KNOWING
LESS AND SEEING MORE
John 9:1-41
A sermon
preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
A
few years ago, Shirl Jennings, went into surgery in an
You
see, what Shirl was facing was that after the surgery – when he had his first
visit with the physician in charge – there would be a television camera crew
present. Because this surgery could
radically change Shirl’s life. After
being blind for nearly 50 years, Shirl was going to undergo laser surgery that
the doctors believed would restore Shirl’s sight – sight that he lost at the
age of 3 because of a serious case of meningitis. The camera crew was going to be there when
the doctor first took the bandages off Shirl’s eye, 24 hours after the surgery.
Can
you imagine what it would be like to hear a doctor tell you that surgery could
give you the ability to see – after 50 years of blindness?
When
the doctor took the bandages off Shirl’s eyes, there was clapping, and his
fiancée, Barbara, called out his name.
But when Shirl turned towards her voice, all he could see was a cascade
of red – her hair. He could not make out
her face. When he looked out the window,
all he could see “were great fearful blocks,” as he later described it. All of that light hurt his eyes.
Shirl’s ability to see did not get much better when
he returned home: “I could see yet I couldn’t see,” he writes. “Waking up in the morning I would open my
eyes and quickly shut them. It took all
my will power just to get up and go to work.”
Shirl
Jennings eventually saw the world-famous neurologist, Oliver Sacks, who
explained what was wrong: “Your eyes are fine,” he told Shirl. “The problem is that…the part of your brain
that processes sight doesn’t know what to do with what your eyes are taking
in.”[1] Shirl’s problem was not with his eyes, but
with his brain. And only by re-training
his brain would he be able to really see.
John
9 tells the story of Jesus’ healing of a blind man. Unlike Shirl, this man has been blind from
birth. And unlike Shirl, this blind man
has no problem seeing after he is healed by Jesus. But in a story that manages to be both comical
and poignant, nearly everyone else other than the blind man has
difficulties with seeing. The problem is
not with their eyes – but with their brains, hearts, and faith. When it comes to Jesus’ words and actions,
they are blind because they cannot process what they are seeing.
Consider
the disciples. They see the blind man –
but they really don’t see him. What they
see is not a man but a puzzle, fodder for their theological debates. “Rabbi,” they ask Jesus, “Who sinned, this
man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Who can we blame here?” the disciples ask Jesus.
In
typical fashion, when given just two alternatives Jesus opts for a third one
that no one else has thought of. Instead
of answering a general philosophical question, Jesus talks about what God wants
to do in this blind man’s life: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he
was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” And then Jesus proves his point by making mud
to cover the blind man’s closed eyes and sending him off to wash his eyes in a
nearby pool.
How
often are we blind like the disciples?
Instead of seeing a three-dimensional person in front of us, we see one-dimensional
evidence for our philosophies and political agendas. We see a youth on a skateboard on the church
parking lot and talk about “all of the unruly teens” these days. Or, we see a foreign looking man and talk
about all of the illegal immigrants flooding our country.
How many times in the face of human suffering do we
turn most our attention and energy to the question of who is to blame rather
than to the question of “what does God want to happen here?” Do we see as poorly as the disciples here in
John 9? If so, the problem is not with our
eyes; the problem is how we process with our minds and hearts what our eyes are
seeing.
Second, consider the healed man’s neighbors. Every indication is that this blind man is a
grown man, so that the neighbors would have watched him grow up. They would have passed by him standing beside
the road and begging for money for years and years. They passed by him, but did not really see
him. Because after this man is healed,
they are not sure who he is.
The scene turns comical. The crowd is arguing back and forth as to whether
this healed man is the blind man who used to stand beside the road and beg. All the while, the healed man, the man they
are talking about and arguing about is standing right in front of them. Finally, the healed man says with obvious
frustration: “I AM THE MAN.”
How often are we blind like the neighbors? How many people are there in our lives –
people down the street or the janitors in our schools, people in the cubicle
down the hall at work or behind the counter at the WaWa where we stop every
morning – who we pass by without really noticing them? If something changed about them – would we
see it, or would we be blind to it because they are not really on our radar?
When it comes to seeing the blind man, the difference
between Jesus and the neighbors is not that Jesus can see a smaller line of
print on the eye chart at the doctor’s office.
No, what separates Jesus from the neighbors is how he processes in his
mind and heart what his eyes see. The
difference is that Jesus does not pass by the blind man without noticing him. Instead, he pays attention to the blind
man. Jesus sees him.
Third, there are the Pharisees and religious leaders. They are the most blind of them all – because
they think that they have everything figured out. First, they argue that the man could not have
been born blind. But the parents prove
them wrong.
Then, the religious leaders argue that Jesus must be
a sinner because he heals on the Sabbath.
But the healed man’s simple logic shoots down this argument: “If this
man were not from God, he could do nothing,” the blind man points out. And yet, “I was blind [but] now I see.” What do people with all of the answers do when
someone points out that those answers cannot hold water? They get angry and reject the messenger
bearing an unwanted message: “You were
born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” they sputter. And then the religious leaders drive the
healed man out. Poor guy. “[He] is excommunicated. And he never asked to be healed in the first
place!”[2]
The religious leaders know so much that they are as
blind as a bat. They know that
this man was not born blind. But they
are wrong. They know that Jesus
did not really heal this blind man. But
they are wrong. They know that Jesus
is nothing special; in fact, he must be a sinner. But they are wrong every step of the way. They are blind. But once again, the problem is not with their
eyes. It is with how they process what
they see.
There is no one quite as blind as a religious
know-it-all. Because when you have all
of the answers, there is no reason to ask the questions or learn from anyone
else. And there is no one quite as
dangerous as the one who thinks they know enough to give answers for
God. Remember that the next time you
hear a politician talking about God’s will, or a religious figure assessing who
is to blame after a tragedy happens.
When you hear that, know that you are hearing the blind trying to lead
the blind.
But blindness is not just the sin of the powerful and
arrogant. It is also our sin. Like the religious leaders, we are blind to
our own failures and shortcomings; blind to what God is doing in our life and
the life of the world.
What is the answer for our blindness? What hope do we have?
The religious leaders stumble upon the answer at the
end of this passage, although it is not clear whether they comprehend the
answer. Some of the Pharisees ask Jesus
a question: “Surely we are not blind are we?”
Are they open to be told, “yes, you are blind,” or are they just
expecting Jesus to tell them, “No, of course not!”
It is not clear.
But Jesus’ response to their question could not be clearer: “If you were blind, you would not have
sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’
your sin remains.”
What is our answer? Do we claim to have all of the answers or do
we acknowledge that when it comes to the marvelous presence of God, there is a
lot we don’t know? Do we acknowledge our
blindness? Because the only cure for our
blindness is to acknowledge it and let Jesus heal us.
And heal it he will, if we let him. Because Jesus will not pass by us without
stopping, any more than he passed by the blind man in John 9 without
stopping. Jesus is the Light of
the World. He has come to bring sight to
the blind, every one of us. He has come
to bring light to the darkness, our darkness.
“Seeing is believing,” we often say. Based on that logic, we think that if only
God would do a miracle that all could see, then it would be easier for all to
believe. But that is not the way it
works. Look at this story here: a blind
man is given his sight, but all it leads to is questions and quarrels. There is no joy or celebration.[3]
It is not “seeing is believing.” Instead, it is just the opposite: believing
is seeing. With belief, with faith, we
can start seeing and understanding so much that is going on in life. We can start seeing what has been present all
along: God at work.
But we will not necessarily see and understand all at
once. Notice the progression that takes
place here with the healed man. At
first, he doesn’t even know what Jesus looks like. Remember: Jesus sent him to wash his eyes in
the pool and then Jesus walked away before the man regained his sight. Then the healed man considers Jesus to be
only a prophet, and nothing more. However,
by the end of the story, the healed man has come to know Jesus as the Son of
Man, as his Lord and Savior, and the light of the world.
Shirl Jennings really struggled after his surgery. And with that struggle came a faith
crisis. He thought everything would
change instantly with that surgery, but in some ways it only got harder. And, in the turmoil, he lost sight of that
which had given him strength in his blindness: his faith.
He writes, “Sight has come back to me slowly. Big things are easiest for me to
process….Little details escape me. But
I’m learning to take in the world piece by piece, like putting together a
puzzle. And like a puzzle, it will take
time to complete. …What really matters is I can sense God again….[God’s] in the
light and the colors just as he was in the darkness. That’s all I really need to see.”[4]
Are we ready for Jesus to touch our eyes today so
that we can see who he is? Though
spiritual insight may not come to us all at once, when we are able to see Christ
as Lord, as the Light of the World, we will be able to sense God’s presence and
see God’s power at work – no matter how dark it is.
And in the end, that is all we really need to see.