Sermon text: John 9
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Conflict, as you know, is an unavoidable reality in a sinful world. And while Christians ought to do what they can to avoid unnecessary conflicts and offense, Scripture teaches and even commands that when it comes to the doctrine of Jesus Christ, Christians are to, quote, “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). And we are to confess Christ before men, as our Savior Jesus Christ confesses us before His Father in heaven. And in Luke 8:12, we are to be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks an account for the hope that is within us, yet in gentleness and reverence.
The Gospel assigned for this morning is an interesting one for many reasons. First, it shows the principle of confession, of answering, and of contending for the faith at work. Second, this reading spends more time on what the blind man does and doesn’t do than on what Christ did for the blind man. Most Gospel stories have Jesus as the primary actor. This is one of those rare readings where the focus is on the aftermath of a miracle done by Jesus on a poor beggar who finds himself in the middle of a historic church fight — not of his own making at all.
The whole series of events began with a question, a simple question, one asked quite frequently in Jesus’s day. The question: as Jesus passed by, He saw a blind man from birth. The disciples asked Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
The question reflects a form of superstition rooted in a religion of law and works-righteousness. It’s a common problem in every generation in every century. People think that if they behave the right way, God will reward them in particular fashions. If they misbehave, God will punish them. And if somebody is going through a particularly troublesome point in life, then they must have done something to deserve it. Otherwise, a just God would not do it — is how the argument goes. It’s a common problem in every generation, in the first century as well as the 21st century.
But Jesus says it’s not that this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. Think of that. Maybe somebody’s suffering a particular hardship or injustice because God intends to do something with, for, and through them. Sometimes we are called to misfortune for our own benefit, as well as that of the people who see us in our time of trouble.
The blind man of chapter nine not only had to live with blindness, he had to live as a beggar, and he had to listen to self-righteous speculation on the horrible sin that either he or his parents committed in order to earn him this lot in life. That was the orthodoxy of the age: God rewarded the good and punished the sinner in a way that was visible for all to see. So when Jesus corrects the orthodoxy of His day and gives an answer to the question, it must have been a great comfort to the blind man that it was neither this man’s sin nor his parents’, but rather that the works of God might be displayed in him. There was no specific sin in his background, or in the background of his parents, that caused his blindness. In fact, Jesus teaches God was doing something to show one and all that God works even in the life of a blind beggar.
Jesus spat on the ground, made some clay of the spittle, and applied it to his eyes, and told the man, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” So he went away, and he washed, and he came back seeing. Up until that point, he lived the life of a blind beggar. He wasn’t a threat to anybody. He lived in peace with all he had to, if he wanted to eat. Then Jesus came along, and all that changed. The blind man received the gift of sight and the gift of faith. You’d think everybody would be happy. Instead, conflict immediately followed.
No sooner had Jesus moved on than a debate arose about what exactly had happened and how it had happened. There was even a debate among people who were acquainted with the blind man as to whether this was still the blind man of yesterday, or was it some impostor. So the people take the man to the local Pharisees to show them what has happened.
At first, when questioned by his neighbors and the Pharisees, the no-longer-blind man simply reports the simple facts: “He applied clay to my eyes. I washed, and now I see.” But they can’t believe the miracle. There’s too much at stake. The entire system of law, obedience, of rewards and of punishments, of works-righteousness could crumble if the man’s story is true. And if Jesus is indeed the Christ — if in fact Jesus did exactly as the man said — they have to take steps to mitigate the damage to their religious authority.
So their denial runs two tracks. The first is stated in verse 16: “Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, ‘This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath.’” They question the formerly blind man further, but they don’t like his answers. They head down a second track of reasoning, since the first one ended in a dead end. They find his parents and interrogate them. They are trying to uncover a hoax, but the evidence is too overwhelming. The man had indeed been born blind, and now he sees.
The Jews were very clear about what they were trying to prevent. They don’t want this man, or anyone else, to confess Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Jesus to be the Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. And that’s eventually what happened to the formerly blind man. Verse 34: they put him out.
First, they threatened him with excommunication and attempted to get him to change his story. But the man doesn’t seem worried. He’s been blind his whole life. And now, in one day, through one simple act, he sees. That adds up to a pretty good day for a blind man — and a pretty merciful Savior for Jesus.
At first, the religious leaders of the day tried to prove there was no miracle, but that failed. So the Pharisees try to come up with a way to grant a miracle while at the same time proving that Jesus is indeed just another sinner, flagrantly violating the laws of the Sabbath. The argument went like this: Okay, he did a miracle, but he did so by breaking the law of the Sabbath. He made mud — that means he worked on the Sabbath. Then he put the mud on the eyes of the man and healed him. That too is forbidden by the law of the Sabbath. So you have the saying, you’ve heard the saying: there are none so blind as those who will not see. It summarizes the status of the Pharisees throughout all the Gospels. So blind that they cannot see.
As we make our way through the chapter, you can almost see the Holy Spirit at work in the confession of the blind man. When he was first asked about Jesus and what happened, he simply stated the facts in a respectful way: “He applied clay to my eyes. I washed, and I see.” But now the interrogators move the interrogation to the next level. They want to know more. “What do you say about him? It was he who opened your eyes,” they asked the blind man. And the man, at risk to himself, moves right along with it. He says, “He is a prophet.”
They try again. So a second time they call the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” And he, meaning the formerly blind man, then answered, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know. One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.” With each exchange, he grows more and more confident, more and more bold in his theological confession that Jesus is the Christ. The interrogation, though, grows more and more hostile. That’s how it tends to work. It’s why it’s called contending, fighting for the faith. So expect it to go that way whenever you’re put in a position to confess the faith as well.
Verse 26: they say to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” And he answered them, “I have told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Now he begins even having fun with this theological confession. He begins to mock his accusers for their unbelief. He isn’t worried in the least that they might actually put him out of the synagogue. The miracle should be celebrated by all, as far as he’s concerned. And the Pharisees are left in sheer panic. They’re afraid. They’re angry, and they’re full of hate.
They reviled him, the blind man, and said, “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he is from.” The man answered and said to them, “Well, here’s an amazing thing: that you do not know where he is from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is God-fearing and does his will, God hears him. Since the beginning of time, it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
Again, none are so blind as those who will not see. But the formerly blind man now sees, and seeing, he speaks, and speaking, he confesses Christ as best as he could, and did so under the threat of persecution.
I mentioned to a couple of you the other day that Iran is experiencing the largest growth of Christian congregations on the planet at the moment. People get baptized knowing that they can walk out of the building and be beheaded in a moment — legally. But there they are: baptized, confirming Christ as the Son of God in a pagan country. We, on the other hand — we grow timid entirely too quickly. We’re worried what people think about us, not to mention what they say about us. If we express our faith too boldly, too confidently, too happily, we don’t contend for the faith as we should. We don’t learn the doctrines we need to in order to defend the faith and bear witness to the Christ. We do not answer the questions as we ought. We get preoccupied with other doctrines and other ideas and theories about Jesus and how He works in the world.
We Lutherans have a thing that’s called the theology of the cross. And in it we believe that God does His greatest work in suffering, not in pleasure. Luther once wrote, “I myself am deeply indebted to the papists — that is, the Roman Catholics — that through the devil’s raging they have beaten, oppressed, and distressed me so much. That is to say, they have made me a fairly good theologian, which I would not have become otherwise.”
The blind man in chapter nine ended up openly confessing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of Man, the Son of God, and publicly worshiped Him. And so doing, the words of Jesus came true: it was neither that this man’s sin nor his parents’, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
The Pharisees make good on their promise. They put him out of the synagogue. Verse 35: Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” And he answered, “Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen him, and he is the one who is talking to you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.”
In the opening verses of chapter 9, the blind man was nothing more than a blind beggar. Then Christ came to him, joined His word of promise to spittle and mud. By the end of chapter nine, the man turned into a confessor of Christ, a champion of the Christian faith. He had learned that Jesus was not just a prophet, but that He was the Lord of the prophets and even more, the Christ of God.
Jesus Christ came to you in the means of grace: not mud, but water, bread, wine, and the voice of a sinful man proclaiming your sins to be forgiven. As baptized children of God, the Holy Spirit dwells in you, as He dwelled in the blind man. But we often forget that in times of trouble. We don’t see them as God at work in our lives, bending, shaping, molding our faith and our life together through us, forgiving our sins and strengthening our faith in understanding. He is making of us better theologians, people of true Christian faith, that when the day comes for us to bear witness to Him, as He bears witness to us, we’ll be prepared to do so. For in Christ — His person, His work, His name, His doctrine — your sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.