NOTES for Joh 9:1-38
Today we have before us a vivid example of prejudice: the Pharisees question the man who had been blind. Everything that happens looks more like an interrogation. They casually repeat their questions, trying to catch the healed man out and find at least some opening in his words. When their store of means is almost exhausted, they have to deny the very fact that the healing took place. They drive themselves into a dead end. It seems that their opinion was formed in advance: “It cannot be, because it can never be.” Especially not on the Sabbath... Despite the eloquence, unheard of in an illiterate beggar and clearly given to him from above, they remain deaf. “How can such a sinner teach us anything?” This recalls their own words: “Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee” (Jn 7:52). Once again, it is the same wall against which a person’s living experience of encountering God is shattered. For it is so easy, through our knowledge and firm conviction about something—our own, not coming from the Lord—to wound another person and deprive them, if not of their convictions and faith in God, then at least of their faith in people.