John 9.1-14.
Previously I wrote about
The story begins with a lesson, ’cause Jesus’s students see the blind guy and make the typical human assumption: He’s blind
John 9.1-3 KWL - 1 Passing by, Jesus saw a person, blind from birth.
- 2 His students questioned him, saying, “Rabbi, between this man or his parents,
- who sinned so he’d be born blind?
- 3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents.
- He was born blind so God’s works could be revealed through him.”
Um… if you set fire to a building so you can rescue people from the burning building, you’re not a hero; you’re an arsonist. Likewise if God creates evil so he can save us from this evil, he’s not good; he’s evil. Don’t go there.
I’m sure determinists mean well, but their beliefs really mangle
And yeah, sometimes blindness is the result of those natural consequences. Sometimes a man is born blind because his parents did sin. Sometimes a woman later goes blind because of her own sins. Jesus’s kids knew this, so it wasn’t totally invalid for them to presume sin was the root cause of this man’s circumstances. But neither is it the only possibility. Sometimes accidents happen;
In this specific person’s situation, he was blind because God was gonna do stuff through his blindness. Talk to certain blind people, and they’ll tell you their blindness was an unexpected blessing. Because they can’t see, they have to depend on their other senses. (Usually this is described as “all your other senses get sharper,” but they don’t just do this on their own; they get sharper because you pay more attention to them.) As a result they feel things others don’t notice, hear things we overlook, smell and taste what we take for granted, and are much better at
And that’s what you’ll see later: This blind guy realized who Jesus is. Much better than the other folks in this chapter. His mind was sharper than theirs. Which of course it would be; without his eyes, he had to use his mind to observe his world. His blindness was preparation for God’s revelation.
Don’t miss Jesus’s comment,
John 9.4-5 KWL - 4 While it’s day, we have to work the works of my Sender:
- Night comes, when no one can work.
- 5 Whenever I’m in the world, I’m the world’s light.”
And no, Jesus wasn’t talking about how it would be “night” once
Curing the man.
When people make
John 9.6-7 KWL - 6 Saying this, Jesus spat on the ground and made mud of the spit.
- He smeared the man on his eyes with the mud.
- 7 Jesus told him, “Go wash in the Šiloakh pool.” (Šiloakh is translated “sent.”)
- So the blind man went away, washed, and came back seeing.
Our culture finds this a little nasty, ’cause spit. Remember, Jesus’s culture saw saliva differently; as something you clean or cure with. Ordinary mud would probably have a little manure in it; spit-mud would certainly be cleaner than that. So Jesus put some of this concoction on the guy and told him to wash it off in the public pool.
Šiloakh was the end point of an aqueduct, connecting the Gikhon spring through Hezekiah’s tunnel.
So in between all these priests making temple stuff ritually clean, this guy washed himself. And he could see.
I remember a preacher who once commented Jesus—
Medical science makes it possible to cure some people who’ve been born blind. Give ’em eye transplants, or radically correct their vision. Trouble is, if such people are used to being blind, it takes a lot of getting used to. Oliver Sacks, in his book
So the man’s life was radically changed in one way… and not so much in many of the others. Not yet. He didn’t have any other trade he could just leap into. He still needed to eat. So, back he went to begging.
Which always reminds me of this bit from
- BEGGAR. “…Half a sheqel for an old ex-leper?”
- BRIAN. “Did you say ex-leper?”
- BEGGAR. “That’s right sir; 16 years behind the bell and proud of it, sir.”
- BRIAN. “Well what happened?”
- BEGGAR. “I was cured, sir.”
- BRIAN. “Cured?”
- BEGGAR. “Yes sir; a bloody miracle sir.” [holding out hand for money] “God bless you?”
- BRIAN. “Who cured you?”
- BEGGAR. “Jesus did, sir! I was hopping along, minding my own business; all of a sudden up he comes, cures me. One minute I’m a leper with a trade; next minute my livelihood’s gone, not so much as a by-your-leave. ‘You’re cured, mate.’ Bloody do-gooder.”
- BRIAN. “Well, why don’t you go and tell him that you want to be a leper again?”
- BEGGAR. “Ah, I could do that sir, yeah. Yeah I could do that, I suppose. What I was thinking was, I was gonna ask him if he could make me a bit lame on one leg during the middle of the week. Y’know, something beggable, but not leprosy. Which is a pain in the arse, to be blunt, excuse my French sir. But uh…”
- MANDY. “Brian! Come and clean your room out.”
- BRIAN. [drops a coin] “There you are.”
- BEGGAR. [bows] “Thank you sir, thanks…” [outraged] “Half a denarii for me bloody life story?”
- BRIAN. “There’s no pleasing some people.”
- BEGGAR. “That’s just what Jesus said, sir!”
Half a sheqel is half a denarii, but the Pythons were going for comedy, not historical accuracy.
“Who cured you?”
Anyway the neighbors immediately noticed the difference. Maybe before he was cured, his eyes were covered, or shut, or something. Now his eyes were open. He was using ’em. Probably staring at everything which passed by, getting used to the idea of functional eyesight. But still begging, of course.
John 9.8-12 KWL - 8 So the neighbors, seeing the man was begging as usual,
- said, “Isn’t this the usual man who sits and begs here?”
- 9 Others said “That’s him”; yet others said “No, but he’s like him.”
- This man said, “I’m him,” 10 so they told him, “How are your eyes open?”
- 11 This man replied, “A person called Jesus made mud, smeared my eyes,
- and told me, ‘Go to Shiloakh and wash.’ So, going and washing, I received sight!”
- 12 They told him, “Where is that Jesus?” He said, “I don’t know.”
And here’s where the story turns dark.
John 9.13-14 KWL - 13 They brought the formerly-blind man to Pharisees:
- 14 The day Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes, was Sabbath.
’Cause you know
One commentator I read, pointed out we shouldn’t presume the neighbors expected to agitate the Pharisees. Something miraculous clearly happened, and they wanted some feedback from their religious leadership. Happens all the time to me: Some current event with religious implications takes place, and since I’m a scholar, people ask me what I think of it. ’Cause they don’t know what to think of it… or they do, but wanna see what I think, either to confirm themselves, correct themselves, or judge me. This man’s neighbors might’ve known the Pharisees viewed Jesus as controversial; or they might not have, because Jesus after all did teach in Pharisee synagogues.
But Pharisee views about Sabbath customs, which they considered absolute, meant they were ironically gonna be blind to who Jesus is. As you’ll see as we go through the chapter.