So this morning we continue our journey in Lent with John’s Gospel, and we find ourselves with Jesus’s third encounter. This past week, we heard about the Samaritan woman and the week before that, Nicodemus, today Jesus meets an unnamed blind man at the entrance of the Temple. Again, it’s a long passage, a long conversation that climax dramatically with the revelation of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. Indeed, one thing that may not be automatically obvious for us, but was very well known at the times], is that the Messiah would be recognized at this sign that he would heal the blind, and there are many passages in Isaiah that testify about it (Isaiah 29:18, 35:5, 42:7, 42:16). You could assume, as I did, that the most obvious sign the Messiah would 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” whereas we know 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). Now he knows his Scriptures well for a beggar, doesn’t he? He was probably listening very carefully, looking 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 scanned the Bible really hard for answers to what she was going through.
We all can understand that right? In difficult times, we may open our Bibles to look for verses that 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 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 we Messiah comes! We know that people at the time where expecting the Messiah, but for this blind man, it would have been his only hope! That must have been hard. Maybe that’s also why he was at the entrance of the Temple everyday, while everybody was passing him by, he was waiting and it must have felt like neither God nor anybody saw him. He could not see but he wasn’t seen either. We have two important clues in our passage that he wasn’t seen:
– The disciples talk about him like he wasn’t there, they point him out to Jesus and ask questions about him, and I am afraid that’s often the way we behave with people who are sick or have a disability. If anything, this passage teaches us that we need stop doing that. Jesus rebukes his disciples and engage with the blind man instead, and we realize later in the story how sharp the man is, how he speaks with much wit and behaves with much integrity. He’s a real person even though he isn’t treated like one.
– The second clue we have that nobody 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 had only one characteristic. He was defined by his ailment.
But now, Jesus will see 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 indeed that could summarize his whole ministry: He saw people when we don’t see them. Or we see people, but we don’t see individual, personalities, their dreams, their fights, their joys, their sorrows. It puzzles some but I love it that Jesus makes mud and put it on the eyes of the blind man. It was probably not needed, Jesus just had to say the word, but as he does this sign he had to kneel towards the man, to come close, to touch him, and that’s really the way blind people get information and create relationships, by touching and being touched. So he must really have felt seen by Jesus. On top of that, it meant that Jesus wasn’t afraid of him, that he didn’t think he was under a curse. We see that the disciples thought his blindness must have been due to a sin, whether his sin or his parents’ sin. Now there’s a medical explanation because Gonorrhea is an STD that can make children blind when they are birthed, but it’s also just very emblematic of the way we reason, isn’t it? When something bad happens to someone, even when we have compassion, we assume they have done something wrong, maybe not always sin but always 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 protect ourselves, 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 it’s not about saying that God made the man blind to be healed some day and people would be amazed. That would be a little cruel on God’s behalf, right? 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 is that this healing is the manifestation of Jesus as the Messiah, it reveals Jesus as the Messiah, because never before since the beginning of the world a man born blind has been healed. Again, we may have thought Resurrection would be a greater sign, but we can easily understand how the gift of sight is a sure sign of who the Messiah is:
– The Messiah opens the eyes of the people who were born in darkness (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 (In this very passage, with the hardness of heart of the Pharisees that is revealed)
The Samaritan woman about whom we talk about last week puts it well: The Messiah is the one who knows everything and explains everything.
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 man had the highest calling to be a witness of the light of the world, to reveal God’s works and give testimony to him who brought healing, who opened his eyes first. There’s this very important idea of giving glory to God and doing the work is for all of us. No excuses, we all have to do the work, even beggars. Maybe you know the “Honk for Jesus” man here in Wilmington?
We often think about giving glory with our gifts, skills and we certainly can. That’s how we think about things in our churches: Oh you can sing? Go 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 use 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 by his own parents who didn’t expect anything of him, (and think about it, why was he a beggar in the very city his parents lived?), and yet God had something wonderful in store for him. If someone had said to this beggar: In two millenniums people all around the world will still read your story. Because you can’t see now but when your eyes will 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 will say:”I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18)
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.
Now 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 sometimes also with advocating for social justice, but we may consider speaking about our faith is too personal or may be offending other people’s beliefs. Well, there are a few take out 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 them but they just tell their story, their own experience with Jesus. And it’s not even about what they think of Jesus, they rather state facts, what Jesus has done for them in their lives. They tell their stories, as did the Samaritan woman, as does the former blind man in our passage.
– 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 as we 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 make sense of what happens to them, or to bring attention to Jesus himself so they would also go to meet Jesus: He can’t be the Messiah, can he? (4:29)/ One thing I do know, though I was blind, now I see (9:25). We may not so much have to have all the answers, but help ask questions.
– 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, well it’s like that but even more. It’s like when you really loved a book, a movie, you would tell people. So we should even more have this desire to talk about our faith. The woman at the well leave her vase behind! She does not care about the water anymore. This is happy news, not just for us but for everyone, so it shouldn’t feel like “imposing”, rather it’s an invitation.
– 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 our eyes and help others open their eyes too. John 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?