At church this morning, the pastor preached about Mark 10:46-52.
Jesus, his disciples, and a large crowd are departing from Jericho, and a
blind beggar on the roadside calls out to Jesus, “Jesus, Son of David,
have mercy on me!” People tell the blind man to be quiet, but the blind
man cries out more loudly, “Son of David! Have mercy on me!” Jesus
tells his disciples to call the blind man to him, and they do so, while
offering the blind man words of comfort. The blind man hastens to meet
Jesus, and Jesus asks the blind man what he wants Jesus to do for him.
The blind man responds that he wants to see, and Jesus says, “Go: your
faith has made you well.” The blind man immediately can see again, and
he follows Jesus on the way.
(My summary of the story draws from whatever translation my church’s bulletin was using.)
The pastor was talking about how blindness in those days was
considered to be God’s punishment for sin, and so, if a person were
blind and continued to be blind, people concluded that the blind person
must be on the outs with God. Moreover, people with disabilities were
excluded from the Temple and the worship that occurred there. The
pastor said that a blind person could learn really fast that one can
experience God outside of a physical building. And, indeed, the blind
man in the story has keen spiritual insights. He calls Jesus the Son of
David, which may indicate that he recognizes that Jesus is the
Messiah. He believes that Jesus can heal him. What’s more, he is
tenacious in crying out to Jesus for mercy, for he does so even when
people tell him to shut up. And, when Jesus tells the blind man to go
after the blind man is healed, the once blind man instead chooses to
come: he follows Jesus.
The pastor was talking about the importance of rehumanizing the
dehumanized, which means respecting the humanity of people whose
humanity society does not generally respect. The pastor also talked
about acknowledging the spiritual insights of people outside of the
church and inviting them to church. I remember when I was googling my
pastor’s name when I learned that he would soon be our new pastor, and I
found an interview in which he said that there is something special
about the spiritual insights of the poor. He may have had something
like that in mind, among other things, when he delivered his sermon this
morning.
There are historical questions that occur in my mind. Did ancient
Judaism believe that the blind were blind because they were being
punished by God? Obviously, that was a belief that was out there. In
John 9:2, Jesus’ disciples asked Jesus who sinned—-the blind man or his
parents—-that the man was born blind. There is the Jewish story of a
man named Tobit, a righteous man who became blind, and whose healing God
arranged. Even righteous Tobit felt that his blindness may have been
God punishing him for his sins (Tobit 3:5).
Did ancient Judaism exclude the blind from the Temple? Leviticus 21
prohibits blind sons of the high priest Aaron from offering food to God,
even though they can eat from the sacrifice. In II Samuel 5, David’s
attack on the blind and lame in taking Jerusalem from the Jebusites
serves as an etiology for the rule that the lame and the blind cannot
come into the house. According to The Able Bodied: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies,
by atheist biblical scholar Hector Avalos, Sarah Melcher, and Jeremy
Schipper, “According to Johannes Renger, in ancient Mesopotamia people
afflicted with a disease or a disability would often end up working at
the temple, because their immediate family could no longer take care of
them” (page 81); a different view on how things should be done appears
in parts of the Hebrew Bible, however. There is at least one place,
though, where a blind man blesses in God’s name: Isaac in the Book of
Genesis was blind on account of his old age, and he blessed Jacob and
Esau; yet, that was prior to the time of the Temple.
Did ancient Judaism believe that one could experience God outside of
the Temple? Well, eventually the Jews tried to do so, when they were in
exile. But Temples were considered to be important in the ancient
world.
At the same time, the Hebrew Bible does teach compassion for the
blind. Leviticus 19:14 prohibits putting a stumbling-block before the
blind. Deuteronomy 27:18 curses the one who makes the blind person
wander out of the way. Job in Job 29:15 says that he was eyes to the
blind. Isaiah 35:5 promises that, in the time of God’s restoration, the
eyes of the blind shall see.
Was Jesus challenging the system and assumptions that God himself set
up in the Hebrew Bible? That is a good question. Perhaps, in the
Hebrew Bible, God could punish people with blindness, but that did not
mean that everyone who had blindness was being punished by God. I
should also note, again, that, in Leviticus 21, the blind priests are
not thoroughly excluded from priestly duties, for they can still eat the
meat of the sacrifice.
Loving the marginalized can be easier said than done, at least for
me. If I were to see a homeless man mumbling to himself on the street, I
would be very hesitant to engage him, and I think that is wise on my
part. Still, we should care about the marginalized, and if we feel that
our abilities to do so are limited on the individual level (i.e., how
exactly would I help a homeless man mumbling to himself on the street?
I’d have no idea what to do!), then we should act on the communal level,
getting different people’s wisdom, experience, and resources in trying
to help.