Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity
“Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?”
It is a familiar image and one which appears in the New Testament both in Luke and Matthew; in Luke in the form of a question and in Matthew in the form of a statement. The context of Matthew’s use of the image is the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees. His statement is an indictment about leadership which is also the common way in which this image is understood. We use it to talk about a lack or a problem about leadership. That implies that reason and understanding are important qualities when it comes to political life and to the life of institutions.
Luke’s interrogative use of the image is more intriguing since it is set in the context of mercy and forgiveness and serves as the entry point to the problem of hypocrisy, the problem of judgement. In a way, as his interrogative approach suggests, the image is being applied to all of us – to our judgments that stand over and against others and reveal our blindness. For Luke, the blind leading the blind is not simply about others; it is about us.
The idea and image are not limited to the Christian Scriptures. It is an important aspect of Buddhism in its reaction against and rejection of Sanatana Dharma, Hinduism. The Buddha comes to reject the leaders and teachers of Hinduism directly. The Canki Sutta, recalling, it is claimed, Buddha’s rejection puts it this way. “It is like a line of blind men, each holding one to the preceding one; the first one does not see, the middle one also does not see; the last one does not see. Thus, it seems to me that the state of the Brahmans is like that of a line of blind men.” It is a devastating critique of the Brahmin class, the teaching class of Hindu religious philosophy which is found in the Pali Canon, in a text set down before the time of Christ but sometime after the actual life of Siddhartha Gautama.
And yet, within Hinduism itself there was, far earlier, its own self-critique found in the Upanishads which speaks about the blindness of those who claim to know. “Fools, dwelling in darkness, wiser in their own conceits, and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round, staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind.”
The idea and image receives its most moving visual expression in Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s famous and unique 1568 painting of The Parable of the Blind leading the Blind. (more…)
