Generally speaking, most people don’t think the Bible is funny. They think it’s serious stuff, if not difficult and dour. Others think it unattractive, boring, even toxic. Too bad for them. Today’s passage is funny and fun, and I believe that John, the writer, is milking every last word for its humor. Here we have the opponents of Jesus doing backflips to try to dismiss an obvious miracle by Jesus, the healing of a man born blind (told in yesterday’s post from the first part of John 9). After having already quizzed the man himself, trying to disprove the miracle that had obviously happening, they now quiz the parents about the man’s healing, indicating that, perhaps, he wasn’t really born blind at all (Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? John 9:19). Failing here, they go back to the man, now trying to discredit the One who had done the healing, making him out to be a fraud (we know that this man [Jesus] is a sinner John 9:24). The healed man responds simply, with words made famous in a beloved hymn: one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see (John 9:25). And when challenged again, he launches into the fray, saying of Jesus’ opponents, Do you also want to become His disciples? (John 9:27), and then challenging their theology (John 9:30-33). And their only answer is a slur: you were born entirely in sins (John 9:34). This reads like a sitcom, it’s that funny (at least to me).
As some of us fume and fuss about “the world” and how it sometimes reviles Jesus like this, perhaps we should take the attitude of John and, I think, of Jesus. On this Valentine’s Day, perhaps we should draw deeply on the love of God for the world that, in a sense, reads like a divine comedy, as well as a human tragedy. In fact, in several places in Scripture it indicates that the Lord laughs at such things as this (Psalm 2:4, 37:13). It would be well if we could learn to laugh as well: at such foolishness in others, at our own foolishness in getting all frothy about these things, and at the grace of God which calmly and powerfully loves us all nonetheless.
Then maybe, we, and our “opponents” could have the lovely experience of the blind man now seeing, not only physically, but spiritually as well. We, too, would see the Lord and worship the One who offers to open our eyes and the eyes of those around us. And that would be a perfect Valentine, indeed.
