I guess the answer would depend on how you model a photon. If you think of it as an EM (plane) wave passing through space, then upon reaching the electron, it should cause it to experience an (oscillatory) force and thus cause it to accelerate. That's an interaction, but I'm not sure how to get...
How does a photon "know" to pass through without interacting?
The usual explanation given for transparency is that when the energy of a photon is smaller than the band gap energy of an atom, the photons don't interact with the electrons and pass through, so the material is transparent.
But...