There’s a saying that ‘There’s none as blind as those who won’t see!’ As Helen Keller said: ‘What would be worse than being born blind? To have sight without vision.’ It’s certainly true in the encounter that Jesus had with the Pharisees on the occasion when He healed a man who had been born blind (John 9). The scene is in Jerusalem. Jesus had just left the temple after a confrontation with the Pharisees over what they thought was an outrageous claim by Jesus. He had said, ‘I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!’ (8:58). They were so infuriated at what would have been gross heresy had it not been true, that they ‘picked up stones to stone him’. Our Lord was aware that His time had not yet come for His Passion, so He ‘hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.’ From then on, the Pharisees would watch Jesus like a hawk to see if somehow they could find some pretext to bring an official charge.
As Jesus walked away we’re told, ‘He saw a man blind from birth.’ This unfortunate person was what we would call in our day, congenitally blind, and what’s more, he was reduced to begging. Like ourselves, the disciples were always anxious to ask questions to which there are no final answers on this side of eternity. They posed the query to Jesus, ‘… who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?’ and so we examine:
THE PROBLEM OF AFFLICTION
This has been the topic of speculation down the ages. Job wrestled with this ancient problem; the psalmists and prophets agonizing over it. The 21st century Christian leaders are no different over these perplexing issues: Dr Rowan Williams likes to tell the story of Pope John XXIII, who woke up worrying about a problem. He said to himself: “I’ll consult the Pope about that.” Then he thought: “Wait a minute, I am the Pope!” So it’s no wonder the mystery of illness is a theological puzzle. ‘Who is responsible?’ asked the disciples, ‘the man himself or his parents?’ The Jewish rabbis had the idea that if a pregnant woman sinned, there may be some deformity in the child. It’s true that there’s often a relationship between cause and effect. On the day I wrote this there was an item on the news that medical research pointed to the disastrous effect that alcohol during pregnancy had on the unborn when the children grew up.
C S Lewis wrote that God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. Sickness can be God’s megaphone to draw our attention back to Him. But while the Bible allows a general relationship between suffering and sin, due to the fall of man depicted in the Garden of Eden, it refuses to permit the principle to be set in stone for each individual. Yes, sin has produced a suffering world, but a given person’s suffering isn’t necessarily attributable to his or her personal sin. Jesus dismissed this simplistic theory of suffering as He answered the disciples’ question. ‘No’ he said, ‘it wasn’t the sin of this man or his parents, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’
Jesus isn’t interested in the ‘whys and wherefores’ of the past but rather how a person’s predicament can be resolved in the present. All things – even afflictions and calamities – can work to the glory of God. He can turn suffering into good. Jesus made it clear that He wasn’t here to explain the mystery of evil, but to remove the cause of it and break its power. When Jesus made His first public address, He quoted from Isaiah’s prophecy that the Messiah would ‘proclaim freedom for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind and to release the oppressed’ (Luke 4:18). This tells us that:
HEALING IS A GIFT FROM GOD
The Almighty is sovereign and has a purpose in all He does. Jesus knew that giving sight to the blind beggar would be one of the signs by which He would validate His claim as the Son of God. ‘I am the light of the world’ he said and He would prove it by changing the darkness of this man to light, symbolic of His greater work of releasing mankind from the power of sins’ darkness through His atoning work on the Cross.
We might be tempted to think it would be so much simpler if the gift of healing could be received on request, like reaching out for a bottle of medicine. But that isn’t so. It isn’t God’s way. A balanced view of Scripture indicates that God plans for us. He has the best in mind for us and, in His permissive will, may allow health and strength, or weakness and suffering, long life or short life. It’s not for us to question His decision. Ultimately, we are at the mercy of God.
Whether we are healed or not, we are to proclaim the faithfulness of a God who is alongside us in Christ. He suffered, died and rose again for us. I read the testimony of a young woman who wasn’t healed. She said that God was glorified even more because, in spite of her continuing disability, she loved Him. That’s the ultimate test of our faith, as we walk by faith and not by sight.
When suffering is submitted to God, then God’s work is displayed, by healing or deliverance, perhaps miraculously or with gifted medical assistance, or alternatively by a courageous acceptance of the suffering. It’s then we are enabled to discover God’s strength in our weakness. This was the experience of the apostle Paul when he wrote of his ‘thorn in the flesh’. The Lord assured him with the words, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor 12:9). But undoubtedly there is:
THE MIRACLE OF HEALING
Jesus did proceed to heal the blind beggar, using a mudpack made from saliva. The gospel doesn’t tell us why Jesus should use this means when a word had sufficed in previous acts of healing. Perhaps the man needed to be involved in the healing process by some simple act of obedience or was it to tell those who would read the story over the generations that God does use ‘props’ when it suits His purposes? The stories of Scripture are often to be interpreted as giving principles rather than strict precedents or formulas to be slavishly followed.
The healing of the beggar’s blindness was clearly a miracle. The mudpack of clay may have been used to symbolize the defilement of sin that needed to be cleansed away and to demonstrate that healing could only come from the Lord Himself. But there was more to it than that: it was followed by a word from Jesus. ‘Go’, He said, ‘wash in the Pool of Siloam.’ To achieve the cure, the beggar had to co-operate with Jesus. He had to show faith in our Lord’s words by obedience to the command.
The Lord alone could perform the miracle and open the blind eyes, but He chose to do it through the obedience of faith in Him. The definition of ‘faith’ is simply taking Him at His word. It’s easily remembered by the spelling – F : forsaking; A : all; I : that’s you and me; T : take; H : Him. We’re told ‘So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.’ In a moment of time, the beggar’s darkness was turned to light. But that’s not the end of the story for there are other parties involved. There’s the:
BLINDNESS OF UNBELIEF
You would have thought that everybody would have been ‘over the moon’ in happiness at the blind man receiving sight for the first time in his life. But no, such is the perversity of human nature, the very people who should have been the first to rejoice showed a very sour spirit! First of all some of the now sighted-man’s neighbours were full of unbelief. ‘Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg? Some claimed that he was. Others said, “No, he only looks like him.’ I think this has something to say to us in the religious conservatism of the western world. Christians in the ‘third world’ claim that God is doing ‘new things’ that we find hard to accept. It’s easy to be overtaken by ‘spiritual dumbness’. We must be open to miracles of God’s grace, which sadly we don’t see here. We must be open to them although careful to evaluate in the light of Scripture. Above all, we must avoid the attitude of ‘Don’t bother me with the facts, my mind is made up!’
This was the position of the Pharisees – the religious hierarchy. It was a tragedy that these men who revered the Scriptures and were zealots for good works wouldn’t humble themselves to see that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah. And so these theologians of Israel were out to get Jesus ‘by hook or by crook’. The neighbours brought the man to them, perhaps to get some help in understanding this astonishing miracle. The Pharisees must have rubbed their hands with glee; this was just what they were waiting for. The miracle had taken place on the Sabbath! From their standpoint, Jesus had infringed the Sabbath tradition of their man-made regulations, although certainly not in breach of Scripture.
In the first place, Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, which was permissible only when life was in danger; and secondly, in making mud, he had ‘worked’ in a manner strictly forbidden. How petty can you get! This was enough to damn the Lord of glory! They couldn’t face that the God who had given the Sabbath had further things to reveal. Their God was petrified in the past.
There’s a verse of a hymn with this line: “The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from His word.” (George Rawson). They are based on the words of Pastor John Robinson as the Pilgrim Fathers set sail from Plymouth in 1620, leaving their homeland for an unknown future. Like them, we too, are called upon to take risks of faith whenever God calls us to accept change, even if it means leaving precious things behind, safety, homeland, or another comfort zone. There’s always more to learn in our Christian pilgrimage, the Lord stirring us to find risk-taking faith to change and grow in obedience to Christ. We say we are open to God, but whose agenda do we accept? Is it God’s or our own?
Both the man’s neighbours and the Pharisees grilled him as to what took place but he held his ground. ‘He insisted, “It was me that Jesus healed and it happened as you were told … I did what Jesus told me to do … and then I could see.”’ This clear testimony wasn’t to the liking of the Pharisees and so they tackled his parents who succumbed to:
COMPROMISING TIMIDNESS
The man’s parents wouldn’t have been the first, or the last, to have trimmed the sails of their conviction to a blast of opposition. The parents were asked to corroborate the facts, but they were frightened to give too much away when closely questioned by the Jews. ‘Is this your son … the one you say was born blind? Yes, he is our son … and we know he was born blind.’ Now comes the crucial question: ‘How is it that now he can see?’ It’s then that they became evasive and timidness takes over because they were afraid ‘to acknowledge that Jesus was the Christ.’ They knew that to do this would mean being condemned by the Pharisees. They resorted to being economical with the truth: ‘… how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age: he will speak for himself.’
The parents had come to a decisive moment in their lives. Would they stand up and be counted for Jesus? Sadly, no, they were guilty of ‘passing the buck’. We mustn’t be too hard on them. The consequences of speaking the truth were terrible indeed. The Jewish religious authorities, the Sanhedrim, had decided that anyone of Jesus’ followers who would recognize Him as the Messiah, God’s Anointed, would be ‘unsynagogued’, that is, cut off from the religious and social life of Israel.
The question must always be asked, ‘What would we have done in similar circumstances? Choices have to be made by all of us at some time. A poet (James Russell Lowell) put it like this: "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide; Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight; Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by for ever, ’twixt that darkness and that light." The now sighted-beggar did make that vital decision as we think of:
COUNTING THE COST OF CONFESSING CHRIST
The former beggar was cross-examined by the Pharisees as to what Jesus had done. The facts were indisputable so they resorted to cast aspersions on the integrity of Jesus as a man of God. They asked him frankly ’What do you say about him?’ The man’s knowledge of Jesus grew as the encounter developed through the miraculous touch of his eyes and then the further meeting with the Lord, so his testimony to Jesus progressed. He first speaks of Jesus as a ‘man’, then ‘he is a prophet’. When he becomes thoroughly disillusioned with the Pharisees at their irrational argument over the credibility of Jesus, he’s provoked, tongue in cheek, in asking them ‘Do you want to become his disciples, too?’ to which they angrily retort, ‘We are disciples of Moses!’ overlooking the fact that a greater prophet than Moses had appeared (Heb 3:3-6). ‘How dare you lecture us!” was their last word and they excommunicated the new believer in Jesus from the synagogue.
Jesus wouldn’t leave a prospective convert. He found him and asked if he would make his final commitment, ‘do you believe in the Son of Man?’ The man whose eyes had been opened received spiritual eyesight as he confessed ‘”Lord, I believe,” and he worshipped Jesus.’ His journey of faith was complete. He had lost his position in the religious community but he was assured of a home in heaven. The former beggar found his discipleship costly, and we, like him, have to decide whether we’re willing to count the cost of following our Lord.
It reminds me of a story I read in the biography of a missionary concerning an Indian law student who became a Christian. He asked the missionary if he could be baptised secretly as, if he was baptised in a public service, his Hindu father would cut off his allowance and disown him. The missionary insisted that baptism must be an open confession of faith in Christ or nothing. The student accepted the condition and was duly baptised. His father did cut off his allowance. He had to leave university and became a clerk instead of a barrister. When the missionary was returning to England, the young man came to see him off at the station. The missionary told him how sorry he was that his conversion had meant such a sacrifice, but the young man gripped the missionary’s hand and said, "But it is worth it!"
This is something that we need to embrace, but whatever comes our way, it will be worth it all when we see Jesus.
THE BLIND SEE, THE SIGHTED ARE BLIND
John 9
“There’s none as blind as those who won’t see”
“What would be worse than being born blind?
To have sight without vision.” (Helen Keller)
THE PROBLEM OF AFFLICTION
Why was the man blind?
HEALING IS A GIFT FROM GOD
The ministry of Jesus: “To proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed” (Luke 4:18)
THE MIRACLE OF HEALING
How was it ministered to the blind beggar? Through believing faith and obedience.
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BLINDNESS OF UNBELIEF
The Pharisees : refusal to accept Jesus as the Son of God.
COMPROMISING TIMIDNESS
The blind man’s parents : afraid to be identified with Jesus.
COUNTING THE COST OF CONFESSING CHRIST
The newly sighted man : willing to follow Jesus whatever the cost.
