“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in
him.”
Human suffering has been one of those ongoing points of puzzlement in the Christian faith. People
have offered many different explanations, but most of them tend to leave us feeling less than
satisfied. We know that the suffering of the innocent is somehow connected to the legacy of a fallen
world, but many questions remain. So for me it’s a great comfort whenever we can clearly see how
suffering, or the relief of suffering, has meaning, and points to the God whom we know to be loving
and good.
This is the case with this morning’s reading from John’s Gospel. Just like the story of the Samaritan
woman at the well last week, we have a situation in which a very personal interaction results in a
simple person’s simple proclamation of Jesus to others. Just before his encounter with the blind
man, Jesus had confronted the Pharisees at the temple (surprise) and spoken words that had nearly
gotten him killed. He’d been telling them that they had not truly been acting as Abraham’s children,
because they hadn’t recognized the One Abraham had foreseen all those centuries before. He
concluded this bit of dressing-down with a kind of coup de grace: “Before Abraham was, I am.” This
reference to his own pre-existence and the use of that phrase “I am”, which of course is the very
name reserved for God in the Hebrew, sparked the Pharisees to pick of stones and try to kill Jesus
for the crime of blasphemy.
Jesus escaped the mob, and is now walking along in the area of the temple. He comes across a
man blind from birth. I find the story of his healing to be yet another source of delight.
The belief was widespread at that time that this kind of affliction was the result of someone’s sin.
Jesus’s disciples ask him about this. “Who was it, Lord? Who sinned that this man was born blind?
Jesus says, “Gentlemen, you’ve got this all wrong. There’s something a lot bigger here than some
individual sins and one man’s blindness. He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed.
Just watch!” Then Jesus uses his own saliva to moisten some soil, and applies the mud to the man’s
eyes. He tells him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam, which he does, and is promptly healed. And of
course this is when the mud hits the fan.
There are so many things we could focus on this morning about this healing. But I’d like to spend a
few minutes looking at how God’s works are displayed in the blind man’s healing. There really are
two aspects of this work: physical and spiritual. Jesus uses this opportunity to perform a miracle of
physical healing, then deals with another type of blindness—spiritual blindness. Both of these
address something much greater than the relief of one man’s affliction.
One of the neat things about this incident is that the formerly blind man becomes a compelling
witness of Jesus’s glory even before he fully understands what’s going on. Isn’t that often the case
with us, also? We’re touched by Jesus, then we’re compelled to investigate further, to dig deeper.
Who is this who did this for me? What manner of man is this?
But in the whirlwind of attention just after his healing, the blind man really doesn’t even have a
chance to do this. He’s immediately questioned (in fact interrogated might be a better word) by a
number of people, ranging from his neighbors to the Pharisees. This is a jarring event. This guy
who’d been begging at the gates for as long as anyone could remember is suddenly up and around
taking it all in with 20/20 vision. This is definitely something of an attention-getter. Obviously,
something big has happened.
So the hornet’s nest is stirred. The neighbors and temple regulars are asking along the lines of
“How did this happen?” And of course the questioning at the hands of the Pharisees is not exactly a
barrel of laughs. They probe, accuse, and cross-examine. They’re already furious at Jesus’s
claims; now this beggar is saying that Jesus is the one who healed his blindness. They interrogate
his parents, who reply, “Hey, ask him. He’s old enough to speak for himself.” They come back to
the formerly blind man and press him further. They huff and puff about the indecency of healing on
the Sabbath, and proclaim that Jesus is nothing but a sinner. And the man says, “Hey, I don’t
anything about all that religious stuff. All I know is, I was blind, and now I see.”
As the Pharisees order him to repeat his story, this is where I really start to like this man. I can see
the guarded twinkle in his newly active eyes as he replies, “So, you want to hear it again. How
come? Do you want to be his followers, too?”
F. F. Bruce writes: “He now displays a hitherto unsuspected capacity for ironical repartee.” English
translation: He just tweaked them. He’s having a little fun with the hotheads. And the mercury
shoots even higher in their Pharisaical thermometers. They sputter about Jesus being a sinner and
a nobody, and the blind man responds by saying, in effect, “Well this is just getting curiouser and
curiouser! Because this nobody just healed my blindness!”
That’s it. The Pharisees completely lose it at this point and roughly escort him out of the temple.
Jesus hears about this and returns to find him. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” he asks. And
adoringly, the man replies, “Who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I might believe in him.” In delightful
witness to his own act of healing Jesus says, “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is
he.”
Does that remind you a little of the Samaritan woman last week? Jesus announces his identity first
to a woman of Samaria, then to a blind beggar. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Doing the
unexpected. Giving hope, healing, and life to the people who are open to Him, those who have
simple faith, regardless of their station in life. Confounding those who consider themselves to be
experts on God and His ways.
In healing the blind man, Jesus accomplishes a couple important things. First, He overtly shows
himself to be the Son of Man and the Son of God. He gives direct evidence for His establishment of
the kingdom of God on earth. He plants a huge banner that says on one side “The kingdom of God
is among you.” And on the other says “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you rest.” That banner still flies over us today. The kingdom of God is among us. The Lord
still performs miraculous healings. Just ask the Tischlers’ neighbor, Barbara. For that matter, just
ask me, as there’ve been miraculous healings in my own family of origin. I know there are other
examples in this room this morning. The Lord is alive and well and continues to heal the sick and to
give life to the dead. More about that next week as we look at a man named Lazarus.
The second thing accomplished by Jesus’ healing of the blind man is the opportunity confront our
own spiritual blindness. Think of the Pharisees. Their reaction is a bunch of “yes, buts.” “Yes, but
no one who’s from God would heal on the Sabbath. Yes, but Jesus is just a nobody and a sinner.
Yes, but maybe this guy wasn’t really blind in the first place.” It’s easy to point our fingers at the
Pharisees and chide them. But what about us? Do we have yes, buts? (I have to say, this reminds
of Fr. Stenner back in Maryland, who, regarding our excuses, once soberly proclaimed, “We all have
‘buts’.” (This was one of those embarrassing times when I was behind him in the sanctuary snorting
and gasping as I vainly tried to stifle my laughter. I mean, tears were rolling down my cheeks. Same
with many in the congregation.)
Anyway, we can blame the Pharisees, but what are some of our “yes, buts”? “Yes, but there’s
probably some other explanation for the healing.” “Yes, but the gift of healing only happened back
then, not now.” Do you ever catch yourself thinking anything like that? While some aspects of
healing are still a mystery to us, I think it bears repeating and emphasizing that God still heals. Do
you believe that this morning? I hope so. He heals our spirits and he heals our bodies. In fact,
divine healing is in the very DNA of Hope Church. In the not-too-distant future we plan to have a
center in which both physical and spiritual healing are performed by the same Lord who healed the
blind man and many others who came to Him. We’ll be in an even better position to be used by God
to proclaim Jesus as both the Son of Man and the Son of God. Just as in the days when Jesus
walked the earth, witnesses will bear testimony and the word will spread.
Some may be rankled by this. But in God’s sovereignty nothing will be able to prevent the good
news from filtering out to people longing for hope and healing.
So with a hopeful and faithful eye to the future let us all remain in diligent prayer in preparation for
the witness that we, like the blind man, will bear.
Let us pray. Dear heavenly Father, thank you for the privilege of doing Your work. Please remove
from us any spiritual blindness now afflicting us, we pray. Use us as your instruments of healing,
and as witnesses to your power and love. Prepare us for even greater works than we ever
imagined, as we mobilize to minister to the people of Albuquerque in our new setting. All this we ask
through your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and forever. Amen.
him.”
Human suffering has been one of those ongoing points of puzzlement in the Christian faith. People
have offered many different explanations, but most of them tend to leave us feeling less than
satisfied. We know that the suffering of the innocent is somehow connected to the legacy of a fallen
world, but many questions remain. So for me it’s a great comfort whenever we can clearly see how
suffering, or the relief of suffering, has meaning, and points to the God whom we know to be loving
and good.
This is the case with this morning’s reading from John’s Gospel. Just like the story of the Samaritan
woman at the well last week, we have a situation in which a very personal interaction results in a
simple person’s simple proclamation of Jesus to others. Just before his encounter with the blind
man, Jesus had confronted the Pharisees at the temple (surprise) and spoken words that had nearly
gotten him killed. He’d been telling them that they had not truly been acting as Abraham’s children,
because they hadn’t recognized the One Abraham had foreseen all those centuries before. He
concluded this bit of dressing-down with a kind of coup de grace: “Before Abraham was, I am.” This
reference to his own pre-existence and the use of that phrase “I am”, which of course is the very
name reserved for God in the Hebrew, sparked the Pharisees to pick of stones and try to kill Jesus
for the crime of blasphemy.
Jesus escaped the mob, and is now walking along in the area of the temple. He comes across a
man blind from birth. I find the story of his healing to be yet another source of delight.
The belief was widespread at that time that this kind of affliction was the result of someone’s sin.
Jesus’s disciples ask him about this. “Who was it, Lord? Who sinned that this man was born blind?
Jesus says, “Gentlemen, you’ve got this all wrong. There’s something a lot bigger here than some
individual sins and one man’s blindness. He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed.
Just watch!” Then Jesus uses his own saliva to moisten some soil, and applies the mud to the man’s
eyes. He tells him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam, which he does, and is promptly healed. And of
course this is when the mud hits the fan.
There are so many things we could focus on this morning about this healing. But I’d like to spend a
few minutes looking at how God’s works are displayed in the blind man’s healing. There really are
two aspects of this work: physical and spiritual. Jesus uses this opportunity to perform a miracle of
physical healing, then deals with another type of blindness—spiritual blindness. Both of these
address something much greater than the relief of one man’s affliction.
One of the neat things about this incident is that the formerly blind man becomes a compelling
witness of Jesus’s glory even before he fully understands what’s going on. Isn’t that often the case
with us, also? We’re touched by Jesus, then we’re compelled to investigate further, to dig deeper.
Who is this who did this for me? What manner of man is this?
But in the whirlwind of attention just after his healing, the blind man really doesn’t even have a
chance to do this. He’s immediately questioned (in fact interrogated might be a better word) by a
number of people, ranging from his neighbors to the Pharisees. This is a jarring event. This guy
who’d been begging at the gates for as long as anyone could remember is suddenly up and around
taking it all in with 20/20 vision. This is definitely something of an attention-getter. Obviously,
something big has happened.
So the hornet’s nest is stirred. The neighbors and temple regulars are asking along the lines of
“How did this happen?” And of course the questioning at the hands of the Pharisees is not exactly a
barrel of laughs. They probe, accuse, and cross-examine. They’re already furious at Jesus’s
claims; now this beggar is saying that Jesus is the one who healed his blindness. They interrogate
his parents, who reply, “Hey, ask him. He’s old enough to speak for himself.” They come back to
the formerly blind man and press him further. They huff and puff about the indecency of healing on
the Sabbath, and proclaim that Jesus is nothing but a sinner. And the man says, “Hey, I don’t
anything about all that religious stuff. All I know is, I was blind, and now I see.”
As the Pharisees order him to repeat his story, this is where I really start to like this man. I can see
the guarded twinkle in his newly active eyes as he replies, “So, you want to hear it again. How
come? Do you want to be his followers, too?”
F. F. Bruce writes: “He now displays a hitherto unsuspected capacity for ironical repartee.” English
translation: He just tweaked them. He’s having a little fun with the hotheads. And the mercury
shoots even higher in their Pharisaical thermometers. They sputter about Jesus being a sinner and
a nobody, and the blind man responds by saying, in effect, “Well this is just getting curiouser and
curiouser! Because this nobody just healed my blindness!”
That’s it. The Pharisees completely lose it at this point and roughly escort him out of the temple.
Jesus hears about this and returns to find him. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” he asks. And
adoringly, the man replies, “Who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I might believe in him.” In delightful
witness to his own act of healing Jesus says, “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is
he.”
Does that remind you a little of the Samaritan woman last week? Jesus announces his identity first
to a woman of Samaria, then to a blind beggar. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Doing the
unexpected. Giving hope, healing, and life to the people who are open to Him, those who have
simple faith, regardless of their station in life. Confounding those who consider themselves to be
experts on God and His ways.
In healing the blind man, Jesus accomplishes a couple important things. First, He overtly shows
himself to be the Son of Man and the Son of God. He gives direct evidence for His establishment of
the kingdom of God on earth. He plants a huge banner that says on one side “The kingdom of God
is among you.” And on the other says “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you rest.” That banner still flies over us today. The kingdom of God is among us. The Lord
still performs miraculous healings. Just ask the Tischlers’ neighbor, Barbara. For that matter, just
ask me, as there’ve been miraculous healings in my own family of origin. I know there are other
examples in this room this morning. The Lord is alive and well and continues to heal the sick and to
give life to the dead. More about that next week as we look at a man named Lazarus.
The second thing accomplished by Jesus’ healing of the blind man is the opportunity confront our
own spiritual blindness. Think of the Pharisees. Their reaction is a bunch of “yes, buts.” “Yes, but
no one who’s from God would heal on the Sabbath. Yes, but Jesus is just a nobody and a sinner.
Yes, but maybe this guy wasn’t really blind in the first place.” It’s easy to point our fingers at the
Pharisees and chide them. But what about us? Do we have yes, buts? (I have to say, this reminds
of Fr. Stenner back in Maryland, who, regarding our excuses, once soberly proclaimed, “We all have
‘buts’.” (This was one of those embarrassing times when I was behind him in the sanctuary snorting
and gasping as I vainly tried to stifle my laughter. I mean, tears were rolling down my cheeks. Same
with many in the congregation.)
Anyway, we can blame the Pharisees, but what are some of our “yes, buts”? “Yes, but there’s
probably some other explanation for the healing.” “Yes, but the gift of healing only happened back
then, not now.” Do you ever catch yourself thinking anything like that? While some aspects of
healing are still a mystery to us, I think it bears repeating and emphasizing that God still heals. Do
you believe that this morning? I hope so. He heals our spirits and he heals our bodies. In fact,
divine healing is in the very DNA of Hope Church. In the not-too-distant future we plan to have a
center in which both physical and spiritual healing are performed by the same Lord who healed the
blind man and many others who came to Him. We’ll be in an even better position to be used by God
to proclaim Jesus as both the Son of Man and the Son of God. Just as in the days when Jesus
walked the earth, witnesses will bear testimony and the word will spread.
Some may be rankled by this. But in God’s sovereignty nothing will be able to prevent the good
news from filtering out to people longing for hope and healing.
So with a hopeful and faithful eye to the future let us all remain in diligent prayer in preparation for
the witness that we, like the blind man, will bear.
Let us pray. Dear heavenly Father, thank you for the privilege of doing Your work. Please remove
from us any spiritual blindness now afflicting us, we pray. Use us as your instruments of healing,
and as witnesses to your power and love. Prepare us for even greater works than we ever
imagined, as we mobilize to minister to the people of Albuquerque in our new setting. All this we ask
through your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and forever. Amen.
Two Kinds of Blindness
John 9:1-41
John 9:1-41
March 2, 2008
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton