Blind Faith

March 19, 2023

Rev. Mary Erickson

Hope Lutheran Church

Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

Blind Faith

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

A famous test was conducted in 1999 called The Invisible Gorilla. Perhaps you’ve seen the video.

Audiences were told to watch a video of people passing basketballs. There are two teams: Three players wear white shirts and three players wear black shirts. The audience is told to count how many times the players in the white shirts pass the ball. They pass the ball 15 times.

But then the audience is told, “And…how many gorillas did you see?” Gorilla? What gorilla? Then the same video is shown again. This time the audience watches for a gorilla instead of counting passes.

And sure enough, a person in a gorilla suit casually walks on screen, stops in the middle of all the basketball players, beats its chest, and proceeds to walk off camera.

The test demonstrates the phenomenon of inattentional blindness. It has to do with our ability to perceive unexpected stimuli.

Inattentional blindness has nothing to do with your ability to see. It has to do with your ability to pay attention to something unexpected. If you’re totally focused on one task, it’s possible that you’ll completely fail to see the unexpected item, even if it’s right in front of you.

Sometimes we can’t see things that are plainly right in front of us. Our story from John this morning deals with a man born blind. But he’s not the only person suffering from blindness. There’s a whole lot of unintentional blindness going on.

The story begins on the streets in Jerusalem. Jesus and his disciples encounter this man who was blind since birth. Right away, the disciples suffer from a perceptual blindness. They overlook the man in all his humanity. All they can focus on is sin. In their minds, this man suffers from blindness as a punishment for sin. Someone sinned.

The disciples’ mindset was trained to think that if someone suffers from a physical malady, or if something catastrophic befalls an individual, it’s because they sinned. It’s a divine judgement. This is the premise behind the story of Job.

Job is actually a very devout man of God. But after a conversation between God and Satan, one curse after another falls on poor Job. His children and his livestock are killed in horrible accidents. Then Job’s own health takes a nosedive.

Job’s friends pay him a well-intentioned visit. But each of them reaches the same conclusion: “Job, you must have done something terribly bad. Confess to God and your lot will improve.” Job vigorously denies that he’s done anything wrong.

Jesus’ disciples draw the same conclusion as Job’s friends. Somebody must have sinned – but did the man himself sin while he was still in his mother’s womb or was it his parents who sinned?

Do we ever do this? Do we ever focus more on judgment than we do on compassion? When we see someone working through a situation, do we behold them with the eye of judgement like they had it coming? Does it blind our eye of compassion? The young woman who is pregnant outside of marriage. The neighbor who gets their third DUI. The impulsive nephew who makes bad choices. What do we see? Do we overlook the person, are we blind to the person and search only for faults? Our Lord counsels us, “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

The disciples focus on the sin, and they completely overlook the man and his suffering. Jesus points out to them that sin has absolutely nothing to do with the situation. This man’s suffering is not the result of sin. But Jesus will use it to shed light on God’s glory. Jesus sees the whole man and he sees God at work.

Jesus applies mud to the man’s eyes and gives him instructions. The man does exactly what Jesus said, and when he washes away the mud, he can see for the very first time in his life. What a marvelous thing.

And then we see more situational blindness. The man’s own neighbors don’t recognize him! Hey, is this the blind beggar? Some say yes, others say no, some say it’s a case of mistaken identity. They’ve lived next to him, they’ve passed by him in the streets for goodness knows how long, and they’re not sure who he is.

That’s because they never really saw him. He filled a role in their mind. They saw him as a caricature: “the beggar,” “the blind guy.” They had him pigeon-holed in their limited view. They didn’t know what to make of him once he no longer fit into their mold.

In a similar way, we can overlook others, too. We think we we’ve got them figured out, but really, we’ve done nothing but reduce them into a two-dimensional figure. It’s like we look at them through a tiny pinhole and only appreciate one very small aspect of who they are. We see someone as a black man or an old lady. We see a woman wearing a hijab and we think, “Muslim” with all the notions we personally carry about that. But in this limited vision we’ve become blind to their humanity. We miss their aspirations and talents, we overlook their courage and their daily challenges. Open our eyes, Jesus. Help us to see our neighbors in the fullness that you do.