The question which our Gospel for today begs us to consider is this: who’s really blind here?
Who’s really the blind one? In the course of this chapter in John’s Gospel, the story of the healing of the man born blind and its aftermath, it seems that pretty much everyone experiences a moment in which they are blind, one way or another. Everyone except Jesus, that is.
As our Gospel for today starts out, the first ones, other than the blind man himself, to demonstrate their blindness are Jesus’ disciples. They are blind to the truth of sin. They assume, as was conventional in that day, that any catastrophes or calamities which happen to anyone must be directly related to a specific sin they committed. It’s kind of like the old saying, “What goes around comes around.” Cause and effect. Certainly the blind man must have deserved it. Of that the disciples had no question. Their only question was whose fault it was.
Perhaps you also have been guilty of this way of thinking. You see someone who has all sorts of things happen to them and on some level you think, “well, they must have had it coming.” We assume that this world is basically fair, and that only those who deserve bad things happening to them have bad things happen to them.
But this isn’t so. Sin is dirtier and uglier than we assume. It permeates every corner of this universe, making a mockery of the good order that God created. It is true that it is sin that caused this man’s blindness. It is not true that it was because of any specific sin that this man was blind. In the same way, cancer or Parkinson’s or Alzheimers or MS or whatever debilitating disease you want to name don’t necessarily have identifiable triggers. It can be due to no fault at all of the person who has the disease that they have it. Our job isn’t to sit in judgment over those who suffer, whatever the reason. As Jesus says, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3 ESV) Here was an opportunity for Jesus to show God’s grace, mercy, and power to this blind man. Here was an opportunity for Jesus to show what true blindness, blindness to God, was really all about–and what it means to really see.
They didn’t have advocacy groups for people who had blindness or deafness or any sort of physical problem or abnormality in those days. No, if you were found to have some sort of defect in the eyes of society, your role and lot in life was to live on the fringes of society. This blind man in specific had taken up begging for a living. You had to live. It was required of the Jews in the law of God that they take care of the poor among them. Without the various aids and props which the blind now have, it was a pretty gloomy prospect for the average blind person in Jesus’ day.
Gloomy, that is, until Jesus showed up. When Jesus came to this man, He changed the whole picture for him. Jesus is the light of the world, and He has come to shine the light of God’s grace into the darkness of sin. Any time there’s even a little light in darkness, it is no longer dark. Jesus had come into the world to bring salvation–and so He does for this blind man. He has come on the scene to save him from a life of being the lowest of the low, to restore his dignity and humanity by giving him back the ability to work, the ability to serve his neighbour. In short, Jesus is going to make this blind man see again.
This miracle is a little different from most of Jesus’ miracles in one very notable way–He uses physical means here. Jesus spits on the ground and makes mud. Not a very clean thing to do, but there’s a couple really good reasons to do that: first, it’s the Sabbath. Drawing water from a well, even a tiny amount, would have the Pharisees all over Jesus as a Sabbath-breaker in a second–and they’d be right. So that’s not an option. More importantly, Jesus uses His saliva to make this mud–His own water, as it were. The one who is the Living Water uses some of His own bodily water to cause this miracle to occur.
Jesus takes the mud he’s just made and rubs it on the eyes of the blind man, then sends him off to the pool of Siloam. Even though he’s blind, he knows that pool. Everyone knew that pool. It probably took him a little while to get there, but there he went. He washed, as Jesus had told him to do, and all of a sudden he could see.
I can’t imagine just how mentally overwhelming it would be to see for the first time. But imagine that you’ve identified everything in your life by smell, sound, taste, and touch, and all of a sudden you have sight to add to the mix. Talk about disorienting! He went back to where he had been–and again, this probably took a while, because he hadn’t ever seen the route before– and by the time he got back, Jesus had gone.
Naturally, nobody believed it was the same guy. He had been a fixture as a beggar for some time. There was no way that the blind beggar could possibly be fully able to see. The people who knew the beggar were blind. Blind to the power of God now displayed in this man’s life. They had no clue of the ability and authority which Jesus, as the Son of God, had over physical ailments.
Of course, they wanted to see Jesus now, not because of Jesus’ teachings or anything like that, but because they wanted in on the secret. They wanted to know how Jesus had done this great miracle. Utterly baffled, they did the only thing they knew to do in such a circumstance. Blind to what Jesus had done, they brought this man to the local religious authorities, the Pharisees, who then had their own look-see of this blind man.
Sadly, the Pharisees, at least some of those involved in this event, were the blindest ones of all. Utterly, completely blind. “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” What a retort! “Sorry, God, but this miracle doesn’t fit our schedule so it can’t be a real miracle. Must be a demonic event.” Some of them believed–and they stuck up for Jesus. “How can a sinner do such signs?”
Ultimately, the group who did not believe had to get to the bottom of things, to try to defame Jesus and prove that they were right. The blindness of sin is like that. It makes us want to look out for ourselves only, to prove ourselves right at all costs. This is the attitude which prevents us from humbling ourselves, from looking to the good of others ahead of our own. That desire we have to simply be looked at as somebody who is to be respected. We all want to be those ones who are well-listened to, well-regarded. Certainly this is an affliction which affects pastors as much as anyone in the congregation.
And so the religious authorities proceed to the parents of the blind man in order to get their version of the events. The parents know that their son has been healed; no debating that. The parents know that Jesus has healed him. There’s little debate there. And the parents demonstrate their own blindness, the blindness of fear. They are aware that there’s a no-entrance-to-the-synagogue rule now in place for all those who are followers of Jesus, and their position in the community is too important to be risked, even over their son who was blind now being perfectly able to see.
Fear is such a powerful blinding agent. It blinds us to our responsibilities as God’s people within our own families and communities too. We’re afraid to demand that our children come to church with us and sit through church with us, to learn how to worship. So our church attendance ages and declines and we wonder why. We’re afraid to talk to friends and neighbours about how important our faith and our congregation are to us, and we wonder why they never come to join us at church. We’re afraid of rejection from the community so we try to be polite and not assert ourselves by doing door-to-door evangelism or canvassing our neighbourhoods. All the while we don’t see how we’re sinning because our fear has blinded us to our Christian duty.
The parents do the safe thing and pass the buck. Back to their son the religious tribunal goes. And this tribunal won’t take no for an answer. “Give glory to God. We know this man is a sinner,” they say. They think they know what Jesus is, but they are truly the blind. They are so convinced that Jesus is a sinner, sent from satan to corrupt the piety of their people that they fail to see what Jesus has done and is doing. Hear again the dialogue between this man and the tribunal:
He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out. (John 9:25-34 ESV)
So convinced that they alone hold the market on the truth, they fail to see how Jesus is fulfilling the words of those Scriptures they claim to hold so dear. Jesus is fulfilling the words of the prophet Isaiah about the Messiah who will give sight to the blind–and yet, so hung up that Jesus had dared do such a thing on a Sabbath, they refuse to hear the truth and to heed the Gospel. And the blind man, whose only action in this whole affair was to hear and respond to the word of Christ, is tossed out of the tribunal, and, barred from the synagogue. He has gone from a tolerated and patronized blind man to a hated and feared seeing man–all for the supposed crime of being healed!
Jesus has not left this man to fend for himself, however, and shows up on the scene not too long afterward.
Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” (John 9:35-41 ESV)
This is really the key to this chapter and to the message of Jesus for us today. Jesus has come to make the blind see and to make the seeing blind. In this story we have one blind man who sees, and a whole bunch of seeing people who become blind, for they do not see things how God sees them. Any time we claim to be good enough on our own, any time we claim to be those who can see into the mind of God, we show our utter and total blindness. But when we confess our sin, when we acknowledge before God and one another our blindness, then we receive mercy. Then we are forgiven. Then we see.
Truth be told, this is one of the hardest things to do. Yet it is necessary. To truly confess our sin before God is to become vulnerable. To stare truly at the stony condition of our hearts is not easy. But it is what we are called to do this Lenten season–to rend our hearts and not our garments. Jesus promises grace and every blessing to those who rely on Him and not on themselves. It goes against our nature, it goes against everything that life experience might tell you. But it is the only way to be saved. As the apostle Paul says, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” (Romans 4:5 ESV) Again, God’s Word says, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:23-25 ESV)
Only in Christ, washed in His blood, freed from the power of sin, can we see. Only through His Word can we know the truth which sets us free. God grant us the faith to be blind to ourselves that we may see His truth. God grant us the courage to rely on Christ alone and despair of our own strength. In Jesus. Amen.Jesus has suffered death that you might live, and lives that you might spend eternity with Him. In Jesus. Amen.
Last updated February 2008 by the webmaster.