Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-march-28-2023
John 9:18-41
18 The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. 19 “Is this your son?” they asked. “Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?”
20 “We know he is our son,” the parents answered, “and we know he was born blind. 21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”
24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God by telling the truth,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.”
25 He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
26 Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”
27 He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
30 The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
34 To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Spiritual Blindness
35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
37 Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
38 Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
41 Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
This reading is the conclusion of the story we started reading and thinking about yesterday. It’s the story of Jesus giving sight to a man who had been born blind. Or maybe a more accurate way to put it is that it’s a story about Jesus revealing the spiritual blindness of his people’s religious leadership.
In the first part of the story, Jesus came upon the blind man, and told his disciples that the man’s blindness wasn’t a punishment for some sin committed by the man or his parents. Jesus spat on the ground, made mud from the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. He sent the man to wash off the mud at a pool named ‘Siloam,’ and when he did, the man could see.
But then the story takes some strange twists. The man went back home, and when his neighbors found out that he could now see, they reacted with confusion and suspicion. They didn’t seem particularly happy for the man. Some of them weren’t even sure it was the same guy. So they dragged him to the Pharisees (probably at a neighborhood synagogue) so they could get to the bottom of the matter.
That was all in yesterday’s part of the story.
Today’s part begins with “The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind.” The first thing we should clarify is that when the Gospel of John talks about “the Jews,” it almost certainly means the Jewish religious leadership, not the Jewish people in general. By the time John was published around 90 or 100 AD, there was a lot of conflict between the church and the Hebrew religious leadership. But it’s important not to blame the whole population of Jerusalem for the sins of their religious leaders.
In our story, those leaders are revealed as more and more ‘spiritually blind.’ They can’t figure out how to respond to what’s happened to the man. He has been given his sight, but it happened on a Sabbath. In the teaching of the Jewish tradition, the healing of a chronic condition like blindness wasn’t supposed to happen on the Sabbath. It was supposed to wait until the following day.
So the Pharisees are confused. But the man who was formerly blind sees things more and more clearly as the story goes on. And by the end of the story, the man who had been blind is shown to have real insight in addition to the physical sight Jesus had given him.
Meanwhile, the Pharisees send for the man’s parents and demand an explanation from them. But the parents don’t know any more than the Pharisees do. So they call the man back in and basically ‘put him under oath.’ (That’s what it means when they say, “Give glory to God.”) But by now, the man is coming to see that the Pharisees really are spiritually blind. And the man starts needling the Pharisees for their blindness. But as bigshots often do when their self-important dignity is threatened, the Pharisees react badly, and they have the man thrown out.
At the end of the story, Jesus tracks the man down and reveals himself as “the Son of Man” – as the Messiah. Then he sort of announces the meaning of this story – that his life and teachings let some people who have “walked in darkness” see the light, while others who think they have things all figured out are shown to be spiritually blind.
It seems to me that the real lesson of the story is that we should guard against being like the Jewish leaders – against thinking we have things all figured out. Really seeing things as Jesus wants us to see them requires lifelong discipleship. It requires staying in contact with him by prayer and service to others in his name and by studying his teachings so we can walk by the light they shine on our path through life.
Let’s pray. Lord, guard us against thinking we have things all figured out – that we see the truth clearly and that we don’t have anything further to learn from the teachings of Jesus. Keep our eyes and our hearts focused on him, so that we can follow him closely and live more and more in imitation of him. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 34 and 146; Jeremiah 25:8-17; and Romans 10:1-13. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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