Is Seeing Really Believing?

We are taking a three-sermon look at John 9. Last week we read how Jesus healed a man born blind and then Jesus disappeared. He doesn’t come back into the story until next week. However, the reality of Jesus is everywhere present because he is, as John’s Gospel teaches, the light of the world. But seeing the light doesn’t happen automatically or all at once. It takes time to follow Jesus and let his light dawn in our lives.

Today we’ll see how the once blind man’s faith grows, despite the opposition of others. More and more he sees the light, but others did not. We also learn that the healing took place on the Sabbath. That means that Jesus violated the rules about keeping the Sabbath holy in obedience to the fourth commandment. So the religious authorities condemned both Jesus and the man he healed.

Before going any further, I need to mention one of the big challenges of preaching from John’s Gospel, or just reading it for that matter. In many places including today’s text, John uses the term “the Jews” in a polemical, pejorative way. He portrays “the Jews” as quarrelsome, legalistic, and spiritually blind. Because of that, unfortunately, John’s Gospel is partially responsible for some stereotypes and prejudices of Christians against Jews that are still held even today.

Anti-Semitism is an abominable thing. So let me make it clear right from the start that John was not talking about what we today would call the differences between Jews and Christians.[1] Everyone in the story is Jewish. When John speaks of “the Jews” he refers to the religious leaders. In other words, he means people like me. By definition, religious leaders are those who preserve, uphold, and protect the traditions, laws, moral codes, and integrity of the faith. So religious leaders become excessively consumed with preserving the status quo. This can blind us to new truth. Neither “the Jews” in general nor the Pharisees in particular were bad guys whom we can just dismiss. Good religious people opposed Jesus.

To be sure, the Pharisees were certain about what they knew. You have to be certain to be a religious leader. They were certain that someone who healed on the Sabbath directly violated the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. So here was their logic. (1) Because Jesus healed on the Sabbath, he was a sinner. (2) A sinner cannot perform the works of God. (3) Therefore, the healing of the blind man was not, in fact, could not be, the work of God.

But this story tries to move us beyond what seems so logical to see the light that comes only from Jesus Christ. Let’s read it in John 9.

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.”

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

My sermon’s title asks a key question. Is seeing really believing? I think many people think that seeing really is believing. I’ve heard people say that if they could just see a real miracle, then they would have faith. But among the many insights of today’s text, clearly one is that seeing doesn’t automatically lead to faith.

• As we saw last Sunday, even some of the blind man’s neighbors who knew him as a blind beggar didn’t accept that he was the same man once he was healed.

• In today’s text, the Pharisees don’t believe because the healing took place on the Sabbath. According to their belief system, no one who was really from God would heal on the Sabbath. Therefore, either there was no healing or it didn’t come from God.

• The blind man’s parents knew that he had been born blind and that now he could see. But when questioned by the religious leaders, they denied knowing how their son was healed or who healed him. They feared the consequences of believing so the repressed any faith they might have had.

• Finally the Pharisees, desperately avoiding a conclusion that would force a change in the way the looked at things, dismissed Jesus as a sinner. Therefore, he could not be a healer. Then, when the formerly blind man got a little testy with the Pharisees’ questioning, the religious leaders denounced him as a wretched sinner too.

No, seeing isn’t believing. Here was a miracle right in plain sight and only the blind man began to believe. Everyone else continued to think, behave, and believe exactly as they had before. Seeing new truth is very hard.

One of the reasons it is hard is we always want to know why things happen a certain way. That’s how the story began. The disciples wanted Jesus to tell them why this man was born blind. Did he sin or did his parents? They wanted a logical explanation.

Jesus wouldn’t answer why questions. For the most part, why questions cannot be answered, especially when it comes to human suffering. At San Francisco Seminary there was a certain class called, “Suffering, Loss, and Spiritual Growth.” The students nicknamed it the “Five Ds” because they spent the entire semester dealing with death, disease, depression, divorce, and disaster. The professor, a man named Roy Fairchild, spoke about how there comes a time in all our lives when we can no longer keep asking the “why” question, because asking why is no longer doing us any good. If we get stuck in the why we begin to perish. There comes a point of spiritual surrender when we say, “Okay, God, if I can’t know why, then at least help me figure out what’s next.” Professor Fairchild said that where spiritual growth begins to happen — when we move out of the “why” and into the “what now.”

The Pharisees were basically asking “why” questions. They were trying to figure things and the healing didn’t fit into their way of looking at the world. But Jesus is the light of the world and is constantly revealing new truth. But it’s hard to see if we just keep looking at the way we think things should be.[2] Once we decide there is nothing new to learn, we consign ourselves to blindness.

The blind man, on the other hand didn’t ask why or need to ask why. “The only thing I know,” he said, “is that once I was blind, and now I can see.” For him seeing was believing because it started him on a life of following Jesus. “What now, Lord? What’s next?”

I read recently an article by a man named Al Hsu who is an associate editor at InterVarsity Press. He told how his vision was never good. He wore glasses from the second grade on. His vision was so bad that the only letter he could see on the optometry chart was the big E at the top, and he could only see that because he knew it was a big E.

After laser eye surgery became possible, he thought about it even though he knew it would be very costly. He worried that it might just be a vanity expense like a facelift or a tummy tuck. But after losing yet another contact, he finally decided to do it. However, the procedure didn’t quite take. His vision had been something like 20/400. Now it was 20/40 — better, but still fuzzy, even after ongoing “enhancement” procedures.

Then he happened to attend an InterVarsity Asian/American staff conference. During worship, Al squinted to make out the song lyrics projected on the far wall. In one particular session, they sang a song called “God of Justice.”

He closed his eyes as the chorus was repeated, praying that God would direct him. How might he move into action? He lived in such a cerebral world of books and ideas. What could he do to live more for a God of justice?

The song cycled back to an earlier verse. Al was very moved by it and he opened his eyes. The lyrics on the screen shimmered slightly, then came crisply into focus. He could see! Clearly, without squinting. Have I just been healed? he wondered. His innards fluttered and his heart raced. A miracle?

He blinked several times, and his vision wavered back and forth. Clear, blurry, clear, blurry. Then he realized what was happening. While singing, a few tears had come to his eyes which momentarily acted like extra contact lenses so he could see more clearly.

As he thought about it he realized there is so much we don’t see when we don’t have tears in our eyes for a world that needs the light of Christ. He thought about being blind to the needs of his neighbors down the block and around the world. He doesn’t see the plight of the enslaved child laborer, the trapped sex worker, the communities wracked by AIDS or genocide, the people around the world who lack the hope of the gospel.

“I do not act because I do not see. I am blinded by insularity, privilege, and affluence, which give me the luxury of having laser surgery when countless millions around the world lack basic medical care. But when God moves me to tears, I begin to see more clearly and do something about it.”[3] What next, Lord?

The tragedy of the Pharisees in John’s story was that instead of seeing a miracle of divine grace and asking what next, they saw a theological controversy, a point to be debated, a problem to be solved. But the blind man sees that the light of the world invites him on a journey of faith with the Lord. When we really see, we will follow. That’s where will pick it up next week.

[1] This is a point well made by Lisa Kenkeremath, “Eyes Wide Open,” Lectionary Homiletics 19.2 (2008): 43.

[2] Kenkeremath, 44. “God’s truth in Jesus is so unsettling because Jesus is so quiet, so unaggressive. Jesus Christ shows us God in hidden ways. When Jesus acts, there is no coercion, no bullying, no tactics of intimidation. There is no forced conversion. God shows us in Jesus a world very different from the world we know, where we expect good and evil, truth and untruth to duke it out until a victor emerges. Jesus doesn’t play by those rules. In John’s story he gives sight to the blind man and then disappears. He doesn’t stay on the scene to enter the fray, but the formerly blind man gradually comes to know who he is by the work he has done. The man doesn’t feel compelled to explain Jesus and what has happened to him, only to assert that what has happened in his life is something of God.”

[3] Al Hsu, “The Vision Thing,” online, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=53840, Internet, 21 Feb. 2008.