Sermon — March 19, 2023
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Last week, a thirty-five-year-old man was released from the prison where he had spent the last eighteen years after being convicted for a murder he did not commit. In 2004, Sheldon Thomas was arrested after a witness recognized Sheldon Thomas’s picture in a photo array provided by police officers, and identified him as one of the men who’d been in the car at a drive-by shooting. But there was one problem. The Sheldon Thomas in the photo wasn’t the Sheldon Thomas who was arrested. In fact, there were two different Black men named Sheldon Thomas living in the precinct at different addresses, and the one in the photo was not the one the police picked up. What’s worse, as the district attorney’s office reported this year, the detectives, prosecutors, and judge in the original trial knew that the Sheldon in the photo array was the wrong Sheldon Thomas. The one who was arrested had been involved in a confrontation with the police earlier that year, and when the shooting occurred, they leapt into action, prompting a witness to identify the photo of one Sheldon Thomas and arresting the other.
The defense commissioned a study in which 85% of law students of color who examined the photo array accurately reported that the Sheldon Thomas who’d been arrested wasn’t in it. The lead detective admitted on cross-examination that he had provided false testimony about the photo array. But the witness who’d identified one Sheldon Thomas in a photo array then identified the other in three in-person line-ups, and despite his claims of innocence, the Sheldon Thomas who’d been arrested—who does not look very much like the Sheldon Thomas whose photo had been used, apart from his age and the color of his skin—was sentenced to 25 to life, and the years that I spent, aged 14 to 32, going to high school and college and getting married and going to seminary, he spent aged 17 to 35, in jail.[1]
Now, it’s possible the witness was entirely unaware of what was happening. The FBI itself recognizes that even law enforcement officers’ unintentional actions can actually distort eyewitnesses’ memories. For example, if an officer says, “I know that was hard for you, but you did a good job” at the end of the session, the witness actually becomes more likely to identify the same person again in the future.[2] Human eyes, it turns out, are not cameras, objectively capturing a scene: our vision is shaped as much by what we expect to see as it is by what’s actually in front of us. The stories we tell about someone shape our memories of the past and even our perception of reality in the present.
Just ask the man born blind.
The characters in this story think they see the blind man for who he is. Both the disciples and the crowd treat the man as though his blindness is a judgment from God, a punishment for sin. The disciples ask Jesus: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2) But Jesus says, “Neither.” The underlying premise of their question is completely false. The man’s impaired vision is not a punishment for sin. No disability or impairment or illness, in fact, is a punishment from God. Later, the crowd repeat the same idea, in less polite tones. After the man points out that surely, Jesus must come from God, or he couldn’t have done this miraculous healing, they dismiss him. “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” (9:34) They think they know the man’s story. They take their own prejudices for granted, and use them to tune him out. “You were born blind, and therefore you must be a sinner”–what? he was sinning in the womb?—“and therefore we don’t have to listen to a word you say.” The story is settled. The case is closed. Ironically, the people who’ve been able to see their whole lives fail to see what’s happening right in front of them. If the man’s blindness was a judgment from God, then surely his healing must be a blessing. But the people refuse to consider the evidence of their own eyes. The ones who can see become, metaphorically, the ones who are blind.
In fact, some of them become almost literally blind. After the man washes his eyes and is healed, John writes, “the neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’” And some of them said, “Yeah, it’s him!” But others said, “No, it’s just someone who looks like him.” And he kept saying, “I am.” “I am.” “It’s me!” (John John 9:8-9) But some of them just won’t believe him. They are so convinced that this man’s story is already set in stone that they literally can’t see that it’s the same man. It’s the neighbors who’ve always been able to see who have never seen him for who he is, who literally can’t recognize his face or his body because they only recognize him as “that blind beggar.”
Their vision is so warped by their preconceptions that they can’t even see their own blindness. Jesus says that he’s come into the world “so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” (9:39)Some of the Pharisees hear Jesus’ say this and ask, “We’re not blind, are we?” (9:40) Look at this man, Jesus says, and look how you’re treating him. If you admitted you were blind, it would be okay. But if you tell me that you’re seeing him as you dismiss him as one was born in sin, it’s clear that your sin remains: you are still deceiving yourself. (9:41)
The stories we tell are powerful. They shape how we see one another. They shape how we see ourselves. They can put a man in jail for half his life. They can convince us that a man we’ve seen every day in the street asking for change must be a different man from the one we see now, healed of his impairment. They can convince us that people can’t ever change, that we can’t ever change, that we are trapped in our circumstances or our situations and there’s nothing that we can do about them. We look at one another through eyes of judgment, or distrust, or fear, and our minds warp our vision.
But as God says to Samuel, “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) And this goes deeper than “don’t judge a book by its cover,” “don’t treat people different even if they look different.” Those are the negative commands, the things that the disciples and the crowd do that we should not do. But there’s a positive command, an invitation, something that we really ought to do. And that’s what modeled for us by the man who was born blind himself: a humble recognition of our own ignorance, and the integrity to admit it. The Pharisees call the man back to testify before them that Jesus healed him on the Sabbath, and they ask him—actually they tell him—“We know that this man [Jesus] is a sinner.” (9:24) And the man simply says, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.” Maybe he is, maybe he’s not. “One thing I do know: that though I once was blind, now I see.” (9:25)
So what are the stories you tell that shape the way you see things? What are the stories you tell about people from __________—from this side of the neighborhood or that one, from Texas or Nebraska or San Francisco or DC or wherever, that stop you from seeing them as your siblings in Christ? What are you the stories you tell about someone who wronged you ten years ago that stop you from seeing how they’ve changed? What are the stories you tell about yourself that stop you from being able to change? What are the things you know for certain that simply aren’t true? What are the places in your life, in your own mind, where God is inviting you into the humility of the man born blind, to say aloud in public, “I do not know.”
These are hard, hard questions to ask and to answer. Almost by definition, we can’t answer them for ourselves. We don’t know the things we don’t know. We can’t see the things we can’t see. We need somebody to spit in the mud and rub it in our eyes, and tell us to go and wash it off. And if that seems gross—that’s about as uncomfortable as it can be, to have to break apart those preconceptions that we have. It’s an unpleasant thing. But it’s an incredibly important thing.
So may God rub the mud in all our eyes, so that we may see things as they truly are; may God give us the wisdom to recognize the places where our own assumptions divide us from the truth; and may God give us the courage to admit our own ignorance, and trust in God’s guidance, all our lives. Amen.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/nyregion/brooklyn-exoneration-sheldon-thomas.html
[2] https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/perspective/perspective-the-photo-lineup-an-important-investigatory-tool