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Jesus says, “For judgment I came into this world that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.” You may be seated in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dear Saints, it was such a rich, long gospel reading. I don’t know quite what to do. I told Jonathan this morning that I think there’s eight sermons here in this text, and he said, “Oh, that’s fine, two minutes each.” I told the vicar, “I think there’s eight sermons,” and he said, “Oh, that’s fine, one minute each.” At least I think he thought it, that’s what he was. But I don’t think we can cover it all, but maybe just a couple of highlights before we want to hone in on the two riddles that Jesus gives at the end of the text, where he says, “For judgment I’ve come into the world that the seeing would be blind and the blind would see.” And then he has another riddle right after that, because the Pharisees say, “Are we blind?” and he says, “Well, if you were blind, you wouldn’t have guilt, but because you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” We definitely want to understand those texts. But let’s pick up a couple of things on the way.
The first, if you can notice, that the text opens with this question: Who sinned so that this man would be blind? There’s an inclination in our own sinful flesh, for all of us, it’s for the disciples, it’s for the Pharisees, it’s for everyone, to try to connect moral evil and natural evil. Or, when something bad happens, it’s because someone did something wrong. And so here’s a man who was born blind. Obviously, someone sinned so that it happened. Was it him or was it his parents? And Jesus says, “Don’t connect those dots. This did not happen because of the man’s sin. It happened so that the glory of God can be revealed.”
Now, what’s quite amazing is that when we get to the end of the text, the disciples say to this man, “You were born in utter sin,” and they missed the whole point. That’s where we’re headed. But this is also true for us. You know, something bad happens to us; one of the ways to tell if your conscience is troubling you is that if something bad happens to you, you immediately think it’s God punishing you because of your sin. If you get three red lights in a row, and then you remember that thing you said to that person that you shouldn’t have, you know you have a troubled conscience. The Lord does not connect the bad things that happen to particular sins. The prophets do, but we don’t. But we understand that we’re always to be repentant and that everything bad reminds us also to repent.
The second thing we don’t want to pass by without noticing is the mud. Jesus says, he said it in chapter 8, “I am the light of the world.” He says it again here in chapter 9, “I am the light of the world.” There’s hardly a more majestic thing that Jesus says; there’s seven of these statements in the Gospel of John. Remember, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” “I am the Good Shepherd.” “I am the vine; you are the branches.” “I am the door.” He has these great magnificent, universally true statements, and this is one of the most glorious of all. Jesus says, “I am the light of the world,” the light that no darkness can overcome. He’s the light come into the world.
And then what does the light of the world do? Spits on the ground. I just, it’s just a surprise. All week I was thinking about what an amazing thing to do. Right after Jesus says, “I’m the light of the world,” he leans over and he spits. And he makes mud, and he puts mud on this man’s eyes and tells him to go to Siloam, to the pool, and wash it off. Now, we can just ask, well, why does Jesus do it this way? Why does Jesus use mud that he made with his own spit to heal the man?
Let’s remember that Jesus, whenever he heals someone, he almost does it different every single time because that’s just what he does. He never does the same thing twice. He’s always surprising us. But then let’s also remember this: that Jesus uses stuff to bless. He created the world. He doesn’t hate the world, and he uses physical things to bring spiritual blessings. We had it last week, a couple of weeks ago, when the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness was healing the people from their snake bites, and we have it even into the New Testament as well. I mean, Jesus uses water to wash away our sins with his word in baptism, and he puts his body and his blood with bread and wine for us to eat and drink.
There’s a way that we think, well, no, it’s not spiritual enough; this little bread or this little sip of wine or this mud that Jesus makes, surely that’s not spiritual mud. But when the mud is combined with the Word, it’s a true washing away of blindness. So the Lord uses physical things. There’s a lot of people in the church today that say that if it’s physical it can’t be gospel. And we just see from the text, from all the texts, that that just can’t be true.
The other thing I think is really interesting that we don’t want to miss is that this blind man’s, or as the text calls him, the man who was formerly blind, how his faith is growing. And to see how his faith is growing. If you look, can you look with me at verse 25?
So, this is Jesus, the blind man; he has this sort of argument with the people in the street, so they bring him to the Pharisees, and they’re not sure it’s not a scam, so they bring his parents in, and then they don’t want to talk because they know they might be excommunicated, so the blind man comes back in, and they say, verse 24, “Give glory to God. We know this man, Jesus, is a sinner,” that’s the Pharisees’ accusation, and then look at what the blind man says in verse 25. He answered, “Whether he’s a sinner, I don’t know. One thing I do know: I was blind, but now I see,” quoting the hymn Amazing Grace, right? I don’t know if he’s a sinner or not. But look at what he says at the end of this, after he’s been in front of the Pharisees, and they’re drilling him, and they’re trying to get him to curse Jesus and blaspheme. As he’s facing all of this oppression, his faith actually strengthens.
His faith in who Jesus is strengthens. It’s in verse 31, where the man says, “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the beginning of the world has it been heard that a man born blind was healed.” So that at the beginning of the interview, the man says, “Well, I don’t know if he’s a sinner or not; I just know that I can see.” But now at the end, he says he can’t be a sinner. He must not be a sinner because he’s healed me. He’s delivered me. He’s rescued me. God’s listened to him and used him to answer my prayer.
Now, this is important for us to consider that the man’s conviction is made stronger through opposition. The man’s faith is strengthened through the trial of all these accusations. I am—I’ll just speak for myself—I’m nervous sometimes to speak the name of Jesus and the Word of God when I know that it will cause trouble, that people will push back. Not with you all; you love to hear the Word of God. But you know, with people who don’t believe it, with people who are unbelievers or have different doctrines, it’s slow to speak it because I think I’ll have to suffer grief from it. But look at how the Holy Spirit strengthens this man’s faith through the opposition of it.
It’s important for us to know that we are not authorized to be afraid to speak the name of Jesus. We’re not authorized to be silent when a testimony is called for, that we speak the name of Jesus, even if it does cause trouble, and know that that trouble the Lord uses to strengthen our faith. Pretty amazing.
Now we get to the riddles. So the man is kicked out of the synagogue for trusting in Christ; he’s excommunicated, and Jesus hears about it. In fact, it says that—this is a little detail—it’s verse 35, Jesus heard that they had cast him out. That word got around that he was excommunicated, and Jesus was paying attention to that. He cares about you. He’s paying attention to how it’s going with you. It’s amazing. So Jesus hears that he was excommunicated, and he goes and he finds them and he says, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” And the man says, “Well, who is he?” And he says, “You’ve seen him; it’s me.” And he says, “Lord, I believe,” and he falls down and worships him, like we do. He worships Jesus.
And then Jesus gives these two riddles. And there’s Pharisees listening to it. So the first riddle is great. He says, “For judgment I’ve come into the world so that those who see will be blind and those who are blind will see.” And the Pharisees have a hint that Jesus is digging at him but doesn’t think it’s going to stick, and so he kind of sarcastically responds, “Are we then blind?” And Jesus gives the second riddle: “If you were blind, then you wouldn’t have guilt, but because you say we see, your guilt remains.”
Now, what is going on? What does all this mean? Jesus is holding before us and the Holy Spirit, through the Apostle John in the reading, is holding before us two pictures: the picture of the blind man who trusts in Christ and the picture of the seeing man who doesn’t trust in Christ. And the question is, which one of them truly sees?
The blind man has more sight than the Pharisees, who probably can see 20-20. The blind man can see more clearly than these religious authorities who are completely blind. To see, then, is to know who Jesus is and to know what He’s done. And the Pharisees simply cannot see it; they’re blind to it. But they don’t even see their own blindness. So that, you know, he says, “Are we then blind?” And Jesus says, “Well, if you would only admit it. If you could only admit that you were blind, then you would begin to see. But because you cannot admit it, you can’t see it.”
The way to sight is to admit that you are blind, just like the way to wisdom is to admit that you are a fool, or what we are much more familiar with, the way to righteousness is to admit that you are a sinner. The way to health is to acknowledge your sickness. Remember how Jesus says it to the Pharisees? “The one who is well doesn’t need a doctor, only the one who is sick.”
So that repentance begins with contrition. Sight begins with knowing your own blindness. The Pharisees were blinded by their own self-righteousness. They could see the speck in their neighbor’s eye with extreme accuracy, but they missed the plank that was in their own. It was, I was thinking about this between the services. I had forgotten about this story. My family one time went on vacation to Yellowstone, and my mom had gotten a new camera for the trip that had some fancy zoom lens on it. And so mom was there taking pictures of some buffalo, and she zoomed way in on this buffalo and she’s talking to us and says, “You won’t believe how close this buffalo looks,” while the buffalo was getting right in front of her. And we were all backing away. And she put down the camera, and wham, I jumped backwards because it was like 10 feet in front of her.
This is the Pharisee problem. You zoom in so much on your neighbor’s sin that you miss the big picture. They had zoomed in so far on Jesus spitting on the ground. Did you know that the rabbis had rules about where you could spit on the Sabbath day? This is a real thing. And one of their rules was you could spit on a rock if you wanted to, but you could not spit on the dirt because if you spit on the dirt, you might be watering a plant. I’m not, that’s a real deal, that’s the Pharisee thing. So that they see that Jesus, where did he spit? Oh, he spit on the ground, he made mud; that’s breaking the Sabbath. They were so zoomed in on that sin, they were so zoomed in on that made up transgression that they couldn’t see that the Son of God was here in the flesh delivering this man born blind. They totally missed it, they totally missed it.
If they would have only admitted that they were blind, then they would be guiltless and innocent. The Bible calls Christians enlightened. We confess it in the catechism: The Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts. You are the enlightened ones. That means you have gone from darkness to light, from spiritually blind to spiritual sight. And that sight consists in two things. Number one, that you see your own sin—not the sin of your neighbor, you see your own sin. You know your own guilt, and you know the wrath of God that you deserve. And then, more importantly, number two, you see that Christ is the Son of God who came to save sinners. You see that when this man, 33 years old, so many hundreds of years ago, was nailed to the cross to die in darkness, you see that all of your sin and all of your guilt and all of your shame and all of your breaking of the commandments and everything that you’ve done wrong, all of your regrets, and all of it is on Him, and that He is suffering in your place so that God can look at you and smile, so that God can delight in you and forgive you your sins and cover you with the robe of his righteousness.
This is the sight that the Lord gives us through the Word and the Spirit, and this is what it means to be enlightened. There’s an old theme that runs all through the Scriptures and it runs through the writings of Luther. Although I’ve never seen anybody writing on it or talking about it, I’ve just been noticing it in my own study, Luther likes to talk about seeing the world through the eyes of Jesus. Here’s an example. Do you remember when Jesus was called to the house of the man whose daughter had died? And they’re all mourning and weeping and playing the flutes and crying, and Jesus walks in and Jesus looks at the little girl and he says, “Oh, she’s not dead, she’s asleep.” You remember what they did? They laughed, they laughed at Jesus.
“Jesus, what are you looking at? We have eyes, we can see! We see this girl; we know that her heart’s not beating, that she’s not breathing. We know what dead is. We can see with our own eyes that she’s dead, Jesus. You’re wrong! The things—whatever you’re looking at is wrong!” But it turns out Jesus was right. “Tabitha, Coombe, little girl, stand up!” and she wakes up from the dead. Jesus was right. He saw things right. And God, the Holy Spirit, wants to work this in us that we would see things through the eyes of Jesus.
Oh, if you could see yourself through those eyes. I don’t know what you see when you look in the mirror, but if you could see what Jesus sees when he looks at you, how he sees you holy and perfect and without spot or blemish or any such thing, He sees you radiant and glorious.
Oh, if you could see, how about this? If you could see your neighbor like Jesus sees your neighbor. Or if you could see the person who cut you off in the highway, like Jesus sees them. Or you could see the person who hates you, like Jesus sees them. Or the person who’s your enemy, like Jesus sees them. Or the whole world as Jesus sees it. This is the eyes of Christ; this is what it means to see. This is why Jesus came for judgment so those who think they see would be blind, but those who know they are blind would see. See ourselves, see our neighbors, see our Savior, all with opened eyes, and faith to believe.
So may God grant it. May God grant us His Holy Spirit so that we would be the enlightened ones. So that with this blind man we would see our own sin and, most of all, our Savior Jesus Christ. May God grant it for Christ’s sake. Amen.
In the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.