Text:  John 9:13-39                                                                                         W Oculi (3^rd Sunday in Lent)

Blind Spots

            In the name of him who is the Light of the World, dear friends in Christ:  It happened as they were leaving the Jerusalem Temple complex that the disciples with Jesus saw a man who had been born blind sitting near one of the Temple gates.  It was a choice spot for such a person to appeal for alms, for it’s well known that those coming or going to worship and to make requests of the Lord are more likely to be generous to beggars making requests of them.  Sincere worshippers give because their hearts are full of compassion, and hypocritical worshippers give either because it makes them look good to the public or to the Lord, whoever it is they’re trying to fool. But anyway, the sight of this blind beggar reminded the disciples of a much-debated theological question that they had long wanted to ask Jesus.  It was this: “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he should be born blind?”

It seemed to be an impossible riddle.  That’s because according to conventional wisdom and the teaching of the religious leaders, it was taken for granted that to be born blind – or with any birth defect for that matter – was obviously a sign of divine disfavor.  The only explanation was that it was punishment for some terrible sin.  That much was a given.  And because the ability to see is considered to be the most important of the senses – the one we’d last want to lose – it was assumed that the sin in this case must have been truly horrendous.  But reasoning forward from that point led to an unsolvable dilemma.  How could a child not yet born commit an offense so serious that such a severe punishment was called for?  But on the other hand, if the sin were something the parents had done, it still didn’t seem fair that their child should have to pay the consequences.  Now, the rabbis in Jesus’ day were pretty well spilt on the answer, some blaming parents, and others blaming children born with defects.  Of course, neither answer really satisfied anyone; which is why the argument went on – and why the disciples asked Jesus to weigh in on it.

In his response, however, Jesus rejected both of the commonly accepted answers.  The problem, he said, was with their original assumption. “You think this man’s blindness is God’s punishment for someone’s sin.  You look at him and see God’s wrath and judgment.  You’re looking for someone to blame.  But that’s all wrong.  This man was born blind so that the great works of God might be shown in his life.” Jesus told his disciples were not looking at the situation correctly.  Their preconceived notions were blocking the truth from their view, creating a sort of blind spot.  Jesus opened their eyes to see the man’s blindness as he did:  as a showcase for the Lord’s mercy and love.  In the Lord’s economy and wisdom the man’s blindness served a good purpose.  As it happens, part of that purpose was fulfilled when Jesus performed a miracle that gave the man his sight, and surely that displayed God’s powerful work of healing and restoration; but we need to see that all his life up to that point the man had been the means for others to show kindness, and patience, and compassion, and hospitality, and charity – all of which displayed God’s grace at work in the lives of his people.  We know too that the man’s blindness was what eventually led him to faith in Christ and to eternal salvation.  There’s no greater purpose than that.  And we know that his story has for two thousand years helped others to see the truth.  And who can say what other good things the Lord accomplished through this man’s blindness? The point is that the Lord wasn’t punishing anyone; from God’s point of view, it was for good.

And all of this would make a worthy topic to explore in a sermon.  I know, because I’ve preached that sermon before.  But for that reason I thought this morning it might be good to change direction a bit and pursue this other idea we’ve touched upon that has to do with blind spots, and how it is that sometimes we erect obstacles that prevent us from seeing God’s truth.  The disciples had done that in the case of the man born blind with a preconceived notion about how physical defects (or suffering of any kind, really) are simply the just desserts of sin handed out by an angry God.  But it turns out that this whole story is filled with people who have other blind spots to truth caused by a number of other obstacles – and many of those, like the wrong-headed notion that blinded the disciples, are still prevalent among people today.  It’s some of these that I’d like to expose.

            But before we begin to examine these blind spots and their causes, it will be helpful to briefly review a deeper meaning that permeates this whole story. As is the case in all of the miracles of Jesus, there’s more going on here than a simple display of his power.  It also serves as an illustration of a fundamental spiritual truth, which in this case is that with respect to the things of God, we are all people who have been born blind.  Because of our inborn sin and the darkness of our hearts and minds, we are unable to see or understand any of the truths of the Gospel.  And so we should see ourselves in this man sitting helplessly waiting for handouts on the outside of the Temple, completely unable to do anything on our own that might improve our situation – unable to find the Lord or come to him.  But, as he did in this story, Jesus came to us in our blindness and he opened our eyes. And just to refresh your memory, this is the story in which Jesus spat on the ground and made mud, and then smeared it in the man’s eyes.  His purpose in doing so was to reveal himself as the Creator who first formed man’s eyes from the dust of the ground.  But if you recall, the blind man was not yet healed at that point.  Jesus told him to go wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. And you have to picture this: from the Temple mount to the pool of Siloam was just about as far as Jesus could have sent him and still kept him in the city.  It was a long walk for a blind man with mud in his eyes, especially considering that water was available any number of places much closer.  For the man it was an act of faith in the Words of Jesus to make that trip.  And when he arrived at the pool, the water, the Words of Jesus, and the man’s faith in his words came together to perform the miracle that allowed him to see for the first time in his life.  I hope that sounds a lot like Baptism to you.  It should, for that’s exactly what’s being illustrated:  how the Lord grants spiritual sight by giving the Holy Spirit in Baptism to enlighten hearts and minds that were formed in darkness and in sin.

            Now, with this overall theme informing our understanding – that is, how we are born blind and need the Lord Jesus to give us his Spirit so that we can see – we can begin to look at other parts of the story for some of the blind spots that I mentioned earlier.  For example, in the Pharisees who interrogate the man who was born blind we can detect a number of blind spots, like the one caused by their extreme legalism.  These were the folks who were obsessed with trying to live righteous and God-pleasing lives by keeping the law in all its details, and who had as a result multiplied and expanded the laws that God gave into a massive and rigid code.  In the process, they lost the loving spirit and purpose of the law.  They exchanged it for cold and lifeless letters.  This was especially true of the Sabbath laws. The Lord had graciously chosen a day for his people to rest and to enjoy his gifts without having to work.  The Pharisees turned it into a meticulous burden of do’s and don’ts that made people miserable all in the name of resting. Now along comes Jesus who violated their rules by spitting, making mud, and smearing it the blind man’s eyes.  It was shocking!  Three blatant cases of forbidden work on the Sabbath:  carrying water, mixing mortar, and placing it by hand. They could also probably get him on a couple of counts of performing medical services, one for each eye.  Oh, and because he told the man to take a long walk and wash himself, he was guilty of two counts of teaching others to break the Sabbath.  This Jesus was obviously a notorious public sinner; therefore it was simply not possible that he could have anything to do with God.  Now, this is how minds blinded by legalism work.  They could not see the goodness or the power of the miracle – or more importantly, the miracle’s implications about who Jesus really was – because their hard and pitiless laws were blocking their view.

            The same kind of blind spots occur today whenever we allow rigid legalism to triumph over the freedom we have in the Gospel.  It happens that whole groups of Christians are sometimes condemned by other groups because according to “our” rules they worship on the wrong day, they eat the wrong sort of food, they permit the drinking of the wrong sorts of drinks, they worship with wrong style of music – or perhaps they accompany it with the wrong kind of instruments.  And incidentally, that cuts both ways.  Some people are scandalized if there’s a guitar in the church, and others are equally horrified that some poor benighted souls still sing traditional hymns to an organ. And these are only a few of the obstacles that can blind us from truth.  And please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying that anything and everything goes.  What I am saying is that we must not allow unbiblical, self-imposed regulations to block our view of who Christ is and what he is doing among us or any other group of Christians.  The focus must always be on him:  on his Words, his truth, his Gospel of salvation, and his Sacraments.  These are the means by which he gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can see and believe in him.

            Now, in the story, not all of the Pharisees were completely blinded by such legalism.  Some of them could see the miracle for what it was:  something good and wonderful.  And so they argued with the others as they struggled to understand what it might mean about Jesus.  At first they thought maybe it was a hoax – that the man wasn’t truly blind at birth and that the event was staged to make it look like a miracle.  That’s why they interrogated his parents.  But after they’d testified, this group of perplexed men was in a terrible logical bind.  What pushed them over the edge, however, so that they could not come to see the truth was yet another obstacle to spiritual vision, and that was their pride. They asked the man for his point of view on the subject.  He told them that it was a no-brainer.  A miracle like this had never happened before.  It was obviously of God.  And since Jesus was the one who had done it, he too was obviously of God; and because people who disobey God can’t expect to get what they pray for, Jesus was clearly doing God’s will.

            Well, that ended the discussion.  Even the Pharisees with some doubts about the matter found themselves unwilling to receive instruction from someone they considered to be so much lower socially, educationally, and morally on the scale of humanity.   Now the simple truth about Jesus was blocked by prejudice and religious and intellectual snobbery.  And at this point, because they were unable to actually deal with his argument, they resorted to insults and threw him out, all the while fuming about the nerve of some people.  And again, the same kind of blindness can affect any of us when we refuse to hear the truth of God’s message because of our own pride or our prejudice against the messenger.  In this life we are all always disciples – that is, people who are learning from Jesus. And he can teach us lessons through any member of his church, if only we are open to hearing it.

            Yet another kind of blind spot shows up in the parents of the man born blind; and this is the one caused by the obstacle of fear.  They know the truth, but are unwilling to confess it for fear of the consequences.  And to a certain degree we can understand their dilemma.  If you think about what was said before, that having a child born blind would have been interpreted by a lot of people in their society as a punishment from God, then you can understand how this couple lived under a cloud most of their lives.  Behind their backs people have long whispered about what terrible sins they must be guilty of.  And I think it’s telling that the man is found begging at the Temple. Rather than keep him at home and put him to work for the family, for there’s a lot that a blind person could do with the support of someone who cares, it seems that these folks wanted to dissociate themselves from the stigma of having a child born blind.  His blindness made them look bad.  So as soon as he was old enough to fend for himself by begging, they turned him out to remove the source of their shame.  And now at this point, some years later, they could maintain an air of respectability.  They could begin to hold their heads up in the world.  And they waited long and worked hard to get to this point – and now, all of a sudden, it’s being threatened again; for if they confess the truth about Jesus and what he did for their son, they’ll lose it. They’ll be thrown out of the synagogue and everyone will treat them as terrible sinners again.  They may lose their friends, be rejected by their family, the husband might lose his job.  Better, they think, to enjoy the benefits of the lie than to take a stand on the truth and suffer the consequences.  Shameful, isn’t it?  But isn’t it true that we too sometimes allow the same sort of fear to fill us so that we deliberately close our eyes to the truth about Jesus and refuse to say what we know about him?

            And finally, the last sort of blind spot I’d like to point out this morning can be seen in the man who was so recently blind himself.  Because of the miracle he can now see in a physical sense – which illustrates how in Christ we are given the ability to see spiritual truths that were impossible to see before; but the fact is that in this particular case, at the moment he receives his sight the illustration has not yet caught up with the reality.  He can see with his eyes; but much of the truth is still hidden to him.  Oh, there’s a glimmer of light there; but for the most part his spiritual sight is still very dark and cloudy.  He has what might be termed a blind spot caused by ignorance.  He didn’t know Jesus before the miracle.  He hadn’t asked to be healed by him, which indicates that he might not even have heard of Jesus.  And now that he can see, all he knows for sure is that he got that way by following the instructions of some guy named Jesus.  He still doesn’t really know who he is.  And his first guess that Jesus must be a prophet is the same incomplete and inadequate answer given by the crowds when Jesus asked, “Who do people say I am?”  It’s not the same as knowing Jesus as God’s Son and confessing him as Savior and Lord.

My point here is that just having spiritual sight is not the same as seeing, nor is the ability to hear and understand what the Lord says the same as actually doing it.  It only becomes possible for the man to really know Jesus and to see and hear him when Jesus comes to him after he has received his sight.  Only then does the man see the whole truth and worship Jesus as his Lord and Savior. This is what is key for us.  We can see, and yet we all still have plenty of blind spots, blind spots caused by our own brands of legalism, our pride, our fears, and yes, our own ignorance of Jesus – for we all could know him better and more intimately than we do.  The thing to see is that only way to be healed of these blind spots is actually to be with Jesus and to listen to him.  This is what happens when we gather together to hear him speak.  With strong words of God’s law he clears the obstacles of sin that block our view.  As we repent of them they are cast away.  And with his message of forgiveness and healing that we attain through faith his sacrifice for us, he opens our eyes wider and gives us greater clarity allowing us to see more than we did before.  And then in the Sacrament of his Holy Supper he shows us himself and says, “You have seen me now; and I am here speaking my words of forgiveness and life to you.”

            My friends, by the Lord’s grace and the light of his Spirit we can see.  May we make it our goal to see him better each day. In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!