Judgments

Text: John 9:1-41

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            There’s a joke about two young fish swimming along when an older fish passes them going the other way and says, “Mornin’ boys, the water sure is fine, isn’t it?” The two young fish swim on for a bit until one looks at the other and asks, “What’s water?” This joke, while mildly amusing, actually exists to make a bigger point: often the most obvious realities that we’re surrounded with are the ones that we’re least able to see and recognize because we’re so immersed in them. It’s the air we breathe, it’s the water that surrounds a fish. It’s the fabric of our everyday lives. We have such an immersive reality in our gospel reading today—and it’s one that we still have surrounding us in our world. It’s the reality of judgment and self-justification. A theologian by the name of Oswald Bayer points out: “Those who justify themselves are under compulsion to do so… We are forced to justify ourselves, and as we do so, we usually want to be right…The world of the court is not a special world of its own, but just a particular instance—a very striking one—of what is being done always and everywhere.”

            We have judgment everywhere in our reading from John today, just as we do in the lives we live in this world. Everyone is issuing verdicts—on the man born blind, on Jesus, on the members of their community, on each other. We live in a world of constant judgment and we’re either in the judge’s seat or at the defendant’s table.

            It begins with Jesus’ disciples when they see the man born blind, begging—the only thing that someone blind in that day and society could possibly do to survive. “Rabbi,” they ask, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Their question was not out of left field. It was a common concept among some of the rabbis at the time that some sins were so worthy of punishment that God would reach backward and preemptively punish that sin even before birth. The only question in such a situation was whether it was the one born with the issue or if it was the parents who committed such a sin. The disciples have already rendered judgment: someone sinned; this man’s blindness is the evidence.

            Once Jesus heals the man born blind, this poor man is put on trial yet again—this time by the Pharisees. They make him stand first as a witness, to prove that this Jesus is a sinner for healing on the Sabbath; and then, when he won’t give them the answers they want, he’s treated as a hostile witness and judged himself. They judge him a liar, saying he hadn’t really been blind. They judge him a follower of a heretic, Jesus the renegade healer. They judge him unworthy of being in their community as they cast him out of the synagogue—the only support structure he would have known as a blind man who had to beg for everything. And all the while, the Pharisees are judging themselves innocent. They’re the keepers of the Law. They’re the ones who honor the Sabbath. They’re the ones who are rooting out the sins of others. They’re disciples of Moses.

            And just like water to a fish, we swim in judgment too. We compare our deeds and lives to others and assume we’re doing better than they are based on the evidence. We shake our heads when bad things happen to others, and even if we don’t say it out loud we can’t help but wonder if maybe they didn’t have it coming. We use the yardstick—maybe specially tailor-made for us—so that we can show where others have fallen short. And if we should ever fall short, like the Pharisees were shown to have when the man called them out, we have every excuse, every good reason, every self-justification of why it’s fine for me and not for thee; why that rule doesn’t apply in my situation, even if I’m insistent that it applies to yours. This is the tragedy of original sin. We’re curved in ourselves. Every judgment bends back to protect the judge, whether it’s the disciples, the community, the Pharisees, or us. We fallen creatures cannot judge truthfully because we can’t afford to. We would find ourselves just as guilty as those we judge.

            But there’s one exception in our reading: the man born blind. It’s not because he’s a better person than everyone else. It’s not because he has better morals or because he’s nonjudgmental or anything like that. It’s because he’s already lost everything. He has no position, no standing to protect. He was born blind, which meant that he couldn’t learn any trade. He couldn’t do any job that would have been available at the time. He had to beg, right from the start. Anything he had was given to him out of grace and charity. So having nothing to lose, he’s free to simply report what happened, what’s clear as day. “He put mud on my eyes, and I wash, and I see.” Even when he’s pushed, his verdict, if we may call it that, is a statement of fact. “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. He is a prophet.” And it’s that simple expression of the truth that gets him condemned and cast out.

            But there is One to whom it is actually given to judge. Jesus says, “For judgment I came into this world.” And what is it that we see Him do? He does not put the man on trial. When His disciples tried to do that at the start, Jesus refused. “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents that he was born blind, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Then, after the poor man had been cast out, Jesus went out of His way to find him and again would not condemn him, even when the rest of the world did. He simply asked, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” And then when the man answered, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus didn’t come down on him for not understanding everything right away, nor for being unable to recognize who was standing right in front of him. Jesus simply tells him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.”

            For there is one final verdict yet to take place, but we won’t get to hear it for a couple more weeks. There will be a trial, a judgment—and I’m not talking about the joke of a trial that the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate and King Herod will pretend at. God Himself will sit in judgment of sin; not just this blind man’s sin, or his parents, or the disciples, or the Pharisees. The Lord will judge all sin as it is contained in the crucified body of Jesus. With the final verdict of Golgotha, “It is finished,” all will receive their judgment. And God will judge the Son of Man guilty—guilty of it all, of every sin ever committed. And you, along with every other son and daughter of Adam and Eve, will be judged innocent. Your sentence will be given to Jesus on Good Friday. And all that Jesus has earned—every kind word, every healing, a lifetime of keeping God’s commandments—will be pronounced as yours. You, the blind, will see. And those who insist that they’re doing fine on their own, that they don’t have so much to be forgiven, they’ll be revealed as the blind ones; their guilt will remain.

            But not you, who have heard the preview of that verdict in the Absolution spoken to you this very morning after you confessed your sin. You, who have been washed in waters even greater than Siloam, in the waters of Baptism—you have been given to see who your Savior, your Healer, your God is. And He stands before you in body and blood, in Word and promise. He doesn’t ask you to defend yourself. He simply asks you what you believe. Believe in Him, for you have seen Him in His Word, in His Sacraments, and He has spoken to you, judging you to be His heir of eternal life. In the name of Jesus, who grants us sight. Amen.