Sixth Sunday after Pascha – Sunday of the Man Born Blind; The Holy Martyr Isidore (249-51)
Acts 16:16-34; John 9:1-38.
Read John 9:1-38
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
How do we recognize God’s work in the world? There are three ways of knowing in today’s gospel reading:
Authority: “We know that God has spoken to Moses.” In this we can sympathize with the Pharisees. They were not wrong in keeping the Sabbath.
Experience: “One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see.” The experience of the man born blind was undeniable.
Inference: “We know that this man is a sinner (because he worked on the Sabbath).” “Whether he is a sinner, I do not (experientially) know…We know that God does not listen to sinners…If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” Why could the Pharisees not connect the dots as the blind man did?
God “resting” on the “seventh day” did not mean that God then did nothing; it meant that the glory of God – not day six’s humanity – is the goal of creation: “We must work the works of him who sent me.”
Jesus sent a message to the Pharisees that they should have picked up on. He used biblical code they were thoroughly familiar with to say that He is Lord of the Sabbath: just as God created man (adam) from the earth (adamah), Jesus did a new work of creation with clay.
Among other things, the Pharisees were stuck in the unbiblical prosperity teaching so prevalent in our day, that ease or hardship in this life are signs of God’s blessing or curse: “You were born in utter sin.” Instructive for us is that Jesus’s disciples made the same error: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Every day can present opportunities for eye-opening experiences with God if we re-examine our own ideas that may make us miss what God is doing.