John 9:1-41
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.
8 His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, “Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some claimed that he was.
Others said, “No, he only looks like him.”
But he himself insisted, “I am the man.”
10 “How then were your eyes opened?” they asked.
11 He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
12 “Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The Pharisees Investigate the Healing
13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
16 Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”
But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
17 Then they turned again to the blind man, “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”
The man replied, “He is a prophet.”
18 They 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 Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah 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,[a] “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.
Listening guide
Can we gain spiritual sight?
“Who sinned, this man or his father”? (verse 2)
No one __________________ sees ____________________.
Spiritual blindness =
“You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
You see differently when ________________ _________.
Sermon
I’m a slow learner. It’s taken me 10 years to recognize the spiritual effect I have in my wife. Making some area of the house clean, picked up – shame
JS – sensing her guilt, assuring her that this doesn’t mean she is a failure
Big topic of the week. Peeps are out for Easter. It’s true. Did you see Meijer, Walmart? Lots of Peeps. Just kidding.
COVID-19.
Discover/adventure
This kind of spiritual sight is more than just personality. More than training
You can each have spiritual sight that brings healing, forgiveness to relationships
Sure maybe I have more than some of you because true spiritual sight is a gift. That’s my training and experience.
Some of you probably have a lot more of it than I. All of you can have it to some extent. True spiritual sight that makes a difference in the souls of others is a supernatural gift from God
Part 1
Jesus is with his disciples. They meet a man born blind.
The disciples ask a very basic question: “Who sinned, this man or his father”? (verse 2)
We need to see where we stand with other people.
Are we good?
Are we bad?
Did I wrong you?
You’ve wronged me.
We all do this.
Then you can see what Jesus does. Jesus says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (9:3)
This blows me away. You and I living in the 21st century live in what’s caused a closed box universe.
It’s slowly reopening, but for the most part, it’s closed. What do I mean? I’ve talked to a lot of people about the coronavirus this week. Do you know how many people have asked me about the spiritual implications or even commented about them? Fewer than 5. Talked to a lot of people but the number of people who say, “what’s God up to here? What is God going for? What would cause God to let this happen.” or the people who have said, “It’ll be okay. I’ve done everything I can and I trust God to take care of me.”
You might say.... That is the very essence of a closed box universe.
A closed box universe says, “the material world is all there is. There is only physical stuff. There is nothing more than what we can touch and feel and see.”
I can completely understand someone in the 21st century not thinking about God. … meet someone in the store. .. But look at these disciples
They don’t think about God either.
I think they are a little ahead of us. They think about other people. … Listen to the people talk about coronavirus. They say, “I’ll be okay. My family will be okay.” It’s not about you. It’s about what you might do to someone else. These disciples are at least that far ahead of us. Still...
They don’t say, “Maybe God is punishing him.” They don’t ask, “Jesus, why did God let this happen.” … This is spiritual blindness.
No one naturally sees spiritually.
We all know this blindness at times. Everybody goes through a situation where you really blow something, a relationship, a job, or a project. You look back five years, and you say, “I was so blind. I knew it, but I didn’t know it. I had the data, but I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t get it. It didn’t sink in. I was such an idiot.” What is that? It’s not like you got new data. It’s not like you actually, literally, physically didn’t see something. It’s that you realize you were spiritually blind.
What is spiritual blindness? Here is how Martin Luther put it, believing we are “free, happy, unfettered, able, well, and alive” when we are not. (Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will)
Free – I can make choices for myself and they will benefit other people
No one naturally sees spiritually.
Part 2
If we are unable to see ourselves and other people for who they are,
We don’t have time for this today... Maybe you can look at this at home. But
If we don’t see spiritually naturally, if we don’t have natural spiritual sight, what do we put in place to guide these relationships?
Later on the religious leaders say, “we follow Moses.” The religious leaders have Moses – they have religious rules
His parents also get involved – family norms.
Everyone experiences this spiritual blindness. If we don’t gain spiritual sight, then we put something else in the place to help us see how we relate to other people.
Gaining sight
When it comes to gaining sight, there are really a number of things that should be said
Spiritual sight comes in a community
Faith is instantaneous and complete, sight comes in stages
Jesus went and endured the darkness. The darkness swallowed him and snuffed him out. And because the light of the world was extinguished, we can see. It’s a trade.
That’s not what we see here. This story tells us something else of gaining sight.
Jesus sees a man born blind
“After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.”
There is a physical, tactile experience. Part of gaining spiritual sight is a physical experience. And not just any kind of experience
Spiritual sight comes from physically living out God’s Word.
Almost all of us, I think I can even say all of us, deal with something physical in order to gain real spiritual sight. Money, careers, health, retirement, family.
If you haven’t gained spiritual sight, Jesus says, “Wash that away.” Let me give you the gift that washes. Not baptism. The gift of forgiveness.
At the end of the event, after all the discussions and debates, Jesus comes back to the man and says, Jesus says, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” (verse 37)
If you want spiritual sight, not only does it mean forgiveness for the physical ties you love so much. It means getting seen, being known by the one who sees all things.
He sees you and when you see that, then your eyes will be opened from your blindness.
Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. At the age of nineteen months, she became ill with what was at the time called “brain fever.” She had been left blind and deaf as a result of the illness. Helen could not see any light or objects, and her ears could not conduct sound either through bone or via air. This situation continued for almost six years. Years later, Helen wrote about that period in her life:
I had no concepts whatever of nature or mind or death or God. I literally thought with my body. I was like an unconscious clod of earth. There was nothing in me except the instinct to eat and drink and sleep. My days were a blank without past, present, or future, without hope or anticipation, without interest or joy.
Then Keller met a woman named Anne Mansfield Sullivan (1866–1936). Miss Sullivan had been working with Helen on spelling words over and over with her fingers. Miss Sullivan kept spelling the words over and over! Finally, she took Helen to the pump house; and as she pumped with one hand, she spelled water with the other. According to Helen:
She spelled w-a-t-e-r emphatically. I stood still, my whole body’s attention fixed on the motions of her fingers as the cool stream flowed over my hand. All at once there was a strange stir within me—a misty consciousness, a sense of something remembered. It was as if I had come back to life after being dead! … Now I see it was my mental awakening. I think it was an experience somewhat in the nature of a revelation.
That wasn’t the end. Helen went to a school.
John Hitz was the person who brought Emanuel Swedenborg and his religious teachings to Helen’s attention, giving her a copy of Heaven and Hell when she was fourteen. She writes:
The words “Love” and “Wisdom” seemed to caress my fingers from paragraph to paragraph and these two words released in me new forces to stimulate my somewhat indolent nature and urge me forward evermore. . . . I was not “religious” in the sense of practicing ritual, but happy, because I saw God altogether lovely,...The Word of God, … has been at once the joy and good of my life.[3]
As she writes: “I do not know whether I adopted the faith or the faith adopted me. I can only say that the heart of the young girl sitting with a big book of raised letters on her lap in the sublime sunshine was thrilled by a radiance and inexpressibly endearing voice.”[9] In speaking of Divine Love and Wisdom, she writes, “[it] is a fountain of life I am always happy to be near. . . . I bury my fingers in this great river of light that is higher than all stars, deeper than the silence that enfolds me. It also is great, while all else is small, fragmentary.”[10]
You see differently when you’re seen.
Conclusion
These kinds of times we see a community’s true colors.
You will see differently when you’ve been seen. You’ll have a love for the greediest, the most selfish, or the foolish out there and you will have a justice that upholds what is true and good and defends the helpless.
You will literally see things differently.
That’s what happens when you get seen.
You see differently when you’re seen.