Come and “SEE” - Jesus Wants to Open Our Eyes
A theme throughout this series about encounters with Jesus is Come and See. We are being called to go to Jesus, follow him and see what is He is doing. But a big question pours out of this: Can you truly see what Jesus is doing? Can you see what is right in front of you? If our passage today has anything to say about it, we probably can’t. We see five groups of people that can’t see. The disciples can’t see why the man was born blind, because their one frame of reference is sin. The man was born blind, ultimately because it would lead him to God. The townspeople who knew the blind man were blind because they couldn’t see or even imagine the glory of God. The Pharisees were blind because they didn’t understand what real sin, or holiness or rest was - ultimately they didn’t know the glory of God either. And the blind man’s parents were blind, because they were afraid of losing something they had instead of seeing the immense promise God had given them. I think we are all holding onto at least one of these realities that makes us blind, so the question is are we willing to see our blindness so that Jesus might help us see?
So, we start with the disciples, this ragtag group of Jewish men who covered the gambit of education, class, and career. They ask Jesus a question, “Was it this man’s sin or his parents that made him born blind?” A tough question: Is this man struggling because of something his parents did or something he would do in his life? I think we feel the consequences of both what our parents do and what we do, so it feels like a natural question. Yet, in the question is the problem. We have limited the options, we have limited God, and we have limited our understanding. We can often do this. When looking at anything with our limited perspective, we can often limit it to what we most understand. This can easily close us off from what is actually true, or sometimes it only leads us to a partial truth instead of us seeing the greatest and most important truth.
Jesus responds, “It was neither his parents’ nor his sins, it was for the glory of God”. I can’t say this makes it any easier to understand. How does that work? How can someone’s suffering be for the glory of God, especially when they never chose it or walked into it personally? Well, we saw how it works, but I think it is important to address the seeming injustice. We all live in this broken world, we all live in our sins, we will all struggle - those are all facts that we have seen and live in. Whether this struggle is a direct consequence of our personal sins or those close to us doesn’t really matter, because those consequences are there. Plenty of people have blamed God, but that isn’t really being honest and most importantly it is ignoring how we are delivered from that struggle. It is God who will lead us through.
This formerly blind man never blames God, nor does anyone else. He glorifies God in Jesus. Instead, he recognizes a simple fact, I was blind and now I can see. He recognizes the state he was in without Jesus and now he recognizes the new state, the new life that Jesus had brought him into. He trusted in this life-altering reality. Sure, things weren’t suddenly perfect for him, he could have gotten angry when people didn’t recognize him, when the Pharisees kept interrogating him, when his parents put the load back on him, or when he was kicked out of the Synagogue for telling the truth. Life isn’t made perfect when we meet Jesus, but something has fundamentally changed. He begins to open our eyes to see the glory and grandeur of God. For this formerly blind man that is everything. It almost feels like all the other stuff didn’t matter to him. Stuff that would have been core to the identity of most, was sluffed off because this man knew the simple truth that his life had been changed and wanted to follow it to Jesus. When next he meets Jesus, Jesus asks him if he knows of the Son of Man. He responds with a simple and beautiful statement, “Tell me about him so that I might believe”. When we meet the life-giving reality of Jesus, in a friend, church, passage, or prayer, we should respond tell me about him so that I might believe.
So here is this man born blind. People had probably walked past him as he bagged for years. They had seen him every day in a humbled and lowly state. They may even have known his parents. When he was healed, their immediate response was to doubt his healing and not believe it was him. I can't blame them I am surprised by how fast I turn to doubt when hearing a miracle story or even when watching for God to act. I would suspect most of you would be the same way. They might say, sure God might have worked miraculously in the Old days of Moses and Elijah or for us we would say miracles happened in the days of Jesus, but that doesn’t happen to us. Maybe we live in a different time, or maybe we struggle to believe in miracles at all. It was the same way in Jesus’ time. Even with massive crowds flocking to Jesus for healing it would seem that the majority didn’t actually believe in miracles at all. Jesus’ own hometown didn’t believe, there were many that just wanted to see a sign, and now they come face to face with a miracle and they don’t believe it. What does this say about us? Can we see or believe in the miracles that are right in front of us? If we don’t see them happening at all, what does that say about our ability to see or experience God’s guidance, work, or presence, which is less stark than a miracle? We need to ask God to open our eyes and then we need to watch and listen for when God says, it is I, the light of the world.
Some might be willing to ask, listen and look, but refuse to see what is right in front of them. The Pharisees are doing an investigation on this miracle. They interview all the people including the man born blind and they don’t believe it. Here are the people who studied God’s word and law and they can’t perceive when God has worked a miracle. Why? Well, because they are holding onto something. They have something standing in the way of God. We can often do the same thing. God is doing something wonderful, possibly even new and unexpected in your life. Yet, it doesn’t fit what we are holding onto, it doesn’t fit our desires, or our expectations, or our limited understanding, so what do we do? We resist it, we deny it, and we might even fight against it. What do you think happens when we fight against something God is doing or giving us? Well, we lose that fight for a start, the struggle in our life is far worse because our struggle is against God and ultimately, we can miss the really good thing God is giving us. Isn’t that terrible and interesting all at once, the way we relate to God in our blindness can actually take something immensely good and turn it into something immensely bad. Who knows why the Pharisees were fighting against this miracle at this time? Maybe they doubted like the others. Maybe they were scared for what this meant for their position as teachers. Maybe they were holding onto control or what the Sabbath meant to them.
A short note on the Sabbath because it is really important. The Sabbath is a weekly day of holy rest and worship that God calls us to. It is meant to be a weekly reminder of creation as God created everything in six days and rested on the seventh and also a reminder of how God delivered us out of slavery in Egypt into freedom and life - so the Sabbath is meant to be kept holy. The Pharisees had so limited the Sabbath that they forgot to ask the simple questions: “What would make the Sabbath Holy (special like God)? What is true rest? What is freedom?” If the Pharisees asked these questions, I don’t think healing on the Sabbath would be surprising - as it is Holy, restful, and freeing.
The formerly blind man’s parents rejected this new truth about what Jesus did because they were scared of being kicked out of the synagogue. This was a very real fear and a hard one. The formerly blind man would be kicked out of one of the places where regular, poor, uneducated people could hear, read, and discuss Scripture. For many, it would have been like not being allowed into God’s presence. Here we face another reality, there are hard consequences to seeing, understanding, speaking, and living out God’s truths. The world will often reject us, we won’t be able to participate in or even enjoy the same things we used to, we are called to live differently, to turn the other cheek, to forgive, to follow, and to celebrate something the world doesn’t. We can easily steer away from the truth, because we are avoiding these consequences, but when we steer away from the truth, we end up rejecting something we need and something that is far better than what we are holding onto.
So, the big question remains, can you see God and his work? Or are you letting your frame of reference limit the truth? Can you see, or are you letting your doubt excuse away what is right in front of you? Can you see, or are you letting your desires, your prejudice, your position fight against what God is doing? Can you see, or are you letting the possible consequences scare you away and rejecting what God is offering you? This formerly blind man was no longer defined by any of that. Instead, he was defined by the truth: the truth of what Jesus was doing in his life. Jesus started by giving him new sight, but through faith, he began to live a new life. We too can live this new life - undefined by our limitations, doubt, prejudice, or fears, but rather defined by the truth of God’s hope. Come and see, actually see God’s glory that is right in front of you. AMEN
Notes:
Not Blind because of his sin, but God’s glory
Come and See
The light of the World
The people that new the blind man, the pharisees, the parents and the formerly blind man’s reactions - knowing what God has done for them
Two Choices
Wanting to see
Truth vs. Fear vs. Bias vs. What we Want
Why the Sabbath? Observe? Human Laws?
Slavery
Freedom
Rest
Holy
A prophet - someone sent from God
Doubt about the miracle (sin?)
Why ask twice? - couldn’t see the truth
Become his disciples
Disciples of Moses vs. God
If this man were not born from God he could do nothing
Those who do not see may see and those who do not will see
You are in your sins because you say you can see
Can we see?
New Life
Defined by Truth
Introduce me to him so I can believe - In whose name did you do these things?
Sent
