Oh that I might see...
Scripture Reading: John 9:1-15, 28-41; . Mark 8:22-27 Text John 9:1-7
Brothers and Sisters, here in England and North America, we don’t often see cases of physical blindness. Sure, many of us require corrective lenses and prescriptions, and our eyes may progressively degenerate as we age, but we’ve had this technology in some form or another since the late thirteenth century. Increasing numbers of people even have the option of laser corrective surgery to change the shape of our eyes and “restore” our vision should it be lost. But even the earliest date for eyeglasses is well over a millennia removed from the healings of the blind recorded in the time of our Lord. In that time, it would not have been uncommon to see two people walking down the street holding one stick – the person in front serving as the eyes of the person behind. Imagine if every one of us who can’t see a thing without our glasses had to be led around! Signs of intense physical blindness are not as common here, and while I am no expert on the sufficiency of care provided by NHS here or at home, our visually impaired are more able to live independently here than they would have in the time and place of our passage today.
The individual healed in this passage was blind from birth. In the Greek, we read “ejk geneth”, which my commentaries tell me means “from the hour of birth” . This phrase is found nowhere else in the New Testament. The Disciples’ question at first would seem strange. How could this man have sinned prior to being born blind? We know from our Old Testament reading of the Ten Commandments that God “punished children for the sins of their fathers to the third and fourth generation”, but they don’t refer to fetal sin. So the sin of a man born blind would have to be that of his fathers. But we can also read Ezekiel 18:20, which says that 20 The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.
The blind man would therefore not be punished for the sins of the fathers, and so the sin must be his own. Psalm 89: 33 but I will not take my love from him, nor will I ever betray my faithfulness, and other single verses devoid of context, were commonly used in Judaism to argue that there was neither death nor punishment without sin and guilt, and that fetuses could indeed sin. The question of the disciples, then, is a scholarly one in the midst of a debate. Which passage should be given primacy as the root of this man’s blindness?
But Jesus had his own agenda. The blind ones were the disciples! Jesus said “Neither this man nor his parents sinned”, not implying that they, like him, were without sin, but that the man’s congenital blindness was not a specific punishment. This man’s blindness was a result of sin; in a perfect world, he would not have been born blind. But it was not his sin nor his parents; it was the sin of the world.
“This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life”. Well wait a minute, I’m tempted to say: this man was born blind simply so that Jesus could heal him? Isn’t that a little harsh? Surely God wouldn’t afflict an innocent man who had neither sinned as a fetus or been born to evil parents such that he deserved blindness! Imagine living all those years, just to be healed one day to set straight some dim-witted disciples on a matter of doctrine!
Perhaps, however, that’s not what Jesus meant by this passage; the blindness, not intended by God in Creation, is there because mankind has disobeyed God as we have already seen.
Jesus is about to show his disciples that God can, and desires to, show God’s authority over all things by making use of the effects of sin, including physical and spiritual infirmities.
As a third point, in this passage we see that God demonstrates His love to all men by giving them the grace they need every day to live with the effects of sin.
Jesus goes on to say that he is the light of the world; in his presence it is truly “light”. As work generally ceases when the sun goes down (at least, without the conveniences of artificial lighting), so Christ’s departure from the world would end the miraculous works of his ministry on earth, making it seem as night. In this text, Jesus looked beyond the questions of his disciples, who reduced the blind man to a subject of discussion; he saw a man, without sight, and had compassion – turning their question into an opportunity to perform an act of mercy, bring healing to a broken man, and set the disciples straight.
Jesus spat on the ground, and worked the moistened dirt into clay; he applied this – a substance from himself – to the man’s eyes, and sent him to the Pool of Siloam to wash (interestingly, Siloam translates as “sent”). Very rarely in his healing acts did Jesus give up something physical of himself; the other instance, in Mark 8:22-27, says Jesus “spit on his eyes and put his hands upon him”. In this case, the man’s eyes were not immediately healed; he saw men who looked like trees, walking; Jesus touched his eyes again, and the man was healed. In other healings, however, Jesus simply spoke and the men were healed. In these two cases, perhaps Jesus sought to emphasize the difficulty of healing; perhaps the men suffered from a great degree of physical blindness; in John 9, it is congenital blindness; in Mark 8, perhaps something very similar.
In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, American writer Annie Dillard describes surgeries that correct the severe cataracts of people born blind. The medical accounts she cites describe the inability of the newly-sighted to see things clearly, to perceive shape, colour, or perspective as they could when they were blind, and it is entirely possible that the blind man in Mark 8’s confusion of men and walking trees could be like this early stage. She writes, “In general, the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of color-patches. They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult. Soon after his operation a patient ‘generally bumps into one of these colour-patches and observes them to be substantial, since they resist him as tactual objects do. In walking about it also strikes him – that he is continually passing between the colours he sees, that he can go past a visual object, that a part of it then steadily disappears from view…The mental effort involved in these reasonings proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world…On the other hand, many newly sighted people speak well of the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision…One girl was eager to tell her blind friend that “men do not really look like trees at all”
Perhaps this is what Jesus was getting at – in healing these blind men, showing the difficulty of healing and of seeing fully.
If this man – with his originally-blinded eyes – can be taken as representative of humanity, Christ’s act of healing his affliction can be seen to represent his much larger act, mankind’s greatest affliction: Sin. At Calvary, Christ offered up his life and body, without holding back, that we might be able to see and respond to God. It required saliva to heal these physically blind; it required blood to heal the blindness of sin. Isaiah speaks to this several times in his messianic prophecies, describing on several occasions the “opening of blind eyes” when the Messiah comes.
In the book of John, light and darkness are contrasted continually – John uses “light” in reference to Jesus no less than twenty times! Jesus enabled people to see spiritually; and in the case of these men, physically. It is interesting to note that this man did not solicit Jesus’ healing. Jesus initiated the healing; but it caused the man to ‘see’ spiritually as well – he counted himself as a disciple of Jesus before the Pharisees, who subsequently threw him out of the synagogue – perhaps not literally, as we might picture; but certainly cutting him off from fellowship.
Jesus sought out the man, revealed that he was talking to the son of man, and was worshipped by the new convert; the blind man was enabled to see, and those who claimed sight were shown to be blind. We may not always see the physically blind who live among us, or the deaf, or frail; we’ve designed systems to help them fit in; but neither do we always see the spiritual blindness of those about us; and no system can correct for or explain that. We even suffer from blindness ourselves! I confess that it was quite by providence that I chose the passage for this message; I had no idea of its personal significance. It was by more than coincidence that I was confronted with my own blindness towards others as I was preparing this message. My soul twisted in sadness as I realized how I had played the part of the harsh Pharisee, externally convinced of my justification, yet blind to struggles deep within myself and insensitive to those around me.
We have seen in this passage that Jesus saw the need of the blind man – the subject of his disciples’ question. He recognized his weakness, his affliction, and the physical darkness in which the man lived day by day. He approached the man, spat, and made clay, and used his elemental substance to let the blind man see. Our Christ was humiliated, shamed, and rejected by those who could not, would not see; He initiated healing for us when he offered up his substance as a sacrifice, descended into darkness so we could see light, and rose from the dead in Victory. Let us therefore go forth from this place assured of his victory and seeing the world for whom our Saviour died, in the light of the resurrection that we are gathered to celebrate here today.
Brothers and Sisters, here in England and North America, we don’t often see cases of physical blindness. Sure, many of us require corrective lenses and prescriptions, and our eyes may progressively degenerate as we age, but we’ve had this technology in some form or another since the late thirteenth century. Increasing numbers of people even have the option of laser corrective surgery to change the shape of our eyes and “restore” our vision should it be lost. But even the earliest date for eyeglasses is well over a millennia removed from the healings of the blind recorded in the time of our Lord. In that time, it would not have been uncommon to see two people walking down the street holding one stick – the person in front serving as the eyes of the person behind. Imagine if every one of us who can’t see a thing without our glasses had to be led around! Signs of intense physical blindness are not as common here, and while I am no expert on the sufficiency of care provided by NHS here or at home, our visually impaired are more able to live independently here than they would have in the time and place of our passage today.
The individual healed in this passage was blind from birth. In the Greek, we read “ejk geneth”, which my commentaries tell me means “from the hour of birth” . This phrase is found nowhere else in the New Testament. The Disciples’ question at first would seem strange. How could this man have sinned prior to being born blind? We know from our Old Testament reading of the Ten Commandments that God “punished children for the sins of their fathers to the third and fourth generation”, but they don’t refer to fetal sin. So the sin of a man born blind would have to be that of his fathers. But we can also read Ezekiel 18:20, which says that 20 The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.
The blind man would therefore not be punished for the sins of the fathers, and so the sin must be his own. Psalm 89: 33 but I will not take my love from him, nor will I ever betray my faithfulness, and other single verses devoid of context, were commonly used in Judaism to argue that there was neither death nor punishment without sin and guilt, and that fetuses could indeed sin. The question of the disciples, then, is a scholarly one in the midst of a debate. Which passage should be given primacy as the root of this man’s blindness?
But Jesus had his own agenda. The blind ones were the disciples! Jesus said “Neither this man nor his parents sinned”, not implying that they, like him, were without sin, but that the man’s congenital blindness was not a specific punishment. This man’s blindness was a result of sin; in a perfect world, he would not have been born blind. But it was not his sin nor his parents; it was the sin of the world.
“This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life”. Well wait a minute, I’m tempted to say: this man was born blind simply so that Jesus could heal him? Isn’t that a little harsh? Surely God wouldn’t afflict an innocent man who had neither sinned as a fetus or been born to evil parents such that he deserved blindness! Imagine living all those years, just to be healed one day to set straight some dim-witted disciples on a matter of doctrine!
Perhaps, however, that’s not what Jesus meant by this passage; the blindness, not intended by God in Creation, is there because mankind has disobeyed God as we have already seen.
Jesus is about to show his disciples that God can, and desires to, show God’s authority over all things by making use of the effects of sin, including physical and spiritual infirmities.
As a third point, in this passage we see that God demonstrates His love to all men by giving them the grace they need every day to live with the effects of sin.
Jesus goes on to say that he is the light of the world; in his presence it is truly “light”. As work generally ceases when the sun goes down (at least, without the conveniences of artificial lighting), so Christ’s departure from the world would end the miraculous works of his ministry on earth, making it seem as night. In this text, Jesus looked beyond the questions of his disciples, who reduced the blind man to a subject of discussion; he saw a man, without sight, and had compassion – turning their question into an opportunity to perform an act of mercy, bring healing to a broken man, and set the disciples straight.
Jesus spat on the ground, and worked the moistened dirt into clay; he applied this – a substance from himself – to the man’s eyes, and sent him to the Pool of Siloam to wash (interestingly, Siloam translates as “sent”). Very rarely in his healing acts did Jesus give up something physical of himself; the other instance, in Mark 8:22-27, says Jesus “spit on his eyes and put his hands upon him”. In this case, the man’s eyes were not immediately healed; he saw men who looked like trees, walking; Jesus touched his eyes again, and the man was healed. In other healings, however, Jesus simply spoke and the men were healed. In these two cases, perhaps Jesus sought to emphasize the difficulty of healing; perhaps the men suffered from a great degree of physical blindness; in John 9, it is congenital blindness; in Mark 8, perhaps something very similar.
In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, American writer Annie Dillard describes surgeries that correct the severe cataracts of people born blind. The medical accounts she cites describe the inability of the newly-sighted to see things clearly, to perceive shape, colour, or perspective as they could when they were blind, and it is entirely possible that the blind man in Mark 8’s confusion of men and walking trees could be like this early stage. She writes, “In general, the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of color-patches. They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult. Soon after his operation a patient ‘generally bumps into one of these colour-patches and observes them to be substantial, since they resist him as tactual objects do. In walking about it also strikes him – that he is continually passing between the colours he sees, that he can go past a visual object, that a part of it then steadily disappears from view…The mental effort involved in these reasonings proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world…On the other hand, many newly sighted people speak well of the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision…One girl was eager to tell her blind friend that “men do not really look like trees at all”
Perhaps this is what Jesus was getting at – in healing these blind men, showing the difficulty of healing and of seeing fully.
If this man – with his originally-blinded eyes – can be taken as representative of humanity, Christ’s act of healing his affliction can be seen to represent his much larger act, mankind’s greatest affliction: Sin. At Calvary, Christ offered up his life and body, without holding back, that we might be able to see and respond to God. It required saliva to heal these physically blind; it required blood to heal the blindness of sin. Isaiah speaks to this several times in his messianic prophecies, describing on several occasions the “opening of blind eyes” when the Messiah comes.
In the book of John, light and darkness are contrasted continually – John uses “light” in reference to Jesus no less than twenty times! Jesus enabled people to see spiritually; and in the case of these men, physically. It is interesting to note that this man did not solicit Jesus’ healing. Jesus initiated the healing; but it caused the man to ‘see’ spiritually as well – he counted himself as a disciple of Jesus before the Pharisees, who subsequently threw him out of the synagogue – perhaps not literally, as we might picture; but certainly cutting him off from fellowship.
Jesus sought out the man, revealed that he was talking to the son of man, and was worshipped by the new convert; the blind man was enabled to see, and those who claimed sight were shown to be blind. We may not always see the physically blind who live among us, or the deaf, or frail; we’ve designed systems to help them fit in; but neither do we always see the spiritual blindness of those about us; and no system can correct for or explain that. We even suffer from blindness ourselves! I confess that it was quite by providence that I chose the passage for this message; I had no idea of its personal significance. It was by more than coincidence that I was confronted with my own blindness towards others as I was preparing this message. My soul twisted in sadness as I realized how I had played the part of the harsh Pharisee, externally convinced of my justification, yet blind to struggles deep within myself and insensitive to those around me.
We have seen in this passage that Jesus saw the need of the blind man – the subject of his disciples’ question. He recognized his weakness, his affliction, and the physical darkness in which the man lived day by day. He approached the man, spat, and made clay, and used his elemental substance to let the blind man see. Our Christ was humiliated, shamed, and rejected by those who could not, would not see; He initiated healing for us when he offered up his substance as a sacrifice, descended into darkness so we could see light, and rose from the dead in Victory. Let us therefore go forth from this place assured of his victory and seeing the world for whom our Saviour died, in the light of the resurrection that we are gathered to celebrate here today.
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