“I Can See Clearly Now”
John 9:1-41
March 2, 2008
Rev. John Fleming
If you’ve been in church in the last couple of weeks,
then you know I’ve been struggling with how long our scripture lessons have
been. Last week’s lesson, Jesus’
encounter with the woman at the well was twenty-nine verses long. Today’s lesson is forty-one verses long. Next week’s lesson is forty-five verses. You don’t want me to even mention the number
of verses suggested for Palm and Passion Sunday. In the back of my mind, I remember the pastor
who one said to me, “
Take today’s story as an example of that. It
reads like a drama or a play with six scene changes. There are a lot of characters involved in the
story, as biblical stories go. The
twelve disciples are there. The
neighbors of the man born blind are there.
The blind man’s parents are there.
The religious leaders were there.
The blind man, of course, was there and so was Jesus.
The
last two, the man himself and Jesus, get most of the lines in the play and almost all of the attention, but it
may not be the kind of attention either of them were hoping for. I looked at this lesson as I never have
before and I quickly came to the conclusion that according to the story the man and Jesus are the only sinners in the
bunch. The man was a sinner
because he was born blind and in his day if such a thing happened, it was
someone’s fault, it was your fault or your parents fault. It was either your sin or your parent’s sins
that caused your illness. I want to
quickly say that we don’t believe this kind of thing anymore. We don’t tie illness to sin. We don’t worship a God like that. So the blind man was a sinner. Jesus was a sinner, too, because he broke one
of the Ten Commandments. He worked on a
Sunday.
I
want you to notice something. Jesus does
his thing, he mixes his salvia and a little dirt, places the concoction on the
man’s eyes, tells him to go and wash in the pool at Siloam, and then leaves for
a while. He leaves the man to fend for
himself.
Can
you see it? He is on his own. Something great and powerful and wonderful
has happened to him. Suddenly he can
see. I would have liked to have been
there when it all happened. I would have
liked to have been his eyes as the shadows turned brilliantly bright. Can you imagine it, seeing for the first
time? No. We really cannot.
Turn
back to the man. Something great and
wonderful happened to him. He doesn’t
have a clue how it worked. He didn’t
know how he got chosen for such a thing.
He doesn’t even know who the stranger was who did this for him. All
he knows of him is the sound of his voice.
When the healing happens, all of a sudden the man is
bombarded with questions. Everyone wants
to know how it happened. “How were your eyes opened? Where is the man who did this? Just mud, huh? How did he open your eyes?” As far as I can tell, no one shouted out,
“Hallelujah! It’s a miracle! Or Praise
God.” That is what should have
happened. Instead all anyone wanted to
know was how and who and where and
what. They may have thought the man had
gotten mixed up in something terrible.
Certainly that could have been the case.
But the truth is he is not altogether sure how it happened to him. He is only sure that it did happen to
him. He’s not interested if it is right
or wrong. He’s just grateful.
I want you to look at his answers. They are timid
one liners at first. He says things
like, “I am the man. He put mud in my eyes. I walked to the water. I washed my eyes. Now I see.”
No one celebrated with him. You
long for someone to, but they don’t. Then
along come his parents. Their reaction
may be the worse of them all. They
didn’t run up to him and embrace him.
Instead they kept their distance. The Bible would have us to believe that they
did that because they were afraid. They
were afraid of being thrown out of the church!
Granted, getting thrown out of the fellowship is serious business, but
this was their kid! “Ask himself
yourselves” they say. “He’s of age. He can answer for himself.”
Let me ask you, who was really blind that day? The neighbors didn’t see the man. The church leaders saw a problem. His parents saw a social difficulty. And in the end, because his answers got more
and more eloquent and courageous, the man was removed from the premises. The thirty-fourth verse says it all. The Pharisees say, “You were steeped in sin
at birth; how dare you lecture us! And
they threw him out.” A nobody from
nowhere was blind forty-five minutes ago and now he’s just told the Board of
Elders, the Board of Ministry, the Bishop and the cabinet, the church council,
the seminary professors, “You couldn’t see God if he were standing smack dab in
the midst of you!”
We catch up with the man after all this has happened
and now he is back on the street. And
he’s confused about it. He was born
blind only to be healed. He was healed
only to be kicked out. He was kicked out
only to be left alone? It all happened so fast! It all happened on a Sabbath day. And now he can no longer beg. Imagine how he feels.
That
is when Jesus appears again. Eugene
Peterson’s The Message translates the
verse with these words, “Jesus heard
that they had thrown him out, and went and found him.” I like that about Jesus. Jesus is a perfect stranger to the man. The man has never seen Jesus before. There is something familiar in the sound of
his voice. Jesus asks, “Do you believe
in the Son of Man?”
To
the man who used to be blind, the question sounds like all of the other
questions he’s just answered. But
somehow the question isn’t so harsh. It
sounds more like an offering. He
answers, “And who is he, sir? Tell me so
I may believe in him.” For the second
time in two weeks, Jesus says who he is.
He says, “You have seen him and the one speaking with you is He.” The man sees and he says, “I believe.”
Now,
what is so hard about this lesson, it seems to me, is that his confession
didn’t take place in a church. Remember,
he’s been thrown out of there. It doesn’t
take place at an altar. His confession
doesn’t involve talking with anyone who has been to seminary. The man’s name is not put on the membership
books. In the end he confesses. He is sure of two things. “He is sure of Jesus and he is sure he can
now see.”
We
have to decide where to fit in this lesson.
Most of us would like to think
that we are like the man born blind.
That’s where most of us see ourselves in this story. Our eyes have been opened. We have seen things we missed before.
Last year The Learning Channel had a wonderful series of shows called The Messengers. It was a reality show. Ten people would go out into the world and
experience something then come back to the studio, be given a word, and expect
to speak on the subject for five minutes.
One person was voted off of the show every week based on their
message. I’m glad we don’t do that here!
One
of the experiences was to be blindfolded for the better part of a day and then
to speak on the subject of perseverance.
The better part of one day; that was it.
They received their sight again at the end of the day. There is more to blindness than that. We could all tell stories of the times of our
lives when our eyes were opened and we saw something we missed before. My children help me to see things I have
missed. We can look deeply into
someone’s soul and realize something we failed to see. There is always that.
But
truthfully I think we’re a whole lot more like the Pharisees than we want to
admit. We guard the faith. We pay our pledges. We listen to the sermon. We say the creeds. And we are blind. If we are not careful, friends, we will miss
some of the greatest things God does.
Vision
is the issue dear friends. Can we really
see what God is doing in our world? Can
we really see what God is doing in our lives?
More importantly, can we see what Jesus is doing in someone else’s
life? Can we help them celebrate it?
A
celebration; that is what should have happened when the man received his
sight. There should have been a
party. A mother and father should have
celebrated that they could see each other for the first time. Their friends and neighbors should have
joined in with the celebration. The
church should have been there. The
pastor should have prayed and been overjoyed with the news that one in the
flock was blind, but now he could see!
As
it turns out, that day, only one person could see. And what he saw he was sure of. Listen to his words, “I only know one
thing. I once was blind. Now I see.”
I hope you will open your eyes to the wonders of God. Let us pray.