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Blindness is a terrible thing isn't it? We rely on our eyes so
much for experiencing the world, for enjoying life, for perceiving reality.
After all, seeing is believing. Di and I went to the Opera in New York when
we were there. We decided we could just afford seats in the Family Circle.
What we discovered of course is that the Family Circle was so high above
the stage you got a nose bleed climbing the stairs. I was telling my mother
about this last week and she asked whether we could see anything on the
stage. I assured her that we could see all the performers, even if we couldn't
see any details of their faces or their costumes. She told me that when
they went to something recently at the Sydney Opera House she had a similar
experience. But that was nothing compared to my father's experience. You
see, he's going blind and so he couldn't see anything that was happening
on stage. All he could do was listen to the music so half the experience
was lost to him. I guess you don't really appreciate how much you rely on
your sight until you find it failing. |
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But you
know, there are different forms of blindness. There's
physical blindness, and there's spiritual blindness. In
the story we're looking at today, we see Jesus healing a
man's physical blindness, and in the process we discover
the spiritual blindness of some of those looking on. |
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Now you
may be aware that the theme of light and darkness runs
throughout John's gospel, and linked with that theme is
that of judgement. Open your bibles if you will, to John
3, v19. We'll come back to this later, but it won't hurt
to have this in mind as we go through the passage before
us. There in John 3:19-21 John explores the idea of light
and darkness and how it's linked with the true nature of
judgement. (John 3:19-21 NRSV) "And this is the
judgment, that the light has come into the world, and
people loved darkness rather than light because their
deeds were evil. 20For all who do evil hate
the light and do not come to the light, so that their
deeds may not be exposed. 21But those who do
what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly
seen that their deeds have been done in God." Can
you see the connection between this theme of light and
darkness and blindness and seeing? It's a connection that
comes out more strongly as the story unfolds. |
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But back
to John 9. The story begins with Jesus and his disciples
encountering a man who's been blind from birth. The
disciples look at this man and what do they see? They
don't see a man in need of healing do they? They're blind
to his pain. Rather they see an example from the
Theologians Case Book! They ask "Rabbi, who sinned,
this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
This promises to be a really interesting discussion.
Never mind the poor chap sitting there by the side of the
road, let's see what Jesus thinks about sin and
blindness. Well, Jesus immediately points out their own
blindness. "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." |
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Their
presuppositions have blinded them first to the
possibilities of the situation, and second to their
purpose for being there. Their understanding of the man's
blindness is in fact no different from that of the
Pharisees. Their understanding of the world is one of
cause and effect. Illnesses must be the result of God's
judgement on sin. Whether it's the person's sin or the
parent's is a matter of debate, but clearly sin must be
involved. This is actually an attitude that continues to
have currency in Christian circles today. Still people
attribute suffering and illness, or lack of healing,
perhaps, to sinfulness on the part of those suffering or
those who are close to them. But Jesus blows that idea
out of the water. He says the only thing God desires from
this man's blindness is that God's works might be
revealed in him. There's nothing sinister about this
illness. There's no sense of retribution associated with
it. It's just the way things happen sometimes. But in
this case God is going to use it to reveal his glory. |
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And let's
not miss the rebuke in what Jesus says to his disciples.
He says, "We must work the works of him who sent me
while it is day; night is coming when no one can
work." In other words, don't let your
presuppositions deflect you from the task that God has
put you here to do. How often do we analyse and dissect
rather than acting to bring God's light into the world?
How often do we apply our theological minds to working
out why something is the way it is, rather than doing
what we can to right the wrongs we see? |
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Well,
Jesus knows what to do. He spits on the ground, makes
some mud and uses it as a salve for the man's eyes. He
sends him off to the pool of Siloam (which means Sent), I
guess a reminder that Jesus is the one who was sent by
the Father (v4). So the man goes and washes and we're
told he comes back able to see. Well, this causes
something of a stir, as you might expect. Everyone has
known this guy all his life. He's been blind since birth
and now he can see! And so they want to know how it
happened. Who did this? Are you really the man we know
who's been a beggar all his life? And so he assures them
that he is, and that Jesus has done it. |
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Well,
this is such a big event, that, naturally they want a
religious explanation. So they take him to the Pharisees.
And here we see spiritual blindness come to the fore. The
Pharisees of course know all about Jesus, They've already
made their judgement about him, and it doesn't take them
long to discover that he's been up to his old tricks,
healing on the Sabbath. Even to the extent of making mud
in order to do it! So what's their verdict about this?
Well, they can't deny the reality of the miracle. The man
can clearly see, though they do their best to find a
loophole by suggesting that maybe he wasn't really blind
at all. But no it's established that he was blind and has
been healed. So they get out their case book and begin to
make a judgement about what's happened. "This man is
not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath."
Their grid is fixed and quite clear. He can't be from God
if he doesn't follow the law. And we begin to see how
their traditions, their age-old interpretations of the
law, blind them to reality. In fact as the interview
continues the contrast becomes even more stark. This
simple beggar, who presumably is without any education,
can see clearly what's happened: "He is a
prophet." The Pharisees fall back on the things they
know. "We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as
for this man, we do not know where he comes from."
The man responds in amazement: "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." The reality
of Jesus' origins is blatantly clear to this man, yet the
Pharisees will not acknowledge it. Faced by this rebuff
from an ignorant peasant they revert again to the case
book: "You were born entirely in sins, and are you
trying to teach us?" Like the disciples they know
that blindness is the judgement of God on sin, so they
can dismiss everything the man says because obviously he
was born in sin. (Just as an aside by the way, if their
assessment were correct, what would it say about the
man's sinfulness now? But they can't even see that, can
they?) |
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So here
we have a man who was blind but now can see, whose
ability to see clearly goes beyond the physical to the
spiritual, while those who are meant to be the spiritual
guides of Israel are shown to be spiritually blind. But
that isn't the end of the story is it? There's more to
come, as we discover the relationship between sight and
belief, blindness and judgement, or guilt. |
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Jesus
goes looking for the man and when he finds him he asks
him, not whether his eyesight is better, but whether he
believes in the Son of Man. You see the discovery he's
made, that Jesus is a prophet sent from God, needs to be
grounded in the reality of who Jesus is. He's the Son of
Man, the one who in Daniel 7 is given all authority and
dominion, who in John's gospel is the one who will be
lifted up, and who will judge all the earth. And it's
important that he doesn't just acknowledge that the son
of man exists but that he puts his trust in him. |
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The
response of the man is to not only acknowledge his belief
in Jesus, but to worship him. His eyes have been opened
to the whole reality of who Jesus is. His worship, in
fact, is a sign that here is not just a prophet, but
truly the Son of Man, the one whom all peoples will
worship on the last day. |
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Jesus
response is to say: "I came into this world for
judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those
who do see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees
who are listening at this moment understand what he's
saying as pointing to them. They ask whether he's
accusing them of being blind. His reply is enigmatic:
"If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now
that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains." They are
blind in fact, but their claim to be able to see
establishes their culpability. Going back to that passage
from John 3:19 "this is the judgment, that the light
has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather
than light because their deeds were evil. 20For
all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the
light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21But
those who do what is true come to the light, so that it
may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in
God." The Pharisees claimed to be able to see, but
when the light of Christ appeared in their midst they ran
from it. Jesus very presence among them blinded them to
the things they should have been able to see, even as it
opened the eyes of others who perhaps didn't have the
enlightenment of the learned Pharisees. |
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Well,
let's finish by thinking about what we can learn from
this incident in Jesus' life. I guess the first thing to
think about is the way we see things. That is, how is our
spiritual vision? Are we open to seeing God at work in
every circumstance or are we blinkered at some points by
our theological or professional or rationalist
presuppositions, or by the various traumas of life we've
experienced. I guess I've seen all of those at different
times in people. It's easy when you're strongly convinced
of your theological position to close your mind to
anything that falls outside the familiar. So, for
example, those who come from a well thought out
evangelical tradition may have some difficulty with the
experiences of those who are part of the charismatic
movement. They may have trouble fitting some of the
claims of the miraculous or of prophetic words or of
ecstatic spiritual experience through their predefined
grid. Similarly those who come from an anglo-catholic
tradition may question the rock and roll flavour of some
evangelical worship, as not being appropriate for worship
of an awesome God. |
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There are
some people I've come across who are professionals in the
area of medicine who refuse to accept the idea that God
might heal in a miraculous way. Certainly they may have
seen examples where a healing was claimed falsely, where
the person was given false hope by an overzealous
Christian, but they go further in denying that miraculous
healing ever occurs. Mind you that attitude isn't
restricted to medical people. There are many today who
are so convinced by a rationalist scientific approach
that they refuse to admit the possibility of miracles,
either today, or even in Jesus' time. So they argue away
the miracles of Jesus, perhaps even more strongly than
the Pharisees did. But to do that is to blind ourselves
to the possibility that God might and indeed does
intervene in this world. It's to shut our eyes, as it
were, to what God is doing around us all the time. |
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Similarly
there are those who have been so hurt by events or people
in their past that they can't acknowledge the possibility
that God might be doing something good at the moment. |
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You see
the danger is that we judge from precedent rather than
from reality. We judge from what we've been taught, or
from what we've worked by ourselves, rather than letting
the facts speak for themselves. That's the contrast in
today's passage, isn't it? The Pharisees looked at what
had happened and got out their case book to help them
pass judgement, while the man let the facts speak for
themselves. And what was the end result. Judgement was
passed, but it wasn't the judgement that the Pharisees
had in mind. The judgement that was passed was that those
who had eyes to see, saw, while those whose eyes were
shut fast against the reality of Jesus work, had their
guilt made clear for all to see. |
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Is seeing
believing? Are you looking to see God at work in the
world? Are you pointing out those works of God to others
so they too can see? These words of Jesus are addressed
to us as well as to the disciples: "We must work the
works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming
when no one can work." Let's keep our minds alert to
the places where God is at work in people's lives, so we
can give him the glory, and so we can bring people from
spiritual blindness to spiritual sight. |
