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January 30, 2005
The Gift of Sight
The Gift of Sight
Psalm 23 / Isaiah 42: 6-9
John 9: 1-7
January 30th, 2005
You and I come from the week just past, with all that we have done and seen and thought, to focus our attention on Jesus. The seven verses which we just read are part of one of the most interesting stories in the Gospels.
The two main figures in the story are Jesus and the man who was born blind. We don’t know his name.
There are three stages in the story of the man born blind. The first stage ends with him recognizing Jesus as the man who healed him. In the second stage he sees Jesus as a prophet. Finally he sees Jesus as Lord and he worships Him. The more he looked at Jesus the better he came to know him. He ended up worshipping him.
But others who saw the same miracle were blind to who Jesus was, and their blindness intensified at the same time the blind man’s vision became clearer. It all had to do with the difference in how they looked at Jesus. The blind man looked at Jesus with trust. The others looked at Jesus and saw only someone who violated their traditions. It is a built in flaw in a kind of religion whose strength is found primarily in its tradition. What we pass along is vital, but there is a freshness that we need to maintain in looking at Jesus or our faith will become stale, lukewarm, and then become dead.
We read the letters in the second two chapters of the Book of Revelation where already early in the story of the Church, within the first century in fact, lethargy had set in even when Christians were willing to die for their faith. To the Church at Ephesus the Lord says, “I have this against you, you have abandoned the love you had at first.” To the Church at Pergamum the Lord says, “I have a few things against you, you have some there who hold the teaching of Baalam—that is, who dabble in idolatry and immorality. On and on Jesus assessed the churches until he came finally to the Church at Laodicea about whom he spoke most harshly because it was prosperous and had no sense of need. It was lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. “I will spew you out of my mouth,” Jesus said, in words that seem so unlike him to us.
Nearness to Jesus does not always have the same effect. Remember all kinds of people were around Jesus physically, and not all were drawn to Him. Some hated him. Some, undoubtedly, were simply indifferent. But happily some were like the man in our story who was blind from birth, who grew in a short space of time to recognize that Jesus was not only the man who healed him, not only a prophet, a man who spoke for God, but was the Lord Himself, whom he worshipped.
Let’s briefly remember a few of the important details of the story. Jesus and His disciples met a man who was born blind. It may have been common knowledge that he was born this way. Unlike blind Bartimaeus who sat beside the road in Jericho and called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me,” this fellow didn’t ask Jesus to heal him. Maybe he’d been told he deserved to be blind.
There was a theory going round that all birth defects are due to sin. Jesus’ disciples asked, “Who sinned this man or his parents that was he born blind?” They didn’t ask Jesus to give him sight. They just asked what sin was the reason he was born blind.
Some thought birth defects were the result of the sin of the parents. Others that the fetus sinned somehow in the womb, and still others, that it was sin in a previous life. These last two assumptions had no basis in the Hebrew scriptures.
Jesus told His disciples neither this man sinned, nor his parents. Though it is true the Ten Commandments include the statement that God “visits the sins of parents on the children to the third and fourth generation of those that hate me,” later Scriptures reveal a development in God’s ways. The prophet Ezekiel gave the word of the Lord to those who blamed their misfortunes on earlier generations, “What do you mean by repeating this proverb . . . ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?’ as I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel . . . the soul that sins shall die.” We are responsible only for what we do. Only in a mechanical sense do our children suffer from our sins as parents, perhaps as drug addicts pass on their addiction, or as we fail them as we bring them up.
Jesus said “He was born blind that the works of God might be manifest in him.” What works of God? At first, it was Jesus giving him the gift of sight. But the greater work followed, as he could not only see Jesus, but also recognized Jesus as Lord and worshipped Him.
What fascinates many folk is how Jesus healed this fellow. It seems so uncouth. He spat on the dust, made some mud and smeared it on the man’s eyes and said, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam and come back seeing.” He was not being crude. The spittle of a distinguished man was seen as good medicine. The dust on which Jesus spat may have been symbolic, as the Creator reached for fresh dust to heal a man who was made of dust.
He was still blind as someone led him through the city and down thirty-three steps to the pool of Siloam. He washed his muddy face and then stood up to a whole new world, a world of sight. Whereas he made his way down gingerly, I wonder if he came back skipping—though being able to see was a brand new experience he may not have known how to handle immediately.
The story is far from over.
When we read the whole of the ninth chapter of John’s Gospel we see that this fellow wasn’t the only one who was blind. He was physically blind but a worse kind of blindness afflicted others. When his neighbors and others saw him walking around no one shouted, “How great, he can see!” They were blind to gratitude, we might say. Some were blind about the obvious. “Maybe it’s not really the blind guy.” But he let them know, “I am the guy. A man healed me.”
These neighbors and friends took him the religious teachers for closer scrutiny. The teachers grilled him and then drew his parents to an inquisition about him. His parents knew these teachers had threatened to boot out of the synagogue anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Christ. Fearfully his parents said, “He is of age, ask him who healed him.”
So the learned teachers of religion grilled him again and again, “Describe exactly how it happened.” Again he told them the simple details of spittle, mud on his eyes, and a good wash in the Pool of Siloam. The space where they stood began to buzz. Some argued that Jesus couldn’t be from God because he healed on the Sabbath. It was a matter of logic. Someone from God would obey God’s law! They broke down the steps of what Jesus did and found three technical violations of their traditions about working on the Sabbath. They believed these traditions were implicit in God’s mind when God gave Israel the Ten Commandments.
But others of them countered by asking, “How could he heal if he were a sinner?” Again they asked the man, “What do you say about Jesus?” hoping to hear him disqualify Jesus in some way. He said, “He is a prophet.” This was a remarkable claim because the days of the prophets were long gone. It was four hundred years since the last of the prophets lived.
As the grilling continued the man once blind finally looked these learned teachers in the eye—far his social and religious superiors, but now mere bullies, “I have told you already and you would not listen.” Then, sarcastically, “Do you too want to be His disciples?”
How remarkable! You do not know where Jesus comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners . . . If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.
With great irritation the teachers replied as no teacher should ever speak to a student, “You were born in utter sin and would you teach us?” And they cast him out.
They thought they were doing right; they were blind. They were allies of the one who prayed in the Temple, “I thank You, God, that I am not as other men are, adulterers, unclean, or even like this tax collector-who prayed beside him, asking God’s mercy.” What utter blindness! Like this proud man who prayed so arrogantly they had forgotten that their Bible taught them humility before God was the essence of true religion. So now, equipped with the hostility to Jesus, and the unfounded idea that this man was born blind because of sin, they were blind to their own bigotry and unbelief—as they pressed this man with religious fervor.
Jesus would sometimes tease such people about their blindness. Once he described some people zealous in discovering sin in others. “You have logs in your eyes and you’re alarmed at the splinters you see in the eyes of other people.” “You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel,” he said to some others. But they couldn’t recognize their blindness. It’s a blindness endemic in some serious people.
We know well and quote Robert Burns final remark in his poem, “To a Louse.” The poem pokes fun at a prim and proper lady sitting in church. She knows how fine she looks. What she doesn’t know is that a louse is crawling along a hair protruding from the back of her bonnet. So he says, “Wad some power the gift to see ourselves as others see us. It would from many a blunder free us and foolish notion.” Good advice we may more frequently apply to others than to ourselves.
But others cannot see us perfectly. Some far over estimate us, blind to our faults, and others estimate us unfairly, blind to what is good. You remember what God told Samuel, as he searched for a king to replace Saul. Samuel looked at Jesse’s first handsome son and thought for sure this was Israel’s new king. But the Lord tugged at his conscience, “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.” Beauty is skin deep, we say. We are blind to what is in the heart.
Jesus healed the eyes of the man who was born blind, and then he healed his soul. Within a short time he came to really see Jesus. At first, Jesus was just a voice, a kindly voice I suppose. And then after he was healed, he was recognizable as a man. As questions were asked of him he realized Jesus was more than a man; he was a prophet. A prophet was as high as he could then imagine. But finally, he recognized Jesus as the Lord and worshipped him.
Each of us has a progress too in how we see Jesus. Perhaps you see Him as a good, an exemplary man whose teachings we should consider. Maybe you view Him as a prophet, a man who spoke for God. But until we see Jesus as Lord and worship Him, we have not recognized Jesus as He is.
Worship is presenting to Him our bodies, fresh when sun rises, fresh at sunset too. It goes on and on. I trust it is our desire to worship Jesus as Lord.
Let us pray: O Lord, help us like the man born blind to look at you, and to pass beyond seeing you as a man, as a prophet, and finally to see that you are the Lord, and then to worship you. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at January 30, 2005 09:30 AM