As Jesus walked along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, was it his sin or his parents' that caused him to be born blind?" "Neither," answered Jesus: "It was no sin, either of this man or of his parents. Rather, it was to let God's work shine forth in him. We must do the deeds of Him who sent me while it is day. The night comes on when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." With that Jesus spat on the ground and made mud with his saliva, and smeared the man's hands with the mud. Then he told him, "Go wash in the pool of Siloam." The name means "The one who has been sent." So the man went off end washed and came back, able to see. His neighbors and the people who had been accustomed to see him begging began to ask, "Is not this the fellow who used to sit and beg?" Some were claiming it was he; others maintained that it was not, but someone else who looked like him. The man himself said, "I am the one, all right. " They said to him then, "How were your eyes opened?" He answered, "That man they call Jesus made mud and smeared it on my eyes, telling me to go to Siloam and wash. When I did go and wash I was able to see." "Where is he?" they asked. He replied, "I have no idea. "

Next they took the man who had been born blind to the Pharisees. Note that it was on a Sabbath that Jesus had made the mud paste and opened his eyes. The Pharisees in turn began to inquire how he had recovered his sight. He told them, "He put mud on my eyes. I washed it off, and now I can see." This prompted some of the Pharisees to assert, "This man cannot be from God because he does not keep the sabbath." Others objected, "If a man is a sinner, how can he perform signs like these?" They were sharply divided over him. Then they addressed the blind man again: "Since it was your eyes he opened, what do you have to say about him?" "He is a prophet," he replied.

The Jews refused to believe that he had really been born blind and had begun to see, until they summoned the parents of this man who now could see. "Is this your son?" they asked, "and if so, do you attest that he was blind at birth? How do you account for the fact that he now can see?" His parents answered, "We know this is our son, and we know he was blind at birth. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we have no idea. Ask him. He is old enough to speak for himself." (His parents answered in this fashion because they were afraid of the Jews, who had already agreed among themselves that anyone who acknowledged Jesus as 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 born blind and said to him, "Give glory to God! First of all, we know this man is a sinner." "I would not know whether he is a sinner or not," he answered. "I know this much: I was blind before; now I can see." They persisted: "Just what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" "I have told you once, but you would not listen to me," he answered them. "Why do you want to hear it all over again? Do not tell me you want to become his disciples too?" They retorted scornfully, "You are the one who is that man's disciple. We are disciples of Moses, but we have no idea where this man comes from." He came back at them: "Well, this is news! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not hear sinners, but that if someone is devout and obeys his will he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever gave sight to a person blind from birth. If this man were not from God, he could never have done such a thing." "What!" they exclaimed, "You are steeped in sin from your birth, and you are giving us lectures?" With that they threw him out bodily.

When Jesus heard of his expulsion, he sought him out and asked him, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" He answered, "Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?" "You have seen him," Jesus replied. "He is speaking to you now." I do believe, Lord," he said, and bowed down to worship him. Then Jesus said: "I came into this world to divide it, to make the sightless see and the seeing blind. " Some of the Pharisees around him picked this up, saying, "You are not counting us in with the blind, are you?" To which Jesus replied, "If you were blind there would be no sin in that. But we see,' you say, and your sin remains." (John 9:1-41)

When you come to John's Gospel, and especially in Chapters 4, 9, and 11, there are two things you have to always remember as you read these. The first thing you always have to remember is that John is a master at developing dialogue. And the dialogue in John's gospel serves a theological purpose. By dialogue there is theological content developed. And as I say, John is a master at doing this. It's not just a discussion, but it's a theological discussion. And it always starts out in these theological discussions that the people are talking on one level and Jesus is talking on another level, a higher level. And in the process of the dialogue between Jesus and the individual that the person is very gradually (particularly if the person is open and receptive to Jesus), very gently, very kindly brought up to Jesus' level. And the amazing thing about Jesus in the Gospel is that he never speaks down to people; he never ridicules people. He can at times be harsh, but He's only harsh to those who are harsh to Him. In other words, Jesus always responds to how people approach Him. If people approach Him with openness, with honesty, then He approaches them with openness and honesty and invitation. But if they approach with mind closed, with harshness, then Jesus in turn is harsh.

The second thing we have to remember in John's Gospel is that he always begins with something either very Jewish or very human. And you might say, "What's so Jewish about blindness?" But it's not the blindness that is Jewish--sickness has no respect for any race--it's what you consider to be sin. And what you consider to be the result of sin. Here in this morning's chapter, Chapter 9, John is beginning with a popular Jewish theological belief. It is what we call in the Catholic church, not the Magisterium, not the official teaching of the church; it's a kind of theological opinion. It's not really doctrine, but it's what people hold in the popular realm. What is held here in the popular realm is that sickness or even lack of wealth, suffering, is a result of sin directly. Now you might say, "Whose sin?" And that's precisely the question the disciples asked: "Whose sin was it that this man was born blind?"

There are three possibilities for the Jews: One possibility was that the man sinned when he was an embryo in his mother's womb. Therefore he was born blind as a result of that sin, and he doesn't even know what it was, he isn't even conscious of it. Another possibility in Jewish popular belief is his parents must have committed some sin, and therefore the sins of the parents are visited upon the children of the parents. Or perhaps his grandparents' sin, and the result of the sin is passed on to future generations in the form of some suffering, or some deprivation. The suffering, the deprivation is seen as a judgment of God on that individual. And Jesus immediately says, "Nobody sinned. The blindness is not a result of sin One doesn't become blind because one has sinned. " The popular belief that is expressed in this Gospel is very close to a popular belief that you here among some fundamentalists, even among Catholics, that people who have AIDS have AIDS because God has punished them for their sin. AIDS is not a punishment of God; AIDS is a result of living a lifestyle that they live. That's what causes AIDS; it's not God's punishment. God is just as sorry about people having AIDS as we are.

Now what is Jesus developing here, and what does John show Jesus developing here? Two things. One thing is that Jesus is the touchstone. Jesus for all of the evangelists is the thing that determines everything. Another word you could use for Jesus is that he is the lodestone, he is the magnet that pulls everything to him. He's the magnet that tries to draw everything to him. Or the touchstone: he's the test. And the other thing that is developed here is faith. And what you see is how faith is developed, and how faith grows. And also what we see is that faith, a deepening of faith is accompanied by deprivation, by suffering, by some kind of difficulty in life, and the greater the difficulty in life, often there is a deepening of an individual's faith. But we are also shown by other people in the Gospel that how they react to Jesus and what kind of faith they have.

Now look at the man who was born blind. Notice the development of faith within him as he enters into dialogue with Jesus, as he enters into dialogue with his next door neighbors, people who knew him very well, and as he enters into dialogue with the Pharisees. How does he look upon Jesus? When his neighbors ask him, "What happened? Who cured you?" he simply responds, "The man they call Jesus cured me." And then when the Pharisees come and interrogate him, they say, "Who is it who cured you?" He then says, "He is a prophet." And when the Pharisees continue to interrogate him, he finally says, "He is a man who comes from God." And when he encounters Jesus the second time in His person, he says, "I believe you are the Messiah." Jesus is gradually lifting him up through the process of this dialogue. There's a heightening of faith, that he goes from physical blindness, to seeing, to moral enlightenment. He comes to the vision that only faith can give. I've used this kind of analogy before: Faith is kind of like wearing glasses. If I take my glasses off, you become blurs. I can't distinguish you, I can't check to see if you're sitting in the same place every Sunday, because most of the time you do sit in the same place every Sunday. But when I put on my glasses, I can see clearly. If I were not to have my glasses on, I could not read the text. Faith is like glasses in that it gives a clear vision, it gives a perspective on life, it allows us to see life clearly and what it is. And that faith has to come as a result of contact with Jesus.

Now let's look to see how some other people respond when they come in contact with Jesus. The Pharisees: Jesus divides them into two camps. On the one hand there's a group of Pharisees who say, "He has violated a law of the Sabbath and therefore he is a sinner. " And what has he done to violate the Sabbath? He's put a little dirt in the palm of his hand, he spit in it. He kneaded it and he made mud paste. That's servile work, that's manual labor, it was not allowed. But on the other hand there's another group of Pharisees that say, "Surely one who does actions like this man did cannot be a sinner, because sinners can't do such things." So you see Jesus divides them. But how do they respond further? They not only respond to Jesus, but they respond to other people, and that gives us insight into a third group of people: the parents of the man born blind. They are like people who have faith, but when the going gets rough they give up. They know what the result is if they say anything about how or who cured their son. So they sort of pass the buck; they refuse to make any commitment. "We know he's our son. We know he was born blind, but how he came to see, we don't know. Ask him, he's of age, he's an adult. We don't claim any knowledge, any responsibility." In other words, they are fair-weather Christians. Their response to Jesus is a faith that says we'll take it as long as we're comfortable. They're kind of like what missionaries to China used to call the "rice Christians"-- you fill my bowl with rice, and I will believe. You cease to fill my bowl with rice and I no longer believe.

We see a fourth group of people and how they respond to Jesus: the disciples. What is their position? We're never told what they think. We're never told how they respond. Perhaps the disciples represent us. But what is clear in this story, and what is a great lesson for us, is that again Jesus is the touchstone. Which category do we fit into? Does our faith deepen like the man cured? Is our faith like the faith of the parents, that when it's going easy, we believe; we're devout, but when the going gets rough, we forget all about it? Is our faith like that of the Pharisees, that we're divided, and ultimately we exclude like the Pharisees. There's a great deal of suffering that the blind man endures, not just from his blindness; the real suffering comes from his acceptance of Jesus. Because he is cast out of the synagogue, and for a Jew to be cast out of the synagogue is to deprive him of his social and cultural heritage. That's a great deal of suffering. Or are we like the disciples, just left wondering? I think perhaps in each one of us there are some elements of all of this: how we respond to Jesus, what Jesus is going to mean in our lives. Recently in an interview with Cardinal Koenig, an Austrian Cardinal, in the Tablet, a Catholic weekly periodical, Cardinal Koenig ended the review by saying, "The primary question of any age is Who is Jesus? How do I respond or fail to respond to Him? What place does He have in my life?"' That is the question that Chapter 9 of John's gospel is asking us.