John 9:1-41; Romans 1:16-32; 2 Kings 19:14-20
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Physical blindness is often used as a metaphor for spiritual blindness in the Holy Scriptures. In today’s Gospel reading we encounter a man who had been physically blind from birth. His entire life had been lived in lonely darkness. He didn’t know what light was, let alone color, or beauty. We are all like that blind man spiritually. Our sin keeps us from seeing the world and others, from seeing God and His word for what they truly are. Apart from the light of God’s Word we call evil good and good evil and we fail to do the things we were created to do, while the evil things we are forbidden to do we do continually. “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” asked the disciples. “Who sinned?” indeed. Our parents sinned, our first parents sinned, and their sin is our sin, not to mention all the sin that we’ve added to it. We came into this world and life spiritually blind, and there is nothing that we or any other man can do to change that. Only the Holy Spirit can open our eyes to see rightly, and He has done precisely that through Holy Baptism and faith.
As Jesus passed by, He saw the man blind from birth. That’s the way it is with us as well. We could not see Jesus, but Jesus saw us in our sinful and spiritually blind state. We could not come to Him, but Jesus came to us. As in the beginning, the Light of His word pierced the darkness of our sin and death and opened our eyes to truly see. You should note that the blind man did not ask Jesus to help him. In fact, the text suggests that the blind man was unaware of Jesus’ presence at all. It was Jesus’ disciples who moved Jesus to act by asking of the man’s blindness, “Who sinned?” Jesus healed the man born blind in response to the disciple’s question. Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” It was not this man’s particular sin, or even his parent’s sin, that caused the man’s blindness, but it was sin – general, hereditary, and pervasive sin – that was at the root, the sin that all humans are conceived and born in, a hereditary sin that is truly our own personal sin as well. Any help to overcome or eradicate sin is going to have to come from outside of us. And that is precisely what happened to the man who was born blind. Help, in the person of Jesus, came to him from outside of him. He couldn’t see Jesus. He likely wasn’t even aware that Jesus was there or could help him. But at the prompting of His disciples, Jesus came to the man who was born blind and He caused him to see for the first time. Jesus forgave the man his sins and released him from the spiritual blindness of sin that leads to death.
But let us wrestle a bit with Jesus’ surprising answer to His disciples’ question, “Who sinned?” “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, [that this man was born blind], but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” You see, it was commonly believed at the time that, if someone was blind or deaf, had leprosy, or any other disease, that the cause of the ailment was sin. Somebody sinned, either the person who was suffering, or someone close to them. Do we not often think that way today? Someone in our family, a neighbor’s family, or in the church has a series of bad things happen to them and we are tempted to blame them, to subtly suggest that they are the cause of their misfortunes, or at the least, they have done something that has brought this seeming curse upon them? To be sure, sin is always at the root of suffering and death, but it isn’t always a particular, personal sin, but the simple, terrible fact of sin in the world and in all of us in a general sort of way, the sin whose wage is always and only death, for every one of us, without exception.
Jesus gives an answer here to the unspoken question that always plagues us, “Why does God permit suffering?” However, the answer Jesus gives is not likely to satisfy our fallen sense of justice and fairness. Jesus answers that God permits suffering in the world, in His people whom He loves and who love Him, so that His “works might be displayed” in the one who suffers.
What are the works of God that are displayed in His people through suffering? When the righteous suffer in faith they give a powerful witness to the hope that is in them to the glory of God. The Christian who suffers in hope gives witness to the righteousness and blessedness of God as did Job when he confessed, “The LORD has given, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” If, perchance, the Lord should grant healing and recovery, that also glorifies the Lord, showing forth His mercy and grace. However, those who suffer in faith and hope also provide an opportunity for others to show mercy and compassion. Sometimes it is a Christian’s purpose to be served by others so that they have the opportunity to be the hands and mouth and heart of God in acts of mercy, love, and compassion. In Christ, God has suffered for all people. In Christ, the suffering of God’s people is sanctified. Christ has suffered for you, and He helps you in your suffering to persevere and endure in faith and hope.
Indeed, Jesus’ healing of the blind man brought Him only grief and suffering at the hands of the Pharisees who accused Him of breaking the Sabbath law by performing a work of healing on the Sabbath. No good deed goes unpunished. The Pharisees were willfully blind to who Jesus was. Even though they knew the Scriptures and the Messianic prophecies and could see for themselves that Jesus was fulfilling them, they closed their eyes to the truth and willfully and intentionally rejected Jesus. They cared nothing for the healing of a blind man, but only that their cold and heartless misreading of the Sabbath law be enforced. Instead of rejoicing with the man who was formerly blind, they cast him out of the synagogue and threatened his parents with the same.
When Jesus heard of this, He replied, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” This somewhat cryptic teaching serves to illumine His teaching that suffering is permitted so that God’s works might be displayed. Jesus Christ is the light of the world, the light no darkness can overcome. The light of Christ shines on all and illumines all, but those who refuse to have their eyes opened but remain in the darkness of sin and death will be exposed for what they are. “Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, ‘Are we also blind?’ Jesus said to them ‘If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”
Jesus taught elsewhere that “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The purpose of God’s Law is that man may fully live by rightly knowing God, receiving good things from Him, and glorifying Him by lives lived in love towards others. The Pharisees had completely inverted the Law of God, enslaving people under it and prohibiting them from receiving and sharing God’s good gifts. Instead of rejoicing that a fellow child of God had been released from blindness and the bondage of sin, they condemned him, and they condemned Jesus who showed him mercy. “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”
It is Christ who gives us eyes to see by faith. We invite the people around us in our lives to come and see Christ where He can be found in His Word. This invitation will often be rejected. It’s not just you They’re really rejecting Jesus. In the light of faith that God gives us, we see our sin. And Jesus forgives it. Jesus is the light of the world. No darkness can overcome Messiah Jesus. He was crucified, but He rose from the dead. We were all born into the darkness of sin. We were all blind at birth, but with the light of faith, we can see, and say together, Lord, I believe.
Almighty Lord and God, protect Your Church and Your Word against all enemies. Preserve Your truth in our hearts and minds. Increase our faith, hope, and love in You and for one another.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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