John 9.1-12

1 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. 2 “Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?”

3 “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him. 4 We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work. 5 But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.”

6 Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. 7 He told him, “Please go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent one, apostle, or missionary”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing!

8 His neighbors and others who knew him as a blind beggar asked each other, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some said he was, and others said, “No, he just looks like him!”

But the beggar kept saying, “Yes, I am the same one!”

10 They asked, “Who healed you? What happened?”

11 He told them, “The man they call Jesus made mud and spread it over my eyes and told me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash yourself.’ So I went and washed, and now I can see!”

12 “Where is he now?” they asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

Comments

We’re going to spend a few days with this story, as it covers all of chapter 9, telling of two trajectories: the blind man toward trusting Jesus and the religious leaders away from trusting Jesus. For today there a few things we should catch. First, Jesus notices the blind man. We are used to this by now. Over three and a half Gospels in, we have seen this over and over. Jesus noticed those in need, cast off by society, suffering. Jesus is a hurting people magnet. True then, now, always.

Second, did you see how the disciples responded to this man’s need? They automatically assumed it was someone’s fault and that the most important thing, the thing to figure out first, was whose fault it was. The Hebrew Scriptures devotes an entire book, Job, to this issue, where people who think themselves godly presume to diagnose the sinful causes behind other people’s suffering. Jesus tells them to stop it and warns them they (we) don’t have time for such pointless discussions. We have a lot of work to do and a short time frame to do it in. No time for debates, do the work.

And really, even if there had been a sinful cause, how in the world could they determine the causality and even if they did, so what? Does figuring it out make the man less blind? Does it bring grace or love into the situation in any way? No. Yes, sometimes suffering is the result of sin, but tracing causes and effects is complicated and not very often helpful in bringing about healing. Even when Jesus brought healing to the woman at the well by showing that he knew her story, he did not go into cause and effect, he only showed that he noticed her, that her suffering had not gone unnoticed. Paying attention to suffering and working to heal it seem a lot more important to Jesus than running diagnostics on it.

Third, we should pay attention to what the blind man does not say. He doesn’t ask to to be healed and he does not express (at this point) any faith-trust in Jesus. Jesus does not heal him because he believed or even because he asked. Jesus does this freely, without prompting. Jesus notices him and takes action. The man does go and wash, but if someone smeared spit mud on your eyes, you would do the same, right? The blind man is going to (spoiler alert) express faith in Jesus at the end of chapter 9 (we will get there Monday), but at this point he doesn’t even know who Jesus is. He didn’t get to see Jesus (since he was still blind) and Jesus never hung around after he healed someone (remember the not-seeking-glory from yesterday).

What is really interesting to me is that early Christians understood his washing to be baptism. There are catacomb drawings that depict this, even though, 1. he hadn’t expressed faith in Jesus yet, and 2. he washed himself. How can a person who doesn’t believe in Jesus yet baptize themselves?? That wrecks so much of our theology and liturgical practice. I think this only makes sense within a centered-set understanding of faith, where what matters is the movement toward or away from Jesus, not crossing some imaginary boundary line between “in” and “out of” faith.

Jesus initiates the blind man’s healing and instructs him to self-baptize as a way of drawing him into a trust relationship. That is what faith names and this method is what Jesus used repeatedly in the Gospels. It is also the work he calls his followers to be doing. Don’t miss that in today’s reading. Jesus says we have to work while we can, while he is with us. John is giving us some foreshadowing here, later Jesus explains that through the Holy Spirit, he will remain with us so we can keep working. The point here is the urgency. There needs to be urgency in our work, not to catalog people’s sins, but to bring healing, grace, and love into their lives, to notice hurting people and get them moving toward Jesus, the source of their healing.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

John 8.48-59

48 The people retorted, “You Samaritan devil! Didn’t we say all along that you were possessed by a demon?”

49 “No,” Jesus said, “I have no demon in me. For I honor my Father — and you dishonor me. 50 And though I have no wish to glorify myself, God is going to glorify me. He is the true judge. 51 I tell you the truth, anyone who obeys my teaching will never die!”

52 The people said, “Now we know you are possessed by a demon. Even Abraham and the prophets died, but you say, ‘Anyone who obeys my teaching will never die!’ 53 Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”

54 Jesus answered, “If I want glory for myself, it doesn’t count. But it is my Father who will glorify me. You say, ‘He is our God,’ 55 but you don’t even know him. I know him. If I said otherwise, I would be as great a liar as you! But I do know him and obey him. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced as he looked forward to my coming. He saw it and was glad.”

57 The people said, “You aren’t even fifty years old. How can you say you have seen Abraham?”

58 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I Am!” 59 At that point they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus was hidden from them and left the Temple.

Comments

Because of how today’s reading begins, it bears repeating that Jesus was having a lively discussion here with people who had accepted his teaching and placed faith in him. Or so they thought. It becomes quite clear in v.48 that they are rethinking that. One thing I really like here is that Jesus refutes their accusation that he has a demon, but he doesn’t refute the racial epithet they brand him with. He wasn’t technically a Samaritan, but in accepting what they meant as an insult, Jesus showed further solidarity with the Samaritans (sort of like JKK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner“).

We should also pay attention to the last thing Jesus says here. He makes a blatant reference to what God said to Moses at the burning bush, where the divine name is revealed as “I am.” (Exodus 3.14) More clearly than at any point in the Gospels, Jesus self-identifies with God in this statement. This is the basis for the teaching that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. It took the church a few centuries to sort out the implications and limitations of this paradox. Not least among those was the implication it holds for the nature of God. If we accept Jesus’ claim to be God, but we already have the Father, and Jesus is about to introduce the Holy Spirit, then what? Do we have three Gods? That would run contrary to one of the foundational teachings of Hebrew Scripture: there is only one God. Do we have a God who takes different forms at different times, like an actor playing many roles in the same play and changing costumes for each? That seems more than a little disingenuous. Subterfuge is not a trait becoming of God, is it?

The early church ran through a series of answers to this conundrum that proved unsatisfactory (usually because they wound up messing up the balance of the God-human paradox with regard to Jesus). The church eventually settled (for the most part) on the teaching that God exists in Trinity, which literally means three-in-one, or Triunity. Three-one became an accepted paradox just like God-human. All because of how the Gospels portray Jesus, at times very human, at times making audacious claims. The crowd here reached for stones because that is what they did to people who blasphemed. And that’s the point, Jesus was either telling the truth or he was blaspheming. There is no in between. John wanted this to be as clear as possible so his readers would stop being led away into the Ebionite heresy that rejected the idea that Jesus was God and wanted everyone to follow all Jewish customs. In this passage, Jesus asserts his preeminence over Abraham (and thus relativizes the importance of Jewish religious custom), while at the same time claiming the identity of Israel’s God.

Sometimes it seems like we have the opposite problem from the Ebionites, like it’s easier for us to accept the idea that Jesus is God, and more difficult to keep in mind that he is fully human (and all that means for the rest of us humans). But I have been making the case that we have strong Ebionite tendencies of our own and I think this passage can help us see that. Notice what Jesus says about not seeking his own glory. Twice (v. 50, 54) Jesus specifically rejects the idea of seeking to promote or glorify himself (remember he said the same sort of thing to his brothers in 7.6-8). Instead, he works to glorify the Father, and the Father in turn glorifies the Son. This becomes an essential part of the concept of the Trinity (but one often overlooked): the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in a state of complete self-giving love toward each other and toward creation. This essential divine trait is most fully revealed on the cross, where God gives as completely as possible of God’s own self in love for us. But the cross is not an exception. It is a picture that is true of God’s nature at all times in all ways. The cross is who God is. This is what Jesus is trying to get his would-be followers to understand in this discourse. He tells them at last, “I am,” not for his own sake (he’s not self-promoting right after claiming not to), but for theirs. Jesus risked their anger for the chance that they might accept the truth.

But I think they had much the same trouble that the later Ebionites had and the even later us still have: a God who is completely self-giving and in no way self-promoting seems ridiculous to us. We think we can accept the idea of Jesus being God easier, but we typically think of Jesus as some sort of powerful demi-god, subordinate to the Father, but still able to kick butt (as Mark Driscoll would say). But that isn’t the God Jesus reveals himself to be at all. Kicking butt and self-promoting are the sort of things the false gods of our age specialize in and so we project the traits of our idols onto who we think God is. When Jesus reveals to us that God is something altogether different from what we value (i.e., worship), then we start picking up stones too.

And in that moment we see all of the God-human nature of Jesus: the one who declares “I AM!” and then hides from the angry mob. And that’s the point here. The God of the universe has become human and stands in solidarity, not just with Samaritans, but with all of us.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.