“There are none so blind as those that… will not see” and
this thought came to me as I was reading and studying the narrative of Jesus
healing the man born blind and its subsequent fall out. The whole story is
about who is blind and who has sight. It sounds like a bible quote… right! But
I googled it and found a website of quotes and misquotes from the bible… saying
that are attributed to the Bible like “god helps those who help themselves” but
are not in the scriptures and “there are none so blind as those that will not
see” was high on the list. Yes it resonates with the wisdom of such verse as
Jeremiah 5:21…”Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but
do not see, who have ears but do not hear:” and with Jesus explanation of why
he speaks in parables in Matthew’s gospel but it is not a bible quote. It’s
been attributed to various people, including Johnathan Swift, who wrote
‘Gulliver’s travels’, but before him a man called John Heywood. 17th
century Presbyterian minister and bible commentator Matthew Henry used it quite
a lot as well which probably helped people associating it with the scriptures. And
it’s also known to people of a certain age because of the lyrics of the Ray
Steven’s song “everything is beautifu in their own way." But it sums up nicely
what is going on with the people round the man who Jesus restores sight to and
the religious authorities who come to investigate this healing: It encapsulates
for me and for us the challenge of this encounter with Jesus.
We are working our way through Encounters with Jesus in
John’s gospel and now. AS we open up the gospel narrative my prayer is that it
may open us up to encounter Jesus in new and deeper ways today… That eyes may
be opened to the wonderful works of God and the person of Jesus Christ. And in
looking at this encounter I want to do four things; explore what it was that
this sign, the healing of the man born blind tells us about Jesus, look briefly
at what this incident tells us about being followers of Christ, Give some
insight from this passage about how we talk about Jesus how we witness to our
faith, and finally to invite us to stand in this narrative and encounter Jesus
today.
Last week we looked at the end of John chapter six, and
before we move on to look at today’s passage, we need to fill in the blanks to
give us the context. Last week we looked at the aftermath of Jesus feeding the
five thousand, where many people were leaving Jesus because his teaching had
got too hard. We also looked at the affirmation of Simon Peter, on behalf of the
twelve “where can we go, You have the words of eternal life, we have come to
believe that you are the Holy One of God” which showed that their eyes were
beginning to open as to who Jesus was.
Ok let's fill in the blanks...After that John tells us that Jesus went up to the festival
of tabernacles in Jerusalem and began to teach. We don’t have what he taught,
rather we have an account of Jesus interaction with the religious authorities
and leaders. They thought Jesus teaching was good and they wondered where this
Hick from the sticks, this unofficial rabbi got his authority. Jesus tells
them, he speaks of his relationship with His Father in Heaven, and as you can
imagine that does not go down well.
At the beginning of Chapter 8, we have an interlude, we have
the story of Jesus and the women caught in adultery. There is some debate over
whether this passage actually fits into john’s gospel here, the argument before
and after it seamlessly carries on, the oldest manuscripts of John do not have
it. So in many bible translations it is in brackets or italics to show this in
some it is simply included at the end of John’s gospel.
But the debate about who Jesus is and where he gets his
authority from continues. Just before the passage we are looking at this
morning it turns ugly. Jesus last comment is to say “before Abraham, I am” and
the religious leaders reach down for stones to kill Jesus. Because in that
statement Jesus is claiming to be greater than their ancestor Abraham, and “I
am” echoes the name of God, YHWH, that was revelled to Moses at the burning
bush. They know that Jesus is claiming to be God. John tells us it wasn’t Jesus
time so he manages to walk away.
That leads us into the encounter with the man born blind.
And the whole narrative seems to sum up what has been going on.
Firstly, what does this encounter, this sign, tell us about
Jesus?
I don’t know about you, but I grew up in Sunday school
hearing the stories of Jesus healing the blind and I think it can stop us from
grasping the wonder of it and what it has to say. They simply become children's stories.
Leon Morris points out that
outside the gospel there are no accounts of people healing the blind. Not in
the Old Testament or the New, the nearest thing to it is in Acts where Ananias
lays hands on Saul, and he is healed of a temporary loss of sight, again a
sign. But in the gospels the most common healing that Jesus does is opening the
eyes of the blind. What is it a sign of? Well in the Old Testament, in verse
like Exodus 4:11, and Psalm 146:8 it is only God who can give sight to the
blind. Elsewhere it is associated with the activity of the coming messiah, a
sign of the messianic age. So as we go on through the narrative, for the
religious Authorities to acknowledge this healing being from God, they need to
acknowledge its source and what it is saying about Jesus, something they are
not prepared to do. They wiggle this way and that to try and avoid that
conclusion.
Secondly, what does this encounter have to say to us as
followers of Jesus?
In this narrative, Jesus disciples have their understanding
of suffering turned on its head. When they see the man born blind, they are
perplexed because they equate suffering and illness with a direct correlation
with Sin. With the man born blind they can’t work out who sinned this man or
his parents. Now Christians believe that suffering and illness are a result of
sin, in as much as they are consequences of a broken and fallen world, but
Jesus dismisses their wisdom of the day and invites them to see things in a new
way. Rather than consequence and curse, he invites them to see them as
possibility for grace and the glory of God. It invites us even to look beyond
the fatalism of someone being born blind so that later down the track they may
meet Jesus to see these sorts of situations as opportunities for the grace and
the work of God. To open our eyes to the people on the road and Jesus who wants
to speak into those situations, that we can bring hope.
The man born blinds story also tells us some truths about
being a follower of Jesus “ Some of us have been playing the part of a vacuum
cleaner salesperson” says Paul Metzger with our "before (I met Jesus) and
after ( I met Jesus) sales pitch." We promote Jesus like he's a new and
improved Hoover, who will suck out all the messiness and dirt from our
lives-only to find out to our horror and dismay, that he actually makes things
messier.” The man born blind finds his healing and affirmation of Jesus brings
him into conflict with his neighbours and friends, who cannot believe he is the
same man. It brings him into conflict with the religious authorities as well.
Life gets messy, they interrogate his parents, question his integrity and write
him off as a sinner for breaking the Sabbath law. We may not catch the severity
of what the NIV translates as “and they threw him out” but it is a technical
term for him being excommunicated from the synagogue. Before he met Christ, he
was ostracised because of the stigma of sin associated with his disability, a
good Jew would give him some money out of religious obligation, but he lived on
the edge of society, supported by his family, now he is officially ostracised
as a sinner, cut off from Jewish society. He can see but everyone else will
turn a blind eye to him. Bethany’s favourite verse comes from John’s gospel and
captures the tension we face as followers of Jesus when he says “in this life
you will have trouble, But I have overcome the world.” In light of the man
being ostracised Jesus comes and finds him and invites him to believe in him,
to find a new home in the kingdom of God, instead of being cast out and written
off, in the gospel, even though we never learn his name, he is held up to us as
an example of faith and one who can see spiritually.
What does the man born blind have to tell about how we talk
about Jesus and how we witness to our faith?
AS I was preparing for this sermon I read a book review that
is part of the debate in some Christian circles. A debate over whether or not
apologetics is a good approach when it comes to witnessing to non-believers.
Apologetics is the discipline of presenting reasoned arguments for the faith,
some people see it as a sort of false intellectualising of the faith.
Distilling what is basically a relationship down to principles and points of
reason. Others say that the basis for
our witness is what we know of God and what he has done in our lives, this is
often scorned as anti-intellectualism ,which does not do credit to the rational
basis of the Christian faith.
In reading the account of the examination of the man born
blind, we see that he was willing to use both to defend what he knew of Jesus.
He shared his personal testimony, “all I know is once I was blind but know I
see”, he is obviously excited about it because he thinks that the religious
leaders will see it as something amazing and wonderful, “Do you want to become
his disciples as well?” But he is also willing to use their reason and logic to
defend who Jesus is. The religious
leaders want the man to yes give glory to God, but not to acknowledge Jesus in
fact they write Jesus off as a sinner, the man born blind then points out that
this cannot be so because in the scripture it says that God answers the prayers
of the righteous, and as he is before them born blind and now able to see, they
can’t help but acknowledge Jesus is of God. They can’t dispute either his experience or his logic so they
kick him out. They don’t want to see.
Finally, I wonder this morning where you find yourselves
standing in relation to this narrative. RVG Tasker says the narrative is an
acted parable about spiritual blindness and spiritual sight where are we in the
narrative. Where are you, where do you encounter Jesus?
Can I say I find myself in a challenging position. I’d like
to say I find myself standing with the man born blind, whose eyes are open,
physically and spiritually by the end of this story. He sees Jesus for who he
is and worships him. But in these stories I cannot help but find myself,
embarrassed and shuffling my feet reluctantly standing amongst the religious
people. Maybe it’s an occupational habit, maybe we who say we know Jesus find
ourselves having to reluctantly admit we sort of kinda fit there. Am I blind to
the reality of who Jesus is? Or at least do I do we have significant blind
spots? Maybe we don’t see the wonderful works that Jesus is doing round us,
because we’ll they don’t fit in our God shaped box, that we keep carefully
locked and stored away. Maybe I don’t see the people on the side of the road
that Jesus wants me to draw his attention to? Maybe I don’t see past sin and
curse to possibility and hope? But the
place I find myself, and the prayer for all of us today is …
”Jesus Light of the world, open my eyes Jesus, help me to go
and wash in the pool of “sent” and to see you and know you and worship you in
all I do.”
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