John 8, 9

John 8, 9

Jesus teaches at the temple.  Stops a woman from being executed.  Mixes it up with the Jewish religious leadership.  Heals a blind man.  And you know there is going to be trouble when you start healing blind folks.

I'm a big fan of the comedy troupe Monty Python.  Most of the bits I enjoy most from them have the common thread of John Cleese's presence.  Which makes it no surprise that I am also a very big fan of Cleese's classic series "Fawlty Towers".  Fawlty Towers is a flawlessly executed version of a very British form of humor relying on convention and set pieces and putting small pieces in place for the majority of the episode so that (kind of like the game Mouse Trap) it can all rain down laughter in a monumental payoff in the end.  Which brings us to John 9.  John 9 is certainly not intended to be a situation comedy, Jesus heals a blind man and deals with the fall out which is, of course, serious stuff.  Except that there is humor here.  There is irony here.  There are people who are doing precisely what they think they ought to be doing while doing precisely what they ought not be doing.  There are blind people who can see, sighted people who cannot see, and, along the way, people who can hear perfectly well and yet cannot hear at all.  It is not hard to imagine Basil Fawlty (Cleese) in the role of a Pharisee ranting about blind people seeing while all the while having perfectly good eyesight and running into obstacle after obstacle in a way that can only indicate a certain kind of blindness.  John is masterful in making his point here.  And a bit funny along the way.