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Born To See John
9:1-41 4th
Sunday in Lent, Year A A sermon preached at First UMC, De Queen/Gillham, AR on March 2, 2008 by the Revd
David S Williams Theme:
Jesus’ heals a man born blind from birth, revealing who Jesus is, “the Light
of the world” and “the One Sent from the Father” (vv. 4-5, 7) to heal us all
from our blindness (v. 38). Following the healing, the man is interrogated by
the religious elite, whom John calls “Pharisees” and “the Jews.” The man is
“put on trial” for the healing that he has experienced. Over the series of
interrogations the man gradually comes to more awareness about “who this man
Jesus is” who healed him. He becomes an authentic disciple, one who gives
true testimony or dependable witness to Jesus. He “sees” and comes to
“belief”. The religious elite are “blind” and filled with “unbelief.” Purpose:
To invite God’s people to become “seeing” disciples and to challenge our own
“blind spots” as people of faith in Jesus Christ. Today’s story is filled
with immense irony. The blind see. Those who see are blind. Maybe it’s a way
for us to imagine this story revealing a host of human “blind spots.”
However, blind spots become an
opportunity for transformational healing.
We
are first told the reason “the man was born blind” is the
result of “sin” (v. 3). We may
call this first blind spot, a
faulty understanding of human nature. The story of “the man
born blind” is probably one of the most unfamiliar stories in the Bible
because we immediately read themes and ideas of other healing stories of
blind people into John’s story. From this story we have also inherited one of
the most beloved hymns of the Christian faith – John Newton’s famous hymn, Amazing Grace. “I once was blind but now I see….” This is the stanza quoting the
words of the blind man’s testimony, “One
thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (v. 25b). However, the song Amazing Grace was written out of John
Newton’s Christian experience in the bowls of a slave ship. His vocation as a captain of a slave ship continued
to haunt him throughout his life as a Christian. His involvement in such
degradation, and inhumane treatment of people of color, brought him to the
realization of his own sin and need for God’s amazing grace. To which he
pinned, “I once was blind, but now I
see.” Amazing Grace not only reflects the personal anguish and experience of John
Newton. It is a song that reflects an understanding of God’s grace that
remedies the worse of sinful humanity and it is a song that many Christians have come to love because its words
for many, name the reality of authentic Christian experience and truth in
what God’s grace can accomplish in one person’s life. However, when we read
the biblical story of “the man born blind” we are faced with a man whose
blindness is not the result of his
sin or the sinfulness of another. At least that is what Jesus says to his
disciples. The disciples assume that his blindness is the result of someone’s
misdoings, some faulty family member, or some sinful behavior. Jesus suggests that his
blindness is an opportunity to reveal the character and nature of God
in his life. Somehow his blindness is a gift
or a sign to reveal the true nature
of who Jesus is in this story (v. 3). In other words, “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me …”
is not completely true of this
man’s experience. The first part may be – amazing
grace how sweet the sound – however, the second part is not – that saved a wretch like me. It may be
true of John Newton’s, yours and mine, however, let’s don’t assume it is true
of his experience. In this story, we learn it’s not his fault he is blind, neither is it the fault of some poor wretch in his faulty family tree.
So, regardless how one
feels about the song Amazing Grace
(which is one of my most beloved of all time), or the way one believes about
the doctrine of Original Sin, we
have a scenario that challenges our most cherished and unchallenged views of
the nature of sin or human nature. For John, sin is the result of “unbelief” or one’s “rejection” of Jesus. It
is not the result of being born a wretched sinner. A second blind spot that our story reveals is a faulty
understanding of healing. When we read this story, we are challenged
to think of the nature of healing differently as Christians. In many of the
synoptic gospels, Jesus’ healing or inability to heal is the result of one’s faith or lack of one’s
faith. However, in this story,
Jesus simply heals the man because he chooses
to and the man’s faith is a result
of Jesus’ healing, not the other way around. This insight ought to comfort
many of us – who have heard, been taught or been accused – that the reason
they or we are not healed of a
physical ailment is because one, we
are sinners, two, we lack faith
and/or three there is something
faulty with our faith. On all of these accounts, this story suggests
otherwise. In John’s gospel,
healing comes from Jesus’ own gracious choosing and initiative. And most of
these healings, we tend to call miracles, are actually called signs in John’s gospel. This is not to suggest that faith is not crucial in one’s healing. It is
simply to recognize there is mystery to the nature of one’s healing and we
don’t always know why one person is healed and another is not. Healing should not exclude one’s faith. However, it
should always be rooted and grounded in a deep trust in the God who
providentially cares for his children and God’s character and will, which is
mysterious and holy loving. A third blind spot is the nature and role of judgment in the story. It is a story of two people put on trial –
one for his actions the other for
his experiences – Jesus and the
blind man. The charges: blindness is the result of sin and a good deed done
on the Sabbath is a sure sign that Jesus is a sinner. The story begins with judgments on blindness and ends with judgments on sight.
Those who see are blind. The man born blind,
sees. Those who pass judgment,
reveal they are actually passing judgment upon themselves. It is a story
about who has the authority to pass judgment.
And from John’s perspective Jesus is the one who has the authority to pass judgment. Actually judgment in John is
the result of unbelief and
rejection of Jesus. This suggests that human
beings should reserve the right of
judgment to God and God alone. This is not to suggest that there are things that are blatantly wrong or
sinful in the world or in the Christian community. It suggests that we who
are part of a particular faith
family should not judge another
person from another particular faith
family for his or her beliefs. This is what the religious elite do in this
story which is a sign of their arrogance and ours when we behave in this
way. The alternative is to cultivate
and celebrate, what in the spirit of John Wesley called, “A Catholic Spirit.”
What he meant was a
spirit of tolerance and openness to a diversity of opinion and beliefs within
the Christian faith. Catholics and Protestants will never agree on this side of eternity concerning the nature of the
sacraments. However, we can learn to understand and be tolerant of one
another. Baptist and Methodist will never
agree on this side of eternity concerning the nature of salvation and infant
baptism. However, we can love one another in Christ and learn to appreciate
one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. As for Jews, Muslims and
other world religions, we should avoid at all costs, falling into religious
bigotry at the expense of the other, especially in today’s world where religion
continues to cultivate violence, bigotry and hatred. We should not draw lines in the sand and on one
side is Christianity and on the other is everyone else who is not Christian and make judgments about
“whose in” and “who’s out” because we believe in the exclusive Johannian claim that Jesus is the only way, truth and life and no
one comes to the Father but through
him (14:6). As Christians we are not encouraged to pass judgment on others. We are invited and
called to live faithful Christian lives that witness to the transforming
power of the gospel. We need to allow the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, to
convict, condemn and make judgments about the other. In our own judgments of the other, we reveal our
own blind spot. It is also a story of salvation. This may be our biggest blind spot of all. Similar to the Old
Testament lesson, the younger David, will become the unlikely chosen hero to
save In similar fashion, an
unlikely person – a blind man, one who is labeled “a sinner” – becomes an
authentic disciple of Jesus. His experience begins with blindness and
ends with sight. So it is a dramatic experience of one man’s encounter with
Jesus. It is more than the
story of a simple healing, though healing is the result of Jesus’ homemade
mud pie. This is John’s way of revealing to us the nature of salvation that God brings to us in
Jesus, the Savior of the world. The
One Sent from God sends the blind man to wash in a pool
named “Sent” (vv. 4, 7). As I alluded to earlier
we are told this healing story is a sign
(v.16). For John, signs are significant
not simply because they are cool miracles, rather they are significant because they signify who Jesus is – in this sense
this sign reveals Jesus as the One sent from God to do the work of God by
bearing the Light of God in the world. Blindness signifies darkness. Light
signifies truth. Jesus’ healing of blindness signifies judgment upon blindness and salvation
as restoring sight. And if salvation is the restoring of sight, notice that this man doesn’t understand fully
who it is that “healed” him at first. He knows it was “a man named Jesus,”
who later he believes is “a prophet,” and who after Jesus comes to him
following his excommunication, he comes to believe in Jesus as “the Son of
Man.” No matter how dramatic the cure, salvation is a process. Belief is a gradual coming to light in
who Jesus is as we live day after day the trials and
tests of being his disciple in the world. In this sense, signs are not only
an invitation to all of us to see
the nature of who Jesus is. They
are also an opportunity for us to see
the nature of Christian discipleship
more clearly as followers of Jesus.
Contrary to popular opinion, there is great risk in being a follower of Jesus
according to John. The blind man that receives healing from Jesus doesn’t get
to go home and celebrate a clean bill of health and become the town’s hero as
a local Optometrist. Rather, his reputation
is questioned and possibly tarnished by neighbors, he is hauled into
religious court by those he should be able to trust, and he is abandoned by
his own parents, who are afraid themselves of coming to his defense. And to
only add to the ostracism, the disciples treat his blindness as an
opportunity to discuss the doctrine of Original
Sin. For John, Christian
discipleship suggests the possibility that persecution will result in
believing in Jesus, that being misunderstood is a real possibility, and
exclusion from faithful religious communities and abandonment from members of
our devoted religious families may actually happen as a result of our belief in and experience of Jesus. However, we are urged to
give authentic witness to what we have experienced and know to be true even
if we don’t dot all our theological “I’s” and cross
all our doctrinal “t’s”.
To be able to fully see is to
simply respond in faith and belief in the One who heals and saves us. And
that authenticity is mirrored through our openness to receive Christ and worship Christ
with our whole being. It is Jesus who will receive and accept us at the
expense of everyone else’s judgment and exclusion. In our story, then, it
is through all the characters – the disciples, the neighbors, the parents,
the rigid religious elite – putting Jesus and the blind man on trial that we
are invited to see our own blind spots.
In doing so, we pass judgment on ourselves. And the blindness of the one becomes an opportunity
for us to realize that we were all really born
to see in the first place. We are all invited to
behold the Savior of the world in faith, and receive the beauty and gift of
life that comes to us when we see the
truth in Jesus the Light of the world and experience the gift of God’s healing as truly amazing. That is why the sound of grace is always so sweet. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind,
now I see.” In the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
