God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you. My sermon is
entitled Blind Man and the Body of Christ, and my focus is on our Gospel
(John 9:1-41). Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced
when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our
feet are standing within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we
listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply
as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
Renato Rascel, aka
Renato Ranucci, was born on April 27, 1912, and died on January 2, 1991. He was
an Italian film actor and singer who appeared in 50 films between 1942 and
1972. He also wrote and sang “Arrivederci, Roma.”
Why open a Lenten
sermon about an Italian actor and singer who’s been dead for 22 years? Because
one of the roles he played is in a series that Cindy and I watched recently and
have repeatedly watched every Lent. Renato Rascel played The Blind Man in the
1977 British-Italian epic drama serial by Franco Zeffirelli entitled Jesus
of Nazareth. You now know more about the actor who played The Blind Man
than you do about the blind man in our Gospel.
Like the Synoptic
Evangelists, John wrote his Gospel for a particular audience and setting.
Reading each Gospel means I must take into consideration its listeners and
original readers, as well as the time, place, religious and ethnic background
of that particular church. The world around the Evangelists impacted their
Gospels. For example, John Steinbeck could not write The Grapes of Wrath
today as he did in 1939. We don’t live in The Dust Bowl of The Great
Depression, but people did 90 years ago. One of my favorite books, Boys in
the Boat, can only be understood against the backdrop of Hitler’s 1936 Olympic
Games, and not the politics of today’s games. Likewise, reading, understanding,
appreciating and applying lessons from books and letters of the Bible must
include its original audience and setting.
In John’s Gospel the
blind man is anonymous. The healing of blind men by Jesus is found in the
Synoptic Gospels, but only Mark applied the name Bartimaeus to his blind man. The
Evangelists named people or listed them anonymously for their own reasons,
which are many, and too far out of scope for this sermon. I will get to why
John left his blind man anonymous, but for now, let’s look at the narrative.
This narrative,
like last Sunday’s and next week’s, has a theme. Last week, it was water;
today, it’s light; and next Sunday, life. These readings have been chosen
primarily for people undergoing instruction to be baptized at Easter, but they
also challenge how we see Jesus.
In relation to
last Sunday’s story of the woman at the well, we see several parallels. The
woman and man both come to believe in Jesus because he personally initiated an
encounter with them. Jesus told the woman about her life (Jn 4:17-18). He
defended and healed the man (9:3-7). Both shared their experiences with the
community and affirmed that Jesus was a prophet (4:19, 9:17). Similarly, Jesus
revealed his identity as the Messiah (4:26) and the Son of Man (9:37) directly
to the woman and man.
At the end of the
narrative, when Jesus criticized the Pharisees, he revealed his identity to the
man, and said that he came into the world “so that those who do not see
might see, and those who do see might become blind” (Jn 9:39). To the
Pharisees who asked if he thinks they are blind, Jesus said, “If you were
blind, you would have no sin; but now you are saying, ‘We see,’ so your sin
remains.” In this statement, Jesus suggested that the Pharisees are
sinful because their self-assurance prevented them from recognizing His
significance.
Today’s narrative
is carefully crafted so that no words are wasted. First of all, Jesus was in
Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (7:10), one of the three feasts
in which all “native born” male Jews were commanded to participate.[1] There were thousands of
people all with offerings in Jerusalem during this week.
The feast was instituted
by God to remind Israelites in every generation of their deliverance by Him
from Egypt. The feast also foreshadowed the work and actions of the coming
Messiah, so the phrases that John included in chapter nine, particularly “the
light of the world” and the reference to the pool of Siloam are tied to the
feast. In chapters seven and eight, we read that Jesus is teaching by word and
example, particularly forgiveness to the woman caught in the act of adultery.
As you continue reading what follows that act of forgiveness, you must wonder
why Jesus hung around the Temple after the scribes and Pharisees picked up rocks
to stone him (8:59). Yet, after he hid himself from them, Jesus passes a man
blind from birth. The man’s blindness was incurable. He never saw his mother’s
face or the sunrise, only darkness.
The man born blind
is not named here because he is more than an individual; he is a spokesperson
for the community. Augustine said that he stands for the human race. Like the
Samaritan woman Jesus encountered at the well, this narrative is about Jesus
encountering another sinful human being whom he sees as a child of God. In the story
of the Samaritan woman and here, we read of the obstacles one experiences in
coming to know who Jesus is.
Immediately, Jesus
spots not only the man, but also his isolation and suffering, and reaches out
to him. After answering his disciples’ question about the reason for this man’s
blindness, Jesus announced that he is the “light of the world,” and spat on the
ground. The significance of this is tied to the creation of man, but notice
that it is not only dirt but also Jesus’ saliva used to form healing mud before
he speaks a divine command to wash in the pool of Siloam.
What is so special
about the pool of Siloam? Seven centuries before Jesus, Judah’s King Hezekiah correctly
anticipated a siege against Jerusalem by the Assyrian monarch Sennacherib. He
ordered a 1/3-mile-long tunnel to be dug underneath the city to bring water
from the Gihon Spring. It was an ingenious idea, and for 700 years, this pool
furnished people with fresh water.
After washing, the
blind man, suddenly able to see, came back to the spot where Jesus was. The
reason John included this passage into his Gospel now begins to make sense for
his audience and us. The blind man’s washing shows him for who he really is –
an enlightened person who only comes to believe in Jesus after a series of
trials and being cast out from the Temple. The intensifying series of questions
to which the man was subjected, the increasing hostility and the blindness of
the interrogators who expelled him from the synagogue, and the blind man’s
growing perceptiveness about Jesus under the interrogations, as well as his own
parents’ apprehensive attempt to avoid taking a stand for or against Jesus –
all of these could easily be enacted on a stage to show how, with the coming of
Jesus, those who claim to see have become blind and those who were blind have
come to sight.[2]
Now, before I move
onto the Body of Christ, let me make a few comments about the significance of Jesus
being in Jerusalem for the feast. As I said earlier, the Feast of Tabernacles
was instituted by God to remind Israelites of their deliverance by Him from
Egypt, and also foreshadowed the work and actions of the coming Messiah. If the
Pharisees had studied the prophetic writings, they would have recognized that
Jesus was not only a prophet, as the blind man first described him, but also
Son of Man and Lord, as he ultimately acknowledged. They did not, however, do
that, and instead stumbled over the fact that Jesus gave sight to the blind on
the Sabbath (vv 14,16). Their stubbornness is thoroughly described in Isaiah
42, as well as how God’s Servant would lead the blind and turn their darkness
into light.
When I led the
study on Isaiah, I pointed out how blindness made Israel identical with the
Gentile world, and deafness showed her failure to hear God’s message. To have
eyes and ears means that one can receive and understand revelation
from God, but it is something else to use your eyes and ears to
know what is really happening around you. The cardinal sin of the people of God
was that they possessed the divine word, but ignored it.
This passage makes
for great theater and television, and so I encourage you to watch Jesus of
Nazareth between now and Easter, but more importantly, as the Body of Christ, I
offer the same encouragement John offered to his community and Paul to the
Ephesians.
The message to
John’s early Christians, new to the faith, and to us is the same. Anyone who
has come to Christ in whatever manner – something miraculous or mundane, someone
raised and reared in a Christian home or not – needs to know and to be
encouraged as they go through their trials that they have been given an
opportunity to come to a much more profound faith than when they first
encountered Christ. This is why John painstakingly crafted this narrative so
beautifully that 2,000 years later we can still imagine it in our minds or in
the mind of Franco Zeffirelli.
Likewise, Paul too
encouraged his beloved children to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and
gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”
(5:2). He warned the Christians in Ephesus not to make themselves identical
with the pagans surrounding them by engaging in crude and filthy talk and
sexual immorality, but to walk as children of the light who once lived in
darkness. Paul did not rely upon John’s Gospel for the basis of his teaching,
but on Christ’ revelation and the Apostles’ understanding as well as the Holy
Spirit when he spoke to Christians, the Body of Christ.
As individual
Christians and a Church Body, we may sometimes be blind. Undoubtedly, each of
us has lived in darkness. Today, we know that there are things about ourselves
that we cannot see. As you sit in church, you cannot see the back of your head,
but the people behind you can. Interiorly, I may not be aware of how my words
or actions affect another member of Christ’s body, but a loving friend can. My
point is that while stubbornness, which prevented the Pharisees from
recognizing and acknowledging the true light that was in their midst, is
sinful, spiritual blindness may not be. John’s Gospel suggests that we must
fully appreciate our own spiritual blindness in order to see the light of
Christ. Like the man born blind, let us acknowledge not only our blindness, but
also say to Christ, “Lord, I believe,” and worship Him.
As we journey
through Lent, we should acknowledge our limitations and seek healing from
Christ as individuals and as one Body for today’s Gospel begins with a physical
healing and ends by asserting the importance of spiritual healing. When Jesus
healed the blind man, he also healed his loneliness, his emotions and his
hopelessness. Through the means of grace – God’s Word and Sacraments – the Holy
Spirit heals our Church Body each time we gather with repentant hearts set on
seeing Jesus as the blind man did – as Lord. John told his church members that the
man fell down and worshipped Jesus. Worship is the most important thing we do.
Everything else could cease today, but as long as we worship God our Father
through Jesus His Son and our Lord, we are Church. Because we are Church, may
the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds
in Christ Jesus. Amen.
[1]
Deuteronomy 16: 16-17 reads, “Three times a year all your males shall appear
before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose: at the Feast of
Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Booths. They shall
not appear before the LORD empty-handed. Every man shall give as he is able,
according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.” For a
fuller understanding, read vv 13-21; 16:9-13; Leviticus 23; Ezra 3:4ff; 2
Chronicles 8:13ff.
[2] Raymond
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 348.
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