John 9:1-41
March 15, 2026
If you are ever feeling blue and
need something that will make you smile and cry at the same time, look up
videos of babies and children hearing for the first time. You can find them in reels
on social media, and on video sites like YouTube. In these videos a baby or a
child who is hearing impaired will be fitted for hearing aids or has had
cochlear implants, and the moment recorded is the instant when sound enters
their life for the first time. Sometimes sound disrupting silence is
overwhelming and the baby will cry. Sometimes being fitted with their hearing
devices is scary to the little ones and they cry or look distressed but then
comes the moment when they hear their name, when they hear their parents’
voices for the first time, and even watching it on a video, you can tell the
whole room is filled with joy.
The doctors and the nurses are
celebrating. The parents are celebrating. Family members who came along to
support them are celebrating. This time of joy and exultation is recorded for
posterity. I realize this is just one small moment in the lives of these
children, these families, but it is a profoundly beautiful moment to witness. It
is a miraculous moment to witness. And I can understand why everyone involved
is so overwhelmed with joy, why children and parents alike are crying. A child
can hear her mother and father’s voice for the first time! That is worth
celebrating. That is a miracle! That is a reason for joy!
And then we have another long and
unique story from John’ s gospel. This is a story I struggle with because no
one celebrates that this man born blind can now see. No one celebrates that
this man who navigated a world of darkness can now see the sun as well as feel
it, can now see the ground below his feet, can now see the faces that belong to
familiar voices. No one whoops for joy at this miracle. No one celebrates that
this man born blind proclaims, “Now I see.”
His parents don’t celebrate and
rejoice at the sight he has been given. The people who knew him before don’t
celebrate. The religious folks don’t celebrate and exclaim with wonder. His
newfound vision, which should have been a source of joy and delight, is instead
treated with suspicion and fear.
From the beginning of the story, we
are introduced to this man not by name but by his condition. He is not Bob, and
by the way Bob happens to be blind. He is the man born blind. His blindness is
his identifier. He is not a man with a congenital condition or someone who was
born with a random issue. His blindness is who he is. He is the man born blind.
That’s how the disciples see him. When Jesus and the disciples come across this
man, the disciples see only his blindness and their one question to Jesus is,
“Who sinned?”
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus’s response seems
straightforward.
“Neither
this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be
revealed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day;
night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the
light of the world.”
But
wait. Does this mean that Jesus was saying God afflicted the man with blindness
so that someday when he was an adult, he could be used as an object lesson for
other people? I don’t think so. I think a deeper, more accurate understanding
is that the man’s blindness was a chance condition of his birth. But Jesus knew
that through this man God’s glory could and would be revealed. When Jesus
encountered the Samaritan woman at the well, he spoke to her not just of water
she could carry in her buckets, but of living water that would revive her soul.
Jesus told Nicodemus that it was his birth, his forming and shaping, in and by
the Spirit that would give him salvation and new life. So too, this blind man
would see. He would see not just the physical world around him, but he would
see and recognize the revelation of God’s glory.
As one commentator noted, Jesus’
actions to heal the man take on a baptismal quality. He spits on the ground,
makes mud, and spreads the mud on the man’s eyes. He tells the man to go and
wash in the pool of Siloam. The man did this, and when the mud was washed away,
he returned able to see, both the world around him and God’s glory.
Shouldn’t this have been the moment
when the celebration began, when the joy at the man being given his sight
bubbled up? But that did not happen. When the man returned from the pool of
Siloam, from following Jesus’s directions, he was different. Maybe he walked
taller. Maybe he held his head higher. He would no longer be forced to beg. He
was no longer just the man born blind. Maybe that’s why his neighbors and the
other folks who knew him before didn’t recognize him. Speculation began. Some
of the people believed that it really was him. But others refused to believe,
saying, “No that’s not that guy. It looks like him, but it’s not him.”
Yet
the man kept insisting that he was who he was. He was the man who had been born
blind, but now he could see. He said to anyone who would listen, “I am the
man.”
One
scholar points out that this man is the only other person to use the phrase, “I
am” except Jesus. I am the man. So the neighbors asked him, “How did this
happen? How did you receive your sight?” The man told his neighbors exactly
what Jesus did. Jesus spat on the ground, made mud, then he spread the mud on
my eyes and told me to go wash. I did everything he told me to do, and now I
see. Now I see.
Once again, this would have been
another perfect moment to get the party started. It really is him! It really is
the man born blind. But now he can see! Someone go and get the fatted calf.
Someone go and bring the wine. Someone go and tell all the folks to come and
celebrate because this man was born blind, but now he can see! But no. That’s
not what happened. It was all too suspicious. No one is born blind then given
sight.
The
man was brought before the Pharisees to investigate. The Pharisees also
questioned how he received his sight. He repeated his story once more. Yet
rather than rejoice in this miraculous healing, this giving of sight, the
Pharisees became more concerned about the timing. This strange and suspicious
healing happened on the Sabbath. Obviously, Jesus was not “from God” because he
willingly broke the Law. No one truly from God would do that. Tell us again,
how you were supposedly blind, but then miraculously received your
sight. He was forced to retell it many times, but the man’s story never
changed. He told the Pharisees exactly what he told the other people. He was
blind, but Jesus gave him sight. He was blind. Now he can see.
John tells us that the Pharisees are
divided. Jesus broke the Law, so he must be a sinner. But how could a sinner perform such signs?
This man could now see. The Pharisees then questioned the man about Jesus. What
does he say about him? He’s the one who was given sight by Jesus. All the man
will say about Jesus’ identity is that he is a prophet.
The Jews – we need to understand
here that John is speaking of the Jewish religious authorities, not just Jews
in general – decided that it wasn’t possible that this man was actually born
blind. So they tracked down his parents and put their questions to them. “Is
this your son and was he born blind?”
The parents were afraid. They were
afraid of being forced out of the synagogue, out of the community and its
fellowship. It was already known that anyone who gave credence to Jesus would
suffer those consequences. Out of fear, they handed over their own son. They
threw him under the proverbial bus.
“We
know that this is our son. We know that he was born blind. But we don’t know
how he’s seeing now and we don’t know who made him see. Look, don’t bother us
anymore. He’s of age. Ask him.”
Once again the religious authorities
called the man in for questioning. “Give glory to God,” they tell him, “we know
that this man is a sinner.” This wasn’t an invitation to praise God for what
Jesus had done. It was a warning. This Jesus, this sinner must be denied, and
any authority he might have, undermined. But the man refused to back down. He
refused to speculate about or categorize Jesus in anyway.
“I do not know whether he is a
sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
This is the beating heart of this entire
passage. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. The man would
not let them take that away from him. He would not let his experience of moving
from blindness to sight be hijacked to accommodate the power driven agendas of
others. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.
The Pharisees couldn’t accept this.
They reviled the man. They accused him of being a disciple of Jesus, a sinner,
while they, the good and righteous people, were disciples of Moses. The man
didn’t take their bait. He even took them to task for their lack of
understanding.
“Here is an astonishing thing! You
do not know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God
does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to the one who worships him and
obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone
opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could
nothing.”
For the Pharisees, that was the
final straw. This man born of sin would not, could not teach them anything! How
dare he?! They drove him out of the synagogue and out of the fellowship of the
worshipping community.
At this point Jesus returns to the
scene. We haven’t seen him since he gave the man back his sight. When Jesus heard
that the man was driven out of the synagogue, he went looking for him. Jesus
asked the man one question, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man born
blind only wanted to know the identity of the Son of Man, so that he may
worship him. Jesus answers, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you
is he.” With that, the man believed.
A fellow pastor remarked that in
this entire story, every person involved with the man objectifies him. They
treated him as a thing to be argued over, fought over, used. Jesus was the only
one who saw him as an individual, who through no fault of his own or anyone
else, was blind. Jesus gave this man, this individual, this unique creation of
God, his sight. And from this powerful experience, the man believed in Jesus as
the Son of God, the Son of Man.
One thing I do know that though I
was blind, now I see.
No one was able to take that
experience away from him. No one could convince him that what he knew was false
or delusional. It was real. Now I see.
And not only did he see in the
physiological sense. He saw the truth of Jesus, his full identity. He saw the
Messiah standing in front of him and believed. But the righteous people, the
people who had never spent a day without sight could not see. They may have
been able to pass an eye exam on the first try, but they were blind. They could
not see nor accept what was right before their eyes: Jesus, the Son of Man; the
Son of God.
How
are we blind? While I would rather relate to the man who could see both
physically and the glory of God in Jesus, I know that I am really more like the
Pharisees. I see what I want to. More accurately, I don’t see what I don’t want
to. How quickly I find myself stuck in the groove of my own righteousness. I think
that I know what’s true and what isn’t. But when I read this story, I get a
glimpse of another truth. I may be able to see, but I can also be blind. Blind
to the revelation of God’s glory because it sometimes appears in ways and in
people I don’t like. I’m blind because the
glory of God Jesus reveals can break the rules that I insist are absolute. I’m
blind because encountering Jesus in a way I’m unprepared for scares and
challenges me. Clinging to my spiritual blindness keeps me from realizing that
I must change, that I need transformation. So, I ask the question again, how
are we blind?
As
we continue to walk through this season of Lent, reading the stories of God’s
revelation through Jesus the Son, may our eyes be opened to God’s glory in the
people around us. May we see, even that which we would rather not see. May we
let go of the blindness that clouds our hearts and minds and see all people as
God sees them, with grace and mercy and abiding love. And as we draw closer to
Good Friday, may we also proclaim, “One thing I do know, that though I was
blind, now I see.” Now I see. Let us celebrate and rejoice.
Let
all God’s children say, “Amen.”
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