One of the difficulties in this passage is that blindness is being used both as a physical condition and as a metaphor for an unwillingness to notice or understand.

The physical disability, the text makes clear, has no moral implications. It is not sinful to be blind nor is it punishment for sin, not your sin and not the sins of your family or community either. It’s tempting to think that looking for someone to blame is an old-fashioned superstition, but the just world fallacy runs deep. When illness, disability, and tragic death are realities of life, we want to be able to blame someone. They were a smoker/ate too many seed oils/ate too much saturated fat/were vaccinated/were unvaccinated/wore dark colors/had brightly coloured hair/drank too much coffee/didn’t drink enough coffee. Because if it’s their fault then it won’t happen to us.

Modern science tells us that sometimes there are reasons. Sort of. Our actions and lifestyles can adjust some of the probabilities of ill-health. Though it’s rarely as clear a connection as people would like. Sometimes it’s still just something that happens. No blame. No reason.

The idea that something bad might happen without anyone to blame is vastly unsettling. Not just in some imagined superstitious past, but also here and now. The religious leaders in this week’s passage do a lot of work to assign blame at least in part because that preserves their comfort. We are not immune to blaming people for their own misfortune or ill-health.

In the text, the while thing is complicated by a debate about the miracle and who Christ is. The question of who is to blame for this man’s disability is all tied up in political positions. That sounds even more familiar.

To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

John 9:34 Full Text John 9

The text this week is careful to specify that it’s noon. That could mean be for several reasons.

Maybe it’s just context setting, part of the excuse for Jesus to sit here by a well waiting for his disciples to return with a midday meal, tired and thirsty from the morning’s activity, but I think there’s something more here for us to notice.

The world that Jesus inhabits is a harsh one compared to most of 21st century North America. In my house, we have running water. Carefully cleaned and sent through pipes to arrive in my kitchen or my bathroom exactly when I need it, hot or cold, for washing or cooking, in vast quantities. But of course none of that is available in the place where Jesus walks. Here water needed to be drawn up by hand from a well and carried, potentially long distances, to where it was needed.

Noon is a terrible time of day to arrive at the well.

It’s OK for a traveling preacher who has, perhaps, been walking all morning and is looking for a convenient place to rest, eat, and regroup to journey onward or find accommodations for the night. But residents who use the well regularly would surely prefer to visit the well as early in the morning as possible especially if coming from any distance. The cooler part of the day is better for doing heavy work like carrying water and that leaves time in the day for other tasks, ones that require water. Perhaps this woman, arriving so late, lives so far from any source of water that it takes hours to travel there every day. The search for the most basic necessity of life could be taking up nearly her entire day leaving no time for anything else. Or perhaps she has experienced some kind of calamity this morning, an emergency that has forced her to put off this vital task, or perhaps a broken water jug necessitating a second trip. She could also have done this on purpose, putting off the trip to the well until a time when she would not see too many of her neighbours there. Or maybe she just overslept.

In any case, her very presence at the well at noon could indicate something about her. She’s struggling here.

The detail about the husbands should make that even more clear. Five husbands, and now living with a man who will not commit to her as a wife. This is a marginalized woman, low on the social and economic ladders of her community, doing what she has to in order to scrape out a living. Barely.

Thinking in an entirely different direction, the reference to the time of day here reminds me of what we saw last week — Nicodemus, the respected Jewish religious leader comes in secret at night. In the next chapter, this woman — a Samaritan, nameless and marginalized — speaks to Jesus in an extremely public place at noon.

These people and contexts are entirely opposite from each other, but Jesus interacts with both of them on essentially the same level, speaking in metaphor of spiritual ideas. It’s the Samaritan woman who understands where the Jewish leader did not. Though to be fair, abundant convenient water is a lot more appealing than the mess and difficulty of rebirth.

Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

John 4:6-8 Full Text John 4:5-42

John 3:16 is very often the first verse we ask children to memorize. The very first summary of the Good News that we teach kids. With adult eyes it can feel kind of trite and simplistic. I have a hard time seeing around that.

Teaching this as a summary of the entire Gospel can mean that it gets hung with all kinds of baggage. Everything we think Christianity is gets stuffed into this single verse. Like the idea that this this image of a loving God is distinct to Christianity. The idea of God loving the world isn’t something that Nicodemus would find shocking. He’s confused by the idea of rebirth, but there’s no recorded objection to this set of ideas.

I can’t help but feel that the expected response to this verse is too small. We teach this verse to children and expect them to be cheerful and helpful in their families, churches, and schools. We expect them to grow into adults who get a job and pay taxes and go to church and marry and buy a house and raise a couple of kids and teach them this verse. But surely believing that Christ was sent out of God’s great love for the entire world should result in some larger action. Especially when there’s so much injustice in the world, so much violence and hatred.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

John 3:16-17 Full Text John 3:1-17