John 9:1-7, 13-17, 34-39
Our Gospel lesson for this morning begins with the disciples walking alongside Jesus and, seeing a blind man, asking Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:1)
This is a question that comes straight out of the human penchant for viewing everything from the perspective of the Law, or of judgment. We want to assure ourselves when we see the bad things others endure that such things couldn’t happen to us. Even when we know better, a part of us believes that someone in the afflicted person’s family tree must have committed a terrible sin. We want to be certain that our good behavior will exempt us from the horrors that can come to us in this fallen world.
Jesus’ response must have shocked the disciples.
For starters, He doesn’t accept the premise that the man or his parents are worse sinners than the rest of the human race.
Instead, He identifies the man’s affliction as a kind of opportunity. Jesus says, “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3)
The blind man was no more and no less of a sinner than the disciples, or than you and me.
But, irrespective of his sin, this blind man becomes an object lesson of the one thing, the one Word, given by God in Christ, that is more powerful than the Law that condemns us to death for our sin.
Jesus approaches the man, makes mud from His saliva and the dirt of the ground, smears the mixture on the blind man’s eyes, and then tells the blind man, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam” (John 9:7)
You remember that back in Genesis, God gave life to Adam, the first man, by scooping up dirt and breathing life into it.
And when Adam fell into sin, God told Adam that death would be the result, “Dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19)
The mud on the blind man’s eyes reminded him and the disciples who saw it that this man and every human being Jesus encountered was a sinner bound for death, each of us subject to the condemnation of God’s holy Law.
But, overcoming the condemnation of the Law, Jesus gives a gift of grace that ignores what punishment the blind man–or the rest of us–deserve for our sin.
Christ gives the man a Word more powerful than the Law. It is a Word of promise, a good news or gospel word, that overcomes the condemnation of the Law. “Go over there to that spot you can’t see, to the pool, and wash the mud from your eyes.”
If I’d been the blind man, I’m afraid I would have argued with Jesus. “Are you out of your mind? What kind of a nut goes rubbing mud on a blind man’s eyes, then tells him to feel his way to a pool of water he can’t see in order to wash it off? What good will that do?”
These are similar to the questions we’re inclined to throw at God and at Christians when told that God saves us in the waters of Holy Baptism or that the bread and the wine of Holy Communion are also Christ’s body and blood. How can good things like forgiveness, new life, and the very presence of God come to us through water, bread, and wine, through ordinary stuff? They can happen because God’s Gospel Word of promise come to us through them!
Amazingly, the blind man heeds this word from Jesus to go to the pool at Siloam and when he splashes the water on his eyes, not only are his eyes clean, but–sinner though he is–he can see!
Anyone familiar with the promises of God, given in Old Testament times, should have remembered at that moment that God had foretold a Messiah Who would bring a Word that overcomes the condemnation of all who trust in Him.
Our first lesson for today contains one of those promises. God says, “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:16)
To those of us bound by sin and unable to free ourselves, laid low by life, afraid that our sins will eternally alienate us from God, Jesus’ gift of sight to the blind man is a Word of promise to us all: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
Friends, the God we know in Jesus hasn’t given up on us even when we’ve given up on ourselves.
Even when we think we’re hopeless cases, beyond the reach of God’s gracious love, beyond the reach of His forgiveness.
As long as we are on this earth, Jesus, through His Church, will keep speaking His saving Word of forgiveness, life, and promise to us.
This isn’t a Word we need to go looking for.
We needn’t wonder what we must do to merit it or earn it.
This Word comes to us in the Bible and the Word proclaimed and taught and shared and heard.
It is as close as the water in the Baptismal font and as near as the bread and the wine on the Lord’s Table.
Some of Jesus’ fellow Judeans and their religious leaders, as our Gospel lesson tells us, didn’t see Jesus as the One bringing the promised Word that overcomes sin and death. All they saw was an itinerant preacher from Nazareth who violated the Third Commandment–”Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy”--by working on the Sabbath: mixing His saliva with some dirt.
When the once-blind man insists that only someone from God–a prophet, at the very least–could have performed the unprecedented miracle of giving sight to eyes blinded from birth, he gets excommunicated. He’s no longer considered part of God’s people, no longer allowed to worship at the synagogue or make offerings at the temple.
Back when some of us got thrown out of a Lutheran church body for standing for what we believed to be right and true and of God, we got letters from our former bishops. Mine said that I was no longer considered a pastor, no longer able to preside over the Sacraments, no longer able to preach in the church body of which I’d been a pastor for nearly thirty years. (They didn’t know that I was already on the roster of the North American Lutheran Church.) A colleague who got a similar letter remarked, “I’ve been thrown out of better places.”
Maybe the blind man, thrown out of the people of God had similar sentiments, that he was better off not being part of a group that refused the clear teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures and refused to acknowledge a mighty work of God when even a blind man could see it for what it was!
After the man’s excommunication, Jesus approaches him and asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (John 9:35)
This was no idle question on Jesus’ part.
Seven centuries before His birth at Bethlehem, God the Son, Jesus the Messiah, appeared in a vision to the prophet Daniel. “In my vision at night,” Daniel writes in the Old Testament book that bears his name, “I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days [that is, He approached God the Father] and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14)
“Son of Man” was among Jesus’ most common names for Himself.
In our lesson, Jesus is asking the formerly blind man if he believes in the Son of Man.
His mind, will, and heart laid open by the Word of God that already gave him sight, the man asks Jesus, “Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
When Jesus tells him, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you,” John says, “The man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.” (John 9:36-38)
It didn’t matter if his parents rejected him as they did in a part of John 9 we didn’t read this morning.
It didn’t matter that the synagogue had thrown him out.
It didn’t really matter if this man was sighted or blind.
That’s because the man now knew he had life with God, that he was made right with God–justified before God–by grace through faith in Jesus.
Jesus had spoken His gracious Word, a Word more powerful than the Law, and by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, he believed and so had life with God that would never be taken from him.
The Lord, Who would be crucified to bear our sins and raised to give us eternity with God, the One Who has authority, glory, and power, had spoken His forgiving Word to this once-blind man and he knew he would live in Jesus’ kingdom forever!
In today’s Gospel lesson, friends, Jesus is speaking this same Word to you!
We are saved by grace through faith in Christ.
And “faith,” the apostle Paul says famously, “comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)
The greatest miracle in today’s Gospel lesson then isn’t Jesus giving the blind man sight.
The greatest miracle happens when Jesus tells the once blind man that He is the Son of Man, the Savior of sinners, and the blind man, by Christ’s Word, believed.
The Gospel Word about Jesus gives us faith in Christ and sets us free from the condemnation of the Law that we all deserve!
My seminary professor and mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, told us about a man who approached him in a state of some agitation after a service at which Pastor Schein preached. “All you did was retell the Gospel lesson!” the man complained. It was as if the man wanted something more than or different from Jesus. He wanted to hear something like five ways to become a better person or, how to be nice. (It seems that many people today would prefer to belong to the church of nice rather than the Church of Christ.) “All you did was retell the Gospel lesson!” the man said. To which Pastor Schein replied, “Exactly.”
Listen, friends, the only Word we have or need is the story of the God Who came to rescue you and me from sin, death, and darkness in Jesus Christ, the Savior Who died on a cross for you and rose from the dead for you. It’s a Word to which we need not and must not add or subtract.
By the power of that Word, the once blind man trusted the Savior Who forgives sinners and gives everlasting life with God to all who believe.
By His Gospel Word, Jesus saves sinners even today to live with God forever!
By the power of His Word, you can repent for sin and trust in Him again today.
When the Word about the crucified and risen Jesus gives you faith in Jesus, you have eternal life with God. No matter what! Amen
This is a question that comes straight out of the human penchant for viewing everything from the perspective of the Law, or of judgment. We want to assure ourselves when we see the bad things others endure that such things couldn’t happen to us. Even when we know better, a part of us believes that someone in the afflicted person’s family tree must have committed a terrible sin. We want to be certain that our good behavior will exempt us from the horrors that can come to us in this fallen world.
Jesus’ response must have shocked the disciples.
For starters, He doesn’t accept the premise that the man or his parents are worse sinners than the rest of the human race.
Instead, He identifies the man’s affliction as a kind of opportunity. Jesus says, “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (John 9:3)
The blind man was no more and no less of a sinner than the disciples, or than you and me.
But, irrespective of his sin, this blind man becomes an object lesson of the one thing, the one Word, given by God in Christ, that is more powerful than the Law that condemns us to death for our sin.
Jesus approaches the man, makes mud from His saliva and the dirt of the ground, smears the mixture on the blind man’s eyes, and then tells the blind man, “Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam” (John 9:7)
You remember that back in Genesis, God gave life to Adam, the first man, by scooping up dirt and breathing life into it.
And when Adam fell into sin, God told Adam that death would be the result, “Dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19)
The mud on the blind man’s eyes reminded him and the disciples who saw it that this man and every human being Jesus encountered was a sinner bound for death, each of us subject to the condemnation of God’s holy Law.
But, overcoming the condemnation of the Law, Jesus gives a gift of grace that ignores what punishment the blind man–or the rest of us–deserve for our sin.
Christ gives the man a Word more powerful than the Law. It is a Word of promise, a good news or gospel word, that overcomes the condemnation of the Law. “Go over there to that spot you can’t see, to the pool, and wash the mud from your eyes.”
If I’d been the blind man, I’m afraid I would have argued with Jesus. “Are you out of your mind? What kind of a nut goes rubbing mud on a blind man’s eyes, then tells him to feel his way to a pool of water he can’t see in order to wash it off? What good will that do?”
These are similar to the questions we’re inclined to throw at God and at Christians when told that God saves us in the waters of Holy Baptism or that the bread and the wine of Holy Communion are also Christ’s body and blood. How can good things like forgiveness, new life, and the very presence of God come to us through water, bread, and wine, through ordinary stuff? They can happen because God’s Gospel Word of promise come to us through them!
Amazingly, the blind man heeds this word from Jesus to go to the pool at Siloam and when he splashes the water on his eyes, not only are his eyes clean, but–sinner though he is–he can see!
Anyone familiar with the promises of God, given in Old Testament times, should have remembered at that moment that God had foretold a Messiah Who would bring a Word that overcomes the condemnation of all who trust in Him.
Our first lesson for today contains one of those promises. God says, “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:16)
To those of us bound by sin and unable to free ourselves, laid low by life, afraid that our sins will eternally alienate us from God, Jesus’ gift of sight to the blind man is a Word of promise to us all: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
Friends, the God we know in Jesus hasn’t given up on us even when we’ve given up on ourselves.
Even when we think we’re hopeless cases, beyond the reach of God’s gracious love, beyond the reach of His forgiveness.
As long as we are on this earth, Jesus, through His Church, will keep speaking His saving Word of forgiveness, life, and promise to us.
This isn’t a Word we need to go looking for.
We needn’t wonder what we must do to merit it or earn it.
This Word comes to us in the Bible and the Word proclaimed and taught and shared and heard.
It is as close as the water in the Baptismal font and as near as the bread and the wine on the Lord’s Table.
Some of Jesus’ fellow Judeans and their religious leaders, as our Gospel lesson tells us, didn’t see Jesus as the One bringing the promised Word that overcomes sin and death. All they saw was an itinerant preacher from Nazareth who violated the Third Commandment–”Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy”--by working on the Sabbath: mixing His saliva with some dirt.
When the once-blind man insists that only someone from God–a prophet, at the very least–could have performed the unprecedented miracle of giving sight to eyes blinded from birth, he gets excommunicated. He’s no longer considered part of God’s people, no longer allowed to worship at the synagogue or make offerings at the temple.
Back when some of us got thrown out of a Lutheran church body for standing for what we believed to be right and true and of God, we got letters from our former bishops. Mine said that I was no longer considered a pastor, no longer able to preside over the Sacraments, no longer able to preach in the church body of which I’d been a pastor for nearly thirty years. (They didn’t know that I was already on the roster of the North American Lutheran Church.) A colleague who got a similar letter remarked, “I’ve been thrown out of better places.”
Maybe the blind man, thrown out of the people of God had similar sentiments, that he was better off not being part of a group that refused the clear teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures and refused to acknowledge a mighty work of God when even a blind man could see it for what it was!
After the man’s excommunication, Jesus approaches him and asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (John 9:35)
This was no idle question on Jesus’ part.
Seven centuries before His birth at Bethlehem, God the Son, Jesus the Messiah, appeared in a vision to the prophet Daniel. “In my vision at night,” Daniel writes in the Old Testament book that bears his name, “I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days [that is, He approached God the Father] and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14)
“Son of Man” was among Jesus’ most common names for Himself.
In our lesson, Jesus is asking the formerly blind man if he believes in the Son of Man.
His mind, will, and heart laid open by the Word of God that already gave him sight, the man asks Jesus, “Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
When Jesus tells him, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you,” John says, “The man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.” (John 9:36-38)
It didn’t matter if his parents rejected him as they did in a part of John 9 we didn’t read this morning.
It didn’t matter that the synagogue had thrown him out.
It didn’t really matter if this man was sighted or blind.
That’s because the man now knew he had life with God, that he was made right with God–justified before God–by grace through faith in Jesus.
Jesus had spoken His gracious Word, a Word more powerful than the Law, and by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, he believed and so had life with God that would never be taken from him.
The Lord, Who would be crucified to bear our sins and raised to give us eternity with God, the One Who has authority, glory, and power, had spoken His forgiving Word to this once-blind man and he knew he would live in Jesus’ kingdom forever!
In today’s Gospel lesson, friends, Jesus is speaking this same Word to you!
We are saved by grace through faith in Christ.
And “faith,” the apostle Paul says famously, “comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Romans 10:17)
The greatest miracle in today’s Gospel lesson then isn’t Jesus giving the blind man sight.
The greatest miracle happens when Jesus tells the once blind man that He is the Son of Man, the Savior of sinners, and the blind man, by Christ’s Word, believed.
The Gospel Word about Jesus gives us faith in Christ and sets us free from the condemnation of the Law that we all deserve!
My seminary professor and mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, told us about a man who approached him in a state of some agitation after a service at which Pastor Schein preached. “All you did was retell the Gospel lesson!” the man complained. It was as if the man wanted something more than or different from Jesus. He wanted to hear something like five ways to become a better person or, how to be nice. (It seems that many people today would prefer to belong to the church of nice rather than the Church of Christ.) “All you did was retell the Gospel lesson!” the man said. To which Pastor Schein replied, “Exactly.”
Listen, friends, the only Word we have or need is the story of the God Who came to rescue you and me from sin, death, and darkness in Jesus Christ, the Savior Who died on a cross for you and rose from the dead for you. It’s a Word to which we need not and must not add or subtract.
By the power of that Word, the once blind man trusted the Savior Who forgives sinners and gives everlasting life with God to all who believe.
By His Gospel Word, Jesus saves sinners even today to live with God forever!
By the power of His Word, you can repent for sin and trust in Him again today.
When the Word about the crucified and risen Jesus gives you faith in Jesus, you have eternal life with God. No matter what! Amen
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