March 29, 2005

Since you say, 'We can see,' your guilt remains

Jesus heard they had ejected him, and when he found him he said to him, 'Do you believe in the Son of man?'

'Sir,' the man replied, 'tell me who he is so that I may believe in him.'

Jesus said, 'You have seen him; he is speaking to you.'

The man said, 'Lord, I believe,' and worshipped him.

Jesus said: It is for judgement that I have come into this world, so that those without sight may see and those with sight may become blind.

Hearing this, some Pharisees who were present said to him, 'So we are blind, are we?'

Jesus replied: If you were blind, you would not be guilty, but since you say, 'We can see,' your guilt remains.

-- John 9: 35-41 (New Jerusalem Bible)

7 comments:

Meredith said...

Has anyone heard from Marjorie or RW?
I miss their voices...

Unknown said...

Dunno.

Both are more active on their own blogs than they were recently. Maybe be they only have energy for one blog at a time. I know holding down two is doing some stuff to my mental energy levels -- especially as I'm sitting fornt of a computer all dya at work as well.

Marjorie said...

Hello friends,
I'm sorry I've been away so long...it wasn't my intention. I guess I'm having a lot of spiritual wrangling over the role of the Bible in my life. I feel like a few of my recent posts where hackish, especially the one where I regurgitated what I'd learned in another study.

I'll probably write a post about what is going on in my head...for the moment, I'm just not that moved by the Gospel of John. Maybe its too spiritual, too beyond me...

But I'm here and I haven't forgotten you and there have been no personal or family troubles that have kept me away. All is fine.

Unknown said...

Don't see how the gospel of John can be more spiritual than -- say Matthew where Jesus tells to love our enemies. You don't get more spiritual than loving enemies.

Marjorie said...

maybe what I meant was that John's gospel seems to be the least literal -- since I sort of started at literalism and the moorings are coming loose, I feel adrift...

Marjorie said...

ohh...and I haven't read the Gospel of Matthew (or Mark), either, so I can't compare them.

Larry Clayton said...

Marjorie, I would agree that the gospel of John is probably not the best first gospel to read. Studying it this time I have noticed that the things that have moved me much more than Jesus' discourses are the incidents: the wedding at Cana, the woman at the well, the man born blind.
All these are much more literal than the rest of it. However I read them as poetic images of personal experiences common to all or most of us.

The writer of John was obviously a poetic genius. His gospel is thought to have come along some time after the synoptics, and what I perceive in the book as a whole is a pastor trying to get certain points over to his congregation.