Wb 265
Jesus saw a man who was blind from birth. Jesus’ disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind, this man or his parents?” Nature or nurture? Who sinned so that this person’s difference is on display for the world to judge? Who sinned, so that this person was born in such a way that his very being sets him socially and spiritually inferior to those of us born “normal?”
Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents. This happened so that God’s mighty works might be displayed in him…”
John 9 is a resonating story of salvation and spiritual blindness, similar to the prodigal son and the resentful older brother. Christians around the world exclaim with the man born blind, “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see!” We’d rather find ourselves on the side of the man born blind, and would never characterize ourselves as the Pharisees, eyes closed to the new wineskin of Jesus’ redemption that sees sacred dignity and worth in those the world sees only as inferior.
At the end of this month, representatives from across the world will convene for my denomination’s Special Session of the General Conference. They will be given the opportunity to vote on the work of The Commission on a Way Forward, which has formed several alternatives for the future of The United Methodist Church. Political posturing is happening on all sides, conversations to forge alliances and alignments to guarantee one way forward over another are happening publicly and privately. Churches and church agencies fear for their uncertain future: will they be defunded? Will they be forced to choose a side when their own people are divided on the subject? Many churches choose to just ignore the issue all together, hoping what happens on a denominational level will have little impact on their local church far away. It seems so big, so weighty, more like Godzilla or War of the Worlds than what it really is…
It’s John 9 all over again. Once again, Christ shows up and surprises good religious people by saving and calling people that we thought were spiritually inferior. Once again, Christ shows up and looks at someone in the eyes, someone we forgot was an image-bearer of the King, and Christ reminds us: “This person was born this way so that God’s mighty works might be displayed in him, in her, in them…” From our dominant power, we want this to mean that God has cured them of what makes them different. God has cured them of their non-whiteness. God has cured them of their non-straightness. God has cured them of their non-maleness. God has cured them of not being as naturally righteous as me. But when Christ opens the eyes of the blind, he affirms that the condition of one’s birth is not inherently sinful. He affirms that opened eyes are not just physical, but eyes that see that Christ is in the world, the light of the world that restores true sight. Christ says, “While it’s daytime, we must do the works of him who sent me…” And that work looks a lot more like telling the spiritually “inferior” that we are all equal at the foot of the cross, and it looks a lot less like insisting on preserving exclusivism for institutional integrity.
I wrote this comic a million different ways before I settled on this final version before you today. And every time I felt my own breath taken away as the characters prepare to blind and mute the new reader of scripture. The more I listen to the stories and teachings of my non-white-straight-male brothers and sisters in the faith, the more my eyes are opened to how white-straight-male-centered my entire theological education has been. Privilege is assuming that there is only one correct narrative of Christian history, and it is the one that came through European culture, making white-straight-maleness the superior norm to any other way of being. Privilege is assuming that your race, sexuality, and gender do not create a bias for you the way they create a bias for someone different from you. Privilege allows you to say, “All are welcome to our church,” but then treat those not like you as spiritual inferiors. Privilege allows you to say to someone whom Christ has redeemed, “You were born completely in sin! How is it that you dare to teach us?”
I hope you will pray for our representatives preparing to go to General Conference (Follow Praying Our Way Forward for resources). They have a heavy task before them, and I am not so sure that voting is the heaviest task. I think for them, as for all of us, the heaviest task is confessing our own remaining blindness, and for some, the hardest part is to stop convincing ourselves that we alone have 20/20 vision.
P.S. If you spent this whole time reading and thinking this article was about the other side, I’m gonna stop you there and ask you to read it again.