An Awkward Walk Down the Street

The Bible says:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” James 1:22

Now in the time that Jesus lived, the Rabbis had come to the conclusion that when the Messiah came, he would be known by performing certain miracles. One of those was the healing of a Jewish leper. After all, the law records detailed instructions for what someone was to do if they had been healed of leprosy -- but since the law was recorded, not a single Jewish leper had had the opportunity to make use of those special laws. So the Rabbis had concluded that the Messiah would change all that -- that he would be able to heal a leper. And, sure enough, Jesus heals a leper in Luke chapter 5.

But another of the miracles expected of the Messiah was to heal a man born blind. This was partly based on an understanding of Isaiah 35:5 “then will the eyes of the blind be opened.” Over the years, blind people had recovered their sight occasionally, and the Rabbis were convinced that Isaiah’s prophecy was uniquely Messianic, so they reached the conclusion that while anyone empowered by God could heal someone who had gone blind, only the Messiah could heal a man born blind. We see this reflected in the discussion that takes place after the fact (verse 32): “Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.” A bit later, we’ll come back to the implications of this.

Today, we are going to have another glimpse of Jesus -- this one from the book of John. And it starts one day when Jesus and his disciples were visiting the temple in Jerusalem. At the end of chapter eight, we discover that Jesus had caused great offence among some of the religious people of the day, and they were intent on punishing him as a blasphemer. And the Bible says that he slipped away from the temple grounds. But on his way out (and this is where chapter nine begins) Jesus and his disciples walked past a beggar. Asking for money, there, just outside the temple, was a blind man. Now the Bible doesn’t explain how they knew, but the disciples seemed to know that this man was born blind. Maybe he had a sign: “born blind – please help.” Perhaps he made his history known in the hopes of receiving more charity. We don’t know.

Now when we’re exposed to suffering, it is only human to ask “why?” Have you ever asked God “why me?” When one’s life falls apart, it is the most natural question to ask! We want to know, don’t we? But here the disciples are asking the similar, compassionate question: instead of “why me?” they are asking “why him?” Why was this man born blind? This will be the first of a number of questions that we will ask this morning. Why was this man born blind?

Like most people that ask good questions, the disciples started searching for what the answer to their question might be. One of them wondered out loud, “Is he blind because he sinned?” Now it would seem a little strange if the man was being punished in such a severe manner for sins committed before he was even born! But imagine for a moment how the blind man feels as the disciples are offering up these ideas in front of him. After all, he’s blind, not deaf!  He’s been poor, and blind, and suffering for many years. And these strangers add insult to injury by suggesting that his suffering is his own fault! He likely knows that he isn’t perfect, but he also senses that their answer just isn’t right.

Another one of the disciples, perhaps sensing the difficulty in this position, had an alternative idea: perhaps the man was born blind because of the sins of his parents. Of course, this idea also has some difficulties. It seems strange to be punished for someone else’s sin!

But we should be grateful that the Bible doesn’t just leave us with the disciples’ ideas about why this man was born blind. Even those closest to Jesus can have crazy ideas sometimes. Even those who walk with him daily can interpret life in mixed up ways -- particularly when it comes to interpreting the events in other people’s lives! But I’m glad that the Bible records Jesus’ response to the question “why?” in order to set his disciples straight. And this is it (this is so great!): “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” What an awesome answer to a difficult question: “… so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

This morning, I’d like to suggest to you that this is the reason for whatever difficulties that you might be going through, too. I’ll grant that I don’t know the details; I haven’t walked in your shoes; I can’t and I won’t claim to understand how difficult life might be for you. But I am still going to be so bold as to claim that the reason for any difficulties you might be going through or even any difficulties you might go through in the future is precisely “so that the work of God might be displayed in your life!” God is the master of bringing victory out of tragedy. God wants to work in your life too.

Now that doesn’t mean that we will achieve victory in all matters. Sure, the blind man in our story is eventually healed (should I have given a spoiler warning?), but by the end of the chapter he has also been kicked out of the synagogue and even his parents don’t want to talk to him. The form that God wants His work to be displayed in our lives might very well surprise us. But just knowing that God wants to work in our lives can be incredibly empowering!

In 1946, the psychiatrist Victor Frankl published a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. He had been an inmate in German concentration camps, including Auschwitz, during the war. And while he was there, he observed weak and sickly men survive years of punishing hardship, but he also observed strong, healthy men enter the camp, only to shrivel up and die in a very short time. And the book he wrote was his answer to the fascinating question: what gives human beings the inner strength to struggle on even in the face of the worst life has to offer? His answer (it is in the title)? Meaning. After talking to many of the survivors, he concluded that those who believed that there was purpose in their experience were not only able to survive, but to enjoy life’s blessings (little though they may be) along the way.

“This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” Here, almost two thousand years ahead of his time, Jesus is giving meaning to all we will ever go through.

And these aren’t just empty words, either -- they aren’t just to make us feel better as life’s tragedies overwhelm us -- Jesus proves his words in his actions. What did he do? He spat on the dusty trail. He bent down, and made some mud out of the dust there on the ground, and put the mud on the blind man’s eyes. Then, he told the blind man to get up and to go down the street, past the market, beyond the synagogue, and then wash the mud off in the pool of Siloam. And in our text, we read these remarkable words, almost hidden near the end of verse seven: “So the man went and washed and came home seeing.”

Talk about understatement! If Hollywood were to produce this story, that half-verse would be done in slow motion accompanied by spectacular music. Here was a man who had never seen light. He had never seen color. He had never seen clouds, or birds flying overhead. He had never seen what it was that he was touching. He had never seen a smile! And now… now a whole new world was open to him! But the light that suddenly flooded into this man’s eyes, amazing as it was, is just a symbol of the Light of the World that needs to come and illuminate every aspect of our lives.

For now, we have a man born blind obeying Jesus and being healed of blindness. But let’s back up a bit and consider the process. How did the blind man get to the pool in the first place? Or to put it another way, “Why did this man do what he was told?” After all, there was no promise of healing in our story; Jesus doesn’t say “go wash and you will be healed.” He just says “go wash.”

It reminds us of the story of the great catch of fish, doesn’t it? The disciples had been fishing all night, and they had caught nothing. Jesus arrives and tells them “throw your nets on the other side of the boat”. Jesus doesn’t tell them what the result will be. He doesn’t promise them any reward. He doesn’t assure them of the future. He just says “throw”, and they can either ignore his words, be content with the life that they are living -- as shallow and unfulfilling as it is -- or they can follow him into a whole new world of amazing.

Same with the blind man in our story. He can sit where he is, unable to see for himself, satisfied with eking out an existence by the charity of others, or he can listen to Jesus, and have his eyes open to a life that he never imagined. Same with us. God has his ways of whispering to each one here this morning. Are we satisfied with the status quo? Are we willing to struggle against the inertia of gravity? Are we willing to exert ourselves in obedience?

In our case, we might like to have it all explained to us in detail. That’s how we’ve been brought up, after all. We want to know what it all means and how it all works. We want to have the future laid out for us. But the blind man wasn’t given that, was he? He was simply told “get up and go”. And he got up and went. And that’s after Jesus’ disciples made him feel uncomfortable. Do Jesus’ followers ever make you feel uncomfortable? He got up and went. And that’s after Jesus makes him look really odd by applying mud made of spit -- ew! -- to his eyes. Do you ever worry that obeying Jesus will make you look odd? He got up and went. And I’m sure that he was ever grateful that he did.

You know, one of the biggest gifts that we as a church could ever give to our young people would be to connect them with people who’ve come to the end of their long obedience to Jesus. I’ve talked to enough of them to tell you what they’d say. If you asked them, “Was it sometimes difficult?” They’d likely tell you, “yes!” If you asked them, “Was it sometimes uncomfortable?” They’d usually tell you, “yes!”. But if you asked them, “Was it worth it?” They would certainly tell you, “absolutely!”. That’s what life is like when God displays his work in people’s lives. He doesn’t take all the challenges away. But when you get to know him, the road of life is just so much more enjoyable.

But we’re not finished asking questions about our story this morning. I’ve got a couple more in store. What do you think: Did Jesus need the mud to heal the blind man? Of course not. Did Jesus need the pool of Siloam to effect the healing of this man’s eyes? Of course not! So why?! Why on earth would Jesus submit this poor handicapped man to such indignity? First, why the mud? Second, why the long walk?

In 2004, archaeologists found the ruins of the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem. It was about six hundred meters away from the temple. That’s five minutes of walking very quickly. When you can see to navigate through the crowds. And the route to take seems to be the major thoroughfare in Jerusalem. Think Leicester Square in London or Times Square in New York. It would have been teeming with people throughout the day. And it is through this crowd that Jesus asks this blind man to walk.

Now back in those days, the man would not have had a white stick to warn people that he was blind. Very likely, he would have been escorted to his begging spot by a family member in the morning, and escorted home at night. It might very well be the case that he has never walked any distance on his own -- particularly not through a hot and largely unsympathetic crowd. After all, people can often tell that a man is blind by looking at his eyes. But how do you imagine they respond to someone walking around with mud on their eyes? That’s just weird.

And six hundred meters is about the distance across Lake Wallace at Frontier Lodge. There, every summer, dozens of campers take up the challenge to swim across that lake for the prestige of wearing the coveted white gimp. It isn’t easy. Not everyone makes it. It can take a young swimmer almost twenty-five minutes of really pushing themselves to make it that far. I suspect that this blind man was considering giving up along the way almost as many times as some of those campers.

So again, “why?!” Well, I strongly suspect that Jesus didn’t ask the blind man to go through this obstacle course for him at all. I think that Jesus did this for us! That’s right: the blind man didn’t need the mud or the hike to the pool to be healed.  But we need to see them, we need to meditate on them, and to understand them.  Jesus was giving us a “living parable” – he was creating an illustration for us.

You see: everyone who has ever heard the words of Jesus -- including you, because you’ve heard his words this morning -- are like the blind man in the story. And every one of us are trying to work out just how much we need to be paying attention.

Some might decide not to bother -- you know, to ignore those words -- even though we know that when God displays his work in our lives, it will change us forever and for the better. Those people would be like a blind man who says “just give me money and leave me alone”. And for sure: some seem set on self-destruction, or at very least seem totally allergic to self-improvement. Perhaps the majority of humanity is like that. What a shame! God only wants the best for you. And while he knows that the path there might be uncomfortable, what’s waiting at the end of that long obedience is always worth it.

Others would be more aware of their need to be whole, and would get up and head down the hill to the pool. But on the way, they’d have to navigate their way through the market, where they would heard people making fun of them (and who likes to be made fun of?) they might feel -- just like the blind man -- that walking around on a hot day with mud covering your eyes and dripping off your face was crazy to begin with. And, embarrassed, they might take cover, clean themselves off, and decide to call it a day. The next day, of course, they would find themselves right back where they were today: begging for money at the temple, in spite of the fact that they had encountered the source of life and health himself. What a mistake. What a tragedy.

Others would get farther, they might make it as far as the bridge before the pool. But at that point, being blind and all, they might stumble and fall, or perhaps even worse, stub their toe. There is nothing like physical pain to make one re-think where one is going. And if they were anything like me, pain would make them really angry -- and that doesn’t help one think clearly, either. But at that stage, they’d be sorely tempted to decide that the whole thing really wasn’t worth the effort. Hey -- they can always go back to begging, right? They might be blind, but at least they are alive, right?

Finally, some -- perhaps not very many -- would make it as far as the pool. And not knowing at all what to expect -- after all, a man born blind has no idea what it is to see -- he might wash in the pool and… have a whole new world open up before him.

That’s what Jesus wants for you. Perhaps not today, perhaps not this week, perhaps not this year. But he is in the business of having God display His work in people’s lives. But here’s the thing. That’s only going to happen at the end of an obedience -- and for some people perhaps a long one.

But there is more to this story, isn’t there? Sure, the gospel writer gives us, “So the man went and washed and came home seeing.” But that was only in verse seven, and the story continues through to verse 41. If the expression is any indication, this big dramatic healing was no big deal. For the rest of the chapter, we see this man, formerly blind, now able to see, attempt to explain to the religious authorities how it must have been God who had done this miracle in his life. On their part, they’re skeptical. After all, Jesus didn’t operate in a manner that they approve of. He rarely does, actually. The displays of God’s work in the world are as often a surprise to the most religious as they are to the least.

But check out verse 35: ‘Jesus heard that they had thrown [the man who had been blind] out [of the synagogue], and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36 “Who is he, sir?” the man asked.’ “who is he?” That means that this man didn’t even recognize Jesus. He certainly didn’t know him very well. But that becomes the climax of the story, doesn’t it? In verse 38, we read: “Then the man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.” But as part of this living parable, Jesus wants us to appreciate that so much of God’s work can happen in our lives long before we get to know Jesus personally. But it is in that moment, when we come to recognize Jesus as our Lord and as our Savior, that we find the greatest fulfillment possible.

Now you might not feel that you know Jesus very well this morning. No matter. You might not feel like you’ve heard his words of instructions very clearly. Well, in that case, let me remind you of his words of instruction to the disciples -- words that he’d like you to consider for yourself: he simply says, “follow me.” That’s it: “follow me.” Now you might not know how seriously to take them. But I’ve got to tell you: nobody who has gone the distance has ever been disappointed. You might not know now what is at the end of that journey. But if you are brave enough, and smart enough, and diligent enough to follow him right to the end, then, and only then, will you discover the work of God displayed in your life. And like the blind man, it will open up a whole new world for you, too.