Ephesians 5:8-14
John 8:1-41
“Blindness”
1. Ruth let the door slam behind her as she skipped through the house. “Wow! You should have seen it! It was neat!” Her father looked up from his reading, and her mother came in from the other room. “What was, dear?” Hurling herself into a chair as only a teenager could, she started. “You know that Jesus guy who everybody is talking about? Well, _I_ saw him!” she announced triumphantly. “Abigail and I were crossing the square in front of the big gate, and there he was with a whole crowd around him, so we followed him. And you know where all those beggars sit so you practically have to step on them? Well, as he was going through there, one of his disciples asked him about one of them, a guy who was born blind. He said, ‘Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?'” Ruth paused and thought for a moment: “You know, I always wondered about that myself, ’cause if God punishes people for something by making them blind, how could God make this guy blind at birth even before he was old enough to have done anything? And why would God want to punish his parents by making their baby blind? It just doesn’t seem fair. Anyhow, this disciple asked Jesus, and everybody got real quiet to listen. And you know what? Jesus said it _wasn’t_ ’cause anyone had sinned! He said it was to show God’s power, so that God’s works would be shown through him. Somebody at the back laughed, but Jesus helped the man stand up. Then he spit on the ground and stirred it around and smeared the mud on the blind man’s eyes. It was gross! And he told him to go over to the pool at Siloam (I thought that was funny: he sent him to a place called Sent!). So Abby and I ran around the back way, and we got there before the crowd did, and we ran up on the roof so we could see, you know, and the blind man gets there and starts to rinse the yucky mud out of his eyes. And guess what! It worked! Jesus made his eyes better! He could see… I mean not real good right away, but he could see! Everybody went crazy and he started dancing around and yelling ‘I can see! I can see!’ He looked so happy that when he got back to Jesus even some of the other beggars couldn’t recognize him, and they started arguing whether it really was him! I mean, it was awesome! Everybody was calling it a miracle and slapping everyone else on the back and hollering out, ‘Praise the Lord!’ Abby said that must have been what Jesus meant– that the beggar was born blind so he could be a miracle.” Ruth hopped out of the chair and skipped out the door. “_I_ think that Jesus is pretty neat!”
2. Itzak walked home slowly, immersed in his thoughts. It had been quite an afternoon, what with the kids running all over the place, and the Pharisees arguing, and Jesus making a blind beggar see for the first time since birth. It was a wild afternoon, all right. He didn’t quite know what to make of Jesus’ performance with the dirt and spit that he put on the beggar’s eyes, but he knew he was ashamed of the performance that the Pharisees put on. “I mean, tacky! Shouting and braying at each other like a stubborn bunch of donkeys. And the way they picked on that poor blind beggar! It was hard to tell who was really on trial; they certainly were going after Jesus, but why did they go after the beggar and his parents, of all people? Actually,” thought Itzak, “the Pharisees and their beliefs seemed like they were on trial, too. What kind of judgement might God be passing on their performance?” A basket blew across the street in Itzak’s path. He carefully stepped around it; this was the Sabbath, a day of rest, and picking it up was forbidden work. Besides, it was almost sundown; the Sabbath would be over then, and the owner could come retrieve it. He wasn’t about to break the Sabbath. That brought up an interesting question. Now, Itzak was just an olive oil merchant, not a religious professional like a scribe or a Pharisee, but he had been brought up in the faith and had studied the Bible enough to know a few things. Obviously, picking up a basket, cooking, plowing a field, selling a jug of olive oil, and things like that would break the day of rest; but it was also an established principle that saving the life of a person or even of an animal, or tending to the sick took precedence. It wasn’t breaking the Sabbath to rescue a lost sheep, so why should rescuing a blind person be breaking the Sabbath? It didn’t seem right that they blamed Jesus for healing someone. It was pretty impressive, though. How many people can give sight to a man born blind _any_ day of the week?” Itzak figured that anyone who could do that kind of miracle must have a good connection with God! If Jesus was a sinner, like all those Pharisees who complained about him healing someone on the Sabbath claimed, how could he do something so wonderful?” Itzak was inclined to agree with the beggar, that Jesus was a prophet, not a sinner.
A young girl ran past Itzak, breaking his reverie by yelling, “Hey, Abigail, wait for me!” He adjusted his robe and smiled; she reminded him of his youngest daughter. He was proud of her. He wondered if the beggar’s parents were proud of him. “That was a dirty trick the Pharisees played on them, asking whether he really was blind. And then asking them what they thought had happened. For crying out loud, they hadn’t even been there! How were they supposed to know?” He had to sympathize with them, dragged into the argument like that. After all the nasty things Pharisees had said about Jesus, they really couldn’t risk getting expelled from the synagogue by saying anything complimentary about him. Itzak thought they chickened out, but they did it well. They threw the question back on their son, saying that he was old enough to speak for himself. “Nice move, even if it was cowardly. Seems like lots of people are impressed by Jesus, but they are afraid to admit it in public. It was sure rough on his followers, what with all the pressure the temple crowd was putting on them. Coming out in public and proclaiming faith in Jesus, that was hard. Not many dared to do that; most were pretty reluctant about it. But that blind… er, rather, once-blind… beggar, he had class. He was willing to stand up and be counted. Even taunted the old greybeards! When they said they were disciples of Moses and accused him of being the disciple of somebody they didn’t know, he threw it back in their faces. ‘If you’re so smart, why _don’t_ you know where he comes from?’ Good question, that: where does Jesus come from?” Itzak turned the corner onto his street. “Where _does_ Jesus get his power?”
3. “Tov Shabbot, Elihu.” “Good Sabbath to you, too, Eleazer.” Elihu pulled his prayer shawl over his head and sat down as his friend passed him on the way out. “Elihu… hmph, servant of God,” Elihu muttered. Sometimes he felt like anything _but_ a servant of God. Take today, for instance. He hardly knew what to make of it. He leaned back and looked up into the rafters of the temple sanctuary. The late afternoon sun was creeping away, and the cool gloom of evening was creeping in. He liked to sit in the back like this after spending all his time at the front, teaching and leading prayers. Sometimes it was rough being an important Pharisee, always on stage, always having to say the right thing, always having to sit at the front. He liked sitting back where his family sat when he was a kid; he felt a little more at ease with God back here. He looked at the darkness above him… “That those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind…” Wow, that Jesus caught him with that one. He just sort of naturally figured that if the blind beggar had gained sight, Jesus was probably implying that they had _lost_ theirs, so he asked, “Are we also blind?.” That only made matters worse, with Jesus rubbing it in, “If you _were_ blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” That Jesus could zing with the best of them! Elihu wished Jesus was a Pharisee; at least that way he would be on their side! Never had he seen someone with such confidence and audacity, such power and authority in teaching. Elihu had always imagined that the prophets of old would have that same amazing charisma that he felt today in Jesus. He groaned; come to think of it, the prophets had just as hard a time with the elders and priests as Jesus was having. Maybe there was something to this, after all. He hadn’t seen the healing itself, but he was in on the argument afterward. If Jesus really could heal the blind and the sick, then he would have to do some serious soul-searching about who this Jesus really is. Elihu pulled the prayer shawl over his forehead and started a long conversation with God.
4. Itzak walked past his partner’s house. “That Shemoel… he can be so opinionated! He was so closed-minded about Jesus, for instance. What did he expect, after all? I guess having a father and an uncle on the Sanhedrin and two brothers who were scribes could make you a bit conservative, but somehow, Shemoel seemed _too_ stodgy! He probably wouldn’t approve of Elijah wearing camel’s hair instead of the proper woolen cloak of the merchants! He probably would be offended if King David showed up dressed as a shepherd! Everything had to be just so, just the way he expected it for Shemoel to like it. He expected the Lord (Blessed be He) to look like an olive oil merchant or a scribe. No wonder he couldn’t stand Jesus; Jesus was too radical, too unrestrained, too popular, too different from the religious establishment to be kosher! Good grief, if the Messiah himself didn’t act like a solemn, prosperous, upper-middle class gentleman, Shemoel would walk away!” Itzak could see why Shemoel and the others couldn’t stand Jesus’ way of preaching and healing and all the rest. Jesus was unconventional, unexpected.
But maybe, just maybe, Jesus _was_ the Messiah! “Wouldn’t that be a shock! Just imagine: all the scribes and Pharisees and lawyers and olive oil merchants of Jerusalem can’t recognize the Messiah of God walking around in their midst! Wow… it would explain a lot about Jesus, though, like how he could heal a person _born_ blind, like how he always sounded like he had a direct line to God when he preached, like how he was so casual about keeping the details of the Sabbath just so, like how he constantly confused the experts but attracted the simple, faithful people in droves.” Itzak came to a full stop in the middle of the road. “Maybe he _is_ the Messiah… Talk about God surprising people! Everybody expected the Messiah to be a proper, conservative, observant Jew, watching every little rule in the Torah, and here is someone who is more concerned with the spirit behind the law. Everybody was expecting a prophet who would march up to the temple and declare God’s will at the center of the religious establishment, but Jesus walked among the ordinary people, the real strength of the faith. The Zealots were expecting a Messiah who would overthrow those Roman oppressors, but here is Jesus asking us to love our neighbor, pray for our enemies, help each other out, and who was overthrowing the real oppressors like blindness and sin. Wow. If God was going to catch us by surprise, Jesus is just right! No wonder the Pharisees couldn’t accept it; they had decided what God _should_ do, rather than looking for what God was _really_ doing! Their human expectations blinded them to what God was actually doing in their midst. No wonder Jesus called them blind!” The light dawned on Itzak. “Maybe Jesus _is_ the Messiah,” thought Itzak, and he broke into a full run for the last hundred yards home.
5. When Elihu finally came to the end of his prayers, he looked around. It was nearly black in the temple, except for a few lamps sputtering in their pots of oil. He felt like the reverse of that beggar– _he_ had gone from darkness to a few glimmers of light to full sight. Elihu wondered if he was losing his spiritual sight, if he was being left with only the last few glimmers before total blindness. Well, he made up his mind. He had to talk with this Jesus some more. Jesus could give _him_ sight, too. If this guy really was sent from God, he would have to junk some of his precious theology and favorite beliefs, but that was ok. He would rather be right with God than with his brother Pharisees. “All right, Lord, if you say so!” His own voice echoing against the stone pillars startled Elihu. He stood up, gathered up all the layers of his prayer shawl and cloak, bowed reverently toward the ark, and strode out. As he touched the mezzuzah on the doorframe of the portico, he caught his breath when he saw a stunning sunset, bright and sharp. With a heartfelt prayer of thanks, he rejoiced in the vision.
And as he turned, he noticed that, somehow, rising out of the shadows of the valley below, the ugly little hill known as Golgotha was bathed in a brilliant light. It seemed very important.