Many years ago I was vacationing in Cripple Creek, Colorado and decided to take a tour of the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine. Our group climbed into a miner’s cage, quickly descended 1,000 feet below the surface, and we were about halfway through our tour. And then the lights went out.
Immediately there were sounds of surprise, a few cries of fear or even panic. We were 1,000 feet underground in a maze of tunnels and shafts carved out of solid rock and we were engulfed in total … complete … absolute … darkness. It was so dark that you couldn’t see your hand even if you held it right before your eyes. Within a couple of seconds our guide turned on a small miner’s lamp attached to his helmet. It wasn’t very bright, but at least we could see something. He said that a summer storm had probably knocked out the power up on the surface, and that the emergency generators should kick in at any second. They did, and the lights glowed back to life. The darkness was gone.
I think that this brief moment at the bottom of the Molly Kathleen Gold Mine is as close as I have ever come to having the least bit of understanding for what it must be like to be blind. I’ve worn eyeglasses since I was a child, and I sometimes joke that I’m almost blind without them. But even without my glasses I still have sight. I can see lights and shapes and colors. If I hold a page close to my face, I can still read the words on that page. I’m not really blind. Not even close.
Today’s Gospel lesson describes the time that Jesus met a man who not only was blind, but had been blind since birth. I don’t think any of us can fully understand what that would be like. Never seeing colors. Never seeing shapes. Never seeing words. Never seeing the face of a loved one. Never even seeing the light.
What makes this account even more heart-wrenching is the understanding that 2,000 years ago, there was absolutely no help for someone who was blind. No Braille system that allows blind people the ability to read and write, nor any audio books to listen to on a CD or MP3 player. No trained guide dogs and no canes like those that blind people use today to feel their way as they walk. No social agencies that work with the blind to help them live independently and hold down meaningful employment. Two thousand years ago, the only way that a blind person could walk from one place to another was by being led there by another person – a person with sight. Two thousand years ago, the only way that a blind person could earn any money was to beg for it. St. John writes that this was a man who used to sit and beg, and that’s probably what he was doing when Jesus first saw him. His life and his very livelihood depended entirely on the kindness and mercy of others.
And then – one day – one Sabbath day, to be specific – the God of all mercies and all creation walked by and noticed him. Took pity on him. And healed him.
It’s interesting that when Jesus first saw the blind man, the disciples who were with Jesus didn’t show the slightest bit of compassion for him. Instead, they wanted to lay a guilt trip on someone. The Jews believed that whenever something bad happened to someone, it represented a direct divine retribution by Almighty God. They ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Now before we start shaking our heads and thinking that disciples are just a bunch of insensitive dolts, let’s do a reality check – because we often think that way, too. You know what I mean – we all pretty much think that sooner or later, people get what they deserve. We have a catch-phrase for it today: you do the crime and you pay the time. At one time or another probably every one of us has tried to connect specific sins with specific punishments – either our sins and punishments or those of others.
Please understand this: our actions and sins do have consequences. And there were, indeed, times in both the Old and New Testaments when God did specifically punish people for specific sins. In a world that has been totally corrupted by sin, Jesus never rejected a connection between sin and suffering – but He doesn’t allow us the wisdom, the knowledge or even the reason to make those judgments with our sinful and woefully imperfect human minds. Something else is taking place here. In fact, He quickly corrected the disciples and said: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” He is telling them to stop all of this hurtful and pointless nonsense and watch – and see with their own eyes – what God is doing here.
Here’s how John describes what they saw: “He spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.” For the first time in his life, this man could see – could see everything with perfect 20/20 eyesight.
This might have been the end of the story here at verse 7, but John’s account actually continues for 34 more verses. The man was taken to the Pharisees and subjected to an intense interrogation about what Jesus had done. As was true of the disciples in the early verses of this account, the Pharisees don’t really care about this man – they don’t care that he had been blind from birth – in fact, they really don’t care that his sight had been restored and he could now live a perfectly good life.
All they cared about was the fact that in healing this man’s blindness, Jesus had broken one of their laws. According to their rules and traditions, making mud from saliva and dust was classified as doing work. That would be fine on a regular day, but remember that Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath, when no work was permitted. Anyone who did any kind of work on the Sabbath was declared a sinner. Since Jesus isn’t there, they direct their wrath towards this poor man. After the miserable life that he’d led when he had no sight, now the religious leaders are trying to make him feel miserable because he can see!
Here the story takes a rather unexpected twist. As the Pharisees try to wear the man down, his testimony grows bolder and stronger. The first time he is asked about Jesus, the man’s response is as short as possible. “He put mud on my eyes,” he says, “and I washed, and now I see.” The Pharisees were tremendously intimidating, and the man probably wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
But he is called back a second time. Now his fear seems to have vanished, and he actually contradicts the Pharisees: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, I now see.” When they continue to press him he fights back and sarcastically asks them if they want to become Jesus’ disciples, and now they are even more upset. And this is where the man who had been blind steps up and makes an incredible statement of faith: “The man answered, ‘Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’” What began as a seemingly simple story of a physically blind man being given back his sight is actually the greater story of a man who had been spiritually blind – who prior to that day had no faith in Jesus – but saw the light that is Jesus Christ and was brought to faith.
So what do we learn from today’s Gospel lesson? Jesus himself provides the answer. First, His words again from verse 3: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Then the words of Jesus from verse 5: “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” And finally the final verse of our Gospel lesson: “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”
Because of sin, our hearts, our souls are a thousand times, a million times darker than what I experienced at the bottom of that gold mine – or the darkness of being blind. Job 18:5 says that “the lamp of the wicked is snuffed out; the flame of his fire stops burning.” When Jesus was betrayed in the garden of Gethsemane, He said: “this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” Scripture also tells us that darkness cannot serve to hide our sin. Again from Job: “There is no dark place, no deep shadow, where evildoers can hide.” St. Peter says of sinners that “blackest darkness is reserved for them.” The Pharisees may have had perfectly good eyesight, but they couldn’t see the true light – the Son of God – who was there in their midst. Spiritually they were blind, totally engulfed in the darkness of sin. Total … complete … absolute … darkness.
Only one source of light can cut through the darkness of sin. It is Jesus who says: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” St. Paul writes that Jesus “has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness,” and St. Peter describes Jesus as the one who called us out of darkness “into his marvelous light.” That light can’t fade when the batteries run low and can’t be turned off by a power failure. It can’t be stopped by a thousand feet or ten thousand feet of impenetrable rock. And it can’t be denied to a man or woman who has no physical sight. Instead, it saves. It gives us the light of life. Eternal life. Life won for us on the darkest Friday of history – followed on the third day by the heavenly brilliance of Jesus’ resurrection.
Just as God created the first man out of the dust of the earth, on this day the Son of God – the true light of the world – used the dust of the earth to restore sight to the eyes of this man. The Holy Spirit brought spiritual life to the man who had been spiritually dead in his sins. The Triune God was revealed in all of His power, His might – and His love – to that man who had been blind from birth, opening not just the eyes of his head, but the eyes of his heart and soul. The man who had been blind from birth finally saw the light. And thanks be to God, as believers who have been brought to faith in our Savior through the work of the Holy Spirit, we too have had the eyes of our hearts and souls opened so that we may see that light as well.
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