John 9:1-41 Commentary

Our ability to take a beautiful miracle and turn it into a trial of belonging is truly a pox upon our people. The idea that people make up stories about our sufferings and judge us is also a reason to be sad. But the hope that undergirds this passage is that Jesus heals, Jesus dispels lies, and Jesus does not abandon us when others give up on making us fit their boxes.

This work of Jesus starts at the beginning as he dispels the long-held myth that sin is the only reason why someone would suffer so. Instead of trying to find the blame, Jesus points to the possibility: this man can now be part of the revealing of God’s light in the world. Jesus heals the man and appears to be gone by the time the man comes back from the pool of Siloam.

The healed man starts to mess up a whole lot of people’s reality. His neighbours can’t believe that it’s him even though the man keeps repeating his identity and patiently explaining how it’s possible that he can now see. The man says what he knows—nothing less, nothing more. He lets the truth stand as it is.

What’s interesting to see, though, is how the Holy Spirit uses the challenges to his truth to reveal more truth to the man. When his neighbours can’t believe their own eyes, they take him to the religious authorities to get to the bottom of things. The man explains the same thing he told his neighbours, and the Pharisees essentially tell him what he’s saying can’t be true: the only kind of person who could work such a miracle would not have done such a thing on the Sabbath. They argue among themselves a bit, and this leads the man who was healed to realize that this Jesus is a prophet: his reality proves it no matter what these religious leaders say.

The next tactic is to pressure him through his family. The man’s parents tread carefully, trying to protect their precarious belonging while also honouring the miracle that’s been given to their son. They do so by speaking of what they know, but in a way that distances themselves from the actual miracle and the words of their son. It’s more than a little sad that they feel so trapped, unable to more robustly stand beside and behind their son’s truth.

The second time around, the religious authorities don’t even bother with a question and go straight for demanding the man change his story and agree with their view of things. “Tell us he’s a sinner!” Once again, the man says simply what he knows and what he doesn’t know based on what he experienced and the change that it has wrought for him. When the man refuses to toe the line, they pepper him with demands to hear the story again, perhaps thinking the story will change or that they will catch a detail that they can use to bolster their own view.

But the pressure does not produce the results they are looking for. In fact, it seems to solidify something in the healed man. The man has let his yes be yes and his no be no up until this point, but there seems to me to be more than a hint of slyness in his question about becoming the healer’s disciples. Their “world” has been challenged, they keep denying reality as impossible, so what are the chances that they’d take up the mantle of someone they deem a sinner? It goes against everything they know and cling to, and they are not the kind to give up their certainties. Their conversation continues, the mockery of the healing continues, and eventually the man is driven and cast out. The Pharisees will pretend that the whole incident never occurred and they will continue to protect their worldview.

The healed man must now find his way forward in the unknown because he has embraced good news and stood in the truth. But because it was Jesus who led him there, Jesus finds him again. Jesus confirms what the healed man has pieced together through ordeal and blesses the man with a spiritual clarity that matches his clear eyesight. And along the way, Jesus turns the world upside-down again, placing the healed man above the Pharisees as the one who sees and truly knows, who worships in spirit and in truth.

Textual Point

How often do we try to wade through a difficult or confusing situation by firmly identifying what we know? This verb know, is repeated throughout this story for similar reasons. But only one of the parties reaches an epiphany; for the others, what they know and what they encounter is causing a crisis. Dallas Willard once wrote, “Truth reveals reality, and reality can be described as what we humans run into when we are wrong. In the collision we always lose. Being mistaken about life and about the things of God and the human soul is a deadly serious matter. That is why the work of apologetics is so important. So we speak the truth in love. (Eph 5:14) And we speak with all the clarity and reasonableness we can muster, simultaneously counting on the Spirit of truth (John 16:13) to accomplish with what we do an effect that lies far beyond our natural abilities.”

[Note: For the Year A Season of Lent and leading up to Easter, CEP has, in addition to these weekly sermon commentaries, a special Lent and Easter Resource Page with links to whole sermons, commentary on Lenten texts, and more.]

Illustration Idea

If we imagine this scene taking place in a modern courtroom, the Pharisees putting Jesus on trial by proxy through the man born blind, would most assuredly be guilty of badgering the witness. They think that if they keep repeating their view, louder, more harshly, with more threats, then the man who has been healed will get in line and change his story. But the man does not, delivering a dramatic speech from the witness box.