|
|
About That Mud |
John 9
|
© John Ewing Roberts |
 |
|
|
|
INTRODUCTION How would you do on this true or false test? 1. The blind man asked Jesus to heal him. 2. Jesus healed the blind man because he expressed his faith. 3. When the blind man was healed, the first thing he saw was Jesus. 4. Jesus stayed at the blind man's side to offer him support. All four are false, but I suspect your first instinct was to answer all four as true, because of another familiar story of Jesus and a blind man.[1] I came across a tongue in cheek report of a conversation between these two blind men healed by Jesus and what happened when they met on the street and began to reminisce. They discussed the wonders of sight, the beauty of flowers, butterflies, sunrises, and children's faces. Most of all they remembered seeing the face of Jesus. They were laughing and having a great time until one said, "And do you remember how Jesus took that mud, spit on it, and put in into your eyes?" "Mud, what mud? All he did was simply say, 'Receive your sight,' and I could see." "Wait a minute - you mean he didn't use any mud?" "No" "Well, did he at least have you wash in the pool of Siloam?" "No, of course not - who ever heard of anything as ridiculous as mud in your eye?" "Well, if he didn't put mud in your eye, and if you didn't wash in the pool of Siloam, you are still blind, because that's the way Jesus does it." "Mud! That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of! You're the one whose still blind!" And that is how the first denominations were formed..the mudites and the antimudites.[2] THE BIBLE STORY Our scripture begins when Jesus enters, having just escaped stoning in the temple at the end of John 8. Instead of hustling off to Bethany and the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary and take shelter in a back room with Peter, James and John standing guard out in front of the house, he stops for a very visible and highly risky action. Notice that the blind man does not ask Jesus for healing. He is not like blind Bartimaeus calling out for help in Mark 10: 46 ff. Jesus and the blind man have not been talking; apparently he is not even aware of Jesus. He is just sitting quietly by the road until a stranger sticks mud in his face right after announcing "I am the light of the world."[3] The action does not include what we would normally expect - reactions of the blind man to his first views of the people and the city, or the questions - "What's it like? Did you think I'd look like I do? What did you think when you saw your reflection in the Pool of Siloam? What kind of a job will you get now that you can't be a blind beggar?" The image of Jesus spitting on the ground and putting the resulting mud mask onto the man's eyes is offensive to those of squeamish sensibilities. But let us understand what these materials represent beyond the expectations a blind man would have had of the techniques and tools of miracle workers in antiquity. Water and clay are the stuff of creation in Genesis where creation begins with moisture, with "the face of the deep." The first human is formed from dust.8[4] Jesus is healing with the substance of creation, earth, and with the substance of his body, moisture. He is blending the old creation as the one who fashions the new creation. In a sense, the ingredients of religion are just such a blend of the old and the new in a transformational, healing fashion. But there is much more in the moisture, water, Siloam connection. Each morning during the popular Feast of Tabernacles, a procession of priests went to the Gihon spring, the main water source for Jerusalem, the place where Solomon had been made king, the spring which flows through Hezekiah's tunnel to the pool of Siloam. The priests were making in a festive procession the same journey the blind man made from the Temple to the pool of Siloam. Golden and silver sacred vessels and choral singing of great psalms made the event all the more celebratory. But our blind man apparently is on his own to make the 500 yard journey down to the Pool of Siloam, groping and stumbling in a degrading, embarrassing trip. In spite of the rich theological by-play here, this act ends with the man having no idea where Jesus is, much less who he is. (v. 12) He would not have recognized Jesus if he ran into him on the street. The healing takes two verses; controversy consumes the next thirty-nine. Jesus is absent for the middle three acts of the drama. The nameless man is the focus. There is very little contact between him and Jesus in this long chapter. It is an exception to the other healing, miracle stories in the gospels. Oddly enough, no one seems to know where Jesus is. The onlookers decided to bring the man to the people who always have the answers, the Pharisees. The mood darkens now. With the introduction of the highly respected institution of the Sabbath and with the Pharisees divided, we sense something ominous is brewing. The community is still not sure about Jesus' location and identity. If the man does not know, and if the community does not know, maybe his parents will know something. The scene shifts to them. The parents are clearly uncomfortable with the questions about Jesus and their son. Their standing in the religious community is at stake. To understand the seriousness of possible expulsion from the synagogue (v. 22), we need to remember that John's gospel, the last to be written, comes from that period after the destruction of the Temple and after the death of Jesus, when Jews in general and the followers of Jesus in particular were struggling with issues of community identity. Without the physical presence of the Temple, without the physical presence of Jesus, around what could the people rally? There were sharply different answers to this question in those communities where there were Jews in the Jesus movement. It was an intra-family struggle - think of two adolescents developing, competing, complementing, and groping for individuation. Nothing can be more wonderfully stimulating; nothing can be more painfully challenging. All this background is reflected in Act 3. The transition ending this act shows the parents so unsure that they throw the ball back to their son with the evasive words, "Ask him." (v. 23) They do, and in doing so give us an opportunity to see the emerging boldness as the man puts the leaders on the defensive. Like the stereotypical scene in television detective shows when a character has become weary of repeating the same information for questioning police, the ex-blind man turns impatiently on his Pharisaical interrogators, "I told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you too want to become his disciples?" (v. 27) The section ends with the community unable to get the answers it wants. Their solution is simple - expel the man! Jesus and the man, the two people who are marginalized in this story, form a new community of outcasts, a community of light and vision, a community which has been cast out, a community whose very existence poses a challenge to the continuing one. The chapter ends with lots of unanswered questions. John 10 begins abruptly with another subject. We are not told what happened next to the man who had been blind from birth. Did he stay with Jesus? Did he go home? What did he do the next day? The drama ends with the chilling words, "Your guilt remains." (v. 41) ISSUES And we are left with all sorts of issues. I would like to try to deal briefly with three of them. I. The Problem of Evil "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (v. 2) The disciples raise the problem of evil by asking if the human tragedy of blindness is a matter of individual responsibility or the legacy of the past. Any birth defect can become an occasion for raising such a question, a fact appreciated by my friend, Dr. George Sack, who opens his new textbook on genetics by quoting this very passage, John 9: 2. The Bible in its development gives five answers to the questions of why there is evil abroad in the world. (1) Parents and Grandparents In Exodus 20: 5 it appears that children and grandchildren suffer because of the sins of their parents and grandparents. Sometimes they do, but not always. (2) Permission In Job, evil seems not to be so much the result of parental behavior as a function of God's permissive will, allowing Satan, the Adversary, that which is against us, to work on us. (3) Personal Responsibility In Jeremiah 31: 29ff., we see a different perspective. Nothing is said of Satan. We are back to the mind set of Exodus 20: 5, but it is rejected. No longer will it necessarily hold true that if the fathers eat sour grapes, the teeth of their children will require a good orthodontist. There is individual responsibility, consequences of personal choices, accountability. (4) Random Acts Jesus in Matthew 5: 45 and Luke 13: 1-6 explains that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, the sun shines on the good and the evil. There is a randomness about both good and evil which has nothing necessarily to do with Satan, God's will, our parents and grandparents, or our own behavior. When Jesus is asked about the tower which fell near the same pool of Siloam where the blind man washed the mud off his face, he does not take the bait - he refuses to blame the victims for the accident. Rather he takes this random demonstration of life's fragility as an occasion to call all to repentance. (5) A Time for Transformation There is yet another approach to the problem of evil. It is the highest one, the most challenging one. It calls not for explanations - blaming God or Satan or our families or ourselves or randomness ( or plain old bad luck). It calls for moving beyond inquiry into causation and moving on into glorifying God in spite of everything. This is the message of today's text: "It was not this man, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made clear." (v. 3) This is indeed a hard but high road to take. Some have been able to do it. In the early 1970's there was in this church a wonderful young woman with a husband, several small children and loving parents. Her name was Miriam Burch. When she and her mother, Berta Price, learned that Miriam had terminal cancer, the same kind of cancer which would one day also take Berta's life, they told me in Miriam's room at Hopkins: "This sickness is not unto death but rather for the glory of God..."[5] They understood this week's lesson about undeserved suffering becoming an occasion for the glory of God. Throughout her final illness Miriam never swerved from this position, and to the end of her life she was radiantly transparent to the glory of God. We do not all reach such strong faith. We often ask, "Where is God when it hurts?" The answer is that God is not in the "it," the hurt; he is in you, in your human support, in the community of healing. He is in the possibility of giving Him great glory in spite of everything. II. The Gains and Losses of Discipleship Our text is also a drama about gains and losses. Here's how the gains and losses total up for the blind man: What the Blind Man Gained Sight Faith in Jesus What the Blind Man Lost His profession as a beggar His social role based on blindness The understanding of his confused neighbors The religious stability of his family The passive toleration of his community's leaders In short, he is not welcome at work, home or the synagogue because of a man he had never seen and knew not where to find.[6] We must understand that to be a disciple of Jesus means we will lose much, but gain everything. III. Progression in Coming to Jesus The most important part of our drama is the progressive understanding of who Jesus is, the gradual insight the man receives. For the man born blind Jesus is... 1. "the man" v. 11 2. "a prophet" v. 17 3. almost a master to be followed by a disciple; this is the implication of v. 27, an implied confession with implicit faith, "Do you too want to become his disciples?" as if he were already a disciple of this master4. a man from God, v. 33 5. "Son of man" and "Lord" vv. 35 and 38 Jesus said that unless we become like children, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 18: 3). Whatever he meant by this, he surely meant that like children, we are not to remain as we are but to grow and to develop. Children do not want to stay six years old forever; they want to be seven and then seventeen. Children do not want to stay in the first grade; they want to go to middle school, high school and college. This longing for development toward a mature faith is healthy. We see such a progression in John 9 where at first Jesus is just a man, then a prophet, then a potential master, then a man from God, and finally the Son of man, the Lord. The message of John 9 is that we are to make progress and not be sidetracked by the theological problems we encounter along the way. The theological problems are real, and are to be taken seriously, but they are not to sidetrack us. The problems of evil and the consequences of our decisions, important as they are, are secondary to our developing relation to Jesus. I do not mean to suggest the simplistic affirmation, "Christ is the answer," and to let it go at that. I think John 9's focus on Jesus above potentially distracting but important theological issues has the same message as Matthew 6: 33 - "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well." YOU AND ME John 9 is a drama of the human condition and divine salvation, a presentation on the state of humanity - all of us blind to the power and presence of God until Jesus, the light of the world, shows that God can cure our disorder. The truth is central of the loved hymn, Amazing Grace: "I once was lost, but now am found, 'twas blind but now I see."[7] It remains central to all Christian growth. Another beloved blind/see, darkness/light element of our faith is found in Psalm 23. Christians quickly identified Jesus, who called himself the good shepherd[8] with the shepherd of the 23rd Psalm. However we translate Psalm 23: 4, either "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" (KJV) or "though I walk through the valley of deep darkness" (NRSV), the point is that the Shepherd would be with us. But we do not always sense his presence - sometimes we are like the blind man, stumbling alone toward healing, still blind, knowing Jesus only by his absence. In the tension between the absence of the Healer and the presence of the Shepherd we live our lives, hoping, waiting, trusting, expecting the light, expecting the presence of the Shepherd who supplied our need and the sure provisions of our God. [This sermon is for circulation within the Woodbrook congregation and may not be reproduced without permission.] Notes: [1] Mark 10: 46ff. [2] Homiletics, March-April 1999, Vol. 11, No. 2, p. 24 (Dale Cockrum, citing Stephen McNeil) [3] Jon L. Berquit, Lectionary Homiletics, Vol. VII, No. 4, March 1996, p. 17 [4] Genesis 1: 2; 2: 7 [5] John 11: 4 [6] William Hull, John, The Broadman Commentary, Luke-John, Volume 9 [Nashville: Broadman Press, 1970, p. 301 [7] John Newton, "Amazing Grace," Wesley L. Forbis, editor, Baptist Hymnal [Nashville: Convention Press] 1991), No. 330 [8] John 10: 11 |