Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Can't Anyone See That He Can See?"
Date: March 2, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  John 9:1-41

I find John’s lengthy stories—ones which lay readers may cringe at being assigned!—to be so rich in preaching possibilities.  There are so many details about each of the stories that we could take a detour to, or focus on.  And in doing so, we, like the Pharisees in today’s story, just might lose sight of what really happened.

Unlike some of Jesus’ healing stories, this is not a one in which the healing was requested, either by the person affected or by another person.  Jesus is simply walking along with his disciples when they pass a man born blind.  His disciples ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  This was the prevalent theory of the time—that any malady that befell a person, either a physical ailment or deformity, or a bad turn of events—happened because the person had sinned.  Sadly, some people today still hold to some variation on this notion.

Jesus quickly denies their theory, saying the man “was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  In other words, God has some divine purpose, some telling word of God, that is going to be worked out through him, most likely by Jesus.  Telling his disciples he is the light of the world, Jesus then kneels down in the dirt, spits to make mud, and smears it on the man’s eyes.  He instructs the man to go to the pool of Siloam to wash.  (How he was led there, we are not told.)  “Then he went and washed and came back able to see.”

End of story, couldn’t it be?  It’s all wrapped up in seven verses.  We get the point.  We already sang, “Open My Eyes That I May See.”  We’ll conclude today singing, “I once…was blind, but now I see...”  It’s time to rejoice!  The man born blind now can see.  It’s a miracle!!

But did you hear any of that in the story that drones on for another 34 verses?  I didn’t.  All I heard was confusion, bickering, posturing, and positioning.  First, the neighbors don’t recognize him.  Does he look different now that his eyes can see?  They bring the man before the righteous religious leaders.  They questioned how it happened, and, more importantly to them, when it happened.  On the Sabbath?  How scandalous!

To move the story along, I skipped the part where they questioned the parents.  They waffled and dodged the questions.  ‘Looks like our son, we don’t know how it happened.  Ask him.  We didn’t have anything to do with it.’

A second time they take him back to the Pharisees.  For me, this is beginning to sound like the trial of Jesus before his crucifixion.  The Pharisees postulate that Jesus must be a sinner.  Who else would heal on the Sabbath when all the other ophthalmologists’ offices are closed?  In anger and disgust, they end up driving the man out.

If you read the whole story, 41 verses line by line, it may not take you long to develop this building rage within you.  It’s small at first, then it gets more and more frustrating, until finally you’re ready to scream aloud, “Can’t anyone see that he can see?”  They all were blind to the whole point.  Jesus gave this blind man the ability to see.  Do they rejoice?  No; all they do is debate the merits of who sinned, why he was healed on the Sabbath, who did it, and by what power he did it.  The most dramatic verse in the whole story is the man’s response to the Pharisees about whether his healer was a sinner:  “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (9:25)   It would be rather like you saying, “I don’t know if my doctor’s a paid-up member of the American Medical Association; all I know is that I’m better now.”

Thoreau once said that some circumstantial evidence is so strong as to be almost impossible to refute.  If there is a fact, some obvious and irrefutable piece of evidence, who can ignore or deny the facts?

Almost anybody can, that’s who.  Each of us lives in an assumptive world, a realm that is bounded by certain steadfast convictions of what can and cannot be.  When something happens, we rush to fit it into our assumptive world.  We have a set of boxes, each one a cause that explains why something happened.  When something happens, we rush to file it away in one of those boxes.  This caused that and that caused this, and so forth.

A minister wrote about a woman in his church.  Though her surgery was terribly painful, disfiguring, and difficult, she made it through.  She found a whole new life for herself, and new dignity and sense of mission.  Her recovery was rather miraculous.

In fact, that’s what she called it, a miracle.  The minister was there with her when she said to two friends, “God gave me the hope and the strength I needed to go on.”

One friend said, “You have always been a strong person.”  The other said, “I don’t know anyone who has a stronger sense of self than you.”

Isn’t it curious how the confession, “God miraculously gave me the hope and strength to go on,” is regarded as a threat?

It is of the nature of miracle to be an intrusion, a dislocation of the expected and the explained.  Rather than say, “Wow, that’s interesting … that’s wonderful!”, in the face of miraculous claims we are conditioned to say, “Let’s get all the experts together and explain what happened using the conventional, socially acceptable modes of explanation, okay?”

It happens in the halls of academia, in the courts, in the medical world, even in churches.  Sometimes our discussions about “the stuff,” our debates, methods of research, procedures for verification, surveys of what others think, can be a means of avoiding the stuff.

Here was a man who was once blind.  Now he can see, and nobody takes time to wonder, to give thanks, to celebrate with him.  The whole thing is turned into an intellectual problem.  Let’s all get together and explain this in such a way that we reassure ourselves that nothing new, nothing that doesn’t fit our reassuring modes of explanation has occurred here.  Because if something truly new had happened, and if it had happened by the hand of Jesus, then we might have to go back to the drawing board and rethink a few of our cherished assumptions like, “if you are sick, you must have sinned,” or “there is nothing new under the sun,” or “it’s up to us to fix the world or the world won’t get fixed.”

Brennan Manning tells this story of a recent convert to Jesus who was approached by an unbelieving friend:

   “So you have been converted to Christ?”

“Yes.”

   “Then you must know a great deal about Him.  Tell me, what country was he born in?”

“I don’t know.”

   “What was his age when he died?”

“I don’t know.”

   “How many sermons did he preach?”

“I don’t know.”

   “You certainly know very little for a man who claims to be converted to Christ.”

“You are right.  I am ashamed at how little I know about him.  But this much I know:  Three years ago I was a drunkard.  I was in debt.  My family was falling to pieces; they dreaded the sight of me.  But now I have given up drink.  We are out of debt.  Ours is a happy home.  My children eagerly await my return home each evening.  All this Christ has done for me.  This much I know of Christ!”

(Told in Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality: God's Annoying Love for Imperfect People,

[Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002], p. 49.)