Scripture Reading John 9:1-12
As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. The 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?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He 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.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
Sermon
There are two definitions of “blindness” in the Oxford English Dictionary. They are:
1. the state or condition of being unable to see because of injury, disease, or a congenital condition.
and
2. lack of perception, awareness, or judgment; ignorance.
In our story Jesus heals a man of the first definition—the physical inability to see. Then, Jesus and the healed man interact with people who seem to have the second condition—inability, or even unwillingness, to comprehend the healing miracle. Somewhere in the middle, Jesus calls himself “the light of the world.” Jesus wants to help people with both those definitions—helping the blind to see.
Jesus is walking along with his friends, and they see a man, whose name we never hear, but who is probably sitting by the side of the road, begging. In the year 30 of the common era, people who had the physical condition of blindness didn’t have many options. Men with blindness could not (or weren’t permitted to) do most work, so they had to ask others for help. They couldn’t marry and have families, because they lacked (or were believed to lack) the ability to support a family. In the case of a woman with blindness, no one believed she could do the tasks traditionally done by women in the home.
One of Jesus’ friends asked a blunt question, one the blind man probably heard. Rabbi, they say, who sinned? Was it that man, the one who is begging for his bread? Or was it his parents? Because, obviously, God is punishing him. Right?
It wasn’t unusual for people in this time and place to believe that misfortune was deserved—that God had acted to punish someone who was blind, or who had suffered a terrible loss, or who couldn’t make a living for some reason. Some passages of scripture even support this idea. In the Ten Commandments we read that God will punish those who worship idols: God says,
You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me… ~Exodus 20:5
That sounds harsh, punishing children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren for the sins of the first generation. But… we know bad things happen to good people, don’t we?
On the other hand, this is immediately followed by God saying,
… but [I show] steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. ~Exodus 20:6
… which, of course, sounds amazingly generous.
It’s easy to blame ideas we ideas like on what we consider primitive or archaic ways of thinking. Of course, we say, no one believes that. But we do believe—at least, our culture seems to believe—that people who are materially successful deserve their success, and people who aren’t must be punished and kept in their place. That what our laws seem to believe.
But we cling to this idea, of bad things happening to people because they are, somehow, bad themselves. We cling to it subconsciously, even when, in our rational minds, we don’t believe it’s true. Think of how we respond when we hear of someone’s illness. Hopefully we respond with compassion, period. But haven’t you noticed yourself, when you hear about someone’s serious diagnosis, wondering, “What did they do to get this?” or “What didn’t they do to avoid this?” People do this. We even do this to ourselves. Haven’t you heard someone say, or even said yourself, “What did I do to deserve this?” I heard this from a friend, who immediately backed off it, saying, “I mean, I don’t really believe God punishes us like this. But… I can’t help wondering.”
Jesus rejects this idea. Strongly. No one sinned, he says. This man didn’t sin, and his parents didn’t sin. That’s not how it works. But then, Jesus says something interesting. He says, here’s the reason: This man was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.
I’ll be honest. I don’t feel great about this reason. We don’t know how old the man is. His parents are still alive, we find, if we read to the end of the chapter. Given life expectancies for this period, I think we can say that means the man is probably young-ish. Maybe he’s 25. Did God really ordain that this man would not have sight for all those years so God could use him to show off God’s power? That he would grow up not learning his father’s trade, not able to care for himself except by begging? That he would never have been able to bring an offering into the Temple, to participate in the religious life of his people? It feels a little like Job, who suffers because of a bet between God and a Tempter in the heavenly court. These are not my favorite biblical moments.
I think I react this way because I have a problem with the way we explain away tragedies that have not happened to us. Everything happens for a reason, we say. What an awful thing to tell someone in pain. I truly believe, only we get to determine the meaning of the things that happen to us. Over time, with reflection, we might come to conclusions that a tragedy taught us something, or that it molded us to be more compassionate—or any amount of good may have resulted from something that was objectively bad. I believe in allowing people the dignity of that self-discovery. I believe in giving everyone the space to determine what God is saying to them, in every season of their lives, without unhelpful commentary.
On the other hand, this is Jesus. And based on what our faith claims about Jesus, maybe I need to back off and let Jesus (the Jesus of John’s gospel) be Jesus (the Jesus of John’s gospel). The Jesus of John’s gospel, the way I see him, is the risen Christ, from the very beginning. While the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke walk through their lives and ministry and passion and death and resurrection with varying degrees of confidence and doubt, fear and courage, sorrow and joy, the Jesus of John just feels like he knows absolutely everything from the get-go, and tells us all of it.
So. Jesus spits in the dirt, and bends down and picks up that dirt and saliva and makes a paste, which he then rubs on the man’s eyes. Then he tells him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. He sends the man to the place called “sent,” a pool built initially by King Hezekiah about 600 to 700 years before Jesus. The Pool of Siloam was discovered in Jerusalem, not far from the Temple Mount, in 2004 when excavations were being made for a sewer. It was possibly used as a ritual pool for cleansing (a mikvah), but it was known as the place for the beginning of pilgrimages to the Temple. Pilgrims came to the pool, cleansed themselves, and were then “sent” to the Temple, to make their offerings.
The man is healed. But no one believes him when he says how it happened.
In our passage, he runs into neighbors who don’t recognize him out of the context of his begging. Is that him, they ask one another. Yes, it’s me! He says. But they’re not sure. When he insists, they say, Well, how did it happen? When he tells them, point by point what happened, they reply with, well, then, where is he, this Jesus?
After our passage ends, these neighbors bring the healed man to see some religious authorities, and the whole dance occurs again. This is when we find out, Jesus did this healing on the Sabbath. So some of the religious authorities say, well, he’s not a man of God, he healed on the Sabbath, while others say, But look at what he did! Surely, he is a man of God!
Then, they bring in the man’s parents, which is kind of hilarious, because their answer sounds a lot like one big run-on sentence: Yes, this is our son, and yes, he was born blind, but we don’t know how it all happened, that he can see now, and we certainly don’t know who did it, so ask him; he is of age, he can speak for himself. (John 9:23)
Then they question the man again, calling Jesus a sinner. In his annoyance the healed man says, Why are you so hung up on this? Do you want to be Jesus’s disciples?
In case I haven’t made it clear enough, this is the part where definition #2 of blindness comes into play. Lack of perception, awareness, or judgment. And—before we come down too hard on these religious authorities, let’s ask ourselves how we would react if this man were our brother. Our son. Our friend. Would we be encouraging him to see a therapist, to help to treat this delusion? Would we be offering to pay for the therapist? Would we be talking to mutual friends, murmuring how worried we are about Billy, is it possible he’s in a cult of some kind? Would we be Googling Jesus, thinking he was surely some scam artist that fooled our friend? Who, by the way, can now see? We are in a culture filled with skepticism and mistrust. It’s hard for me to imagine I would be much better than any of the doubting ones in this story.
Finally, Jesus shows up in the story again. And he names it. “I came into this world for judgment,” he says, “so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” Huh. That’s both definitions right there. Jesus knows that the people who will come to him are the ones who know they need healing, and that the people who will hold him at arm’s length are the ones who don’t think they need any such thing, they know everything, thank you. Again. Let’s not be too hard on the religious authorities. Jesus breaks the mold.
There are seven signs performed by Jesus in the gospel according to John.
The changing of water to wine at the wedding at Cana. (John 2)
The healing of the royal official’s little boy—a healing Jesus does at a distance. (John 4)
The healing of the paralyzed man at the Bethesda pool (John 5)
The feeding of the 5000 (John 6)
Jesus walking on water (John 6)
This is the sixth sign, the healing of the man who suffered from blindness from birth. There is one more. Tune in next week.
These signs, these miracles, are all meant to show the people around Jesus, to show us, who he really is. In this sense, Lent is a lot like Epiphany, isn’t it? The time of showing, uncovering, revelation? I think we all come to this uncovering with our own need for healing. With our own sense of what we will buy into and what we won’t, with our own skepticism about miracles or our own confidence that the miracles of course tell us exactly what we hope about the man. There’s more to Jesus than meets the eye. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Jesus calls himself “the light of the world.” Why not healer? Why does he never call himself “the healer of the world?”
Maybe the question we take away from this story is about healing. What in us needs to be healed? What in us do we pray, wish, or desperately desire to have made right? What sorrow? What anger? What fear? What pain? Or maybe our attention is more on someone we love—some healing they need. Let’s end with a prayer—taking all our hope, all our doubt, and all our wonder together. Let’s end with a prayer for healing:
Loving God,
in Jesus your son you show us yourself.
In him, you gave love a human face.
He is our healer and our hope.
So we pray, now, for that healing.
Heal us, loving God.
Heal whatever in us is hurting.
Heal those we love from whatever in them is hurting.
Heal this broken, beautiful world.
Show us your face once again
in the one who came so that we might know you better.
In his holy name we pray. Amen.