Lent 4A: Seeing God’s glory (John 9: 1-41)
Rev Fanny Belanger
This morning we continue our journey in Lent with John’s Gospel, and we find ourselves looking at Jesus’ third encounter. Last Sunday, we heard about the Samaritan woman and the Sunday before that, Nicodemus. Today, Jesus meets a blind man at the entrance of the Temple. Again it’s a long passage, a long conversation that climaxes dramatically with the revelation of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. One thing that may not be obvious for us, but was very well known at the time, was this prophecy that the Messiah would be recognized because he would open the eyes of the blind, and there are many passages in Isaiah that testify to that (Isaiah 29:18, 35:5, 42:7, 42:16). You could assume, as I did, that the strongest sign the Messiah could give would be his ability to raise the dead, but the blind man of the story is right when he says: “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind”. I checked: There are a few passages in the Old Testament where some people are raised from the dead (1 Kings 17:17–24, 2 Kings 4:32–37, 2 Kings 13:20–21), but not once someone born blind is healed. Now he knows his Scriptures well for a beggar! He was probably listening carefully, searching for passages that could give him hope. I had a friend who couldn’t have children, and one day she told me that nowhere in the Bible barrenness was a punishment from God. She knew all the stories about barren women in the Bible. That’s when I realized she must have been scanning the Bible really hard to find answers.
We all can understand that right? In difficult times, we may open our Bibles to look for verses that can apply to our situation and comfort us. Actually, if you visit some bookstores, you may quickly understand that there is even a whole business around “Comforting verses of the Bible”! Now imagine looking for help with something, and it tells you it is unheard of that God has done anything about it since the beginning of the world! That’s what the blind man had to go through: Only when the Messiah comes could he be healed! We know that people at the time where expecting the Messiah, but for this man, it would have been his only hope. Maybe that’s also why he was at the entrance of the Temple every day, while everybody was passing him by, he was waiting and it must have been hard. It must have felt like neither God nor anybody else could see him. I think that’s what John wants us to know: The man could not see, and he wasn’t seen either. And we have two important clues in our passage that confirm that:
– The disciples talk about him like he wasn’t even there, they point him out to Jesus and ask questions about him but never address him directly. I am afraid that’s often the way we behave with people who are very sick or have a disability.
– The second clue we have that people never really saw this man is that once he is healed, nobody recognizes him. It’s like they didn’t know how he looked like, except that he was the blind man. He was defined by his ailment. Oh, and he was a beggar.
But now, Jesus sees him – and it all starts with that: Jesus notices him. I had a parishioner who one day told me something I have never forgotten. She said: Jesus came and he saw people. I think that could summarize his whole ministry: He saw people when we don’t see them.
Or maybe we see “people”, but we don’t see individuals, personalities, their dreams, their fights, their joys, their sorrows. Its puzzling but I love it that Jesus makes mud and put it on the eyes of the blind man. It was probably not needed to heal, Jesus just had to say the word. But as he does that, Jesus had to come close, to touch this man, and that’s really the way blind people get information and create relationships, by touching and being touched. So the man must really have felt seen by Jesus. It also means that Jesus wasn’t afraid of him, that he didn’t think the man was under a curse. It’s very emblematic of the way we reason, isn’t it? When something bad happens to someone, even if we have compassion, we often assume they have done something wrong, maybe not always sin but negligence (They should have had a screening earlier, They should have watched their kid, They shouldn’t have been on the road etc) – maybe we do that to believe that it won’t happen to us, that we would do better, but Jesus he just turns the whole thing on his head: Far from being because of a curse, a sin, a wrong, the man’s blindness is meant for God’s glory: “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (v3)
Now one thing we need to understand is that he’s not saying that God made the man blind to be healed some day and people would be amazed. It would be a little cruel on God’s behalf if God gave us us problems and diseases to show us that in the end He had the power to take them away. What we need to realize instead is that this healing is the manifestation of Jesus as the Messiah, it reveals Jesus as the Messiah, because “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind”. And we can easily understand how the gift of sight is a sure sign of who the Messiah is:
– The Messiah saves people born in the darkness of sin and death (Luke 1:79)
– The Messiah shows us who God is, enables us to see God’s face (John 14:8)
– The Messiah shows to people the truth about themselves (reveals our hardness of heart – here with the Pharisees)
The Samaritan woman about whom we talk about last Sunday puts it well: The Messiah is the one who knows everything and explains everything. He is the light of the world.
And so this blind man whom people were ignoring or talking about as if he was an object or at the very least “a sinner who deserved his sad lot”, this blind man had the highest calling to be a witness to the light of the world. Jesus says to his disciples: “We must do the work”, the work of revealing God’s works, God’s glory, and doing the work is for all of us. No excuses. Even if you’re a beggar. Maybe you know the “Honk for Jesus” man here in Wilmington?
Now it’s important to notice that we often think about giving glory to God with our talents and skills, and we certainly can. That’s how we think about things in our churches: Oh you can sing? Join the choir. Oh you can balance a checkbook? Be our treasurer. But actually we can also give glory to God through our weaknesses and limitations, Paul hears Jesus tell him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). That’s actually what a lot of Saints did: They didn’t necessarily did great things because of special gifts, rather they let God work through their weaknesses and they used all opportunities to give testimony to God by showing faith.
I can’t stop thinking about how this blind man whom everybody thought was doomed (even his own parents didn’t expect anything of him) and yet God had something wonderful in store for him. Imagine if someone had said to him: In two thousands years,people all around the world will still hear your story. Because you can’t see now but when your eyes open, you will see the face of God. There is crazy hope for all of us who are suffering, who feel like nothing or nobodies. Paul says:”I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18) – it is surely how that man must have felt.
So how do we do the work of God? Well, we see that in our story as we saw it in our story last week, it’s all about testifying, bringing witness to the world. And we can all bring this testimony, through words and deeds, even in the midst of our weaknesses and sufferings. I know most of us Episcopalians aren’t very comfortable with testifying with words. We’re happy with giving testimony by caring for others and doing social justice, but we may consider speaking about our faith as too personal or may be offending other people’s beliefs. Well, there are a few take away in our passage, as well as in last week passage, we may want to consider:
– The men and women who give testimony to Jesus in John’s Gospel don’t start attacking people or try to show them wrong. It’s actually often the other way around. They are often the ones asked about what’s happened to them. They don’t reply by debating but they simply tell their story, their own experience with Jesus. It’s not even about what they think of Jesus, they rather state facts, what Jesus has done for them in their lives.
– They stick to these facts, even when people try to prove them wrong and they don’t feel like they have to over explain. Most of the time, they are unable to explain what happened. What they know for sure is that Jesus changed their lives. Even if they are still questioning, they talk with others to bring attention towards Jesus himself so people would turn to him: He told me everything I ever did (4:39)/ One thing I do know, though I was blind, now I see (9:25).
– They’re joyful and they cannot wait to tell their story. You know how it happens when you’re in a conversation and you really want to tell this anecdote. It’s like when you really loved a book, a movie, you would tell people. That’s how we should have this desire to talk about our faith. The woman at the well is so excited she leaves her vase behind. This is happy news for everyone, it isn’t about “imposing ideas”, rather it’s an invitation to a feast!
– Several times, John mentions that people don’t know God. It’s probably something we can observe on our world now. Our ministry is to open eyes to God’s reality. We may not so much have to have all the answers, but we can help ask questions. John says he wrote his Gospel so that we may believe (20:31). Aren’t we thankful we have faith? And don’t we have faith because someone else told you about their faith? So what are we waiting for to share it?