To fearful disciples behind locked doors Jesus appears risen from the dead. The disciples were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? You would; I would too. They’d crucified their Teacher and Friend. Surely they would be next. They’d heard the news from Mary Magdalene who had seen Jesus, touched Him, heard Him. He is risen! Peter and John had investigated the tomb. Nothing there. The grave clothes were folded neatly, the head covering off to the side. Everything was in order. Clearly not the work of grave robbers.

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Moral calculus. We all do it, going from effect to cause. We crave the easy explanation. The man is born blind. Something went wrong. Congenital blindness is not the norm. Why did this happen? Was it a freak of nature, an accident, a genetic slip? Did someone sin? His parents perhaps. God must be punishing them. Or perhaps the man himself. That’s crazy, you say. Not to the rabbis of Jesus’ day who said, “There is no death without sin, and there is no suffering without iniquity.” Job’s friends believed that too. Bad things happen to bad people. Someone must have done something bad, right?