Prop: Siri (phone or ipad)
[Hold up the phone.]
This….is Siri. Anyone have one of these? Talk to her, and she answers you!
[Demonstrate in any way you wish.]
Siri….what is the capital of Nevada? …….Siri….what will the weather be like tomorrow?
But ask her this…. Siri….do you love me? What happens? She’s giving you a song!
[A youtube appears! Siri doesn’t understand the question, because Siri is missing that human element of emotion.]
Siri doesn’t understand the question. Siri is the creation of our minds and imaginations. But Siri doesn’t have the capacity we do for emotion. Siri may have a high IQ, but she has a low EQ. She doesn’t have a clue what “love” means, except to define it. She finds love, not in the heart or in people, but she finds it in a pool of information. She is missing the ability to love, to intuit, to feel, to discern. So, what will happen if Siri’s intelligence increases but her ability to love is still missing? What if Siri becomes so intelligent that she doesn’t need us anymore?
These are questions we are asking now in our culture.
We are at a point in our world, in our inventiveness, in our own creativity, where we must ask those questions. Our very lives depend on it! Technology is developing faster than our moral comprehension or reflection on what it is we are creating. Each new technology sows the seeds for its own obsolescence and decline. Look at your iPhone. Its irrelevance is inevitable in two years.
So, how do we as small-c “creators” develop a relationship with our “creations” --- our “robot” or “droid” or “computer” inventions? As they become more and more intelligent, how do we insure that they respect us, obey us, stay submissive to us, do not seek to replace us?
What happens when we invent a machine whose intelligence supercedes our own? Even when we use technology for practical problems, things don’t always turns out as planned.
Jeffrey Sachs had a formula for ending poverty. This famous Columbia University economist and founder of the Earth Institute contended that aid and technology could fix poverty. Indeed, every problem has a technological fix and aid solution, he said. Just add more aid and technology to whatever the problem, and presto . . .the problem is fixed.
Sachs said he could prove it with an experiment that became known as “Millennium Village,” where his theory was put into practice. Unfortunately, all that “Millennium Village” proved was that the idea that more aid and more technology can bring the end of poverty is an idea whose time has gone, not come.* Those who imagine technology as the “fix” to every problem soon find themselves in a “tech-no-fix” culture.
Don’t get me wrong. Technology can be a helpful and beautiful thing, as all created things are. But sometimes, technology not only doesn’t solve the problem, but creates far more frightening new ones. Technology is unpredictable, especially those technologies that begin to take on a “mind” of their own. And what if that technology decides it is far more suitable to exist than we are? Sounds like a science fiction movie. But we now are nearing the technology that could do just that. Can we control it?
We are both thrilled and terrified by our creations. But one thing we know for sure: creation is unpredictable. And change is exponential.**
Novelists say that once a character is released to the page, he or she takes on a life of his or her own. Sometimes, what the author meant to write changes, as the personality of the character begins to take form. In a sense, that character is given life, and goes on to do unexpected things.
We have hundreds of stories about this thrilling and terrifying process of creation. One of those is a simple children’s story I’ll bet all of you have heard. It’s called the “Gingerbread Man.”
Does anyone remember the story? [Give time for someone to tell it. Make adjustments where necessary.]
The story is about a woman who bakes a large Gingerbread boy. He is her creation, and she wants to keep him to herself. But he escapes the kitchen and takes off, having various adventures in his flight, until at last he is consumed by a sly fox.
Another delightful version is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. We love to watch the “wizard’s apprentice” Mickey Mouse cavort about trying to prevent the damage done by the “broom” he has brought to life. The entire movie is spent trying to stop the antics of the figure he has granted with the independence and unpredictability of “life.”
While these stories are rather tame, there are more ominous tales of creations gone awry, in which our creatures do not obey us but run amuck causing all kinds of havoc. One of the most famous is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In fact, the story was so fascinating and terrifying that we have invented it again and again in various media –books, movies, plays—and in different variations of the original. But the essence of the story is the same. Human creativity invents artificial life. Humans expect the new invention to obey. The invention ends up going its own way and causing trouble, and must in the end be destroyed.
The bottom line: all creation is unpredictable.
Even in nature….think of a hurricane, a tidal wave, a sink hole, a meteorite. Creation is beautiful. It’s exciting. It’s thrilling. But….no one can deny….what? Creation is unpredictable! A “loose cannon.”
Did anyone see the movie, “Ex Machina?” Was that scary or what! We have our own “Frankensteins” in our culture of technology that we are giving greater and greater intelligence! The fact is, when you “release” your creation and give it life –you can’t count on it acting in the ways you hoped.
Creation is unpredictable.
The Jewish tradition may be the root of all of these terrifying stories. Long before Frankenstein or even The Gingerbread Boy, there was the “golem.”
Most of you are probably familiar with the Gollum (spelled Gollum) in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. What do you remember about that creature?
[Give them time for input.]
Well, some scholars believe that Tolkien actually got the idea for his Gollum from Jewish folklore. In the Jewish tradition, the “golem” is a creature made out of clay but without a soul. In folklore stories, the golem is created to serve its master, but of course havoc ensues.
One of the most famous stories, The Golem of Prague, tells of the creation of a powerful creature given consciousness and then behaving in unpredictable ways that thwart its maker. In fact, it tries to kill its own creator.
But the Hebrew tradition also uses the word golem in the scriptures—in Psalm 139. Listen to the words of this part of the psalm:
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
In the Hebrew tradition, God creates adam[a] from unformed substance, clay. In fact, in the Jewish Mishna (and the oral Torah), adam is equated to a golem –a human made from clay but not yet inbreathed by the Spirit of God.
Once inbreathed by God, the “clay” form takes on life. [You could read them that part of Genesis 2.]
God, as our creator, has brought us (ground and water of the earth) to life with God’s own breath! We are God’s beautiful creation.
But as we know, (don’t we?)….. all creation… once brought to life and given the freedom of breathing and acting on its own….. it’s unpredictable! And so we are!
We sure are!
What’s the story of scripture? The “fall” of God’s creation! From the time we were created, we’ve been running away from God, feeling we can be on our own, going our own way, feeling we can “be” God! We are a creation run amuck.
And God spends the whole of scripture trying to figure out how to be in relationship with us, how to entice us to be back in relationship with God the way we were at the start! God…wants to bring us home! God’s mission is to restore, repair, and redeem God’s beloved creation.
So how does God do that? [You can allow people to answer.]
God chases us everywhere, trying to prevent us from destroying ourselves, trying to get us to listen, to obey, to love God, to love each other. God tries to build a loyal people with Abraham. God tries to start over with Noah. God tries to win over people by freeing them from the Egyptians. God promises them a land flowing in milk and honey. God promises to bless them. God sends prophets, who deliver warnings and messages when no one else is listening. Finally, in frustration, God sends “Himself.” Jesus. The Son of the Father. The Presence of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is not just Adam brought to life. Jesus is God as Human, the ultimate human who can show everyone else how to be the kind of human God intended us to be. Jesus won’t fall. Jesus IS God in human form who can lift the fallen ones up, restore them, remake them, revision them, revise them.
Face-to-face, God can redeem all of creation. God knows how.
If only we could recognize Jesus. Some do. Many don’t.
How do we know Jesus is the One? The Second Adam? God’s perfect human? The One who can revise and revision God’s creation and bring us all home and back into relationship with God?
The scriptures give us clues.
What does God use to make Adam? [Allow them to answer.]
Dirt…..and water. We are made from the clay of the earth. Formed by God’s hands. The original potter. Breathed by God’s breath. Given sight by God’s light. Ears by God’s voice. We are clay come to consciousness by God’s spirit.
In our scripture today, we see Jesus taking on the creative power of God, as he heals a man born blind …a man who can’t see…physically, and perhaps spiritually. How does he do that?
He takes ground from the earth. He infuses it with spittle. He forms eyes, and places them into the man’s face. He “reforms,” “revisions,” revises,” “redeems” this creation and allows him to see for the first time. The man in the story was born blind (mere form as God’s original creation). Blind to the love and the sovereignty of God. But now he sees.
Jesus has him wash in the Pool of Siloam, the Messiah’s Living Water. And when he emerges, his eyes see. At first, he isn’t sure what happened, or who did it. He only knows he can see. But as he talks with Jesus, he realizes, God/Jesus is the one who is his Restorer, his Maker. And he falls down and worships him. At last, he “knows” his creator, and he realizes his dependence upon that creator.
What a better ending to the usual science fiction story!
All of us are fallen creatures. We are all errant and unpredictable to our Maker and Creator. We are fickle sons and daughters, sure of our own abilities, sure we don’t need God nearly as much as we truly do.
We are blinded to the “truth” of our relationship to our creator, the reality of that relationship, the necessity of that relationship.
Just as with any creation –whether gingerbread, artificial human, or artificially intelligent robot—we become arrogant in our own existence. And we think we can reach the kingdom by building our own towers of Babel. We feel, God either doesn’t exist, or we can rely on our own devices. We come to feel fine in our brokenness. We think we see, even in our blindness.
Creation is unpredictable.
But God is entirely reliable. God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. God is entirely, tirelessly loving. God is unchanging in strivings to bring us home.
May you today submit yourselves to the authority of Jesus –the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Know, that God is greater than you, more knowing than you, more loving than you, wiser than you.
May your eyes be opened. May you find your way home.
Jesus is waiting to revise you and revision you.
*We need to spend more time, not less, theologizing about our creativity. At the end of his best book ever, World Order (2014), Henry Kissinger warns about the need for more “fusing” of technology with “enhanced powers of humane, transcendent, and moral judgment.” It is worth reading the whole book just for this chapter on what difference technology has made to global relations. Kissinger admits that in his early years as a political scientist, he made bold pronouncements about history and its meaning. Now in his 90s, he is at a much more humble point in his life where the meaning of history is something “to be discovered, not declared.” That could be said about the faith of a Jesus follower. Faith is less something to be declared than discovered.
**For more on this see The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty [Doubleday, 2014].
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
John’s Witness to Jesus’ Healing of a Man Born Blind with Clay and Saliva (8:56--10:21)
Minor Text
Genesis 1,2: Creation By the Hand of God From Dirt and Water and Breath of the Holy Spirit
Moses and the Tent of Meeting during the Exodus (33)
The Hallel Psalms: 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118
Psalm 40: From out of the mud
Psalm 103: He remembers, we are dust
Psalm 139: You formed me in the womb
The Potter and the Clay (Jeremiah 18)
The Potter (Isaiah 29:16)
The Cleansing of the Heart by God (Ezekiel 36:24-27)
Mark’s Witness to Jesus’ Healing of Blind Man (8)
Paul’s Eyes are Blinded and then Opened on the Damascus Road (Acts 9)
Romans: The Potter and the Clay (9)
John’s Witness to Jesus’ Healing of a Man Born Blind With Clay and Saliva
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.
Then the Jews said to him, you’re not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?
Jesus said to them, I’ll tell you the truth, before Abraham, “I am.”
Then they took up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and left.
As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent).
Then he went and washed and came back able to see.
The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”
The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”
The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
They answered him, “You were born entirely in sin, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.
Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”
Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.”
He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.
Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”
Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains. “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”
Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
Again the Jews were divided because of these words. Many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is out of his mind. Why listen to him?” Others were saying, “These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”
Image Exegesis: Revised and Revisioned
“With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” (Isaiah 12:3)
“For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring.” (Isaiah 44:3)
Just as last week, the images and metaphors of dirt, water, and light were significant, they continue to be significant this week. The day is the same for Jesus in the gospel. He has just left the Temple, where he challenged the Pharisees regarding a woman they had brought in accused of adultery. He then had a serious interchange with them, regarding his identity as the Messiah and Son of the Father, which angered them to the point of trying to stone him. He then rather quickly runs into this blind man. The metaphors that he is trying to explain to those around him in the Temple are better explained (or rather demonstrated) in the story of the healing of the man blind from birth.
While the Pharisees could not see what was right in front of them or explained to them, the man blind from birth will be led into the Light and into the sight through the use of the very metaphors inherent in God’s creative story.
The metaphors in the story are beautiful, and carry intonations of ancient Hebrew history, as well as Jewish folk culture. All of these appear in some way in the story:
- Mud/Dirt/Ground
- Water
- Golem
- Spit
- Light of the World
- Clay
- Eyes / Seeing
- Blindness
- Pool of Siloam / Sent / Washing / Cleansing
- Potter
The image of Jesus as “potter” is the first image we have of God in the Hebrew scriptures in Genesis 2 (the actual oldest story in the scriptures). One could say that the metaphors in Genesis are the ones that appear in all of the rest of scripture in one way or another. Certainly the image of “Adam” and the garden, as well as the separation from darkness to light in Genesis 1 are both part of this story.
But the most beautiful images are those of the formation of human beings. In the gospel story, Jesus uses dirt and spit to make a clay that he uses to form the man’s eyes, just as in God’s original story.
Saliva had medicinal properties in Jesus’ Day. Later in about 70 AD, Pliny would record the use of spittle in curing eye disease. And we do know the practice of using spittle existed in practical folk medicine in the Jewish tradition. However, the mixing of spittle with dirt is an odd combination. It was not a usual combination for healing in the ancient world. Our attention is therefore drawn to this mixing of dirt and water to make clay, and especially in then including the Pool of Siloam.
In Jewish tradition, there is a word for a “body” made of clay but without a soul. It’s called a golem. In folklore, this is usually an artificial creature created by magic in order to “serve” its master creator by doing commanded tasks. Several authors of the literary tradition have borrowed this idea, including ETA Hoffmann and Mary Shelley.*
In Hebrew, adam is called golem for the first 12 hours of his existence.** In the Mishna, adam is “kneaded into a shapeless husk.” Created from clay or mud, the golem is then inbreathed by the creative power of God in order to gain a soul. God is the ultimate “potter.”
In psalm 139, the word is used to describe God’s forming of us in the womb:
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
The Sefer Yezirah, “The Book of Creation,” in fact contains instructions for rabbis on how to make a golem out of soil –how to shape the figure into a human being and then use God’s holy name to bring the creature to Life. While this extraction from Jewish mysticism may seem more akin to something from the Hobbit (in fact we can guess that JRR Tolkien may have borrowed from this idea of the golem as well), still, the idea of the “golem,” a formed but not inbreathed human who remains imperfect until God’s breath is infused, also acts as a metaphor for spiritual awakening –or blindness.***
The golem is a creature blinded to truth. In fact, in the Jewish legend, one of the ways to “wake up” the golem is to write the word for truth upon his forehead, because Truth is a word for YHWH.
While the golem as a word only appears once in scripture (in psalm 139), it does also appear in the Talmud, the Mishna, the Sefer Yezirah, and in other Jewish literature.
The idea of adam or adama (dirt or ground or earth mixed with the living waters of creation) as a golem before God’s inbreathing reads in our canonized scripture in Genesis 2 as images of earth, out of which waters spring and form mud, out of which God forms adama. However, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is a tradition in which God spits on the dust to make clay and form the body of humankind.
In the New Testament scripture, Jesus takes on the creative power of God as he also spits into the earth and forms “eyes” for the blind man, then as the man’s eyes are opened after washing in the Pool of Siloam, the Light of the World (“Let there be light!”) shines into them and from them, and he sees the Truth of the messiah! At first, he isn’t sure what he sees. Only that he sees the light! But when Jesus reveals to him that he is the one who opened them, he worships him!
The idea of creation emerging in the combination of land and water is a recurrent motif in the scriptures, from Genesis to the Red Sea, to Noah, to the Jordan. It’s also carries baptismal undercurrents associated with the transition from John the Baptist (water) to Jesus –the Lord of Light (fire), making Jesus’ act a Sabbath sacrament.
While Jesus IS the living water –he uses his spittle, but also tells the man to bathe in the Pool of Siloam. This washing away of the mud from the newly formed eyes is significant as well, for the Pool of Siloam is the holy living water used not only as a mikveh, but in the Temple ceremonies, poured over the altar each day of the Feast of Tabernacles.
Jesus is doing this healing/creating on the last day (8th day) of the Feast of Tabernacles, right after he had challenged the Pharisees in respect to the adulteress woman. After a confrontation with them concerning his identity as Son of God, they want to stone him, so he leaves the Temple and moves on, encountering the man blind from birth. This is never a coincidence really!
Just after Jesus had announced his identity as the Light of the World and the Living Waters for all to drink, the Son of the Father (creator), he then uses these elements to “create” new sight where none had been.
Much word play is used between the words “blind” and “to see,” and the ones who are blind in the story are the Pharisees. He whose sight is revealed is the one who had been rejected by those same Pharisees and Temple.
Speaking of “sacrament,” the Pool of Siloam is not only associated with the Feast of Tabernacles, but it is also associated with the coming of the Messiah in the kingdom age. The Feast of Tabernacles itself is a messianic time in which in the time to “come” God will tabernacle on earth with us. The presence of the Holy Spirit is paramount during the Feast of Tabernacles, and so the creative power of God is strongest during this time one could say.
Besides the connection with adam and golem, there is also a connection between Eden and the Pool of Siloam, which source is said to be the waters of Gihon, one of the rivers that flowed into Eden. Siloam, which means “sent” is the Messiah’s Living Water, is yet another “marker” of the Messiah. It is said that the Feast of Tabernacles will bring in the kingdom with the coming of the Messiah who will heal the sight of the blind, and restore God’s people.
The stone pool was located just outside of the Temple. The former tunnel built by Hezekiah over the City of David, was called in fact the “Messiah’s Pool” in the oral Torah. Jesus had just told everyone, probably near that pool, “If anyone is thirsty, come to me and drink.” Now, he asks the blind man to wash off the “clay” that he has used to form him, and in doing so, restores his sight –the Messiah’s Living Water has healed him.^
The water used for the Feast of Tabernacles was collected each morning in a golden vessel and taken into the Temple for the altar. Here, the vessel is the blind man himself. As he lowers himself into the waters, he is “tabernacling” with the Holy Spirit, and his “golem” eyes are “inbreathed” by the waters of the Holy Spirit, washed, cleansed, and refreshed. And as he comes up out of the water (in a baptismal image), he is a new person.
In fact, the conversations that ensue afterward have to do with his identity. Is he the same man? He answers…. I am! “I am!” He is, and he isn’t. He is the same human. But he has been now spiritually changed! “Revised” and “Revisioned!”
Jesus comes as the Messiah as the Light of the World to tabernacle with us, and to heal our blindness to God’s presence in our world and in our lives. When we come into contact with God, we emerge changed.
Sukkot (or the Feast of Tabernacles) is also the remembrance of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from bondage and their 40 year “tabernacling with God” in the wilderness before coming into the Promised Land. The water libation ceremony is accompanied by the words, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” (Isaiah 12:3). “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my spirit upon your descendants, and my blessing on your offspring.” (Isaiah 44:3)
This cleansing of the eyes is also a cleansing of the heart, and an anointing and blessing of the covenant. Through reliance on God, we are healed.
The Feast of Tabernacles foreshadows the future day of God’s redemption of humanity and judgment of the nations. His shekinah glory is a symbol of the beginning of the messianic kingdom.
Even the psalms sung during this last day of the Feast, during which time Jesus was doing all of these acts are the Hallel psalms, psalms 113-118 –God raising the poor from the dust; bring rock from water; speaking of idols who have no eyes, ears, or mouth, deliverance for the afflicted, praise to God, and the messiah who will be the cornerstone. In a sense the psalms tells the story, not only of God’s rescue and promise of a land of milk and honey, but tell also of the story of Jesus’ healing of the man born blind…with dust and water.
You turn things upside down! Shall the potter by regarded as the clay? Shall the things made say to their maker, “He did not make me?” or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, “He doesn’t know what he’s saying?” (Isaiah 29:16)
From out of the mud, God created us, and from out of the mud, Jesus creates and restores sight where sight was missing.
Most interesting too is the conversation about sin. Jesus tells his disciples, this man is not blind because he sinned or because his relative sinned. (In those days, rabbis would dicker about whether a fetus could sin!) In fact, Jesus doesn’t talk at all about the cause of his blindness, only sees it as a gift in order to demonstrate the glory of God, “so that the work of God could be displayed!”
The world wasn’t created to blot out a “sin” of nothingness. But the world was created in order to magnify the glory and magnificence of God! God creates, because creation is beloved and beautiful.
Jesus IS the siloam (the sent one), the second adam, who has the power of the Father, the Son, AND the Holy Spirit, and demonstrates all of these in this amazing story.
*See “Modern Jewish History: The Golem.” By Alden Oreck. The Jewish Virtual Library. https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/source/Judaism/Golem.html and The Jewish Encyclopedia. For original source, see the Sefer Yezirah.
**Sanhedrin 38b.
***For more on Tolkien, particularly regarding Tolkien’s revision of 1951 in which he makes Gollum a fallen hobbit in need of pity and mercy, as he has killed his brother in order to get the ring, see Woody Wendling. “The Riddle of the Gollum: Was Tolkien Inspired by Old Norse Gold, the Jewish Golem, and the Christian Gospel?” Inklings Forever 6 (2008); Douglas Anderson. The Annotated Hobbit. Note: Tolkien was a Christian and translated Jonah in the Jerusalem Bible in 1957 (published 1966).
^One could make a case perhaps for the first and second covenants here. Not only is the first creation being replayed. But perhaps also the covenant after Noah.