Lent 4

Sermon

Text: John 9:1-41

I was driving home last night with it dark out. I like that kind of dark, the dark where I can still see what I need to see. It's sort of peaceful, there aren't any distractions. However, I don't like not being able to see what I need to see. Driving without headlights would be a different story. We don't like dark. It's the thing that many people think of when asked for what they are afraid of, darkness. When I was growing up I always had to have the hallway light on and my door cracked a little bit. It was not until we got a dog and he would make noise in his kennel that I started to close my door and have no light.

We don't like dark for many reasons, but I think most of it comes back to the point that we have a need to know what's going to happen, a need to see where we are going and what we need to do.

In our text for today we see Jesus heal a blind man. Jesus' healing of this physically blind man is found in two actions. It is both the physical action of Jesus spitting, molding the dirt into a mud, and placing it on the eyes of the blind man, it is the blind man then trusting what Jesus says that heals him. It is both Jesus' action and the blind man's response that heals.

The blind man and later Jesus then get into this extended dialogue/argument with the Pharisees or Jews, as John uses the two terms interchangeably. And the topic is still blindness throughout. But it moves beyond physical blindness to spiritual blindness. They discuss whether Jesus sinned, which according to the law he did by working the dirt into mud. It was the sabbath and no working of the soil or dirt is permitted, even that little bit that Jesus does. The blind man eventually makes two remarks “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” and “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

And the pharisee's reaction to this is to declare that they know that this formerly blind man is a sinner. “They answered him, "You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?" And they drove him out.” They think they can see who is sinner, who is not in the world, on their own, not through God.

And it is to this that Jesus changes the topic and the meaning of the question, what is blindness? Pastor Meda Stamper says about this:

The story ends with Jesus' condemnation of the Pharisees, whose sin remains because unlike the blind man, who recognizes the grace of God in Jesus' bestowal of sight and light in his blindness, the Pharisees insist that they see and know everything already. They are closed to the gift of Jesus, the judge, who can only give sight to those who know they are blind.

What we see is that the blindness Jesus is referring to is not physical blindness, but the blindness of sin. And not the fact that sin produces blindness, but the thought that we have the knowledge of sin, the knowledge of who is sinner and who is not, that blinds.

One of the most fun things I have ever done is to go on a cave tour. Not a lighted pathway, metal pathway lights on the ceiling thing, but an actual helmets on your head watching out for rocks deep cave. Now I'm not a caver so this wasn't slinking around in mud, pushing through holes a foot wide, I wouldn't fit through those anyways. Just a simple cave experience. But, half way through they had us all turn our lights off. And it was dark. DARK. The whole can't see your hand in front of your face thingy. And unlike normal dark situations your eyes don't adjust, well they adjust, but it doesn't matter. It's just dark, and it's going to stay dark. Until someone pulls out a light. And someone always does. Whether a phone, or a watch light, someone always does. I've heard that there are caves where the tour guides have a running pool of money set up that whoever has a tour group come through where no one turns on a light of any sort during the minute or more of darkness they get it. No one has ever won it. It is this darkness, the darkness that is so dark it feels like it is pushing in upon us, causing us to seek other forms of light. But they do not work, they only cover a tiny pattern, not truly giving us vision, they lie to us and show us things that are not there. Make us see things that do not exist.

In our text we see Christ opening the eyes of a blind man, and we see Jesus open our eyes through his death upon the cross, where he destroys the power of sin and death, removes the power of darkness in our lives. But this text also pushes us. It asks us to look at how it is that we continue to see. Do we look through our own judging eyes, or do we look through eyes that have been touched by Christ, seeing that others have also been touched by Christ. Are we in the dark cave of sin, seeing only shadows if anything, or are we in the bright light of Christ which lights up this world, showering grace upon all.

This text is “fundamentally a story about grace, and the blind man sums it up beautifully for all of us: "One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see."

We concentrate so much on where we think we see sin in this world, when Jesus is instead calling us to see where we see grace in this world. The pharisee's can only see what they think is the formerly blind man's sin, and do not see the grace of Christ working in the blind man. The grace given to all of us, and to the whole world. The grace with which our eyes are opened and we can see with the light of Christ.

Let us pray, God of light, God of mercy,

Open our eyes to the grace you have showered upon this world. Open us to trust in your words, hearing your love. Shine your light upon us and help us to see the light shining on those surrounding us. Help us to say, “though I was blind, now I see.”

Amen