As we ruminate on today’s readings, I would like to focus on one of the passages specifically: the parabolic lesson offered by Jesus in Luke. This narrative gives us distinct insight into how merciful discernment might be applied to the socio-economic and political realms around us with regards to liberative theologies. 

Though the series of Lukan parables in today’s reading typically revolves around the latter verses dealing with hypocrisy and the bearing of good fruit, I will be distinctly focusing on the way in which Jesus begins his lesson. I have found that his introductory questions, “Can a blind person act as guide to another who is blind? Will they not both fall into a ditch?” are often quickly glossed over and have their meaning assumed. 

In order to remedy this and reach the deeper kernel of truth of the parable I will be working under several hermeneutical assumptions. First, I will follow in biblical scholar William Herzog’s footsteps in viewing parables as subversive speech that called not just for social analysis but for enacting the Kingdom of God in the here and now. Second, I find the typical delineation of Luke’s Gospel as politically neutral rather than socially revolutionary to be misguided. Instead, I see Luke needing to delicately navigate his social surroundings as he spread the Good News to gentiles throughout the Roman empire. Third, I will be utilizing a social-scientific approach to biblical criticism, which is especially focused on the ways in which “blindness” functioned in Luke’s context. It is with these assumptions that I now approach the opening verse of today’s Gospel lesson. 

In framing the parabolic series, Jesus begins with a very distinct question for his disciples: “Can a blind person act as a guide to another who is blind?” Of central concern for our interpretive journey is the question of blindness, or as the Greek offers, tuphlos. The root word, tuph, can mean obscurity, lack of clarity, cloudy, etc., and has often been viewed as perhaps indicating spiritual blindness or an inability to understand. However, given Luke’s own position as a physician, the importance of contextualization with regards to parables, and the frequency with which actual physical blindness appears in his narratives (both the Gospel account and Acts), let us see what insight is on offer when we take Christ’s question literally. 

While there is no way to ascertain the percentage of persons within the Roman Empire who suffered from partial or complete blindness, there are several factors that indicate it was a prevalent problem and that Jesus’s parabolic allusions were directed at conditions well known to his audience. Between Luke’s portrayal of Jesus healing the blind man en route to Jericho (18:35); tasking his disciples with the physical healing of the blind (14:13); and distinctly tying his own messianic identity to addressing the particular social grouping of “blind persons” (“The Lord has put his Spirit in me, because he appointed me to tell the Good News to the poor. He has sent me to tell the captives they are free and to tell the blind that they can see again.”); it is my assertion that the parable is introducing a caste of visually disabled persons rather than an esoteric category of spiritual blindness. Luke’s text, after all, is foundational in liberation theologies of all sorts because of his distinct focus on the Kingdom as present today, here and now, or in Greek, semeron. 

Moreover, when looking at the Roman context as a whole, we can frame this literal questioning more precisely. Three leading physician philosophers of the first century offer insight into the prevalence of blindness as a real and wide medical and social concern. Rufus of Ephesus’ De Corpus Humani, Galen of Pergamon’s De Usu Partium, and Celsus’ Encyclopedia De Medicina each discuss the examples, causes, and remedies for the physical ailment of blindness to an extent that its commonality and its impact on the lives of the populace is clear. 

Those who were part of the upper classes could navigate their lives largely unimpeded, while those of the lower classes saw it as nearly a death sentence that relegated them to menial labor at best, and more often than not, to a life of begging and social ostracization. Cicero captures this dichotomy perfectly when describing a fellow philosopher, Asclepiades, as requiring minimal adjustment in the wake of becoming blind – he merely needed the attendance of “one more servant” as a guide (Tusculan Disputations). However, this was a luxury few could afford.

Thus, returning to Christ’s parable, the crux is not whether blind persons can act as guides to other blind people – clearly, they cannot – but why blind persons are even in the position of needing to guide one another. This shifts our concern from rhetorical discussions or spiritualized readings to asking how and why society has failed the characters of the parable and abandoned them to such drastic measures and dangerous conditions. In this sense, Jesus’s central liberating message is that the failures of casting social safety nets to catch the most vulnerable in their times of need is a demarcation of Roman societal structures, and not something reflective of the Kingdom that his ministry was enacting. Quite simply: the Roman Empire leaves their blind poor to fall in ditches, Christ’s Kingdom does not.