NOTES for Joh 9:24-41

What is most striking in the attacks on the man who was healed is the hardness of heart of those assailing him, who demand that he betray the One who showed him mercy. And what legalistic logic: we do not know where He is from, so He should not have healed you (even though just moments earlier this “ignorance” did not prevent them from calling the Healer a sinner). One could apply to the accusers the saying about people who mistake the edge of their horizon for the edge of the world. But matters are far more tragic: the Pharisees, and those close to them in spirit, truly have no intention of acknowledging anything that does not fit their habitual picture of the world; their own level of knowledge of the Law is almost absolute truth to them. The healed man does not know the fullness of truth either, but he bears witness to the part of it that has been revealed to him. And whereas the disciples merely raised as one possibility the question of whether the man born blind had sinned or his parents, those interrogating him, as they cast him out, confidently pronounce him sinful: a judgment logical within their limited system of ideas, but unfounded even on its own terms.

Rejected by people, the man born blind proved to be one of those whom Christ received.