Materials
Real World Encounters with Jesus in the Gospel of John
Blinded By The Light
John 9
by R. Todd Bouldin
I was blind but now I see. It’s one of the most recognized lines in any Christian hymn, and the story from which it comes also is one of the most familiar of the signs of Jesus. We already know what to expect from this story. Jesus is going to help a blind man to see, and we all are going to be the blind man who needs to see. End of sermon. So, why should I even proceed? It is difficult for us to hear this story because we are so accustomed to this imagery about Jesus. The church who first heard this story from John also were not much surprised. There were many stories circulating around in the Synoptic Gospels, especially in Luke, that Jesus had come to give sight to the blind (Luke 4:18-19). So, there just isn’t much of a surprise here. We come to this text expecting a miracle. We know the blind man is going to receive his sight. But sometimes what we know can keep us from seeing what is True.
Prayer - O God, open our blind eyes by your Holy Spirit and by these living words that we may truly see. In the Name of Christ, Amen.
It is a bit difficult for us to grasp the situation of this blind man since blind people now are much more integrated into our society. They can read, walk, work and write. But in the time of Jesus, a blind person was a non-person. Physical ailments and disabilities dropped one out of society altogether. There was no place for the blind or the disabled except to sit by the road and beg for enough to survive until another day. That is what this blind man was doing when Jesus visited Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles – he was sitting by the road, like he had done day after day. Then Jesus walked by and saw him.
It is the followers of Jesus ironically, and not the Pharisees, who first look at this blind man and see an issue and not a person. I am not sure how they know that the man had been blind since his birth, but when they saw the man they asked Jesus, “Jesus, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” (v. 2)
The response of Jesus to this question is clear: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.” Jesus puts an end to that line of reasoning right up front. You cannot draw a straight line between sickness and sin. It just doesn’t add up. Good people suffer too. But what Jesus says next is even more disturbing than the question the disciples ask, at least on it’s face: “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (John 9:3).
Your response may be mine at first glance. “What? God created a man blind so that one day Jesus could come along and show how powerful He was?” What kind of God is that? God deliberately created an unimaginable heartache for this man and his parents just so he could show off his power? I admit that I have a hard time with this text because I do not believe that about God. I actually find the notion that God blinded even one innocent child for the sake of being able to perform a miracle to be absurd – it certainly doesn’t match what I know about God from the rest of Scripture as loving and benevolent toward His creatures.
I do not wish to make the mistake of those in this text who also questioned Jesus and failed to accept Him on his own terms. I suppose that if God chose to allow someone to be born blind to show his miraculous power, that God is God, and I will just have to submit to the mystery of such action. However, it seems to me that there is another way of reading this text. The Greek text of John originally had neither word divisions nor punctuation. Editors of these texts made the decision where to supply commas, semi-colons, and periods. Let’s now place a period where most translations put a comma, and place a comma where there is a period. The text then reads this way:
Jesus answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned that he should be born blind. But so that God’s work 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.” (v. 4)
Now that seems to me to be both consistent with the meaning of this text and to correspond to how I understand God to be in the whole of the biblical witness. To call human tragedy an act of God comes near blasphemy. The Bible certainly suggests that God has on occasion allowed suffering to invade the lives of people. But God did not create torment and suffering. God comes to us as our deliverer, not our tormentor. Suffering is an opportunity for God to work in you – not merely to demonstrate his awesome power, but to show you his great compassion.
Well, by now, I have probably stirred up a theological and textual argument over the man born blind. We may have just done exactly what this text warns us against. It is so easy to do: to turn a person into a theological problem. We can get so worried about reasons, choices and sins that we fail to see the person God loves. Jesus is the only one in this text who could really look at this man and see a human being whom He longed to restore to his full humanity. Everyone else just saw a question for discussion. Debating theology can be a fascinating distraction from really caring for hurting people. Jesus is not so much interested in what circumstances or situation put this man in his place; he just sees pain, and he offers to heal it. It is the opposite of how we often respond to those whose suffering or condition makes us uncomfortable. It is much easier to answer a question than it is to provide healing; it is much easier to see an issue than it is to see pain. Pain requires something more from us than an easy answer – it requires that we embrace the mystery of the work of God in us and in others so that suffering is never the last word. In fact, suffering calls us to give up “knowing” the answers so that we can “know” the Person who passes by and longs for us to see the light.
Jesus wasted no time in opening this blind man’s eyes. Once more in verse 5, Jesus declares Himself to be the Light of the world. Then he spat on the ground, made some mud, and placed it on the eyes of the blind man. He sent him to the pool to wash, a pool whose name Siloam means “sent.” The blind man somehow manages to get to the pool, and he washes, then, for the first time ever, he sees. He can see the water that drips from his face for the first time. He can see himself. He can finally see the people he had only known by their voices. His whole world had opened up to him just with a little mud and water.
You would think there would be a party. A man who has been blind since birth is now given the gift of sight. However, rather than throw a party for the man, the neighbors seek a ruling on the case. No one seems even mildly excited by this great sign. “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 the man.’ But they kept asking him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ (vv. 8-10). I get the feeling from reading this text that these people were determined to find a way not to believe what had obviously occurred. The facts just kept getting in the way of their truth. What should have been a party turned into a debate.
If they couldn’t dispute the healing, then they could blame the Healer. Once they learned that Jesus had worked on the Sabbath – making mud qualified I guess – they were sure He could not be from God. So suddenly we are back to their never ending quest to find a sinner. Who is the sinner now? Well, it is Jesus. He worked on the Sabbath.
None of this makes sense to the blind man. He is a pretty smart and discerning man. He knows that Jesus can’t be a sinner. “How could a sinner give me sight?” he asks. The blind man doesn’t know a whole lot about Jesus. He certainly did not place his faith in Jesus. This man wasn’t healed because of his faith but because of Jesus’ compassion. He isn’t really sure who Jesus is or where He has gone. All He knows is that he was healed. When forced to say who Jesus is, the blind man describes Jesus, and each time, he comes to a fuller awareness of who Jesus is. The more he convinces the others, the more convinced he is himself. The light begins to shatter the darkness. The first time the man calls Jesus “a man named Jesus” (v. 11), then “a prophet” (v. 17), and finally he acknowledges Jesus as “Son of Man” and “Lord.” (v. 38). When Jesus finally seeks him out again after he had been once again rejected and removed from the life he had just gained, Jesus asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘Tell me, so that I may believe in Him.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe.” (vv. 35-38).
While the former blind man is seeing the Light, the Pharisees dig themselves further into a dark corner. They again proceed with the interrogation. Offense becomes hostility. They go find the man’s parents to prove that the man really never was blind. Then in a final scene with the man, they try to have him repeat the details of the sign to see if they can trap him with inconsistencies. They are determined to find a fault because the situation is so far beyond the realm of what they knew. Over and over again in this story, John emphasizes that the religious leaders claimed to “know.” For them, faith was all about intellectual knowledge of God and the Torah. Anything that fell outside the realm of what they knew just could not be true, and they were determined to find a way to prove it as false.
There’s only one problem: It is often what we think we know that can keep us truly blind. The man born blind redefines knowing – it is not intellectual knowledge of Scripture or even about Jesus; rather it is a transforming and healing experience of Jesus that constitutes true knowing. “I was blind but now I see” is the numinous experience which cannot be disputed -- it is the knowing that is beyond knowing by which we come to faith.
The man born blind not only gains his eyesight, but his insight. When Jesus finds him again, he is well on the path to spiritual awakening while those who are so determined to find truth plunge deeper and deeper into the darkness because they want a truth they can control. They prefer a Messiah who fits their expectations. They desire a God whose ways are knowable. So, they cling to what they know in exchange for the peace that comes in embracing the compassionate Jesus whose Truth is not first known but experienced. Then experience gives way to knowing, and knowing to faith.
“I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (John 9:25) That is the testimony of those whose eyes have been opened to the compassion of Jesus. But it is that same testimony that leads to the man’s excommunication by the Pharisees. Just when he finally was able to enjoy acceptance in his faith community, he was excommunicated. Now who is blind here? Who can really see?
Jesus 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.’ Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.’ ” (v. 40-41).
So we are back to where we began. Who sinned? It turns out that sin and spiritual blindness really do go together. But it is not blindness of the eye but blindness of the heart that leaves us in the dark. Sometimes blind people are the ones who are most confident of their sight. They often see doctrines first and people second. They prefer a truth they can control to a Truth that only comes by relationship. They know so much that they can’t really know. Blind people it turns out are often the most religious people because their intellectual belief has never given way to a true experience of Jesus so that the scales fall off and they can truly see. For many of us, we have known before we were healed. But the blind man helps us to see that it is our healing which can give way to knowing.
Whether you are in need of the compassion of Jesus, or you are in need of experiencing what before you have only known, the good news is that Jesus is the Light of the world. He offers sight to every blind one of us. We can truly start to see ourselves and others when He is the source of light that starts enlightening our world. When we start seeing the world through his light, you can start seeing your own blindness. You will see that people are never a problem to be solved but humans waiting to be loved.
Are you still questioning people instead of loving people? Are you still trying to figure out how it all makes sense rather than letting Jesus love you and heal you? It is probably because you are still trying to control truth rather than receiving Truth.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a woman named Millie Hawkins wrote these words as she contemplated the unknown, “And I said to the one who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And she replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand in the hand of God. That shall be better than light and safer than a known way.” (“God Knows,” In Desert, 1908).
You may not understand everything about Jesus just yet -- none of us do -- but your journey can begin today by letting him open your eyes to see an unimaginable world where God has loved what everyone else has rejected – even to your darkness, he longs to bring a great light.
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