The Gospel According to Tommy
See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me
Minorities often feel invisible. Tommy pleads: see me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me. This blind man in John 9 was basically unseen as they thought he wasn’t the same person. Homeless people often feel they are not seen. People with disabilities feel invisible.
Other times they are seen for the wrong reasons. Tommy is the weird kid that cannot hear, see, or talk. The blind man is a beggar, not a person. He was a sinner! Black people are thugs. Natives are drunks. Latinos are illegal, regardless if they are documented citizens or not. Rural people are ignorant rednecks.
While there are a lot of different versions of minorities, today we’re going to focus on one kind. On Tommy. On the blind man healed by Jesus in the Gospel of John. People with disabilities. Some are obvious. A person in a wheelchair is visible. Some are invisible.
We have people with disabilities all around us. There is one whose words you are reading right now, sharing this message. I have a reading disability that makes me a slow reader. In school, I always hated being called on to read allowed because I would lose my place. I would skip words. I’d accidentally substitute the wrong word. Now, I ended up just fine in that regard. Hell, I earned two master's degrees and a lot of student debt, but that is for another time.
The disability that is quite invisible, until it isn’t, is my panic disorder. I get panic attacks. Sometimes they are due to specific stressors. Other times, they appear to be random. They are completely debilitating. I dropped a class in
college because the room brought them on just walking in. I have not been on an airplane since before 9/11 because of this, and 9/11 has nothing to do with the attacks. I’ve been told to stop being silly, to suck it up. Why are you being weird? For the most part, I do not complain because I know many with far worse problems. I don’t mind the teasing for drinking decaf, since caffeine is a trigger. But this whole disorder can be exhausting and it has led to long periods of isolation in the past.
Now I’m not asking you to feel bad for me. I share because I know others need to know they are not alone. Others need to feel seen. You may know, but you may not know, what is hindering someone’s participation in society. Someone that wants to be included. That wants to experience life. Love. Friendship. Freedom. And then, like the blind man in the gospel, wants to be believed when he tells you.
Let’s dive into this text in the Gospel of John. There are a few takeaways, so try an note the following:
1. There is how Jesus sees a person with a disability and is willing to even go beyond his own religious rules to meet that need.
2. There is the religious response, an example of how we need not to respond.
3. There is the right and wrong way to listen to someone’s testimony
4. There is the recognition that we are to act as the body of Christ to people, since Christ is in us now.
At the very 2nd verse in this passage, the shaming starts. “Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind, this man or his parents?”
Jesus shuts this down right away. This was not due to someone’s sin. He says it is an opportunity for God’s mighty works to be displayed in him. Now you could look at this a couple ways. You could say that this man was predestined this way and lived his whole life as a beggar with a disability so that God can get the glory. Or, you could look at it as he just happened to be blind because, to be honest, life sucks sometimes. But, God can make an opportunity out of any situation, even the worst ones. Also, if we are the body of Christ, resurrected now, situations like this are an opportunity to be that miraculous work of God to such a person. Maybe God will grant us a healing miracle. I will never question what God can and cannot do. But, simply overwhelming such persons with love, in a non-belittling way can be the miracle.
Back to the text. The next few verses is the healing itself. The rest of the text is where religious people are more concerned with self-righteousness than they are the person in front of them. Some of them don’t even see this man, they think he is someone else!
They begin the argument of sin management. Did Jesus heal on the sabbath? Can he do that? Then they do not listen to this man. They don’t believe he was healed. They call in his parents, dragging them into this mess. I can hear the sarcasm in their tone:
We know he is our son. We know he was born blind. But we don’t know how he now sees, and we don’t know who healed his eyes. Ask him. He’s old enough to speak for himself.
What is especially sad here is that these teachers or religion have already decided to excommunicate anyone that considered Jesus the Christ. They have already created an ‘us vs them’ dichotomy and if you aren’t with “them” the religious, and uphold every single view of theirs, then you are out. How often do we see this in Christian communities today?
You don’t support the president, you’re out
You support gay clergy, you’re out
You didn’t use the newest PC terminology, you’re out
Sure, this is not limited to Christian communities, but if we are in Christ, then we do not have an excuse, as we can see from this text what Christ is about. He is about the person in front of him who needs help. He is about those that are on the margins, those being taken advantage of, those being judged by a different standard and mass-incarcerated, those being bullied by religious people, those with disabilities that aren’t taken as seriously. I could go on.
Now let’s look at this next bit. They question him again. Notice how he responds. He is showing us how he is not being seen as a credible witness:
They questioned him: “What did he do to you? How did he heal your eyes?” He replied, “I already told you, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
They insulted him: “You are his disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses, but we don’t know where this man is from.”
The man answered, “This is incredible! You don’t know where he is from, yet he healed my eyes! We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners. God listens to anyone who is devout and does God’s will. No one has ever heard of a healing of the eyes of someone born blind. If this man wasn’t from God, he couldn’t do this.”
They responded, “You were born completely in sin! (even though Jesus lready shut this down) How is it that you dare to teach us?” Then they expelled him.
This poor man. He wanted to be healed and part of society. Jesus granted him that opportunity, and the people, supposedly of God, rather than welcoming him into society, spend time telling him what should be. They mock his beliefs. They shame him. They do not take him seriously. So, how does Jesus respond?
Jesus finds the man born blind. He goes out of his way. He looks for him. He does not demand the man come to him, he goes out. He makes the move. Jesus heard they had expelled the man born blind. Finding him, Jesus said, “Do you believe in the Human One?” [aka the son of man, a title for him in that time]. He answered, “Who is he, sir? I want to believe in him.” Jesus said, “You have seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you.” The man said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshipped Jesus.
Jesus finds him. Jesus invites him. Jesus is gentle with him. This is the opposite of these religious people.
Now as I mention anytime we are dealing with religious people in this time, they were Jewish, but so was Jesus. This harshness was not due to Judaism, but do to hypocrisy that can happen in any religious context. Since we are the church, we must look inward and see when we act like the pharisees. Anti-semitism is born out of bad thology.
So that was a long text. There was a lot to unpack. Some of it was not directly related to the topic, but still important to hear and learn about.
So Jesus in this text, met the needs of Tommy, to “see me, feel me, touch me, heal me.” How can we? How can we realize that there are many of us that have some form of a disability and what we want is to be seen? Which the blind man was not by the religious. To be heard? which the blind man was not by the religious. To be felt? Which the blind man was not by the religious. To be healed? Which the blind man was not by the religious. Below is what Jesus had to see about that:
By Jesus, though, the Blind man was. All of it. Seen. Heard. Touched. Healed. And he responded with gratitude. We may or may not be able to heal a person’s disability. We do not know why sometimes God will heal and sometimes not. Anyone who has an answer about that, I am skeptical of. I am skeptical of anyone that thinks they understand the workings of God. While we may or may not be able to “heal,” we can heal their societal wounds, we can stop what bars a person’s full participation in society, and like Jesus, go out of our way to find the person and their needs. Unlike Jesus, we’ll screw up, but what is important is that we don’t allow our hearts to be hardened like these religious teachers who have all the answers. When we screw up, we find the person and apologize. Jesus showed us the way. Let us, as a church, as followers of Christ, find Tommy, and see him, feel him, touch him, and heal him.
