Amazing Grace

Jesus and the disciples see a beggar on the street that had been blind since birth. “How did he get this way?” the disciples ask Jesus. “Was it a sin he committed or was it a sin of his parents?” Jesus finds this question to be offensive, how could the disciples worry so much about sin when really they should be focusing attention on the real issue at hand, how do we go about the business of healing! We can hear urgency in Jesus’ response as he says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (John 9:4-5) Don’t waste your time on abstract moral debating. Your mission is to share of God’s grace freely given to the world.


Jesus just walks over to the blind man beggar and just heals him. The blind man did not call Jesus to heal him. Jesus does not ask him permission, “would it be ok if I healed you today.” No, Jesus just spits on some dirt and rubs the messiness all over the blind mans eyes and tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. The beggar cannot resist the grace that Jesus is giving him; the Holy Spirit nudges him to cooperate, to come to believe in the one who is opening his eyes.

When the man comes back from Siloam with his eyes fully working, his neighbor’s reaction to his healing is puzzling. Even though he is in their circle, they talk about him as if he were not among them. “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg? No it can’t be, it must be someone who looks like him.” The formally blind man keeps repeating “I am the man…I am the one who used to be blind but now I see…hey silly people quit talking about me like I’m not in the room.” The people don’t seem happy about the miracle that is standing in their midst. Instead they begin to interrogate him. “How were your eyes opened? Who opened them?” The man tells them, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” (9:11) You would think that the neighbors would be in awe of the miracle that has happened in their midst but instead they feel anxious, fearing that somehow with this man’s healing they were losing control. You see, As long as the man was blind and dependant, their status quo could be maintained. But “If the man were healed, if he were to shake off his powerlessness he could begin to demand food and care. Eventually he would enter the job market and perhaps even reclaim all that he had lost. If he were to do that, it might mean that someone else would lose status.” (1) Now this does sound mean spirited but in a community living on very little resources, the threat that you could have less could mean the difference between life or death for yourself or your family. What is even scarier for the neighbors is that there is a healer on the loose called Jesus liberating the oppressed left right and sideways. He must be stopped! So they ask the man, “Where is he?” and he says, “I don’t know?” Not satisfied with his answer the neighbors bring in the big guns, the religious authorities of their day…the Pharisees.

The Pharisees ask the man “how did you receive your sight?” And the man gives the same reply he gave to his neighbors, “He put mud in my eyes. Then I washed and I see.” (9:15) Now the Pharisees heard that Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath day. Huge sin according to the laws of the Jewish community of which Jesus was a part of “Ah ha,” the Pharisees say, “Ah ha, this crazy healer named Jesus is a sinner, he made mud and healed on the day of Sabbath. If he were truly from God, if he were the Messiah he would not have worked on the Sabbath day. How could a sinner note a Messiah perform a miracle?” The scripture is careful to note that the Pharisees were divided. Some were open to the possibility that Jesus was the Messiah. But there were some who couldn’t wrap their heads around a Messiah that didn’t follow the tradition to the letter of the law. If Jesus were the Messiah and the Messiah can break the Sabbath, what does this say about their traditions which are the very foundation of their faith? Their whole lives they had been taught that the Sabbath was never to be broken and here was man breaking the Sabbath by performing a miracle which only one sent by God, a Messiah can perform. Well maybe he wasn’t blind from birth after all. The Pharisees go to the man’s parents.

The parents react are tell the Pharisees that yes their son was born blind but that if the Pharisees want to know how he got his sight, that they should to go back to their son “He is of age.” They say, “He will speak for himself.” Now we’d like to think that the parents were practicing good boundaries by refusing to be triangulated between the Pharisees and their son, but really they said what they did because they were afraid. They knew if they implied anything that sounded like a confession that Jesus was the Messiah, they would be put out of the synagogue, which was their their spiritual home, their beloved community.

So the Pharisees go back to the formally blind man and they make him take an oath to “Give glory to God!” (9:24) In their insecurity they become arrogant in their knowledge of all things religious. “We know this man is a sinner” (9:24) Now the man is the first to admit his theological ineptitude, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.” but he will not dismiss his lived experience “One thing I do know, I once was blind, but now I see.” (9:25) Using the experience of his healing, the man gives a testimony that Jesus is indeed one sent by God but the Pharisees drive him from the temple because he did not pass their test of faith. Imagine how devastating it must have been for the man to be kicked out of the only spiritual home he had known. To be told that he doesn’t belong anymore because he wouldn’t toe the line, because he has the audacity to testify his belief on his lived experience rather than obeying tradition alone.

It is no accident that this story falls in the middle of Lent, the season of self examination. This is a story of the beggar’s journey to sight, not only his physical sight but spiritual sight. With any good story there is a character that we identify with, the character that reflects who we are in the story. Many of us would like to think we are the blind man, the one who readily testifies to having received God’s amazing grace. But the self examination of Lent begs the question, have there been times when have we been like the neighbors in the story when we were too afraid to celebrate one person’s victory fearing that it will mean less for us? Have there been times when have we been like the religious authorities, holding on to the letter law so tightly that we refuse to see the spirit from which the law came from? And when we’ve been like the blind man, who received God’s amazing grace, have we showed the courage in giving our testimony of faith even if it meant failing someone else’s test of faith.

In her commentary on this text, New Testament professor Frances Gench shares the following story of a seminarian whom she felt was one of the finest candidates for ordained ministry she had ever known. However, while he was in seminary he figured out something about himself: he was gay. She continues, “It was an experience of God’s grace in his life that opened his eyes—one that liberated him allowed him to see himself as he really was—indeed as God created him to be. But this new sight came with a cost, for what do you do when you are a candidate for ordination, facing a series of interrogations by candidacy committees and ordaining bodies before finally accepting a call? Is it any wonder that he felt a strong bond of kinship with the man in John 9 and his ordeals? Some will no doubt label this seminarian a sinner, even an abomination. But ‘one thing I know’ he says, ‘I once was blind, but now I see.’” (2)

Like the blind man, the seminarian sets the one thing he is certain of, his own experience against the standards with which the candidacy committee confront him. This seminarian knows that his God does not live in a book, not even the Bible itself, but in the act of mercy that has been done to him. In spite of the vitriol that would label him a sinner because of sexual orientation…this seminarian’s understanding of who God is, who Jesus is emerges from his struggle with those who would invalidate the experience of his own life. (3)

The once blind man went on a journey from darkness to seeing the light of the world. He moves from not knowing who it was who gave him sight, to knowing that person to be a prophet, to knowing that person to come from God. to seeing Jesus and proclaiming, “Lord, I believe” This journey did not come from the law alone but from his experience. His salvation came not by his works but by his faith alone. That is God’s Amazing Grace. May it be so. Amen

(1) Walter Brueggemann, “Theological Education: Healing the Blind Beggar.”


(2) Frances Gench, “A Journey to Sight” Encounters with Jesus (Louisville: John Knox Westminster Press, 2007), 75.

(3) Ibid., 76