Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 3-016 (Expository Sermon)

SEEING THE LIGHT John 9:1-38

by Rod Benson

If you wake up tomorrow and discover that your pyjamas are on backwards, it’s possible, says one writer, that aliens abducted you during the night. The author, John Mack, doesn’t write for some supermarket tabloid. He’s a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1977 biography of Lawrence of Arabia.

These credentials make his conclusions in Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens all the more remarkable. The book is based on interviews with patients who, under hypnosis, supposedly recovered “repressed memories” of being kidnapped by aliens.

They “remembered,” for example, that the aliens were short, grey creatures with spindly legs and large, triangular heads who take people aboard their spacecraft.

The central character in John 9 had what may have seemed to him a similar experience. It wasn’t that he was asleep. I don’t think he was wearing pyjamas. He wasn’t in an alien spacecraft. He was at the local swimming pool in a suburb of Jerusalem.

But as he drew his head from the water where he had been washing, his eyes saw for the first time the world he had negotiated for two or three decades entirely without sight. He had experienced a powerful miracle.

What brought him to the pool? What made him see the light? What happened next? How did the miraculous event change his life? All these questions are answered in John 9.

1. BLIND TO PHYSICAL LIGHT

The chapter starts with Jesus. He was a traveller, always on the move. Here, as he walks along, probably somewhere in Jerusalem, accompanied by his followers, he sees “a man blind from birth” (v 1).

Jesus looks at him with eyes of compassion. The disciples look at him and see an opportunity to display their learning and exercise their intellectual skills. They want to know who is directly responsible for this particular tragedy (v 2).

Suffering and sin are connected since both are outcomes of the fall (Gen 3). But beyond this, it was widely held in the first century that personal suffering resulted from personal sin, and the Law of Moses taught that the sins of parents could impact the lives of their descendants (e.g. Ex 20:5; 34:7; Dt 5:9).

The disciples somehow know that the man’s blindness is congenital, so he presents an interesting case: if his parents are not responsible, how could he be said to have sinned before birth? They seem not to have considered that there may be other options. One popular explanation for suffering today is the Hindu doctrine of karma. If the disciples had lived today, they might have asked Jesus, “Did he sin in this life or a previous life, that he was born blind?”

In reply to the disciples’ question, Jesus rules out all these options (vv 3-5). No one is to blame for the man’s blindness, but Jesus has arrived and the work of God will be displayed in the blind man’s life.

In verses 4 and 5 Jesus tells his disciples about the mission of God, and the urgency of doing God’s work; and he reveals something of his own identity.

“While I am in the world,” he says, “I am the Light of the world.” Jesus may not be the only light on offer, but he is the true light from God, as everyone is about to see.

Jesus’ attention now turns back to the blind man. To confirm his authority to make such an audacious statement, and to illustrate its truth, he gives light to the eyes of a man who has never seen light.

But he does so in an unusual way. To the astonishment of the man and the Lord’s disciples, Jesus spits on the ground, making mud packs with the saliva, and applies the mud to the unsuspecting man’s unseeing eyes.

“Go,” he tells him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam.” And the man does so: he washes the mud away, and he “came home seeing” (v 7). He sees the light.

2. BLIND TO JESUS CHRIST

When he gets home, the man-formerly-known-as-blind has the misfortune of upsetting the neighbours (vv 8-12). Some recognise him as the man who used to sit begging at the roadside. Others disagree.

He himself says “I am the man,” and sticks to his bizarre story (v 11). But when his neighbours ask where this man called Jesus is, he cannot tell them.

He is no longer physically blind, but he remains blind to who Jesus is. Three times he claims not to know who Jesus is (vv 12, 25, 36). The neighbours sense that something is not right, and take the man to the Pharisees – the Jewish religious leaders (v 13).

The Pharisees are appalled that this healing occurred on the Sabbath. They interrogate him, and then his parents, and then question him again (vv 15-26). The Pharisees already know about Jesus. They have just tried to stone him to death (8:59). Some of them declare Jesus to be a sinner. Some are genuinely impressed by the powerful miracle. But they had already agreed that anyone who acknowledges that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah (the Christ) will be thrown out of the synagogue.

The man is getting tired of their questioning, but he sticks to the facts as he understands them: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see” (v 25).

The Pharisees are getting angry (vv 28f). The man appreciates the irony of the situation, and – apparently not known for his tact – lets them know it (vv 30-33). In response, they excommunicate him (v 34, cf v 22).

Later, Jesus hears that the Pharisees had thrown him out, and finds him. The man’s understanding of Jesus’ identity has grown. At first, Jesus was merely “a man” (v 11), then he spoke of him as “a prophet” (v 17), then as “Messiah” (v 22), then as “a man from God” (vv 31f).

Now, for the second time, he finds himself face to face with his mysterious healer, and he sees with clear sight and deepening insight (see vv 35-38). Standing before him, he acknowledges Jesus as the Son of Man, and as Lord, and he worships him as his God. The man is blind no longer; he sees the Light.

In what sense is Jesus the Light of your world? Is your Jesus an unknown person, an ancient myth, or a gadfly to your personal spirituality? Is your Jesus nothing more than a great moral teacher, a benign spirit guide, or a free ticket to heaven? Is your Jesus merely a helpless baby lying in a manger? Or is your understanding of Jesus much, much more?

3. BLIND TO PEOPLE’S NEEDS

There is a third kind of blindness in John 9. We find it in verse 2. Jesus looked with compassion on the man, and helped him to become whole. The disciples looked at the man, and began surmising who had sinned to cause this terrible impairment. To intervene might be to risk interfering in God’s judgment on human sin. In their rush to appear intelligent and orthodox, the disciples were blind to people’s needs.

Notice that Jesus first did what he could to give the man sight, and only later found him and engaged him in conversation leading to spiritual insight (or what we would call conversion).

In doing the urgent work of God (see vv 3-5), Jesus wisely chose the path of patience. For us too there is a time for witnessing, and a time for waiting, as we share the gospel with people walking in darkness, seeking enlightenment.

To meet human needs while failing to connect people with Jesus is tragic and ungodly. To preach the truth about Jesus to people without loving them and demonstrating compassion for them is equally tragic and ungodly.

Too many evangelical Christians have separated the spiritual heart of the gospel from its social implications. For Jesus, it was natural to preach the gospel and demonstrate the gospel. For us, they should also be inseparable.

The 1974 Lausanne Covenant, arising out of a World Congress on Evangelism led by Billy Graham and John Stott, expressed penitence “for our neglect and for having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive.”

The 1989 Manila Manifesto clarifies and expands the 1974 statement:

Evangelism is primary because our chief concern is with the Gospel, that all people may have the opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Yet Jesus not only proclaimed the kingdom of God, he also demonstrated its arrival by works of mercy and power. We are called today to a similar integration of words and deeds. In a spirit of humility we are to preach and teach, minister to the sick, feed the hungry, care for prisoners, help the disadvantaged and handicapped, and deliver the oppressed. While we acknowledge the diversity of spiritual gifts, callings and contexts, we also affirm that good news and good works are inseparable.

John 9 offers a beautiful example of good news and good works, the heart and fruit of the gospel, being ministered together. Let us work hard to keep them together in our service for Jesus, as we do the work of God who sent him.

A MESSAGE FROM BEYOND

John Mack, the author of Abduction whom I mentioned at the start of my message, concludes that the patient accounts he investigated are authentic and that “some powerful intelligence is trying to intervene in human affairs.”

This was too much for some of Mack’s colleagues, and Harvard University conducted a probe of his scholarship. It concluded that Mack should “widen his professional circle of research associates and adopt a more detached attitude toward his subjects” – that is, he should get outside Harvard more often.

But in a way Mack is right: there is a powerful intelligence trying to intervene in human affairs: the most powerful intelligence, the greatest of all possible beings, revealed to us in Jesus Christ, who wants us to know and love him.

Open your eyes to other people’s needs. Open your eyes to your own needs. Open your eyes to Jesus, and let the Light in to do its work.

The gentle healer he left our town today I just looked around and found he’d gone away Some folks from town have followed him; they say That the gentle healer is the truth, the life, the way.

(Michael Card, “The gentle healer,” in Scandalon)

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E111 Copyright (c) 2003 Rod Benson. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).

References to John Mack courtesy of Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-List No. 2-244

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