JOHN 9:1–38
The old guy at the corner hasn’t seen him. The woman selling the figs hasn’t either. Jesus describes him to the scribes at the gate and the kids in the courtyard. “He’s about this tall. Clothes are ragged. Belly-length beard.”
No one has a clue.
For the better part of a day Jesus has been searching up and down the Jerusalem streets. He didn’t stop for lunch. Hasn’t paused to rest. The only time his feet aren’t moving is when he is asking, “Pardon me, but have you seen the fellow who used to beg on the corner?”
He searched the horse stable and checked out the roof of a shed. Now Jesus is going door-to-door. “He has a homeless look,” Jesus tells people. “Unkempt. Dirty. And he has muddy eyelids.”
Finally a boy gives him a lead. Jesus takes a back street toward the temple and spots the man sitting on a stump between two donkeys. Christ approaches from behind and places a hand on his shoulder. “There you are! I’ve been looking for you.” The fellow turns and, for the first time, sees the One who let him see. And what the man does next, you may find hard to believe.
Let me catch you up. John introduces him to us with these words. “As [Jesus] passed by, He saw a man blind from birth” (John 9:1). This man has never seen a sunrise. Can’t tell purple from pink. The disciples fault the family tree. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” (v. 2).
Neither, the God-man replies. Trace this condition back to heaven. The reason the man was born sightless? So “the works of God might be displayed in him” (v. 3).
Talk about a thankless role. Selected to suffer. Some sing to God’s glory. Others teach to God’s glory. Who wants to be blind for God’s glory? Which is tougher—the condition or discovering it was God’s idea?
The cure proves to be as surprising as the cause. “[Jesus] spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes” (v. 6).
The world abounds with paintings of the God-man: in the arms of Mary, in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the Upper Room, in the darkened tomb. Jesus touching. Jesus weeping, laughing, teaching . . . but I’ve never seen a painting of Jesus spitting.
Christ smacking his lips a time or two, gathering a mouth of saliva, working up a blob of drool, and letting it go. Down in the dirt. (Kids, next time your mother tells you not to spit, show her this passage.) Then he squats, stirs up a puddle of . . . I don’t know, what would you call it?
Holy putty? Spit therapy? Saliva solution? Whatever the name, he places a fingerful in his palm, and then, as calmly as a painter spackles a hole in the wall, Jesus streaks mud-miracle on the blind man’s eyes. “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (v. 7).
The beggar feels his way to the pool, splashes water on his mud-streaked face, and rubs away the clay. The result is the first chapter of Genesis, just for him. Light where there was darkness. Virgin eyes focus, fuzzy figures become human beings, and John receives the Understatement of the Bible Award when he writes: “He . . . came back seeing” (v. 7).
Come on, John! Running short of verbs? How about “he raced back seeing”? “He danced back seeing”? “He roared back whooping and hollering and kissing everything he could, for the first time, see”? The guy had to be thrilled.
We would love to leave him that way, but if this man’s life were a cafeteria line, he would have just stepped from the sirloin to the boiled Brussels sprouts. Look at the reaction of the neighbors: “‘Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?’ Others were saying, ‘This is he,’ still others were saying, ‘No, but he is like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the one’” (vv. 8–9).
These folks don’t celebrate; they debate! They have watched this man grope and trip since he was a kid (v. 20). You’d think they would rejoice. But they don’t. They march him down to the church to have him kosher tested. When the Pharisees ask for an explanation, the was-blind beggar says, “He applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I see” (v. 15).
Again we pause for the applause, but none comes. No recognition. No celebration. Apparently Jesus failed to consult the healing handbook. “Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. . . . The Pharisees were saying, ‘This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath’” (vv. 14, 16).
That noise you hear is the beeping of the absurdity Geiger counter. The religious leaders’ verdict bounces the needle. Here is a parallel response. Suppose the swimming pool where you recreate has a sign on the fence that reads Rescues Performed by Certified Lifeguards Only. You never think good or bad about the rule until one day you bang your head on the bottom. You black out, ten feet under.
Next thing you know you’re belly-down on the side of the pool, coughing up water. Someone rescued you. And when the lifeguards appear, the fellow who pulled you out of the deep disappears. As you come to your senses, you tell the story. But rather than rejoice, people recoil. “Doesn’t count! Doesn’t count!” they shout like referees waving off a basketball that cleared the net after the clock had expired. “It wasn’t official. Wasn’t legal. Since the rescuer wasn’t certified, consider yourself drowned.”
Duh? You bet. Will no one rejoice with this man? The neighbors didn’t. The preachers didn’t. Wait, here come the parents. But the reaction of the formerly blind man’s parents is even worse.
They called the parents of the very one who had received his sight, and questioned them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?” His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. (vv. 18–22)
How can they do this? Granted, to be put out of the synagogue is serious. But isn’t refusing to help your child even more so?
Who was really blind that day? The neighbors didn’t see the man; they saw a novelty. The church leaders didn’t see the man; they saw a technicality. The parents didn’t see their son; they saw a social difficulty. In the end, no one saw him. “So they put him out” (v. 34).
And now, here he is, on a back street of Jerusalem. The fellow has to be bewildered. Born blind only to be healed. Healed only to be kicked out. Kicked out only to be left alone. The peak of Everest and the heat of Sahara, all in one Sabbath. Now he can’t even beg anymore. How would that feel?
You may know all too well. I know of a man who has buried four children. A single mother in our church is raising two autistic sons. We buried a neighbor whose cancer led to heart trouble, which created pneumonia. Her health record was as thick as a phone book. Do some people seem to be dealt more than their share of bad hands?
If so, Jesus knows. He knows how they feel, and he knows where they are. “Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and went and found him” (v. 35 MSG). In case the stable birth wasn’t enough. If three decades of earth walking and miracle working are insufficient. If there be any doubt regarding God’s full-bore devotion, he does things like this. He tracks down a troubled pauper.
The beggar lifts his eyes to look into the face of the One who started all this. Is he going to criticize Christ? Complain to Christ? You couldn’t blame him for doing both. After all, he didn’t volunteer for the disease or the deliverance. But he does neither. No, “he worshiped Him” (v. 38). Don’t you know he knelt? Don’t you think he wept? And how could he keep from wrapping his arms around the waist of the One who gave him sight? He worshiped him.
And when you see him, you will too.
How dare I make such a statement? This book will be held by arthritic hands. These chapters will be read by tear-filled eyes. Some of your legs are wheelchaired, and your hearts are hope starved. But “these hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us” (2 Cor. 4:17 MSG).
The day you see your Savior you will experience a million times over what Joni Eareckson Tada experienced on her wedding day. Are you acquainted with her story? A diving accident left her paralyzed at the age of seventeen. Nearly all of her fifty-plus years have been spent in a wheelchair. Her handicap doesn’t keep her from writing or painting or speaking about her Savior. Nor did her handicap keep her from marrying Ken. But it almost kept her from the joy of the wedding.
She’d done her best. Her gown was draped over a thin wire mesh covering the wheels of her wheelchair. With flowers in her lap and a sparkle in her eye, she felt a “little like a float in the Rose Parade.”
A ramp had been constructed, connecting the foyer to the altar. While waiting her turn to motorize over it, Joni made a discovery. Across her dress was a big, black grease mark courtesy of the chair. And the chair, though “spiffed up . . . was still the big, clunky thing it always was.” Then the bouquet of daisies on her lap slid off center; her paralyzed hands were unable to rearrange them. She felt far from the picture-perfect bride of Bride’s Magazine.
She inched her chair forward and looked down the aisle. That’s when she saw her groom.
I spotted him way down front, standing at attention and looking tall and elegant in his formal attire. My face grew hot. My heart began to pound. Our eyes met and, amazingly, from that point everything changed.
How I looked no longer mattered. I forgot all about my wheelchair. Grease stains? Flowers out of place? Who cares? No longer did I feel ugly or unworthy; the love in Ken’s eyes washed it all away. I was the pure and perfect bride. That’s what he saw, and that’s what changed me. It took great restraint not to jam my “power stick” into high gear and race down the aisle to be with my groom.1
When she saw him, she forgot about herself.
When you see him, you will too.
I’m sorry about your greasy gown. And your flowers—they tend to slide, don’t they? Who has an answer for the diseases, drudgeries, and darkness of this life? I don’t. But we do know this: everything changes when you look at your groom.
And yours is coming. Just as he came for the blind man, Jesus is coming for you. The hand that touched the blind man’s shoulder will touch your cheeks. The face that changed his life will change yours.
And when you see Jesus, you will bow in worship.