As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. -John 9:1
The LORD your God has undertaken this day to sound into your ears that which concerns your eyes, both your physical eyes with the iris, cornea, rods, optic nerve and all that is needed to capture through vision all that is brought to light outside of your being, for without light you might as well be blind . . .
. . . And then your spiritual eyes, the eyes of faith, which look not to what is seen, but what is unseen and preached into your ears, namely the Gospel of your LORD Jesus Christ through Whom you are saved from sin and death, to be preserved together with your eyes and ears, reason and senses – your whole being - both now and at the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day.
What the LORD God has sounded into your ears this day is a cast of characters and a set of themes that is, to say the least, wide in compass. As far as characters go, there are the disciples, the blind man, the blind man’s parents, the crowds, the parents, the pharisees, and Christ Jesus, all of whom have a say.
As far as themes go there are blindness, poverty, misplaced judgments, ridicule, fear, joy, and most peculiar of all, a procedure no ophthalmologist today would dare to undertake: making a paste out of his own spit and rubbing it onto the eyes of a patient who is blind from birth.
This whole episode in John Chapter Nine is written so that your eyes would ever be looking to the LORD, who plucks your feet out of the net; so that you may seek one thing, that you may dwell in the House of the LORD all the days of your life. And here you are.
What do your eyes see? They see a baptismal font. They see an altar. They see preachers – vested preachers - so that you do not consider their person but consider Christ Jesus Who has called and ordained them to act in His stead and by His Command.
Your eyes see the bread of the Holy Communion, as small as it is. They see the wine of the Holy Communion, as simple and dark as it is. In seeing these things your eyes see Christ Jesus, Who laid down His life for you and took it up again, and now makes a way for His risen body and life to be imparted to you in a bodily way, so that you are joined to Him and may call upon Him in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.
But that is not all your eyes see. For you inherited a blindness from Adam that is worse than that of a man born blind and begging, a blindness that can only lead to an eternal death and an eternal grave where there is no hope or comfort, but only everlasting pain and a regret of indescribable magnitude.
Your eyes may be open, but they also are inclined to take what they see and turn it into an object of worship that is neither meet, right, nor salutary. I am talking about your tendency by nature to worship the creation rather than the Creator.
Think about all the things you’ve seen just in the past week. How much of it has caused you to give thanks to God for His creation? The fact is, very little, if any. How much, instead, did you want more of and worry about what you see? The fact is, very much, if not everything. Your flesh says, “I want it all, and I want it now.”
To dig a little deeper, when was the last time you gave thanks to God for the set of eyes He gave you? Are they not magnificent? Are they not a most precious instrument to take in the blessings and beauty your Father in heaven has placed before you in every way?
And yet you with your eyeballs want more stuff and worry about the stuff you have more than you give thanks for what you already have. I say again that kind of blindness is worse than that of a man born blind, and the poverty it brings is worse than a lack of earthly goods.
But here’s the thing: The LORD God, your Father in Heaven, sought you out with His eyes; the eyes of His mercy. You see it even here as He looks upon this blind beggar. If there is one thing you must see and hear; if there is one thing that sums up the whole of John Chapter Nine, it is that the LORD God has had mercy upon you and saved you apart from any merit or worthiness on your part.
There is absolutely no indication in this text that the blind man saw Jesus coming, or even heard Him coming. He does not cry out for help. “As He passed by He saw a man blind from birth.” He sees you who were blind from birth, too. Blind to His law. Blind to His presence. Blind to His mercies.
Instead gaping about and making judgments about others, like the disciples did – even His own disciples – who said, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” It had to be one or the other, right? The correlation between a major flaw in physical condition and sin must be direct, right?
And when Jesus says, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents,” your proud reason jumps up and says, how can this be, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, so both this man and his parent had to have sinned.”
But that is not the point. Your LORD Jesus Christ, Who created all things and sustains all things, created this man born blind for the precise purpose of showing you that God does not deal with you and His creation the way you think. In so doing, He has made you His child, who walks in the light and does not chase after what your eyes see.
Instead, by baptizing you into His Name and by feeding you with His body and blood He has given you eyes of faith to know and believe the mercies of God are hidden under the Cross of this one Who would use His own spit and the dust of the earth, together with His word on the Sabbath as the One Who fulfills the Sabbath, to give eyesight to a man who in no way could help Himself.
There is a lot of wrangling that goes on in this text. The disciples get it wrong. The pharisees get it wrong. The blind man’s parents who fear getting kicked out of the synagogue get it wrong. The crowds cannot figure out whether the same man who now can see is the one who used to sit by the wayside begging. But the text makes clear Who is right, namely your Christ Jesus, Who together with the Father and the Holy Spirit must work the works of Him who sent Christ Jesus as long as it is day.
This He has done and this He is doing. Working the works. By the mystery of His holy incarnation; by His holy nativity; by His baptism, fasting, and temptation; by His agony and bloody sweat; by His Cross and passion; by His precious death and burial; by His glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, He is saving you while it is day, giving you His life this day so that you may walk in it with the eyes of faith wide open, as with daily contrition and repentance you navigate all He has laid before you in the way of good works.
The poverty that was yours in blindness - a poverty that would run away from God or seek to please Him with your own good works – that poverty your LORD Jesus Christ has replaced with the riches of His mercies toward you while you were yet dead in sin, so that the works of God might be displayed in you, and they are; in frailty and weakness, to be sure, in the midst of death, to be sure, with fear and trembling, to be sure, but the works of God nevertheless He works for you and in you, hidden under the Cross, which is His greatest work and glory for you, His own dear Child.
I said at the beginning that there are many characters and many themes in John Chapter Nine, perhaps the longest of any Gospel readings we are given throughout the years, but there is one thing about this text that is especially peculiar, and that is how Jesus uses His own spit and the dust of the earth to make a clay which He then applies to the blind man’s eyes. Can you think of any other time in the Gospels when such a specific means is used in healing the sick or raising the dead? I cannot, but I am willing to stand corrected.
What about this spit? What about this dirt? This clay, this anointing, and this washing that opens the eyes of a man who never in his life has been able to see? It is not that Jesus has some kind of magic spit, or that the dirt was of a special composition meant to be used in an eye-opening concoction. You know, the crowds make a big deal out of how Jesus did it. The man who received his sight did not hesitate to say it clearly: “He applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I see.”
Beloved in the LORD, this is simply how it had to be in this case where “since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.” The ordinary means of clay and washing at the command of Christ Jesus accomplish the extraordinary purpose of bringing a blind man not just clear vision to see the creation physically, but to be joined by the eyes of faith to Christ Jesus, who is greater than the synagogue.
Likewise, the ordinary means of Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, and the preaching of the Holy Gospel under the apostolic ministry of your LORD Jesus Christ accomplish the extraordinary purpose of delivering you from all evil, and keeping you safe within the body of Christ Jesus.
And so it is: The fair beauty of the LORD you may now behold. To seek Him in His temple you may now do, for He has redeemed you, a lost and condemned person, and placed you into His own body and house, a body and house that is crucified, dead, and buried on the one hand for the forgiveness of all your sin, and a body and house that is risen and ascended on the other hand, so that you may live in His innocence, righteousness, and blessedness forever and ever.
