Seeing and Believing

 March 6 2022

John 9

         Do you see that? Over there, don’t you see it, its right there?Don’t you hate it when someone asks you that question and you have no idea what it is that they want you to see? This usually happens to me when ever I’m in the car with Jennifer. She usually drives and so when she spots something she wants me to see she will shout out, “Hey, look at “fill in the blank”. For whatever reason, when I hear those words I automatically look out the passenger window and promptly miss whatever it was that she wanted me to see, so, no, I did not see whatever it was that she wanted me to see. So, even something as simple as looking out the window and seeing the same thing someone else wants you to see can be a bigger challenge than most people realize. And don’t even get me started with the seeing that is found in the phrase, “Do you see what I mean…”, I mean, most of the time I am probably going to struggle to see what a person means, at least until I have some time to process just what it is that I’m supposed to understand. So, while seeing seems so natural and easy when you try and see what others see and try and see what others mean when they try and explain something to you, this is when seeing gets a lot more complicated.

         The gospel of John is a story that is shot through with seeing, both the actual seeing and the seeing as in us understanding just what it is that Jesus is trying to communicate. When Jesus invites his disciples to come along for the venture of a lifetime he uses the phrase, “Come and see”. The disciples obviously thought that this was a pretty cool way to invite others because when their friends get curious about Jesus they too are told to come and see. Then when Jesus meets Nicodemus he tells him that if Nicodemus wants to see the kingdom he would have to be born of the Spirit. So, in the first three chapters we have this idea of come and see and also this idea that the Spirit is needed to see the kingdom. To see the kingdom means that we are to see the king, to see Jesus and this new reality that he has brought into our world, the new reality of light in the darkness. Today is the first Sunday in Lent, the forty days before Easter when we are to walk with Jesus to Calvary. This Lent, I want us to consider how do we see Jesus. As we will hear today, all of us at one time were blind, blind to who Jesus is, but now we see, we see with a new vision. We now see Jesus in the fullness of who he is. As we walk to Calvary our hope is that we will see Jesus in an ever greater clarity, to see him in all of his majesty and glory.

         So, we begin our Lenten journey remembering that once we were blind but now, because of Jesus, we see. We have been healed so that we might see as Jesus could see. Jesus could see his Father working and because of that he could join his Father in his work. Jesus called his disciples, and us, to see these works and to join him in this work . The crowds, and the Pharisees are quite oblivious and don’t see anything because their dependence on the flesh limits what is possible for them to see and understand. This blindness of the Pharisees becomes evident in this ninth chapter of John where  Jesus works a miracle which gives a man eyes to see. This story though is more than just one isolated miracle because we are to understand that this story is a story of us. We too are people who have been met by Jesus right where we are at, and like this man born blind we at last can see, we can see Jesus and his kingdom that has been right in front of us all along.

         Jesus at this point in the story has made a few enemies. So, he has to hide and goes out of the Temple where he was teaching and as he walks beyond the Temple walls he passes by a man who was blind from birth. The man is most likely begging for money for there is not much else he can do to survive. It is the disciples of Jesus who bring the blind man to the attention of Jesus because they ask Jesus just who is to blame for this man being born blind, himself or his parents? Now, their questions seem a bit crass, don’t they, this seeking out just whose fault is it that this man is in the shape he is in but to be honest, don’t all of us do the very same thing? I mean, doesn’t everybody try and figure out just why for some people that if it wasn’t for bad luck they would have no luck at all? We want answers because we want the world to make sense. The problem is that we try and make sense of the troubles of this world on our own as if we were somehow capable of doing so instead of listening to the answer that Jesus gives. Jesus corrects his disciples telling them that this man’s blindness was not because of this man’s parents sin or because of this man’s sin; no, this man’s blindness was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Are you beginning to put the story together, now? Jesus has already told us that he does nothing of his own accord but  he does only what he sees the Father is doing which begs the question, just what is the Father is doing? The answer is that the Father is working at the place where people have been broken by sin. Our heavenly Father has taken the ugly work of sin and transformed that mark so that it becomes the means for us to see the beauty of his glory. The question is do we see what Jesus means when he tells us this? You see instead of spending all our time assessing blame we should instead be joining God in his work, the work of bringing healing to the brokenness of people. Jesus tells his disciples that they too are to join him in doing the works of the Father, they are not just to see what Jesus is doing but they are to become those who others see are working with God.

         Well, Jesus wastes no time getting to work. We are told that Jesus spits on the ground and makes mud balls and plasters this mess in the blind mans eyes. The God who loves us is not afraid to get his hands dirty, just as he did in the beginning when instead of calling us into being God instead made us out of the earth and gave us life. So, here is this blind man, his eyes smeared with mud but can he now see? Not at all, because we are told that what he must do is to take and wash his face in the pool of Siloam. Think of the irony that the man is sent to a pool of water whose name means sent! We have to wonder just how this man, who can’t see a lick is going to find this pool which he has never been to and has not seen?  A map really is not going to help. It is obvious that he is going to need help.  It is here the underlying message of this story begins to shine through because as we think of this blind man we cannot help but think of Saul who we later would come to know as Paul who when he encountered Jesus rather than being healed of blindness became blind instead. His physical blindness was God’s way of telling Paul of how spiritually blind he had been when he persecuted the early church. As we are told in the eighth chapter of the book of Acts, Paul, in his blindness, needed others to lead him and pray over him so that he might regain his sight and then he was baptized. As the man who was born blind comes to the waters of Siloam we can’t help but think of the waters of baptism where we confirm that Jesus has touched our life, we have entered his new creation and now we will be at last able to see the kingdom which has always been there all along.

         Now what is so very true is that any time one has an encounter with Jesus their life is dramatically changed and this was especially so for this man who was born blind. His neighbors and those who had watched him sit at his same spot day after day, now wondered just why it was that he was no longer crying out for alms. They could see this man but they could not understand how it could be that he could now see. In our world, the blind stay blind they just don’t suddenly get new eyes and start seeing, that’s just the way it is. Yet here he was staring them in the face and they had no answers for what they were seeing. All this poor guy could say is hey, its me, I am that guy that used to spend my days begging, the same guy who used to sit in the darkness and wonder just what it must be like to have light flood into my life only now all that I hoped for has at last come true. The response of the crowd who had gathered around him was well, how can this be so? They had questions that needed answers because people just naturally want a world that they can explain, a world they can figure out until suddenly into this world comes Jesus and then the world becomes very disorienting. The man could not explain just how his eyes were opened; all he knew is who it was that had given him his sight and that one’s name was Jesus. Jesus is the one who had touched his life, who had told him to wash and be cleansed and here he was seeing for the first time in his life. Where this Jesus was now, this man did not know.

         The people rightly understood that what had happened to this man had to have been done in the power and consent of God. So, of course they went and sought out their godly leaders and brought them to check out this man who had lived his whole life in darkness but could now see. Surely they would be thrilled that here they could see that God had worked a miracle, wouldn’t they? Well no, they weren’t happy about all this miracle business because it happened on a Sabbath. If Jesus performed a miracle on the sabbath then he just had to be a law breaker and law breakers can not perform miracles. Or so they thought! All that the blind man could do in the face of their unbelief was to just keep telling his story of what Jesus had done for him. The Pharisees had concluded that Jesus was an outlaw but is this really who Jesus was? The man who was born blind paused for a minute, and he came to the conclusion that this Jesus was certainly not an outlaw nor was Jesus just some guy off the street as he had earlier thought but instead he stated that this Jesus surely had to be a prophet.This man Jesus fit the bill of who a prophet is, as stated in the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, one who God had raised up from his people who God would put his words in their mouth and speak all that God commanded him. Yes, this had to be who Jesus is thought this once blind man because only one so connected to God could have done what he had done.

         The Pharisees though, they were not ready to concede that Jesus was a prophet. No, there had to be some other explanation. Maybe this guy was just concocting this story up out of thin air. Was he really blind, they thought? So, they go and track down his parents and ask them, was your son really born blind? Yes, this man’s parents replied, he was born blind. Then they added but we have no idea how it is that he can now see. You see, the Pharisees were great at instilling fear in people so much so that this man’s parents wanted to avoid a confrontation with the Pharisees at all cost.

The testimony of the man’s parents put the Pharisees in a real bind because if he really had been born blind then what were they going to do about Jesus. This is the problem all good religious people have: just what are they going to do about Jesus. Jesus has a bad habit of coloring outside of the line, of re-writing the script those in authority think everybody is supposed to follow. The religious people all know God the best so its no wonder that when these Pharisees catch up with the blind man who could now see, and they tell him to give God the honor due to him and agree with them that this man who had healed him was indeed a sinner. Now, this man replies with a wise rebuttal saying that he did not know whether Jesus was a sinner or not all he knew is that he once was blind but now he could see. Unbelievably, these thick headed control freaks ask this man to explain again, just what happened. You have to imagine that this poor guy has reached his limit and he asks them, “Why do you want to hear this again? Do you want to be his disciples? You can only imagine the look on the faces of these religious authorities when they were asked if they wanted to be followers of Jesus. Their faces must have blazed red, their eyes shot daggers and sweat poured off of their foreheads. They shouted at this man you, you are his disciple not us. We are disciples of Moses. What we know is that God spoke to Moses. This man, Jesus, we don’t even know where he comes from. In other words, Jesus is in no way a prophet because unlike Moses this Jesus does not speak the words of God and he most assuredly has not been raised up from the people of God. 

The man who Jesus healed just could not believe what he was hearing from these so called religious authorities. You can hear his voice ring with sarcasm when he replied to them, “This is amazing!You don’t know where Jesus is from but the one thing you do know is that he opened my eyes. What you also know is that God does not listen to sinners and you know that if a person worships God and does the will of God, this is a person God listens to.  So, if all of this is true, then how did Jesus do something that the world has never seen before, taking a man born blind and giving him sight? I mean, if this Jesus is not from God then he would not have been able to do this. Can’t you see this?

The Pharisees had reached their limit. They did not take kindly to this sinner telling the likes of them about God and who God listens to. They grabbed this man by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to the city gates and gave him the boot.  Yet even though this man had not fared very well at the hands of the religious authorities all was not lost because once again, this man was found by Jesus. This time Jesus ask this man, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”Here once again, John brings up a title of Jesus that he has written about numerous times before. Jesus, we might recall, in the first chapter of John’s gospel, told Nathanael that he would see heaven opened and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Jesus as the Son of Man has opened heaven, brought what was once beyond our reach close for us to touch, the touch we feel in the hand of Jesus. Jesus, the Son of Man, the one who stands before the Ancient of Days in the seventh chapter of Daniel now stands also before us, bringing us into that closeness with the one who has always been, the Father in heaven. This is what Jesus asks this man who once was blind but who now sees, did he now believe that Jesus is the one who has opened heaven so that the Father might touch his life? The man stated that he did believe and then he did the most remarkable thing, he bowed at the feet of Jesus and he worshipped Jesus, the first person in John’s gospel to do so.

         So, in this story of the healing of the man born blind, can you see yourself in this story? Do you see that it was us who once sat in the darkness, begging and groping our way through the dimness of the life we found ourselves in. Then, Jesus came. Jesus touched us, the new Adam making a new creation out of us. The church, those who also had met Jesus, were there to lead us to the waters to be cleansed. Transformation happened and many wondered just where the old us had gone. They could not see Jesus had touched our life. All we could do is to reply, I was blind but now I see. What else is there to say. Of course, there were those who knew how God worked and they knew that God most assuredly could not do anything to change us to which we again, replied, “All I know is that once I was blind but now I see.” And yes, the new us just didn’t fit in our old places, the old haunts had become to small for us to be confined in so out we had to go. We had met the Son of Man and he was the one who had opened up the doors of heaven and with new eyes we could see the light of heaven shining everywhere we looked. Now we can see that all of the earth is truly filled with the glory of God. This is what John is trying to say that when you see it how can you not believe it. I pray that during this Lenten season that Jesus will open your eyes so that with new eyes you might see Jesus in ways you have never seen him before. To God be the glory! Amen.