Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Locked and Loaded to Believe the Gospel

by Dave Wilkinson

John 9:1-41

May 28, 2000

"In the summer of 1979" writes Marie Riley of Enfield Connecticut, "I stopped at a neighborhood grocery and went to the deli section for my purchases. I was astounded to see a young lady and young man standing among the fine foods smiling, but with tears streaming down their faces. I did not know what to make of this so I waited for one of them to explain.

‘Ma’am, did you see that lady in the green suit that just passed you?’ he finally asked.

I replied that I had. He told me that the lady had just ventured her first trip to the store after having an eye transplant. She had been blind since birth.

‘She has a daughter my age and has never seen her,’ said the young lady. ‘I cannot imagine my mother never being able to see me.’

Seeing is truly one of God’s great gifts. This morning we find an account of Jesus restoring the sight of a man blind from birth and the results of Jesus’ healing in the life of the restored man.

As the text opens, Jesus has been teaching at the Feast of the Tabernacles. The opposition is starting to build. Much of the opposition comes from healings Jesus has performed on the Sabbath. Now, as He leaves the temple, Jesus and His disciples pass by a man blind from birth.

The disciples use the man’s blindness as an opportunity to ask Jesus a technical question about its cause.

Jesus, however, doesn’t keep the event theoretical. To Jesus, the man is more than a discussion topic. He spits on the ground and gets on his haunches to make a paste of mud out of the road dust. Then He takes the mud, covers the blind man’s eyes with it, and sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man goes, washes, and comes back seeing.

Let’s look at this miracle for a few minutes. There is something in it to offend almost everyone -- especially every Pharisee. First, it is the Sabbath Day -- the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. As we have already seen, healing on the Sabbath was forbidden -- especially healings that could have easily waited one more day. The man had been blind since birth. One more day wouldn’t hurt.

Second, there is the spitting. The Jewish law book, the Mishnah, prohibited spitting in healings -- despite the commonly held belief in the medicinal powers of saliva. We hold the same belief today. If you hit your finger with a hammer, notice where your finger immediately ends up -- in your mouth. The reason the Mishnah prohibited spitting was to avoid confusion between medicine and magic. But Jesus isn’t performing magic. He is performing creation -- making new eyes from the dust just as all humankind has origins in the dust.

Third, there is the command to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. The Pool of Siloam was the source of the water used in the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles. Each day the priests would lead the crowds to this pool to gather the water to pour on the altar. Jesus asked back in chapter 7 after the pouring of the water from the pool, "Is anybody still thirsty? Let him come to me and drink." By sending the blind man to this same pool, Jesus is saying in effect, "You have seen what the priests can do with the water from this pool. Now, see what I can do."

And fourth, there is the fact that by telling the blind man to go wash in the Pool of Siloam, Jesus is telling him to violate the very Sabbath laws the Pharisees cherished so highly. There was a limit to how far a person could walk on the Sabbath day. The Pool of Siloam is beyond the legal distance from the temple area.

Jesus presents the blind man with a choice. He can walk through the streets with mud on his face -- looking for all the world like a fool. He can violate the rabbinical law by walking farther than the legal distance. If he does these things -- if he obeys Jesus’ command -- he will be healed.

The man chooses to obey Jesus -- always a good move. He goes, washes, and receives his sight. Then, having gone that far, he walks all the way back -- no doubt quite slowly for he is seeing his city for the very first time.

Why did this man obey Jesus? Verse 11 makes it clear that he didn’t really know who Jesus was. For all he knew, Jesus could have been playing a sick joke -- mocking his blindness.

But hands speak -- especially to a blind person.

Helen Keller, America’s tremendously gifted conqueror of handicaps writes: "The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. I have met people so empty of joy when I clasped their frosty fingertips it seemed as if I was shaking hands with a northeast storm. Others there are whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may be only the clinging touch of a child’s hand, but there is as much potential sunshine in it for me as there is in a loving glance for others."

What did this blind man feel when the hands of Jesus touched his face? He felt certainly the roughened hands of a workman -- scarred perhaps by the years in the carpenter’s shop. But more than that, he felt hands that were accustomed to caring. He felt hands he knew he could trust.

A person blind since birth is apt to have a "vacant expression." When sight is given, there is a decided change of expression. His neighbors aren’t sure they know him. They begin to look at him curiously and nudge each other. "Is that the man who was born blind?" Then he puts their doubts to rest. "I am the man born blind." And when they still don’t believe it, he insists, "I am the one!"

Now a matter of this importance has to be taken before the Council. The man has not only been healed. He’s been healed on the Sabbath and he’s walked too far. They take him to the Pharisees.

Dr. Earl Palmer summarizes the story this way: "The Pharisees were seated at their places in the council and they look down on the healed man in every way there is to look down. They question him, "How did you receive your sight?"

"He replies, "A man named Jesus anointed my eyes with clay and told me to walk down to the Pool of Siloam and wash. I did, and when I washed off the clay, I could see."

Then some of the Pharisees say: "This man Jesus is not from God. If He were, He wouldn’t have told you to break the Sabbath law by walking to the pool." But there is another question: "How can a man who lives apart from God, give a man born blind his sight?" This is a good question. It might be just as well to let the matter lie. But one thing has to be determined first. Has this man been pulled out from under their authority by his experience with Jesus? Is Jesus pulling people away from the Pharisees or the temple and to Himself? The next question is crucial as to whether or not the matter will be pursued further.

"What do you say about this man now that you have received your sight?" Notice that they don’t say, "Now that He has given you your sight." They give him a chance to "fudge" a little.

But he won’t buy it. He says, "This man is a prophet!" That’s quiet a statement. Remember that until John the Baptist, there had been no prophets in Israel for four hundred years.

From the Pharisees point of view, he had just "blown it." The authority of a prophet of God exceeded the authority of the temple leadership and certainly the authority of the Pharisees. This man paid Jesus the highest praise he could. At this moment, he knew nothing higher than a prophet. His answer meant that he recognized religious authority apart from the temple. From the Pharisees’ point of view, his witness must be suppressed. Maybe they can destroy his witness by undermining his story. Could he prove he’d been born blind? Maybe they could show that it was a charade played out between Jesus and a fake blind man.

So they send for his parents. His father and mother come with fear and trembling — the anger of the Pharisees can ruin them. The spokesman for the Council addresses them: "Is this man your son? Is he the one you allege was born blind?" He pauses for a moment before he goes on, "How does it happen that now he can see?"

The parents have three ways out. First, they can deny that he is their son. Or they can say that he hadn’t really been born blind. The third way is harder but they can come up with a story about how he had received his sight in the temple. Any one of those answers will satisfy the Pharisees.

The parents show a little courage. They don’t lie about what they know. "This is our son. He was born blind. And as to how he can see, ask him. He’s old enough. Let him speak for himself." Anything they know about the healing is hearsay.

So the Pharisee’s turn their attention back to the man who had been healed by Jesus. First they put him under oath. "Give glory to God" in verse 24 is a technical expression, which means "Remember that God sees you and tell the truth." They are certain that the man is holding back something that will show Jesus to be the sinner that they just knew He must be. "Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner so what are you holding back?"

What the man has been holding back is a sharp mind. He proceeds to use it. And the more they push him, the greater became his awareness of what Jesus had done for him. "You’re the experts on people being sinners" he said. "All I know was that I was blind and now I see. You have your opinions about Jesus. I have my experience with Jesus. Which am I supposed to believe? I know that Jesus saves because He saved me." That’s a great testimony.

Then, in the age-old method of interrogation, they asked him to repeat his whole story over again from start to finish. They have been watching too much Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue. They want to find the weak link -- the inconsistency that will shake his testimony.

The healed man, however, has lost patience. He begins to bait his interrogators. "I’ve already told you. Didn’t you listen? Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become His disciples too?" He asks the question in such a way as to show that he expects the answer to be "no." But it is significant that he now counts himself as a disciple of Jesus. Maybe he figured that anybody who is an enemy of these Pharisees is a friend of his -- especially if He had already given him sight.

The Pharisees stop arguing with each other and start to abuse the man -- everyone shouting their insults at the same time. When the storm subsides, the spokesman tries again.

"You are a disciple of Jesus? We are disciples of Moses. Now we know that God spoke to Moses, but we don’t even know where this Jesus came from."

The witness is not intimidated. I love the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases his reply in The Message: "That’s amazing! You claim to know nothing about Him, but the fact is, He opened my eyes! It’s well known that God isn’t at the beck and call of sinners, but listens carefully to anyone who loves in reverence and does His will. That someone opened the eyes of a man born blind has never been heard of -- ever. If this man didn’t come from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything."

But the Pharisees can’t hear the truth of this argument. All they can see is the unimpressive figure of their unwelcomed teacher. "The fact that you were born blind," they said, "is proof that you were born in sin -- either your sin or your parents. So there is no way that you could be right about what you say." Then they excommunicate him from the synagogue. They throw him out both literally and administratively. Verse 22 states that they had already decided to excommunicate anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Christ.

It had been fun going head-to-head with the big shots while it lasted but now the man was in a jam. He had been a good Jew. The synagogue was his link to the Almighty. He had closed the temple door by testifying to the power of Jesus. To be excommunicated was to be a social pariah -- unable to earn a living even by begging. If even his parents tried to help him in any way, they would run the risk of being excommunicated themselves.

But when Jesus hears that he has been cast out, He drops what He is doing and goes to find him. Jesus will not leave him in distress caused by witnessing to the truth he knew. Neither will He leave him with only a half-formed, if strong, knowledge of who had helped him. He finds the former blind man and asks, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" The healed man had never seen Jesus but he would know that voice anywhere. He answers, "And who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?" Jesus answered, "You have both seen Him and He is the one who is talking to you." The man answered, "Lord, I believe." And he worshiped Him. He gave not only his loyalty and his gratitude, but also his worship.

When Jesus said, "You have seen Him," it meant a good deal to a man who, up until that time had seen nothing.

This man had been blind since birth, but he was in no sense a cripple. Even in the midst of trouble, his speech was direct and honest -- "I am the man, He is a prophet, Lord, I believe." The more we see of this man, the more we like him. The more Jesus saw of this man, the more He asked of him and the more he received.

Some time ago, would be riders on a bus line in the Midlands of England complained to the company’s headquarters that bus drivers were speeding past bus stops where as many as thirty people were lined up for a ride. Sometimes the drivers would even smile and wave as they roared by.

The bus company defended its drivers by pointing out that "It is impossible for the drivers to keep their timetables if they have to stop for passengers."

The Pharisees had the same kind of closed system logic. They kept their timetable but they forgot the point. And because they claimed to see, their sin remained. If they admitted their blindness they could be healed. But they had life and religion and God too well figured out to do that.

This man claims to be cured. Jesus doesn’t keep our rules. Therefore Jesus is a sinner. God doesn’t hear sinners. Therefore this man is not cured.

It sounds good. Except for one thing. The man is cured. The Pharisees’ beautiful theory is destroyed by one solid fact.

Fredrick Buechner writes: "People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas. They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour’s work as for a day’s. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the Lamb."

The Pharisees aren’t ready. But the formerly blind man is locked and loaded to believe the gospel. Look at how his understanding grows even as the understanding of the Pharisees collapses. First he refers to Jesus as a man in verse 11 -- he hadn’t heard much about Him and he didn’t suppose the people had either. In verse 25 he says that he didn’t know much about Jesus but he did know what Jesus could do and had, indeed, done in him. He knew that he demonstrated the power of God to the extent that he was willing to give Jesus the high title of prophet. Then in verse 27, he identifies himself as a follower of Jesus --for he knew that Jesus was from God. Finally he comes face to face with Jesus as the divine, pre-existent Son of Man, and worships Him as Lord.

In his entire gospel, John has only twenty-one chapters. He spends one entire chapter on the conversion of this man who was born blind. I think John was as impressed with this man, as we should also be. He was a man not only willing to believe, but eager to believe -- and who received not only the light of his eyes but the Light of the World.