelites “bitter with hard service in mortar and brick . . .” (Exo 1.14, trans. Robert Albert). Centuries after their liberation, Jewish communities began serving a paste of finely chopped apples, honey, and cinnamon, called charoset, on the feast of Passover, to symbolize the mortar that Israelites used in their forced labor—but also to convey the sweetness of liberation.
So, in today’s gospel, Jesus is said to have made the very substance that his people most associate with their history of forced labor. And Jesus makes this mortar on the very day of the week when his people celebrate their freedom to rest from the tasks that most resemble that labor.
The depiction of Jesus making mud or mortar on the sabbath didn’t just violate some arbitrary tradition. It affronted the Israelites’ sense that they’re worthy of rest and of freedom, and that they belong fully to God the creator and liberator.
This God had been revealed by Moses as a God who sees and hears his people. Before the Lord’s intervention to liberate the Israelites through Moses, we read in the book of Exodus that “God heard their moaning, and God remembered His covenant . . . And God saw the Israelites, and God knew” (Exo 2:24-25, trans. Alter). And God reveals himself to Moses with the name, “I am.”
In today’s gospel, Jesus sees the man born blind, and he hears that the man has been cast out, and Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”
At this point in Christianity’s long history of schisms, I feel invited to explore a faith that’s less aggressive about how to correctly see Jesus, and more open to letting ourselves be seen to the heart by God through Jesus. Despite its provocations, even today’s gospel invites us to see beyond schism—to share the good news of how God sees each us: as worthy of inclusion and fullness of life.
© 2023 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas