"I See," Said the Blind Man

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish Sunday, January 20, 2013.  The Bible verses are John 9:1-41.

We’re in the third week of our sermon series "It’s a Miracle", looking at the miracles of Jesus. Today, we’re talking about Jesus healing a man born blind.

Our scripture reading for today was kind of long, but you know, it would not have to have been. The actual miracle is described in three verses: Jesus sees the blind man, Jesus rubs some mud on the man’s eyes and tells him to wash it off at a certain place, than man does so and can see. Two characters and three verses. And yet, John takes forty-one verses to tell the story, and brings in a whole bunch of other characters. There has to be a reason for that. So, as we look at what we’re supposed to learn from this miracle, we’re going to look at some of these other characters and see why they’re in the story of this miracle.

We start with the disciples. They see the blind man at the same time Jesus does. And they ask Jesus, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

Now, think about that. The disciples had been with Jesus for a while at this point. They’d seen Jesus do miracles. They’d even seen Jesus heal people. And yet, what was their first instinct when they saw this man? To determine fault. They did not try to do anything to help the blind man. They did not even suggest Jesus do anything to help him. They just wanted to know who’s fault it was that the man was blind.

Jesus has such an awesome response to that. Jesus says no one is at fault that the man was born blind. Jesus does not try to put the blame on anyone. Instead, Jesus says the man’s blindness was not a punishment for anyone’s sin, but happened so the works of God could be displayed.

Let’s think about that for a second. Think about what it means. God did not cause the man’s blindness as a punishment, but the man’s blindness allows the works of God to be displayed.

Have you ever thought of it that way? When something bad happens, instead of wondering why it happened and who was to blame, thinking it gives a chance for the works of God to be displayed? What an awesome response.

It was an awesome response for Jesus, because it gave Jesus the chance to heal the man and reveal who he was. But it can be an awesome response for us in our lives, too. God did not just work through Jesus. God works through all of us, through you and through me, every day, if we just agree to let God work through us.

Remember, the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor. Jesus said the first part is like the second part. We cannot love God without loving our neighbor. That means that when something bad happens to someone, we are the ones who are supposed to show God’s love to that person. We are the ones through whom the works of God are supposed to be displayed.

Again, I’m not saying God punishes people by making bad things happen to them. Jesus specifically said that’s not how it works. What I’m saying is that when those bad things do happen, they give you and me the chance to display the works of God by showing God’s love to people at the time they need it the most.

The disciples did not see that. Even though they’d seen Jesus work miracles before, even though they’d seen Jesus heal people before, they did not see that. They did not see that, when bad things happen, they give us the chance to display the works of God.

The next group of people John brings into the story is the blind man’s neighbors. How did they react to this man now being able to see? They did not recognize him. They refused to believe this was the same person.

How could that be? I mean, they’d seen this person every day. They’d walked right past him. Maybe once in a while they even gave him something. But they’d never really gotten to know him. All they knew about him was that he was blind. When they’d see him, they’d think, "Oh, that’s the blind man." And they’d go on about their business. To them, the only thing worth knowing about this man was that he was blind. Once that was no longer the case, they no longer recognized him.

Are there people in our lives like that? I’ll bet there are. In fact, I know there are. There are people whom we see every day, but we never really get to know. Maybe it’s a clerk at the store. Maybe it’s somebody who works in the same office. Maybe it’s somebody we see at a local café. And all we know about that person is that it’s the store clerk, or the office person, or the guy from the café. If we happen to see them somewhere else, out of that context, we don’t even recognize them.

And then, we have the Pharisees. The Pharisees want to know how all this happened, that this guy who was blind now can see. They even make the guy’s parents vouch for who he really is, because they don’t even want to believe it’s the same person. The parents tell the Pharisees, yeah, this is our son, but we don’t know what happened. Let him tell you the story and keep us out of it.

We’re told the parents said that because they were scared. It was against the religious law to say Jesus was the Messiah. So, even though they knew it was true, they were afraid to say it. They refused to acknowledge the truth about Jesus, even though it was right in front of their eyes, because they were scared of the consequences.

The Pharisees do ask the son, the formerly blind man. And he tells them what happened. He tells them over and over. Jesus rubbed some mud on my eyes, I washed where he told me to wash, and now I can see.

And the Pharisees refused to believe him. They admitted he could see, because they pretty much had to admit that, but they refused to believe it was Jesus who’d healed him. They’d already made up their minds about Jesus. They’d already decided that Jesus was no good, that he did not come from God, and so they were not going to accept any evidence that did not fit their beliefs. In fact, they were so determined to hold onto their beliefs that threw the formerly blind man out.

Jesus heard what had happened, and he sought out the formerly blind man. He asked if the man believed in the Son of Man. The man asked who the Son of Man was. Jesus told him that he was talking to him, that it was, in fact, Jesus. And the man believed, and he worshipped Jesus.

We don’t know anything else about that man. Did you notice, John does not even tell us the man’s name? He’s just referred to as "a man blind from birth," as if that’s all we need to know about him. If you think about it, though, there were lots of blind people in this story.

The disciples were blind, in a way. They could not see that, when something bad happens, the thing for us to do is not to assess blame for it, but to do something about it, so that the works of God can be displayed through us. They were blind to the opportunity to serve God that had been placed in front of them.

The man’s neighbors were blind. They were blind to who this man really was. They did not see that there was a human being behind those sightless eyes. They did not see that there was someone there with needs and feelings and emotions. They did not see that there was someone there who could feel pain and sadness and joy and love and all the things that all of us feel.

The man’s parents were blind, too. They knew that Jesus had to be the Messiah for their son to have been healed, but they refused to acknowledge it. They did not see that they needed to acknowledge the truth about the Savior, no matter what the consequences might be.

The Pharisees were blind, too. With all their knowledge of scripture, they should’ve known that Jesus had to be the Messiah they’d been waiting for. And yet, they could not see it. They could not see it because Jesus did not fit their pre-conceived notions of who and what the Messiah should be. They had every chance to see, but they could not see because they closed their minds and refused to see.

And I think maybe that’s why this miracle is in the Bible, and why it’s there in the form that it is. The point is not just about Jesus’ healing power. That healing power is real, of course, and it’s important. But that story could’ve been told in one paragraph.

I think the reason this miracle is in the Bible is because we all tend to be blind sometimes. We're blind to chances to serve God. We’re blind to the needs of the people around us. We’re blind because we’re scared to acknowledge the truth. We’re blind because we close our minds when the truth is not the way we think it should be.

We all tend to be blind sometimes. But Jesus can heal each of us. Jesus asks each of us the same question he asked the formerly blind man. "Do you believe in me?" The formerly blind man answered, "Lord, I believe." If we can answer that same way, then we will no longer be blind. We will be able to see, because we will have been healed by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.