AND DIDN’T HE RISE…BLINDNESS

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from John 9:1-41

March 2, 2008

John 9

¹As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, ⁷saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. ⁸The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” ⁹Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” ¹⁰But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” ¹¹He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” ¹²They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

¹³They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. ¹⁴Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. ¹⁵Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” ¹⁶Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. ¹⁷So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”

¹⁸The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight ¹⁹and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” ²⁰His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; ²¹but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” ²²His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. ²³Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

²⁴So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” ²⁵He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” ²⁶They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” ²⁷He 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?” ²⁸Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. ²⁹We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” ³⁰The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. ³¹We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. ³²Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. ³³If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” ³⁴They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

³⁵Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” ³⁶He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” ³⁷Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” ³⁸He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. ³⁹Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” ⁴⁰Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” ⁴¹Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

Missing the point. A man walking along a beach encountered another man and his dog. The dog owner said, “Watch this.” He picked up a stick of driftwood, drew back and launched it far out into the ocean. Then he said to the dog, “Fetch, boy, fetch.” The dog took off running toward the waves but didn’t dive into the water. Instead he jumped up and skipped across the surface of the ocean until he came to the stick, stuck his muzzle into the water to grip the stick in his teeth, and pranced back across the waves to drop it at his master’s feet on the sand. The dog owner turned to the beach walker and said, “So, did anything look a little unusual about that to you?” To which the man replied, “Yes, your dog can’t swim, can he?”

Missing the point. A Sunday School teacher said to her children, “We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But there is a higher power than kings and queens. Can anybody tell me what it is?” One child blurted out, “Aces?” Missing the point.

Everybody knew him. Blind since birth, he sat every day on the stairs near the Temple, begging for some meager sum, just a few pennies, anything really. He was a local fixture, as reliable as the water flowing into the pool of Siloam. When he was just a lad, his parents would bring him here and hope that someone would take pity on him, giving him a few shekels to help them care for him. As he grew, he could maneuver by himself the route to his station on the stairs, to while away another day in humiliation and inferiority. This was his life, such as it was; this was all it was—all it ever would be. No career, no respect, no affection, no fulfillment, no family, no future.

You’ve met him in a thousand other guises. The hopeless, aimless, unskilled, down on their luck, pitiful castoffs who are so easy to overlook, especially after you have seen them so often. It is always night for these people, a dark and frightening world.

But Jesus happens along and heals the man with a little spit and dirt and water and faith, thus starting a 41 verse drama of soap opera proportions. Even those who saw him every day, even his own neighbors, don’t recognize the man with that sparkle in his now clear eyes. Some misguided souls trot the man over to the Pharisees. And what ensues is a trial, a tribunal, an interrogation. “Who healed you? How did he do it? Did he realize this is the Sabbath? No one is allowed to work on the Sabbath, not even an eye doctor! Are you sure you are that same blind beggar and not just some imposter trying to lobby for this Jesus preacher?” Parents are dragged into the fray and refuse to answer for fear of being called Jesus supporters and getting kicked out of the synagogue. “Don’t ask us how this happened. He’s of age; ask him.” So they drag the healed man back into court and demand that he denounce the one who gave him his sight. “I don’t know if Jesus is a sinner; all I know is this: once I was blind and now I can see.” Guess what they did, these educated religious elite? They tossed the now-sighted man out of the synagogue. And the rest of the chapter begs the question: who was really blind here?

The Pharisees missed the point completely. That’s easy to see. And we will miss an important point of this passage if we simply see this as a victory for Jesus: Round One goes to the man from Galilee. This time when I read this story, something different popped out at me. This blind man was a believer, a faithful Jew brought up in a family for whom the synagogue, the church, was important. Here was a member of the local community of faith who was healed miraculously, but no one cared, at least not about him. After his faithful parents confirmed that this was indeed their son, born blind but now sighted, you would have expected some joy from the church community. You would have thought that the ministers and elders and teachers would have grabbed him and hugged him and hoisted him onto their shoulders, called for candles to be lighted and festivals to be declared, dropped to their knees to thank their great God for this miracle. Everything that life had denied to this wretched man now lay out before him in plenteous promising potential. Ring the bells, sing some songs, honk your car horns, call the newspapers—this has never happened before in the history of the world! But there was none of that. Just jealousy, defensiveness, suspicion, selfishness, arrogance, many things—but no joy over the restoration of a child of God. No one cared about the cured man; he might as well have still been a blind beggar.

UK basketball star freshman Patrick Patterson has broken his ankle. Out for the season. The print media and call-in radio and water-cooler conversations buzz. Did Coach Billy Gillespie work them too hard in practice? Too many minutes of playing time demanded of Patrick? Can UK make the NCAA tournament without him? Will he turn pro instead of coming back next year, risking further injury? But is anyone thinking about Patrick? Just one quote in the newspaper: “His father, Buster, expressed concern for his son dealing with his first major injury. ‘He can shoulder a big load,’ Buster said. ‘But at the end of the day, he’s still a kid. He’s not even 19 yet. Everybody portrays him to be Goliath or the beast of the east. At the end of the day, he’s still a child. He’s hurting.’” When we overlook the person, we miss the point. We are blind to what is important.

He was a young alcoholic, throwing his life away. I had done everything I could through the church and youth group, but couldn’t get through to him. Then he got caught up in some charismatic church, snake-handlers for all I knew, a church which taught that all diseases were the work of demons, even childhood measles, and you had to cast out the demons. Weird. But he quit drinking, got his diploma at school, found someone to love, opened up a business, became a productive citizen. But you know, that was a weird church, strange people. Couldn’t be doing God’s work, could they?

The frowning man met the family who would move into a house of their own for the first time. It was a miracle beyond anything that poor family could ever even hope for. But he had questions under his furrowed brow. How did Habitat for Humanity raise their money? Are you sure it is all accounted for properly? Why does this family get a house in a better neighborhood than the last family? Doesn’t it interfere with our church’s finances when we have fundraisers like these? He certainly wouldn’t run a business the way Habitat does—using the economics of Jesus, good grief! So he buttoned the pocket containing his wallet and let that needy family just fade out of his mind’s eye, shut his ears to their prayers of thanksgiving. God’s hand can’t be at work in that way, can it?

What miracles are we rejecting in the lives of those all around us just because we don’t like the way they happened? To what are we blind? The Pharisees overheard Jesus saying, “I came…so that those who don’t see may see and those who do see may become blind.” Jesus can point out real blindness in us. Notice that in our story today Jesus is the only one who focuses on the person, the once-blind, former beggar. Jesus went looking for him. The Pharisees, feeling stung by Jesus’ remarks, murmured, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Are we? Are we blind to what is important in life, overlooking the miracle for the method? Are we blind to the lesser people who are merely players on our stage? Are we blind to God’s working in ways to which we might object? Are we missing the point?

Jesus said, “Night is coming.” Maybe that’s still true; maybe a day of darkness is coming when no one on this planet will care about any one else, certainly not about the least of these. A wise man was asked how to tell when night is really over and the day has come. He responded, “Night is not over until you can recognize the face of your brother.” Or sister. But Jesus continued, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” We have to keep Jesus in the world. Can you see? They put him in a tomb at night, but the dawn came…and didn’t he rise?