To Truly See

Searching in the cupboard

Have you ever had that experience where you want to find the scissors in the drawer full of randoms things. You have a good look. You even look twice before concluding that someone must have taken them. Except that someone else comes along. Opens the same drawer, and pulls out the scissors almost straight away.

What? Surely it can’t be.

We sometimes call this a ‘boy’ look, with the implication being you didn’t look hard enough.

Sometimes that might be accurate. Sometimes it is because we weren’t really paying attention when we looked.

But sometimes, I think something else happens.

Sometimes it’s about the assumptions we make. Now, I’m kind of talking about assumptions on a more subconscious level. You see a bunch of shapes, but you gloss over the object you’re looking for because for some reason your brain has dismissed it.

Sometimes we can’t see because we struggle to make sense of all of the complexity.

Religion can be like this.

Religion can be full of symbols and rules. You engage with religion and all you see are the symbols and rules.

We miss what it’s all about.

Last week, I looked at the statement Jesus made when he said “I am the light of the world”.

There was an invitation in it to become a disciple of Jesus - to follow him wherever that leads, even when it means to pick up your cross and follow him.

For believers, we can get excited by this. Even when we recognise it can be hard, there can be something about the thrill of seeking after something bigger than we are.

But, here’s the thing… in the excitement to actually want to follow Jesus we get somewhat lost as we try to understand what this means.

Following Jesus can sometimes become like looking for the hidden object that is right in front of us because we’re too distracted by everything else.

As we come to the ninth chapter of John’s gospel, we’re going to find a Jewish leaders that I believe genuinely want to honour God, but have allowed their religion to obscure the truth that is directly in front of them.

So let’s look at this now...

The man born blind

The chapter starts with the words, “as he went along”, which makes it vague enough that we don’t really know how much time has elapsed since the previous chapter.

The previous episode had seen Jesus travel down to Jerusalem for the Festival of Tabernacles. We know that Jesus is still in Jerusalem, so we are probably a short time after this festival.

Jesus walking through the city with his disciples - and one thing I love to observe is the way that Jesus would be in this constant dialogue with his disciples, teaching them a new perspective.

And on this occasion, we see the disciples ask a quite important question after observing a man who had been blind since birth.

The question is going to be about the relationship between sin and suffering.

Now, this is a huge topic, and this passage isn’t predominantly about exploring this specific issue. Rather, we’re going to see how this issue is one of those religious rabbit holes we can go down which takes our eyes off what is important.

A wrong conclusion

Let me show you… you see, we start with the category of sin. Sin is bad, obviously. Sin causes bad things to happen. Without sin in the world, there would be no suffering.

Okay, so I suspect we could all agree to those statements. So when you see someone suffering, it doesn’t take too much to ask the question what sin did they do to deserve this.

I actually think it’s not too different to looking in the drawer for the hidden thing, and because we didn’t see what we expected to see, it remained hidden.

Now, when Jesus answers there question about why this man was born blind, his intention was not to give a detailed explanation of the relationship between sin and suffering, but rather telling them that their attempt to try and understand it in their limited categories means they are missing the bigger picture, in this case, that God is about to be glorified.

A better framing

In verse 3 Jesus says: “Neither this man nor his parent sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Now, it can be tempting just to add this to our categories in trying to understand suffering. That is, we suffer because we either sinned, or because God is about to be glorified. This is to misunderstand what Jesus is saying here. The problem is, when we keep adding all of these categories to try to help us comprehend everything, we’re making it harder and harder to see.

Jesus goes on to say in verse 4, “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me.”

You know, I think sometimes when we stop trying to make everything we see fit into our nice neat little boxes, and instead just say, I want to follow Jesus and do his work, we start to get our perspective in the right place.

Now, when Jesus goes on to say that night is coming and no work can be done, I’d suggest this is perhaps that time after Jesus ascends to heaven and before the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. You see, while we might live in the time following the ascension of Jesus into heaven, that light is still available to us because of the Holy Spirit.

Our job is to work towards that light - not just stare at it, but do the works, and in the process, things take a new perspective.

The miracle

But let’s keep following the narrative because we now come to the miracle itself.

The dialogue so far has been between Jesus and the disciples. Presumably he has some sort of interaction with the blind man, because he is about to rub some mud in the man’s eyes.

Now it is always interesting looking at the different ways in which Jesus performs miracles. Sometimes the miracle happens at the word of Jesus. Sometimes Jesus says a prayer. Sometimes he requires some action on the part of the one being healed. Sometimes he does some actions to accompany the miracle.

The point is, Jesus is not bound by any method to make the miracle happen. He does whatever it is he feels is appropriate in that moment.

In this moment, he decided to spit in the dirt to make some mud. Why did he think that was the most appropriate thing to do in this moment? Well, it’s not very clear. Some suggest the spit which would normally defile is being re-created using the dust, the matter in which humanity was said to have come from.

Does that make any sense? You know what… I don’t really know. Sometimes I think we just have to accept that Jesus does what he does for his own reasons and we just need to accept it.

Well, Jesus rubs this mud on this man’s eyes, and then tells him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam.

This pool is located just on the outside of the city gates. It was thought to be the place where people could have a ceremonial washing before entering the city.

But I want to suggest that it’s more than just some ritual that Jesus is making him do. Because the fact that the narrative tells us that Siloam means sent, it’s safe to assume that this is significant.

So why is it significant? Because Jesus is the sent one. This man is therefore sent by the sent one, to the place called sent. It’s following the path of Jesus. Things happen when we are sent by Jesus and follow through. We’re not specifically told how he managed to get to the pool called sent, but he does. And when he comes back he can see.

Investigation

Well, interestingly, Jesus is absent from the narrative until verse 35, although he is certainly the focus of the discussions that take place.

You see, we get two different groups trying to figure out what is going on. The first is a bunch of neighbours who have a somewhat innocent sounding discussion. The second is much more serious, being an investigation by the Pharisees.

As we look at these two groups, I want to think about how sight is sometimes obscured. What should be plain and clear, is anything but.

The neighbours

So let’s start with the neighbours which we meet in verse 8.

These are the people that are familiar with the man who was formerly blind. They passed him on a daily basis begging on the street.

For them, the miracle should be obvious.

But here’s the thing with sight… when things don’t make sense, we question it.

Sometimes we say - show me, and I’ll believe.

The reality is, sometimes we are shown, but we still don’t believe.

Look at verse 9… some of the neighbours rationalise, this must be someone who just looks like him.

I have no trouble believing that some people would come to this conclusion. Any time things don’t fit the narrative we believe, we’ll reject anything that is counter to it, even if plain sight tells us otherwise.

Even when the man goes on to explain what Jesus had done, they still want more proof.

Jesus is the light, yet our pre-conceived ideas can get in the way of truly seeing that light.

The Pharisees

But this little interchange gives way to a much more significant interrogation. This man who was once blind is now taken to the Pharisees.

Now in some ways, the Pharisees is in interesting choice. You see, the Sanhedrin were effectively the religious court system for the Jews, or the scribes were effectively the lawyers for the Jews. But it was the Pharisees that held a lot more sway in the local synagogues, and so they are sought out for opinion on this matter.

It’s at this point in the narrative that we’re told that the healing took place on the Sabbath.

Now, you might recall that it was only a few weeks ago when we looked at the miracle that happened in chapter 5, were a lame man had sat by the pool of Bethseda for 38 years, but it was half way through the story that we found out that the day Jesus healed him also happened to be the Sabbath.

Well, similar to chapter 5, this chapter is not going to give us a full explanation of the role of the Sabbath, rather, we’re going to see this as another further reason why plain sight is obscured.

Remember before I talked about the disciples simple connection of sin and suffering as being a means by which they did not simply see, well, here we find another theological truth getting in the way.

You see, the Sabbath is a real command. It was something God gave as a command through the prophet Moses. It explicitly forbade any work to be done on the seventh day of the week, because it was on the seventh day that God rested from his creation.

So, the logic goes, if Jesus broke this command that came directly from God, than quite clearly he can’t be from God. It certainly seems to make sense.

They asked the man born blind. His testimony is clear and consistent.

You open the drawer to find the scissors. There right in front of you, but it’s not looking as you expect, so you don’t see it.

They don’t believe him.

They call his parents. Maybe this will clear things up. It doesn’t. Well, it does on one level. They do confirm that it is their son and that he was born blind, but they don’t want to draw any conclusions because they know if they side with Jesus, they will be kicked out of the synagogue.

In fact, right there we see another reason we struggle to see. We actually do see, but we don’t like the consequences of what we see, so we choose not to acknowledge it.

But let me keep going, because the man born blind is about to have round 2 with the Pharisees.

In verse 24, it tells us that for a second time he is summoned to them.

“Give glory to God by telling the truth” they say to him.

On one level, you might think that is a reasonable thing to ask. Of course we want to give glory to God by telling the truth.

Except, what they are really saying is that they want their version of the truth. Because they go on to say the truth they are expecting. That is, that they believe the only correct conclusion is that Jesus must be a sinner.

I love the way this man responds. In fact, the more this story goes on, the more you start to really respect this guy.

Just look in verse 25… he’s not going to get caught up in there interpretation of events. He doesn’t really care about the finer analysis of the whole thing. There is one thing he does know. He was blind but now he sees.

It’s that simple.

But this just angers the Pharisees. They keep questioning him.

But this man recognises that they are arguing against what is plainly before them. He even gets a little sassy, putting in a little dig of his own - “[What], do you want to become his disciples too?”

These Pharisees then start doing what many people do when arguments go bad. They start hurling insults. It’s an absolute terrible way to argue, but if you make yourself feel superior to the other person… actually this is just another method in which we become blind to what is plainly before us in clear sight.

The man born blind can see clearly. Look at his clear conclusion in verses 32 and 33, a conclusion that really should have been clear for everyone… “Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blond. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing”.

At this they give one last insult: “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.

Jesus and the man

But that’s not the end of the story...

Jesus finds this man after he had been thrown out. Jesus says: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

Now, just to be clear, in the context of this question, the word ‘believe’ it does not just mean believe in the existence of… it means about putting your trust in the Son of Man.

The man born blind has already made the logical conclusion, but we’re now moving to the next level. “Who is he, sir?”

Jesus identifies himself.

Verse 38, we get the beautiful conclusion: “‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshipped him”.

There’s a simplicity to this. By simple, I’m actually not saying that it is simple in the sense that we can understand everything and how it all fits together. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s simple, because we can accept, actually, I don’t understand, but I can trust that Jesus has got it.

Jesus replies: “For judgement I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind”.

Things flip around in very unexpected ways.

Some Pharisees hear Jesus say this, and somewhat offended ask: “What? Are we blind too?”

You see, the problem is, sometimes the more someone knows, the more they think they understand everything. And the more they think they have it sorted, the more they become blind. Because as we’ve seen throughout this story, there are so many things that get in the way and start obscuring our view.

Application

So how do we really see? I mean, not just say the right words, but actually follow Jesus as the light of the world.

I think this chapter shows that we need to humble ourselves. The thing about the man born blind, was that he had no pretensions about himself. He wasn’t tied to any pre-concieved ideas.

It’s not that we reject the truths we’ve been told. All the truths I’ve spoken about today are still truths. That is, sin is bad and results in bad things. The Sabbath day is important. But we have to be careful not to extrapolate and form conclusions that were never meant to be made.

Now, this can all get tricky, because the conclusion of this message is not to just check your brain at the door and accept everything you see. Sometimes, things are not what they seem. We do need to be careful and test everything. But when we test things, and if it clear Jesus is leading in a certain direction, just follow him.

For the skeptic, this has obvious implication. It might not be religious ideas getting in the way, but rather modern ideas that try to reject God. We don’t see the power of God because it doesn’t fit our narrative of this world. If this is you, can I ask you to put aside these notions for a moment, and just look at Jesus, and ask, do you see the light?

But for the believer, this story has big implications for us as well. You see, like the Pharisees, we start to think we understand God. We start justifying our actions, even when the reality is, we’re actually justifying our greed. We justify treating people terribly, because we argue that we’re right, and they are wrong.

We’re meant to be the ones that see, but actually, we’ve lost the love of Jesus. We’ve lost the fruit of the Spirit that has been given us. We don’t see Jesus, the light of the world, despite him being right in front of us.

Conclusion

Do you see clearly?

Some things can be right in front of us, but because we put so many barriers up in front of us, we just don’t see.

Those barriers might be truths that have been extrapolated to form bad conclusions. They might be forming bad conclusions because the truth before us is different to our narrative of the world. It might even being scared of the consequences if that truth is actually correct.

The world is complex, and yet, when we look at Jesus, something changes. When he takes up the focus, the path forward becomes clear.

Jesus truly is the light of the world, and this light is available to you now.

Let me pray...