Here is a longer piece. I need to put in the whole paragraph as it needs to flow. Again from James Alison.
We can go further with this Johannine approach to sin. There are indications present in chapter 9 that more is intended in this story than a merely casual description of a particular incident regarding sin. The question of the sin as being related to the origins of humankind is hinted at in Jesus' use of clay in his restoration, or fulfillment, of creation, as well as in the insistence that the man was blind from birth. The relation of this story to something original is understood by the former blind man himself, who reckons that never has such a healing taken place. In the light of John's irony this means much more than that a particularly spectacular miracle has taken place, such as has never taken place before. It also suggests that there has been present a blindness from the beginning of the world that only now is being cured for the first time. Furthermore, when Jesus speaks , at the end, about judgment it is clear that he is not concerned with a particular local incident, but about a discernment relating to the whole world. Here we have a highly subtle teaching about the whole world being blind from birth, from the beginning, and about Jesus, the light of the world coming to bring sight to the world, being rejected precisely by those who, though blind, claimed to be able to see. All humans are blind, but where this blindness is compounded by active participation in the mechanisms of exclusion pretending to sight, this blindness is culpable.
We will hold on to this for a few days. First of all it is interesting to hear this story of healing interpreted in such a broad fashion. I mean broad here not in the sense of a 'loose' interpretation but broad in the sense of an act that looks so focused on one person - being an act that speaks of the whole of time and the whole of humanity. More and more, I am drawn to these kinds of interpretations that pull us away from what can be a very small view of humanity to one that captures all of us. In some way, I like looking at this healing of the blind man just as it is - a powerful story that not only involves the healing of one person but also opens up the vision of each and every reader to the blindness of those who claim to see. This is not so that we can use it to point at the blindness of others, it is so that we can always listen to ourselves and consider how blind we are even as we are sure that we are fully sighted. Do I believe Jesus healed a man blind from birth? Yes. I cannot prove that. And yet, I also believe that Jesus was actively trying to heal the blindness of humanity that seems to always kill us. That may mean that the writer of John's gospel really caught something when the experience of Jesus' presence took hold and brought new life and new vision to this sainted writer.
Connection: Both the story of a singular healing and the healing of the cosmos (world) is vital to our vision of the inbreaking of God's Reign of grace and peace. The blind need to be healed and those who do not know that they are blind need to be healed and all of us who sit and read about 'them' need to be healed so that blindness - all of it - even our own - can be washed away.
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