The miracle story of Jesus healing the man born blind is placed against the background of a puzzle that has plagued humankind ever since the first person stubbed his toe on a stone and cried out in pain. It is the question of why there is suffering in the world.
Despite the many attempted solutions and suggested answers, people are still not satisfied - only more confused. The stubbed toe still hurts. Is the stone we stumble over placed there by chance or circumstance? Are we somehow engaged in a dangerous game, playing against an unknown opponent that is out to get us by constantly dropping stones in our path?
Some people have given up and accepted suffering as the price we pay for living. It may result from the odds of chance; or it may be an accident without rhyme or reason. Suffering is the misery in the not-so-sweet mystery of life.
Others attribute suffering to forces and powers that control our world. We say, "Tragedy strikes," as if suffering and tragedy had a personality and exercised a will. How often when stubbing our toe do we curse the stone as if it had a life of its own and intentionally placed itself into a position where we would stumble over it. We are therefore victims of these powers. The odds are against us. Luck may save us for a while, but when our time comes - it comes. Suffering is our fate and death our final destiny. And the gods laugh as they watch us struggle to avoid the inevitable.
The scientific mind sees suffering not as the result of chance but of consequence. All existence is viewed as a process. We live in a well-ordered world. Life is but an endless chain of cause and effect - not a gamble nor a game of the gods. Rather, there are a series of forces and natural laws which operate automatically. What we do will determine what will happen to us. If we are careless and do not look where we are going, we will stub our toe. From this there is no exception and no escape.
Divine Justice
When religion enters into the picture, consequence becomes divine justice which demands payment and balance. Suffering thereby becomes the result of intentional wrongdoing. The concept of sin is developed which is an intentional act of rebellion against a divinely established will. Suffering becomes God’s way of punishing sin. Disability and disease, sorrow and pain are viewed as forms of divine retribution.
Such thinking comes easily for it is natural. It sounds so reasonable and logical. It seems to agree with our experience and can be verified by the evidence of past history. So, when a young prophet comes forth to challenge such ingrained thinking and proclaims not retribution but a message of good news - a message of forgiveness, unmerited grace, and unlimited love - it literally blows the Jews’ minds. They, like us, are not built or programmed to think in such a way. It sounds too good to be true. We listen but we do not hear; we look but we do not see.
It is against this background of hard-heartedness and closed-mindedness that our story about healing blindness is told. It is the story of one man born physically blind and given his sight. At the same time, it is a story about many people mentally and spiritually blind to the truth of God who in their stubborn refusal will not accept the gift of sight. The key that unlocks the various aspects of this story is John’s view that Jesus is the light of the world come into the world to destroy the darkness. Laidlaw writes:
The whole work illustrates not merely in general the success of Christ - the light of the world - in dispelling the darkness of human ills, but more specially the analogy between the cure of physical blindness and the enlightenment of the mind in the knowledge of Christ. The narrative which follows displays to us the transition by well-marked steps of a human soul from total darkness of an innocent ignorance to a firm and rock-like assurance of Jesus as the Son of God.1
Raymond Brown adds, "While the former blind man is gradually having his eyes opened to the truth about Jesus, the Pharisees or ‘the Jews’ are becoming more obdurate in their failure to see the truth."2 The care with which the evangelist John draws his portraits of increasing insight and hardening blindness is a work of art. It is truly masterful. Brown concludes, "The blind man’s confutation of the Pharisees in vs. 24-34 is one of the most cleverly written dialogues in the New Testament."3
The Blind God
The story begins, Jesus "saw a man who had been blind from birth." The man suffered because he was blind; but our Lord was not blind to his suffering. This detail is important for two reasons.
First, we find here a situation in which Christ acted without being asked to help. The blind man does not cry out in this story as did Bartimaeus, "Lord, have mercy upon me." It is Christ who takes the initiative and comes to him. This would suggest we be careful not to establish rigid patterns and programs of how God acts in every case. On one occasion our Lord says, "Ask and it shall be given unto you." That is true; but it is also true that God will give to us even when we do not ask. God is not governed by formulas of faith. He is a loving father who deals differently with the variety of needs that come to him. This is the exciting adventure of faith. God is always greater than our grasp of him. Our God is a God of many surprises, and they are all good!
The second reason this detail is important is, according to Thielicke, "The average man is not blind but he thinks God may be." In a world where there is so much unnecessary suffering, God must be blind, for how can a good and loving God see all the suffering in the world and not do anything about it? This miracle story, as we have pointed out above, deals with the issue of suffering. It proclaims that God is aware of our suffering and he will do something about it. First, however, our eyes need to be opened. God is not blind, but we are. We need to see if we are to understand.
Sin and Suffering
When the disciples see the blind man, their question is, "Teacher, whose sin was it that caused him to be born blind?" The very way in which the disciples ask the question tells us something about the way the disciples thought. Jesus saw a man who had been born blind. The disciples saw a blind man. The difference is decisive. The disciples were not really looking at the person; they were looking at the problem which the blind man suggested to their minds.
The question of the disciples was an example of the natural religious reaction to suffering. Raymond Brown comments that, "Despite the Book of Job, the old theory of a direct casual relationship between sin and sickness was still alive in Jesus’ time."4 Harvey adds that the rabbis at the time of Christ taught that "suffering and misfortune must be regarded as punishment for sin."5
In this case, however, the problem was complicated by the fact that the man had been blind from birth. How is it possible for him to have sinned? Barclay,6 dealing with this question, comments that some Jews believed that it was possible for a person to sin in the womb before he was born. A woman "with child" who worshiped in a heathen temple could cause the child within her to be guilty of idolatry.
There was also a belief in Jewish thought that the life-soul existed and was responsible before birth. Some rabbis went so far as to teach that all life-souls existed in the Garden of Eden before the creation of the world. As they waited to enter the world, it was possible for them to sin against God and therefore enter this world guilty of sin.
The content of our text suggests that the disciples were aware of another possibility. A person could suffer because of his parents’ sin. This reflects a concept also found in the Old Testament. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children. In Exodus 20:5 and 34:7 God speaks, "I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations." The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel protested against this doctrine.
Jesus takes his stand with Jeremiah and Ezekiel. He answers the question of the disciples with a strong response: "His blindness has nothing to do with his sins or his parents’ sins." Jesus says this, however, not to enter into a debate with Jewish thought. He does not intend to argue an issue or disclaim a doctrine. Rather, he desires to shift the attention of the disciples away from the theoretical issue of blindness and suffering to the man in need who lay before them helpless in his blindness. Our Lord was not concerned with the cause of suffering but with the object of suffering. Here was a person who had a problem, and it is the need of the person that should concern us, and not the theological ramifications of the problem.
At the scene of an accident, if a person is lying in the road bleeding from injuries, we don’t begin by finding out who caused the accident. Was the injured person’s recklessness responsible for the accident, or was the driver of the other car the culprit? No! Our response should be to the injured person and his need - not the legal issue of responsibility, or the scientific curiosity of cause and effect. The appropriate reaction to an injured person is to help him, not police the problem or analyze the accident.
Jesus calls this to the attention of the disciples with the statement, "He is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him." This means the place to begin thinking about suffering is with the fact that God can and will act in this situation. Our Heavenly Father works in everything to bring good out of evil.
John Marsh comments that "no event in the past can make such undeserved suffering tolerable to the human spirit; only one thing can make that tolerable - what God makes of it when he does his work upon it."7
The problem of suffering can only be understood when we begin with what God can do and does with human suffering. Or, as Marsh goes on to say, "When God has done his work, then some purpose will be discernible in it."8
God’s Power
Confronted with the statement of our Lord, "He is blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in him," we can easily draw the wrong conclusion. It sounds at first as if God brought the suffering of blindness to this man to give God an opportunity to display his glory and power. This is not the intent of what Jesus is saying. He is not concerned with the why of this man’s suffering, but the what that can be done with this man’s suffering.
Jesus is saying that so far as we are concerned, this man’s blindness can be a means by which God’s glory and power might be demonstrated. Faced with suffering, the why of suffering is a theoretical issue; the practical issue is what we are going to do about it. In this particular situation, Jesus is determined to be practical.
Barclay points out there are two ways suffering can be used to demonstrate the glory of God. First, "by the way in which we react to our suffering," and secondly, "by the way in which we react to the suffering of others."9 It is the second way which concerns Christ in our story of the man born blind, for our Lord says, "We must keep on doing the works of him who sent me." And the work of him who sent Christ is compassion - helping where help is needed and trying to make life better and happier for others. Compassionate service to the one who is suffering is the work of God and that is what Jesus is talking about.
Tolstoy tells about the woman who attended evening vespers and wept tears of compassion as the minister talked of the neglected and unwanted children in the world, while her coachman sat outside in a blinding snowstorm and froze to death.
Compassion is not the tears we shed, but the vision we catch of human need around us. Care and concern seen and converted into action are the signs of true compassion. And that is exactly what Jesus did. He cured the blind man. He did not weep for him. He did not speculate concerning the origin of his blindness. He cured him. He gave him sight.
Not Restoration, but Creation
In the gospels this is the only account of a miracle where the sufferer is said to have been afflicted since birth. So far as the drama of the story is concerned, this detail indicates the total helplessness of the man. He has never known sight. He has no idea what "seeing" means.
This man born blind dramatizes the problem Jesus faced when he declared himself to be the "Light of the world." He had to deal with people who possessed a built-in blindness to all he had to say. In Chapter 8 just preceding this story of the man born blind, Jesus made the fantastic claim in the presence of the Pharisees that he was the "Light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness."
To the Pharisees this was a real shocker! Like men blind from birth, this new vision Jesus was presenting had no basis for comparison in their experience. It was so radically new that instead of opening their eyes, its brilliance blinded them all the more.
So John records the story of a man born blind as a symbol of the state of the Jewish people and their leaders. They need to be willing to see as they had never seen before and to accept a vision that had no basis in their experience. Jesus was the light that was going to light up God as never before, and show the people what God is really like.
When Jesus gave sight to the man born blind, what he did, therefore, was not a restoration of sight, but a creation of a new sight. It was a totally new experience for the man. So the coming of Christ means we are able to see God for the first time. Our eyes are opened and we behold his glory!
While It Is Day
Before Jesus cures the blind man, he tells a brief parable: "We must keep on doing the works of him who sent me as long as it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world I am the light for the world."
Some interpreters find in this simply a statement by our Lord that his time for an earthly ministry is limited. The cross looms ahead, and the road he has yet to travel is short.
Other scholars find in the parable a suggestion of the limitations involved in the incarnation. Straton, for example, finds here an answer to why Jesus did not wave his hand and suddenly and miraculously heal all blindness. For Straton, "God in Christ limited or ‘emptied’ himself, as Paul phrases it. Jesus was constrained by his humanity."10
Our Lord had only a limited time on this earth; therefore, there was only so much that he could do. In the future when Christ comes in glory, all people will see, but in the meantime Jesus must do what he can. So with us; we must do all we can with the limited time given to us.
Pierre and Marie Curie made four hundred eighty-seven experiments to try to separate radium from pitchblends. All were failures. Completely defeated and in despair, Pierre said, "It can’t be done; it can’t be done! Maybe in a hundred years it can be done, but never in our lifetime."
Madam Curie, however, would not give up. She said to her husband, "If it takes a hundred years, it will be a pity, but I dare not do less than work for it so long as I have life."
The phrase "while it is day" means "so long as I have life." For our Lord it was a matter of weeks, and then he would give up his life on this earth for the world. For us this phrase means that as our Lord worked, so should we, because he has given us the promise that he is at work in us. When confronted by human need, we should respond as people of the Light and help "so long as we have life."
Holy Spittle
The manner in which Christ cured the man born blind is also an interesting detail. Jesus spat on the ground and made some mud with spittle and then rubbed the mud on the man’s eyes. Now this did not sound strange to those who first heard the story. For in the ancient world, spittle had almost universal acceptance as a substance with medical as well as magical powers. It was thought to cure everything from snake bite to a crick in the neck. It was also thought to have counter charm effects so that people would spit on the ground three times when passing a place in which they had incurred any kind of bad experience.
This is also not so strange to our own experience. Ancient superstitions have a way of filtering into our unconscious minds and expressing themselves in curious actions we practice without thinking about them. For example, who hasn’t seen a man spit on his hands before undertaking the hard and dangerous task of chopping wood? Or, how many times have you seen a boy, waiting to receive the pitch, spit on his hands for luck before gripping the baseball bat? And why is it, the moment we cut or burn our finger, we instinctively put it in our mouth? In light of these observations, the holiness and the curative power of spittle is a most understandable detail of this little story - even for us.
In support of the idea that the cure of the man’s blindness was not an act of restoration but the creation of new sight, Irenaeus saw a parallel between the mud made of spittle and the creation story where God formed man out of the dust of the earth. In the beginning, God formed man out of clay and here is Jesus creating new eyes for a blind man out of mud.
One more thing needs to be noted about the method of the cure. Jesus touched the eyes of the blind man. As Redding points out, "Since he (Jesus) couldn’t have eye-to-eye contact with them, the treatment always included a touch or the traditional use of clay and spittle."11 Today, Braille is the way in which many blind persons can see by touching. In our miracle story the man born blind sees not by touching but by being touched. This was our Lord’s Braille system. He gave sight through his fingers and his touch.
The Pool at the End of the Tunnel
Harvey believes that since mud-spittle was an act of old-fashioned magic, Jesus followed it with a meaningful washing or ceremonial anointing.12 Jesus said to the blind man, "Go wash your face in the Pool of Siloam." John adds, "This name means ‘Sent.’ "
The pool got its name because it received its water from a tunnel which was one of the greatest engineering feats of the ancient world. The only water supply for Jerusalem was a spring outside the city walls in the Kidron Valley. So they cut a tunnel five hundred eighty-three yards long out of the solid rock, thus bringing the water from the spring into the city. The pool was given the name "Sent" because the water it held was literally sent to it by an outside source.
This might suggest some very interesting symbolism. The man’s sight is restored by water that came from outside. This points up the utter helplessness of the man. He could not cure himself. He had to have help from outside himself. And so for us; we need the same kind of help - "outside our world" help - if we are to be changed and become new persons.
Little did the engineers and working men realize as they laboriously chopped and chiseled their way through that mountain of rock that they were creating a pool of water where one day God incarnate would perform a miracle that two thousand years later people would still remember, talk about, and marvel at. How little we know what may happen in some far-off tomorrow because of what we do today.
It is important to remind ourselves, however, that it was not the properties of the water sent by the tunnel, but the power of Jesus, the one sent from God, that accomplished this fabulous miracle.
Baptism
Reginald Fuller, commenting on the fact that the healing of the blind man was for John a Christological sign, adds an additional note: the mode of healing - washing in the pool of Siloam - suggests a connection symbolically to the sacrament of Baptism. In the early church, Baptism was known as "the act of illumination."13 One of the gifts of Holy Baptism is to open blind eyes so that the person of faith can see God in Christ.
Augustine writes, "This blind man stands for the human race if the blindness is infidelity, then illumination is faith ... He washes his eyes in the pool which is interpreted ‘one who has been sent’; he was baptized in Christ."14
Tertullian begins his tract on Baptism with the words: "The present work will treat of our sacrament of water which washes away the sins of our original blindness and sets us free unto eternal life."
Raymond Brown, considering the lessons taught by this miracle story, mentions three which include the "baptismal lesson."15 He points out that the story of the man born blind appears seven times in early catacomb art, most frequently as an illustration of Christian Baptism.
Brown further comments that in the lectionaries and liturgical books of the early church there developed the practice of three examinations before one’s baptism. These correspond to the three interrogations of the man born blind. When the catechumens had passed their examinations and were judged worthy of baptism, the Gospel book was solemnly opened and the ninth chapter of John was read, with the confession of the blind man, "I do believe, Lord," serving as the climax of the service.
Brown adds, "Another indication that the evangelist intended sacramental symbolism in the narrative is the stress on the fact that the man was born blind ... the evangelist is playing with the idea that the man was born in sin - sin that can be removed only by washing in the waters of the spring or pool that flows from Jesus himself."16
Agony and Ecstasy
The man is healed! For the first time in his life he sees. Since the Scripture does not say, we can only speculate the ecstasy that this man must have experienced. But it was short-lived, for it soon turned into agony as he found himself in the middle of a cauldron of controversy.
The Neighbors
It begins with the neighbors. They cannot believe their eyes. They argue among themselves as to whether this man was actually the blind beggar they had known all their lives. Our hero answers, "I am the man." When the neighbors finally accept him, the first thing they ask him is how his eyes were opened - the question you would expect. His answer, however, is not what we would expect. He simply says, "The man named Jesus did it." No adjectives of acclamation here. Not the great, or marvelous, or fabulous, or incredible, or wonderful man named Jesus - just the man named Jesus.
Obviously, his eyes had been opened physically. He had gained sight, but very little insight into the personhood of the man who had cured him. Later in the story his vision begins to clear somewhat and he calls Jesus "a prophet." At the end of the story his eyes are finally opened to the reality that Jesus was the Son of Man. It is a long way from "a man" to the "Son of Man," but therein lies the plot profile of our miracle story. For it is the account of a man who gained his sight and finally received the gift of insight.
The Pharisees Probe the Problem
His neighbors take their friend to the Pharisees. They may have been so amazed that they wanted to share the marvelous news with their religious leaders. There had never been a man blind from birth who was given sight. It was an unbelievable happening. It is probably closer to the truth to say that though they marveled at the event, they were very confused by it. They didn’t understand how it could have happened. They were unwilling to accept the sheer marvel of the miracle without some kind of official explanation of how it happened. They wanted assurance and verification by the experts.
The attitude expressed by the neighbors is not unlike our own approach when we are faced with the miracle stories of the Bible. "How did it happen?" is the first thing we ask. It is easy, therefore, to see ourselves in these Jews of the first century, trying to understand something that never happened before. They wanted answers, so they took the man to the Pharisees.
The Pharisees were not confused. They focused their attention and concern, not on the marvel of the miracle, but on the fact that the event broke the Holy Sabbath they were sworn to uphold and protect. In their minds a serious offense against the Sabbath had been committed. As Marsh points out, "This healing doubly broke the Sabbath law, which forbade works of healing, and also kneading which was involved in making clay of spittle and dust."17
Raymond Brown adds a third and fourth reason that added to the seriousness of what Jesus had done: in the Jewish tradition, "there was an opinion that it was not permitted to anoint an eye on the Sabbath," and "one may not put fasting spittle on the eyes on the Sabbath."18
So the exclusive concern of the Pharisees with their religious rules blinded them to anything except the legal implications of the act, and some of them immediately concluded, "The man who did this cannot be from God, because he does not obey the Sabbath law." Note that at this point they do not deny that a miracle had been performed; they just want to discipline the one who had performed it on the Holy Sabbath.
However, there were some among the Pharisees who were not so ready to condemn. They reasoned, "How could a man who was a sinner do such mighty works as these?" Finally, the Pharisees came to the only conclusion they could agree upon - it was all a hoax! There had been no miracle. The man healed had never been blind in the first place. And they decided to prove it by going to the parents of the man and getting to the bottom of this obvious trick.
The Perplexed Parents
So the Pharisees, the healed blind man, the neighbors all marched up to the house of the blind man’s parents. Undoubtedly when these parents saw this whole contingent of people descending on their house they were frightened nearly to death. Like seeing the flashing blue lights and hearing the scream of a siren - we don’t know what we’ve done but feel we must be guilty of something.
The parents in their panic admit their son was born blind, but they refuse to elaborate. John explains that the parents "were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone professed that Jesus was the Messiah he would be put out of the synagogue."
When pressed for further information the parents answered, "Ask him; he is old enough." Marsh explains that the phrase, "he is old enough," means, "he is of age,"19 or that he is old enough to give testimony in a court of inquiry which would mean that their son was over thirteen.
David Redding says of the parents, "They took what amounted to our Fifth Amendment and cowardly referred the prosecution to their son as Exhibit A."20
Before we judge the parents too harshly, we need to examine our own degree of Christian courage. How many of us avoid controversy and the dangerous position of taking a stand against an established opposition and years of tradition? It is so much easier and safer to sit on the sidelines in the bleachers rather than enter into the contesting struggle for truth. It is comforting to know that "the passing of the buck" doesn’t have to stop with us.
Encounter-Conflict but No Conquest
Having failed to disprove the miracle-happening with damaging testimony from the parents, the Pharisees now realize they must unite and back the young man down with the sheer force of their authority and superior knowledge. So for the second time they call the man who had been born blind - and cured. What follows, to their surprise, is a heated encounter and conflict but no conquest.
First, they say to him, "Give God the praise," which literally means, "Promise before God that you will tell the truth." Much like swearing in a witness in our present-day courtrooms, the Pharisees are putting the young man on the witness stand.
What follows is an encounter which is symbolic of the conflict between two great streams of religious thought.
On the one side stand the Pharisees representing the legalistic approach to religion. God gives laws, rules, and regulations which reveal his will and provide an absolute standard by which all persons, problems, and situations can be evaluated and judged. There is a certainty and a security in this position that is reflected in the very words the Pharisees use, "We know that this man is a sinner." There is no doubt or uncertainty here. The Pharisees do not say "maybe" or "perhaps," or even, "We think this man might be guilty." They know it! Their tragedy is that they are so proud of what they know that they fail to realize whom they do not know.
The young man healed of his blindness is surprisingly bold. He stands up to the Pharisees. One cannot but admire his courage when we realize the power which the Pharisees exercised in their day. As Gossip says, "the more we see of him the better we like him."21 He is sturdy in his convictions and refuses to be browbeaten. Through it all he remains loyal to his benefactor, even when he knows that what he says will certainly get him into some very hot water. He knows that he cannot win the argument, but lie is determined to make his witness.
The young man states his case to the Pharisees who are now both his judge and jury. "I do not know if he is a sinner or not, but one thing I do know: I was blind and now I see." With these words of witness the young man becomes symbolic of the experiential approach to religion. Here the important thing for faith is what you experience - what happens to you as a person. Faith is the result of being acted upon by something or someone greater than yourself. Faith is having something done not only for you but to you.
The Pharisees follow up on this. They ask, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" This brings an insulting reply from the young man, "I have already told you. And you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Maybe you, too, would like to be his disciples?"
The Pharisees cannot believe what they are hearing. They are taken aback by the sudden change of direction this discussion has taken. They, the accusers, have become the accused. The judge and the jury find themselves on the witness stand, so defensively they cry out, "We know that God spoke to Moses; as for this fellow, we do not even know where he comes from." The Pharisees have spoken too quickly. They should have thrown the young man out of the synagogue while they were ahead. Now they have opened themselves up to the most severe indignity of all. The young man begins to teach the teachers! "What a strange thing this is," the young man sarcastically states. "You do not know where he comes from, but he opened my eyes! We know that God does not listen to sinners; he does listen to people who respect him and do what he wants them to do. Since the beginning of the world it has never been heard of that someone opened the eyes of a man born blind; unless this man came from God, he would not be able to do a thing."
The Pharisees have created a Frankenstein monster and like all such stories the monster turns on his creator. This whGle affair has become a horror story to the Pharisees and they shout in anger, "You were born and raised in sin - and you are trying to teach us?" Knowing that they are losing face with the people, the Pharisees do the only thing they can - they revert to physical violence. John states, "They threw him out of the synagogue."
As we look once more at this controversy as the encounter of two basic approaches to religion - the legalistic and the experiential - it is obvious that neither side possesses the insight as to who Jesus really is. The statement of the young man, "Unless this man came from God, he would not be able to do a thing," indicates that for him Jesus is still just a "man come from God." The experience of being healed has given the young man the courage to stand up to his teachers and defend the validity of his new sight, but it has not enabled him to open his inner eyes to the profound insight that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of Man.
Perhaps the healed young man is better off than the Pharisees, for he still has an open mind as to who Jesus might be. But the fact remains that the legalistic and experiential approaches in and of themselves fail to be sufficient to reveal Jesus for who he really is. The purpose for which Jesus has opened the blind man’s eyes has not yet been accomplished. The reason is that neither side possessed the basic element of all true faith. The Pharisees had the Law and the healed man had the experience but both were lacking. It remains for the climax of our miracle story to reveal for us the basic element of true faith.
Tell Me, Lord
In the last scene of our miracle story Jesus hears that the young man he healed has been thrown out of the synagogue. There must have been a feeling of kinship here, because just before our story begins Jesus himself had been stoned out of the temple.
Our Lord goes to the young man and says, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?" With this question the story approaches its climax. The man answers, "Tell me who he is, sir, so I can believe in him." This is the key element to faith. Tell me so I can believe. Speak the word, Lord! It is the word of the Lord that is the key element of faith.
God can give the law and we can obey. God can act and we can experience his action in our lives. But obedience and experience are not enough. We need to hear the word from the Lord. Faith comes from hearing. The God of the Old and the New Testaments is a speaking God, and when he speaks we live in faith. Our eyes are opened and we are given sight; but when our ears are opened we are given the insight necessary for all true faith. Hearing the word proclaimed provides us with the insight that in Jesus the man, the eternal God has come to us.
It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This may be true when attempting to describe an object or an action scene, but it is totally wrong when dealing with the relationship between God and his people which we call faith. As God is a speaking God, we are a hearing people. We do not live by what we see, but by what we hear.
What power of life and death resides in a word directed to us personally - so personally directed that there is no doubt that it is meant for us. "You have cancer." "You are guilty; the penalty is death!" "I hate you!" "Forgive me." "I’m sorry." "Damn you!" "I love you." Persons live and die by such words.
In our story the healed man says to Christ, "Tell me, so I can believe!" We need to hear in order to see and believe. The great miracle of this story is not the mud and the ceremonial washing that opened this young man’s physical eyes and gave him sight; rather, the great miracle of this account is the word spoken by Christ that gave this young man insight into who Jesus really was. "The Son of Man is the one who is talking with you now!" The fact that God spoke in the past does not save us. It is an action of the Holy Spirit whereby God speaks to us now, in Scriptures read aloud, sermons preached, and witness and testimony made - now! And the young man cried out, "I believe, Lord!"
Grace-Sight
The story of the young man born blind and healed begins and ends with the initiative of God. It is Christ in the beginning of the story that goes to the blind man. And the ending of the story is introduced by the phrase, "He (Christ) found him."
John Marsh writes concerning this miracle story: it is "the work of God, sheer grace, sheer kindness."22 And so it is. God speaks to us in this miracle story and promises to give us a greater gift than physical sight, and that is insight!
Insight is grace-sight - the ability to see God in Christ. In our miracle story we see a man born blind given sight - but more, we see him given insight. He looks at Jesus with new eyes. He sees a face, hair, clothes, hands, and the feet of a man like any other man - and yet - he sees so much more! By the power given to him in the words spoken by Jesus, he is able to see beyond the flesh and blood of his benefactor standing before him and see the reality of God dwelling in him. The man cries out, "Lord, I believe!"
There is little doubt that in the days which followed, when this young man witnessed to what had happened to him, he gave thanks for his previous affliction; otherwise he might have been one of those blind Jews who could not see the Son of Man in Jesus, and therefore in their blindness consented to the crucifixion of God’s sent son. It is a terrible thing to be blind to the world. It is nothing less than tragic to be blind to God.
The young man healed of his blindness must have continually quoted the words of Jesus, "I was blind so that God’s power might be seen at work in me." The age-old mystery of suffering may not be solved for all times; but the suffering of this young man can now be seen in a new light. To repeat the words of John Marsh, "No event in the past can make such undeserved suffering tolerable to the human spirit; only one thing can make that tolerable - what God makes of it when he does his work upon it ... when God has done his work, then some purpose will be discernible in it."23
Our Creation Story
It is interesting to note that John follows this miracle story of the healing of the man born blind with the parable of the sheepfold where the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice and follow him because they know his voice.
Actions may speak louder than words in some cases. But in times of suffering it is not loudness that is decisive, but the still, small voice of the Spirit of God speaking to us in, with, and under his words. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."
Existence is darkness and void until God speaks, and then a creation occurs. So in the adventure of faith; we dwell in darkness and are afraid and blind. God speaks, and our eyes are opened, light floods into our lives, and we live courageously in faith. This is our creation story.
A Lamp Unto Our Feet
The modern street lamps that illuminate our streets and sidewalks are attributed to the master inventor Benjamin Franklin. When he first introduced the idea of street lights to the city fathers of Philadelphia, he remarked that the idea was suggested to him while he visited in Paris. Along many of the streets were small shrines attached to poles. At each burned a votive lamp. Franklin said that these lights not only shone for the glory of God, but enabled men at night to find their way more easily through the dark streets of Paris.
So in our miracle story, the Light of the world - our Lord, Jesus the Christ - touched and healed a man born blind and brought glory to God. At the same time he brought light to all people - to you and to me - enabling them to find their way through the darkness of this life to life eternal.
If we walk in darkness, it is not God’s fault. God did not create darkness. Darkness is not of creation; it is what was before creation. Darkness is but the absence of light. Now because of the cross, the empty tomb, and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, there is no darkness for us. In the opening of his Gospel, John writes, "This was the real light, the light that comes into the world and shines on all men." (John 1:9) And John adds, "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out."
In the miracle of the healing of the man born blind, this promise of light that cannot be defeated or destroyed is once more confirmed. Pray God is and may be continually confirmed in us.
1. John Laidlaw, The Miracles of Our Lord (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1956), p. 289.
2. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, The Anchor Bible, (New York: Doubleday, 1966), p. 377.
3. Ibid. p. 377.
4. Ibid. p. 371.
5. A. E. Harvey, Companion to the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), p. 345.
6. William Barclay, And He Had Compassion (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1975), p. 182.
7. John Marsh, Saint John, Westminster Pelican Commentaries, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), p. 376.
8. Ibid. p. 377.
9. Barclay, op. cit. p. 186.
10. Hillyer Hawthorne Straton, Preaching the Miracles of Jesus (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950), p. 161.
11. David Redding, The Miracles of Christ (New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell, 1964), p. 100.
12. Harvey, op. cit. p. 346.
13. Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the New Lectionary: The Word of God for the Church Today (Cottageville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1974), p. 159.
14. Augustine in Jo. XLIV 1-2; PL 35; 1713-14.
15. Brown, op. cit. p. 380.
16. Brown, op. cit. p. 381.
17. Marsh, op. cit. p. 382.
18. Brown, op. cit. p. 373.
19. Marsh, op. cit. p. 384.
20. Redding, op. cit. p. 99.
21. Arthur John Gossip, The Gospel According to St. John, The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. VIII (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952), p. 615.
22. Marsh, op. cit. p. 379.
23. Marsh, op. cit. p. 376-77.