Interrogation
We live in an age of misinformation. With the rise of (unregulated and) fast advancing artificial intelligence, there is no guarantee, for example, that the images and stories on our social media are real. Bishop Mariann Budde, who went viral, when in her 2025 inauguration sermon she addressed President Trump directly, she took to social media last week to counter a piece of news that was circulating about her. The story? That she had been diagnosed with stage IV glioblastoma. This was entirely false and entirely cruel in the light of the people and families who really do face this devastating diagnosis.
As a result of living in an age of misinformation, we also live in an age of interrogation. We are on guard, constantly questioning whether what we’re seeing with our eyes or hearing with our ears is really true. We are leery of requests for help, fearing they could be fraudulent. We wait for the other shoe to drop when speaking with family, friends, or neighbours about any number of issues. Is this a safe person? Is it worth the debate or will this conversation simply result in the further entrenchment of their already established views (nevermind our own)?
Living in such a state of hypervigilance raises suspicion and lowers trust. Interrogation born of fear. Interrogation, at times, a means of survival. Think for a moment what images come to mind when you hear that word: interrogation. Maybe you think of someone under arrest, a prisoner being questioned? Maybe the image that comes to mind is an Intro to Philosophy class on the Socratic method, a form of interrogation that relies on testing, probing, asking clarifying questions of an opponent until they come to a different conclusion on their own? Or, perhaps when you think of interrogation it’s not so much an image but a feeling that you experience, that of being backed into a corner? Or, backing someone else into a corner?
I want to suggest that there is yet another form of interrogation that stands in contrast to these, one deeply shaped by the life and teachings of Jesus. We find it in the story of the man born blind, a story we are used to reading as a physical healing story. It is that, to be sure. It is also a story about transforming the kinds of methods we use to determine—to “see”—what is true.
The Pharisees, the leaders of the Jewish community in Jesus’ time were no strangers to the age of misinformation. They were used to any number of prophets coming through town proclaiming themselves to be the next great leader of the Jews. The Pharisees were well-practiced in testing, probing to see if what these messengers proclaimed in the synagogue was of sound doctrine.
I actually have a lot of time for the Pharisees. I know some of us were raised on that song, “I don’t wanna be a Pharisee/‘cause they’re not fair-you-see,” but I appreciate what they’re trying to do. The Pharisees are not unlike the 200 complainants who wrote to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation recently after their commanders urged them to tell their troops that the United States bombing in Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan,” … “that President Trump ha[d] been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark [Jesus’] return to Earth’”. Or, the villagers of a small Saskatchewan town who have been fighting for nearly two years to remove a religious cult led by the self-appointed “Queen of Canada,” whose followers regularly intimidate and harass members of the small rural community.
The Pharisees in Jesus’s time are testing, interrogating anyone who claims to act in God’s name, knowing the harm it can do. Not only could a false prophet harm the people within the community, they could also draw attention from the Roman authorities—who are keen to stamp out anyone who might incite a revolution. For this reason, the safety of their communities is top of mind for the Pharisees. They didn’t shy away from calling the temple police if a testimony risked catching the watchful eye of the Roman authorities. Remember that Jesus is raised in this environment. He’s grown up with Pharisees. He knows what their role is and is at times even sympathetic to it. It’s one of the reasons why many times when Jesus heals someone he tells them not to go running their mouth around town. He’s aware of the risk it could bring to his community.
The Pharisees are also a kind of liturgical officer or protocol keeper, making sure the practices of their communities stay distinct from the practices of the ‘outside’ world, particularly those of their oppressor. They are genuine guides, warning against practices or teaching that might lead their people to become like the very people who stood on their necks.
Jesus gets where the Pharisees are coming from. And, he is critical of the exclusion that the Pharisees’ interrogation practices can cause: what starts out as “identifying misinformation” can quickly become a method of weeding out difference. Take, for example, the man born blind in today’s gospel reading. The Pharisees interrogate the man after he is healed by Jesus. When they’re unsatisfied with his testimony they go to his parents, who are terrified of being thrown out of the community, so they send the Pharisees back to their son.
The Pharisees go back to the man and seeing that there really is no way to square away this miracle, this difference among them, and fearing the attention of the Roman authorities, they throw him out!
Watch what Jesus does next. He doesn’t go to the Pharisees to raise a stink, or to pit himself against their authority. He doesn’t organize a rally to build up his following, to raise his own profile as the next leader of the Jews. He goes to the wounded. He goes to the man born blind, who has been healed, and now thrown out. And, he says to him, “Remember this: you are the one who sees.”
There was an article in Broadview magazine recently, about a United Church in Ottawa that had attracted over 100 new members. A faith formation leader at the church, Reverend Daniel Addai Fobi, worked in partnership with the church’s minister Reverend Jenni Leslie over the course of a year to invite people to the Church’s new LGBTQ+ ministry called “God’s Beloved.”
“Originally ordained as a Pentecostal minister in Ghana, [Reverend Daniel] came to Canada to avoid persecution as an ally of the LGBTQ+ community.” Reverend Daniel told Broadview magazine that “[t]he situation for queer people is dire in parts of Africa and, unfortunately, when they come to Canada, they often hear the same messages in churches that they heard in their homelands.”
So, while riding the bus in Ottawa (and as a speaker of five African languages in addition to French and English) Reverend Daniel “would listen for African voices and conversations and, if appropriate, introduce himself.” Instead of interrogating the people he met on the bus about what they believed, or didn’t believe, Reverend Daniel would simply say, “[you] are just wonderfully and uniquely made by God. If the Creator says you are good, how can anyone tell you that you are not good?”
After inviting his neighbours to church, Reverend Daniel noticed straightaway those telltale signs of hypervigilance and interrogation.
“The first time they sit at the back,” he told Broadview Magazine, “so they can leave when the minister tells them that they are sinners.”
“But that doesn’t happen — they are told that they are welcome and valued.”
So, they stay.
Jesus demonstrates a form of interrogation, a way of testing to see what is the truth in this age of misinformation without casting out the very people who are set to bring about God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus interrogates by sitting with the wounded, locating the truth in their stories, in their experience. He tells them they are the ones who see. May we go and do likewise.
Amen.