John the Evangelist didn’t write this long chapter about the man born blind only to talk about a miracle Jesus made, but to say through it that Jesus is the giver of light and that the non-recognition of Christ is blindness itself. Since the beginning of the fourth Gospel, where this passage is found, the apostle says: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world”. The Gospel of John talks a lot about the light.
The Jews used to believe that a disaster hits a person as a punishment for a sin he did. The Lord replies saying: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned”. One doesn’t inherit the results of the sins his parents did. The Master goes beyond this debate through healing the man blind from birth. “He came home seeing”. In the end of the talk about the healing this man becomes “seeing” from the spiritual aspect since he believed in Jesus. The physical healing was a way into the spiritual one as the man told Jesus: “Lord, I believe’ and he worshiped him”.
The Evangelist uses the occasion of this miracle to insert a theological debate between Jesus and the Pharisees because the miracle happened on a Saturday and they used the Law of Moses to say that the miracle is a work and one should not work on a Sabbath although they have heard what the Lord said: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”.
The issue of Sabbath as explained by the Pharisees was one of the main reasons that made them provoke the people to kill the Lord. Lord Jesus was the victim of this wrong interpretation of Sabbath, the victim of the tyrannical system that people put and didn’t come from Moses.
There is also another part of the debate, which is the debate that happened between the parents of this man and the Pharisees. Was he blind or not? They refused the fact that the blind was healed and that they entered into darkness although they saw the truth. However, they didn’t want to admit it because if they did they would be then admitting that Jesus is at least a prophet or the anticipated messiah. They refused to admit this in order not to lose their power over the Jewish people and for the doctrine of the Pharisees which they inserted into the pure Jewish doctrine won’t be lost. This young man can’t be blind; they had to insist on that in order to save themselves.
Even if the truth appeared to us, we could sometimes escape from it because it is the surrender of soul to the savior and a complete repentance of all our sins. You can either be with Jesus, and consequently with all what he taught and asked for or with the darkness of your heart and sins.
The Gospel of the blind man is the choice between being completely to the Lord or not. It is nothing to be partially for him. “Your will be done”: This is how we are saved and not through our own will.
Christ is the complete light and we cannot choose parts of the light. Choosing parts of the light is blindness.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “أحد الأعمى” –Raiati no22- 29.05.2011
