Roger Ray, pastor
April 3, 2011 Lent 4
John 9:1-41
As 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.'
13 They 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.'
18 The 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.'
24 So 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.
35 Jesus 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 worshipped 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.
In the Historical Society of the Christian Church which is located in Nashville, TN, you can view the personal effects of Alexander Campbell, who was one of the 18th century founders of the Christian Church. Along with the predictable books, Bible's, notes and writing desk is a little black bag which looks like the little black bag we used to associate with a doctor when making a house call..... for those of you who remember what those words mean.
The 18th century evangelist's bag was, in fact a doctor's bag because, at that time, medical training was a part of the education of a minister.
The clergy, often being the only educated professional in a frontier community, were often called upon, not only to pray for the sick but to be the person most likely to heal the sick. Even now, ministers are expected to make visits to church members who are hospitalized because in the back of our minds the clergy are still associated with healing.
If you ask yourself, "How did Jesus become well known? Why did people come out to see him as he traveled around the Galilee?" And then you read the gospels to see what he did, healing is a big part of that. Jesus was one of many traveling religious teachers who cast out demons, healed people and who sometimes were said to perform miracles but, as we know from historical documents, they were also expected to pull a bad tooth now and then.
In John, there are no demon exorcisms. Also, in John, Jesus doesn't tell parables. That there are so many demon exorcisms and parables in the other three gospels of the New Testament and none in John is an interesting subject in and of itself but since we are looking at a text from John today, let's allow him to speak for himself. In John, Jesus was a healer and a miracle worker.
John calls the miracles "signs" and he lists them in a kind of ascending order from easier smaller signs to bigger and harder miraculous events. He starts with turning water into wine and ends up raising Lazarus from the dead.... From favorite bartender to reverse mortician. Today's account of healing a blind man is near the top of the list of miracles because that is a particularly hard thing to do.
Now, normally, I will get very nervous about anyone trying to find multiple layers of meaning in a gospel text. Normally, when we are looking at Matthew, Mark or Luke, I prefer the most simple and straightforward interpretation of the text because I do not think that the other gospel writers were generally trying to be very complex and sometimes when they do try they tend to lose their way a bit.
But in these early chapters of John, John is being very crafty. He composes narratives in which the real meat is never just lying on the surface. This is an account of a healing and a tough case to be sure, but healing accounts are kind of cheap in the world of religion. Lots of religious healers healed a lot more people than Jesus did and we don't get dressed up and go sit in big buildings to talk about them...... Jesus is different.
This rather long narrative, if it were about the healing, could be shortened to a tight little paragraph. What John is really wanting us to see in this narrative has relatively little to do with the man who was healed. Sure, the guy was blind, and that is no small thing, but what John wants us to be aware of.... What he wants us to see is that the man was living in a world full of blind people. Blindness, after all, isn't always about the eyes.
So, to start with, let me ask you to ignore the beginning portion of this text.... Let's pretend that the actual event being reported is not all that important and let's look at the rest of the text.
In the very beginning, Jesus is just walking along with his friends and his friends are people watching.... Which is pretty normal.
If you notice, when you are walking through the mall, most people aren't carrying any packages. Ostensibly, you go to the mall when you need to buy something but the truth is, most of the people who are at the mall are not going to buy anything, they are just there..... looking at the people. "Man, she's fat..... she really ought to do something about that." "Can you believe she wore that in public? Who dressed her today?" "Did you see who he was with? He must have money or something?"
We go to the mall as consumers but not always consumers of clothes, shoes and Aunt Annie's Pretzels. We consume one another. We eat the flesh of the people we feel superior to.
The disciples saw a man who had been blind from birth and they asked Jesus, "Who sinned that this man was born blind? Was it something he did or was it his parents' fault?"
The disciples, other than Judas, all get to be saints later on. They have churches named for them and they are all up in stained glass windows around the world but on this day, they saw a man who was blind and they didn't go over to him and comfort him, or help him, or give him anything.... They didn't try to heal him or suggest that Jesus give it a shot. What did they do? They discussed him. You have to wonder how the blind man would feel about that. It was a religious discussion.... And I guess that makes it some better, but behind the religion was still just gossip.... Who's fault was it?
"Did you hear that Tim was in a car accident? Yeah, he was hit by a drunk driver and he was injured pretty badly..... but he wasn't wearing a seat belt." "Who sinned, this guy or his parents?"
And then, if you skip on down a few verses to verse 8.....Something wonderful has happened...a miracle.... A real gift from God. And verses 8 and 9 say:
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.'
The neighbors, the other people walking around the mall, saw that the man was no longer blind and they began to talk, "See, I told you he was faking it... he was just trying to get people to feel sorry for him and give him some money.... What a lazy, dishonest fraud!" "Well, you know, I believed it, in fact, I know he was blind.... This has to be his twin brother."
You know, sometimes when someone is blind people assume that they are deaf too so they were just discussing him and finally the man himself interrupts them at the end of the verse, "Guys, that was me.... I was blind but now I am not." Amazing how you can clear things up if you'll just go to the source.
Mark Twain said that a lie told and stuck to is as good as the truth. When it comes to gossip, a lie told, repeated, exaggerated, and asserted becomes the truth rather than the facts.
In this story, a man has had something wonderful, unheard of, fabulous happen to him and people are not rejoicing, they are trying to figure out how it is something bad. And, of course, they get help.
They took the man to the religious professionals to find out what they should think about this thing. In verse 13 we read:
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.And then John throws in the killing detail:
14Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.The only proverb which I have come up with on my own is this: If you light a candle in a dark place you'll draw bugs. I came up with that after several years in the ministry when I realized that no matter what good thing I ever did, some self-righteous.....person.... would try to find fault with it. It is a form of spiritual gossip.... The basic goal is to assert that my spirituality is better and more important than your spirituality. As you see in verse 16:
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.'
I think it is interesting to see how the man who was healed is growing in his estimation of Jesus. When he first told the neighbors about what happed he said, "The man called Jesus," but now he says that Jesus is a prophet and in the end of the text he acknowledges Jesus as the messiah. Who is teaching this man? Well, in the end, you have to admit that it wasn't Jesus because he admits that he doesn't even know where Jesus is.
Jesus did him a favor and then left the scene.... He didn't hang around for applause.... He didn't get any recognition. He just did a kind deed and kept moving. Who, then, is teaching this man? His critics.... Just his critics. I've learned some of the most important lessons I've learned in life from the people who have publicly criticized me. Rarely has the lesson been what they wanted to teach me, but I am grateful for the learning opportunities none-the-less.
Well, the day which started out as easily being the best day of this guy's life takes yet another turn towards the neurotic. The religious leaders, not being able to summarily condemn Jesus for doing this horrible thing, call in the man's parents.
In the past couple of centuries we've gotten kind of formal about the official attitude about parents. We have a Mother's Day and a Father's Day and we are supposed to come to church on those days and, no matter how you spin it, we're being asked to worship our parents.
But I know that a lot of the people lingering in the greeting card isle are sorting through the "you were always there for me" and the "you are my inspiration" and the "I will always love you more than life itself" trying to find the card that says, "You are my dad." Or, "Thanks for giving birth to me." Because saying anything else would be a bit over the top.
In a perfect world, your parents would always be your biggest fans and your most reliable advocates. And some people get to live in that world but not the guy at the center of John's story.
The parents are called in to be questioned because their son has gone and gotten himself in trouble by being healed. You would think that the parents would be planning a big celebration.... They would be introducing their son to all of the relatives he had never been able to see, they would be leading the cheerleading section. But their son is in a bit of a tight spot and, well, they don't really want to get involved:
The 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;
Then tension in the narrative continues to escalate until the man is excommunicated from the community..... what a twisted tale! The way John tells this story about a blind man is that he was born blind but eventually is able to see Jesus the way that John sees Jesus but as the man is healed, the miracle reveals just how blind everyone else is, especially the self-righteous religious folks but his parents, neighbors and the other people milling around the mall don't come off very well either.
I could go on all day about this narrative and I'm sure some of you are afraid that I'm planning to do exactly that but to bring all of this to a relatively compassionate conclusion I want to go back to the original question that started this whole story about blindness and how we can learn to see.
The story begins with the disciples asking Jesus why this man is blind. They assume that someone has screwed up and that is pretty well reflective of how we think about most things. Whose fault is it? Who lied? Who cheated? Who stole? Who was drunk? Who has the most salacious moral failing?
Jesus ignores this way of seeing and interpreting the meaning of peoples' lives and he says to them..... and please listen to this because this makes the difference between being blinded by gossip and prejudice and having your eyes opened to really see. Jesus says in verse 3:
3.....'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him.
The truth is that probably the man and his parents had sinned and so had everyone else at the mall and the church but that is not the point. Jesus saw the man's crisis, not as something that someone had done wrong but rather he saw the crisis as an opportunity to do something good, something holy, something kind and compassionate.
Are the homeless people in Springfield homeless because they are alcoholics? Because they are addicts? Because they are criminals who no one will give a job? Is it because of the Republicans who have ship wrecked the economy? Are they homeless because they are lazy Democrats waiting for a hand out? Are they homeless because they have mental health problems and they are too unstable to solve their own problems? Take your pick.... Most of the guys I know fit into at least three of those categories.
But here is how John tells us that Jesus sees them: They are homeless to give you an opportunity to show compassion. Why did your son's marriage fall apart? Was it his fault or her fault? Or is it an opportunity for you to show that your spirituality is based on forgiveness, a suspension of judgment and a heart devoted to compassion?
Wouldn't you love for people to look at you and your failings this way? Wouldn't you love for your parents, your neighbors, your pastor, to see your crises, your screw ups, your mistakes and accidents as just an opportunity to be love in action? And it wouldn't it be nice if we could learn to see that way too?
Blindness is for people who don't want to see what Jesus sees.
