Jesus answered, neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him (John 9:3).
This answer from out Lord comes in response to a good question: ‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ (John 9:2). It is not unreasonable at all for the disciples to ask this question as so much of Jesus’ ministry has been a revelation of how He has come to save us from ourselves, for all the black evil of this world churns and rages through our worst deeds and best intentions. As Jesus says, ‘For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man’ (Mark 7:21-23). There is no room in this divine pronouncement for the comforting but false notion that all men are good (what does ‘good’ even mean in that sickly sentimental statement?). No, as Paul writes, quoting from the Psalms, ‘As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God (Romans 3:10-11). In humanity’s rebellion, in the forsaking of our role as righteous stewards and keepers of this magnificent planet, we should understand that we deserve far more than just blindness—we deserve nothing less than death.
What about the second part of the question, wherein the disciples assume that the sins of the blind man’s parents may be to blame for his disorder? Is this assumption ridiculous? No, for as we read each Sunday we celebrate the Lord’s Supper: ‘…For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and show mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments’ (BCP p. 244, Exodus 20:5-6). This divine jealousy is not wrong or sinful in the same way a husband is rightfully jealous if his wife actually commits adultery, but we should not miss the graciousness of God here as well: three or four generations is a tiny number of people compared to the thousands and thousands upon whom God showers His unmerited favor. We see an example of the just punishment described here when the evil Achan breaks God’s commandment to steal nothing from the vanquished city of Jericho; it is not only the sinful head of the family who is destroyed for this sin, but the wife and children who depended upon him as well (Joshua 7). It is a grave responsibility to lead a family, and the effects of a man’s success or failure reverberate through the generations for good and ill.
But in today’s reading, hours after men took up stones to kill our innocent Lord in the same way men executed the very guilty Achan, Jesus sees a man blind from birth, and in that moment, knows him better even than his parents. Christ knows him so well because He is his Creator; the One through whom all things were made; the One whom John earlier describes in this way, ‘In him was life; and the life was the light of men… That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world’ (John 1:4,9). Jesus is the light of the world; the being from which emanates the truth and goodness and beauty of our wonderful but disfigured universe. Every good thing in our life is His gift, and every bad thing is a product of humanity’s mad rebellion against the perfect giver of all good things. The light of the world then has come to a man who sees nothing but darkness, and as we should always know, the darkness will not overcome Him.
The Creator of the man who was blind from birth but born to look God in the eyes could have healed him in so many ways: with a word, with a look, with a thought, but Jesus spits into some dirt, rubs it in his eyes, and then tells him to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. Why? Jesus is showing all men how the works of God are made manifest in and through this blind man. What are the works of God but creation and recreation? The first man, Adam, whose name means, ‘dirt man,’ was made from the soil of the earth, and this mud Jesus rubs in the broken eyes of the descendant of that dirt man is described by John using the same word used for ‘dirt/dust’ in the Greek translation of the Old Testament (Genesis 2:7, Job 4:19, 10:9). The love and glory at the heart of the 1st creation of mankind is being displayed in the first part of this act of creating sight where before was none: sight from nothing, light from nothing, life from nothing.
But the symbolism of the healing doesn’t end there, for while the blindness of this man was not brought upon him as some kind of special punishment for his sins or the sins of his parents. Blindness or any other disorder flows from Adam’s horrific failure as the representative of humanity to live in the blessed order in which God built him to live. This betrayal has grown and festered in every tribe of man leading to our collective failure to end the bloody rebellion against God from which so much pain and sadness and shame are born. Being a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve will not save us; we must be made anew: born again of water and the Spirit through faith in the second Adam, faith in the One who came to fulfill the promise the first Adam failed to keep (John 3).
Here is where the pool of Siloam comes rushing into the story. Just as Naaman in the Old Testament faithfully washed himself in the River Jordan as the outward means by which God would heal his internal disease of leprosy, the blind man faithfully goes into the water and is healed. God the Son uses the water as a powerful instrument through which the disciples and the hundreds of generations who have and will read these words could see the unmerited grace of God bestowed upon a man who had nothing to offer but his trust, his surrender, his obedience. Through the blind man’s faith, we have all been given a living picture of the regeneration, the rebirthing which occurs in faith, by the Holy Spirit’s power, and through the instrumental waters of baptism. By Word and Sacrament, the blind man’s eyes are opened, and he can see God.
If that wasn’t enough, the blind man’s surrender to God and rebirth in divine grace fills him with the courage to stand boldly before men who have the power to exile or execute him. The impotent inquisitors who question him and his parents are nothing when compared to the God/Man who twice put life inside of him, and so he can be a fearless witness to the good work God has birthed in him. What earthly power can compare to the Lord who brings light in the darkness, courage where there was once only shame, life where there has only ever been death? The healed man, the seeing man, looks out to us from the pages of John’s Gospel as the answer to that question. We need fear none of it. Whether evil men or corrupt leaders, whether lost children or broken hearts, whether pain or disappointment or sorrow or death, none of these things has power over the reborn sons and daughters of God. We have been washed; we have been healed; we have been given new eyes to see and new hearts to love and obey. We need nothing else.
And so, in our joy but especially in our suffering, we must constantly ask how we can best witness to the glory of God. If a blind beggar on the street can be instrumental in the showing forth of God’s eternal glory, we can most certainly burn with holy fire even as the ever-receding darkness still sucks friends and enemies into its inky blackness. Let us carry the light our Savior has put into our hearts and banish the dark from every corner of our family, our church, and our nation. To stand in this high calling, we must never deny the truth which has made us free; we must stand before the ignorant and damned and witness to them with the certainty of those who have been truly healed; we must be the unmovable object upon which the waters of chaos break and never recover. For as we must remember each and every day, Christ has saved us from the water by carrying us through it on His back. Our salvation, our victory was sealed in the love and strength of the God who saw us in our rebellion and filth and said, ‘Take me not them.’ Our supernatural union to this overwhelming might and majesty defines who we are; it molds our destiny and shapes the very contours of our hopes and dreams.
Let us then believe on the Son of God, and let our good works shine brighter than the darkness can possibly comprehend.