This is the Pastor’s Blog for the Service on Sunday March 15th at 10:45AM. Included here is the primary Scripture of this message and the Pastor’s notes. Prior to the service it will include an excerpt of the Pastor’s notes and following the service the complete notes will be added. Also following the service a link will be provided at the bottom to Replay this service. We hope you will join us in Worship on Sunday.
Scripture: John 9:1-41
9 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. 4 We[a] must work the works of him who sent me[b] while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 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, 7 saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 8 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?” 9 Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am he.” 10 But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 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.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
The Pharisees Investigate the Healing
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. 14 Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15 Then 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.” 16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. 17 So 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 19 and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” 20 His parents answered, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind, 21 but 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.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus[c] to be the Messiah[d] would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore 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.” 25 He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” 26 They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” 27 He 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?” 28 Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29 We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” 30 The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32 Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 34 They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
Spiritual Blindness
35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”[e] 36 He answered, “And who is he, sir?[f] Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37 Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38 He said, “Lord,[g] I believe.” And he worshiped him. 39 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.” 40 Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41 Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.
Pastor’s Message;
I begin today with a confession: I have preached on this passage and its host of characters several times throughout my ministry. When I sat down this week to format the story into a dialogue for our readers, I was surprised at how often the man born blind speaks. After all these years, I brought to this story the time-worn assumption that the one who is “acted upon” – the man born blind who receives the healing of Jesus – is a bit of an object and doesn’t talk much.
What I am confessing is that I didn’t “see.” Over the years my mind has tracked right along with the cluelessness of the disciples and the religious authorities – the ones who don’t get it. Lo and behold, I find myself as one who doesn’t see! So come with me now as we explore this story afresh, and “see” what the Holy Spirit might be wanting us to see.
There is a lot going on this story – many things can catch our attention. Let’s streamline it a bit by lifting up a few layers in this story.
The first presents an age-old question that both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament wrestle with. This question pops up in our own context today. It’s the question the disciples ask Jesus when they see a beggar who has been blind since birth: what sin did this man or his parents commit that caused him to be born blind?
This story and this question always hit a very tender place in my dear Aunt Peggy’s heart and mind. My Aunt Peggy was my mom’s younger sister. Peggy and I were very close. She died in April pf 2020. Peggy was born with cerebral palsy, a condition caused by a neurological injury during birth. Being raised in a Christian tradition that emphasized sin with a very heavy hand, Peggy would move back and forth between fear (have I done something wrong that caused this cerebral palsy?) and smoking-hot anger (how dare any one accuse me of causing my own physical condition!).
Sometimes Jesus doesn’t give us easy answers to big questions, but here he is emphatic and direct. No, Jesus says. This man hasn’t sinned, nor have his parents. His blindness offers an opportunity to “see” how wonderful God is and what God might be up to. That’s not to say that God caused the man to be born blind so that a miracle could happen. That turns God into a capricious and mean experimenter with human life. I like to think of God as the divine lemonade maker. Life throws us lemons, right? In response, God will move to turn those lemons into lemonade.
Jesus’ response to the disciples’ question redirects them from stewing about the past – was this man’s blindness caused by his sin or his parents’ sin? – to the present and future: what might God be doing in this man’s life right now? And what might God do in this man’s life in the future? Jesus offers a striking and sudden re-orientation from our human propensity to ruminate on what’s wrong with us and the world and our past mistakes, and pitches us forward to what God is doing now that is beautiful and glorious and what awesome work God might do in the future.
Another “layer” of this story is the theme of “insiders” and “outsiders.” There’s a reference in this narrative to fear of being put out of the synagogue. Some biblical scholars see this as a whisper of what the community of Jesus believers who received John’s version of the gospel story were going through. The Johannine community was likely small and beleaguered. Not only had they been thrown out of the synagogue for following Jesus of Nazareth, they likely were isolated from the main movement of early Jesus-believers in Palestine. They were double outsiders, with all the loneliness and isolation being an outsider carries.
Wrapped up in the man born blind is this pain of being isolated, lonely, and marginalized. He answers many questions, bears witness to his encounter with the Christ, and is subject to still more questions and winds up being pushed away again. He doesn’t belong.
In the midst of all this pain, Jesus not only heals the man, but calls him into discipleship. As he is interrogated by the religious authorities, the man born blind – the man who now sees – bears witness to his call of discipleship. He testifies to the One who restored his sight and proclaims out loud that no one but God can bring about the healing that he experienced.
His confessions costs him. He is driven out of the community.
But the man who now sees is not left isolated and alone. Jesus hears what has happened and finds the healed man who sees and offers his presence and assurance, his mercy and his grace. The man is healed and loved into the embrace of the kingdom community – a community that provides belonging to those who have been marginalized and pushed out of the old, soul-less hierarchical way of categorizing and separating people based on their perceived usefulness to the hierarchy.
This leads us to a third layer in this story. After the man’s confession of belief, Jesus states his mission: Jesus has come to judge those who claim to see, and to restore the sight of those who are “blind.”
During Jesus’ day, blind beggars didn’t count as people worthy of social standing and inclusion. Observance of the Sabbath was often seen as a matter of strict religious law, rather than gift. Healing on the Sabbath raised eyebrows. Does healing count as labor? And is this healing “real” or not? These questions block vision, rather than inspire it.
The religious authorities actually exhibit a bit of self-awareness when they ask: “surely we aren’t blind, are we?” Jesus’ response to them is sharp: you claim to see, but your insistence on past sin keeps you right there, in the past worrying about past sin. You fail to “see” God’s work and glory in the present.
On the other hand, the man born blind slowly regains his sight: he goes from speaking about “the man named Jesus” who put spit and dirt on his eyes and told him to wash to full confession: “Lord, I believe.”
The question of the religious authorities – surely we aren’t blind, are we? – leaps across the millennia and lands right in our own laps. Are we blind? What is it that we don’t see?
Time after time the Church has found itself blind when it insists that it sees. The crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, the co-opting of the German church by the Nazi party, the failure to fully include all of God’s beloved regardless of gender, sexual orientation, skin color, or physical ability. As individuals, we also have our blind spots, some of which are too painful to name.
But here’s the thing: Christ hasn’t pronounced us all as people without sight eternally. Allowing God-in-Christ to open our eyes is always held before us as a new possibility. But we have to let the painful questions arise: what is it that I do not see? Where am I missing seeing the new thing God is doing among us right now? And am I willing to let seeing that new Spirit-thing cost me?
I want to close with a couple of paragraphs written by Helen Keller. Keller was a writer, lecturer, advocate for disability rights, and a political activist. At 19 months old, she lost her vision and hearing after an illness. At age seven, she met her most significant teacher, Anne Sullivan. Teaching language to a child without vision and hearing was a challenge, but Sullivan was up to the task.
Keller wrote about a breakthrough this way:
“[Anne and I] walked down the path to the well-house…Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over me she spelled into the other [hand] the word “water”, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!
“I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me…I learned a great many new words that day…words that were to make the world blossom for me, “like Aaron’s rod with flowers.”
What new sight, what new vision, is bubbling up around us? Not only for us as individual followers, but for us as the New World community?
May the Spirit move among us, opening our eyes, leading us into God’s dream for us here and now.
Closing prayer.
