“More Ableist Than Altruistic”

A sermon preached with the people of Lordstown Lutheran Church in Lordstown, Ohio.

When the disciples encounter a blind man, they ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus responds, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.”

And then, Jesus mixes mud and saliva, applies it to the man’s eyes, and asks him to wash in the pool of Siloam. And then, the man finds that he can see.

But after that, things don’t go quite as you might expect.

When the man tells the story of what happened to him, the neighbors don’t believe him.  When the man tells the story of what happened to him, the Pharisees don’t believe him. When the crowd goes to his parents, because they still don’t believe him, his parents insist that he is a grown man, capable of telling his own story. And yet, when the man tells the story of what happened to him again, he is driven out of town.

What is going on here? Why is a man who has had a remarkable thing happen to him treated like this? Why is he met with mistrust and disdain rather than celebration?

I think it might have to do with how, then as now, we understand and treat disability and disabled people.

In January, a very popular YouTube content creator who calls himself MrBeast (real name, Jimmy Donaldson), posted a video titled “1,000 blind people see for the first time.” The video has been viewed over 124 million times.

Over the course of eight minutes, the video shows people removing bandages from their eyes and declaring that they can see. Some cry, some smile widely. It seems clear that the results of this surgery – known as Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery – has been a positive development for the subjects of this video, many of whom are also given cash and prizes in addition to the surgery.

But when I watched these people receive keys to a Tesla and $10,000 checks, there was something uncomfortable about it – a knot formed in my stomach – because it is clear their job was to perform for the camera, and they understood that this was their job – this was for a YouTube video, after all.

These people had not had access to a 10-minute surgery because our society and our government has not provided them access to quality healthcare – has not deemed this surgery “necessary.”

So instead, they perform.

Now, I know I’m in tricky territory here. I want to make clear, I know some of these people may have absolutely loved this whole process, and the opportunity to be on camera. And, I would not wish for this to be undone. I would not wish for these people, who wanted this operation, to have it taken away.

But I would wish that these people did not have to perform for us in order to receive the care they need. I do wish that these people did not have to participate in the narrative this content creator is promoting for profit.

And I think that expectation for disabled people to “perform” in certain ways may start to give us answers to those questions about this Gospel story.

The neighbors, the Pharisees, even the parents – they have a narrative they need this man to uphold; a narrative about him; about sin; about Jesus; about themselves; and about disabled people. And instead, he’s simply telling the simple facts of what happened. Over and over. Without flourish and without editing. He’s not taking their cues; he’s not admonishing Jesus for doing what he’s done on the Sabbath and he’s not making himself seem small and desperate – this man who used to “sit and beg,” a figure of pity or powerlessness. He’s just being himself. A person.

And that simply won’t do. So much so, that when they can’t get him to perform as they would like, they banish him.

And then, Jesus finds this man again, and Jesus does not require a performance. He reveals to him that he is the son of God. Entrusts that most-important information to him. And this man believes.

Steven Aquino, a technology reporter, who is blind, wrote of the MrBeast video, “The truth is straightforward: The video was more ableist than altruistic … Although not confronted nearly as often as racism and sexism, systemic ableism is pervasive through all parts of society. The fact of the matter is that the majority of abled people view disability as a failure of the human condition.”

This belief in disability as a “failure of the human condition” is arguably the same line of thought that led the disciples to assume that blindness was a sign of sin. But Jesus insists it is not. And, he adds, “he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

Some people are troubled by this bit, because they read this as Jesus suggesting he was born blind just so that Jesus could come along and restore his sight. But if that’s the case, it didn’t do much good since the people didn’t react so well to this restoration of sight.   

So here’s another read: Jesus is saying that this man was born – blind or otherwise – just plain born – so that God’s works might be revealed in him. Just like any of us are born so that God’s works might be revealed in us.

“Disabled people don’t need pity,” Aquino writes. “We don’t need to be uplifted. We don’t need cures from ourselves. What we desperately do need is some recognition of our basic humanity. We need abled people to start seeing us as the people we are instead of the sorrowful, burdened outcasts society likes to portray us as.”

So maybe God’s works revealed in this man never had anything to do with his blindness. Maybe God’s works were revealed when this person – this child of God who happened to be blind, and then could see (and, who knows, may have lost his sight again later in life), had the insight to be one of the first ever to proclaim Jesus’ identity. Maybe God’s works were revealed when this extraordinary human being became one of the first to know and to believe – when others did not – that Jesus is the son of God.