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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today’s lengthy Gospel Reading, the entire ninth chapter of St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, begins simply enough, with Jesus’s passing by and seeing a man blind from birth, and His disciples’ asking Him who sinned: the man or his parents, that he was born blind. But, Jesus’s answer arguably is anything but simple: neither the man nor his parents sinned with the specific result that the man was born blind, but the man was born blind, Jesus says, so that the works of God might be displayed in him (whatever those works of God might be). This morning we reflect on today’s lengthy Gospel Reading under the theme, “Displaying the Works of God.”
You and I might easily relate to the disciples’ question trying to make sense of the world. People have cancer? Maybe they smoked. Liver problems? Drank too much. Heart attack? Not a good diet or enough exercise. Car accident? Must have been texting. (Confer P. Scaer, 26.) But, how do we explain the massive stroke suffered earlier this week by my former seminary classmate who otherwise was in perfectly good health? To be sure, Jesus’s answer does not mean that neither the man blind from birth nor his parents sinned at all, nor does Jesus’s answer mean that no sin ever results in relatively‑direct consequences such as sickness and death. And, sin is a central theme of the Gospel Reading: not only do the disciples ask whether the man blind from birth or his parents sinned, but also the Pharisees discuss what they think is Jesus’s sin, first among themselves and then again later with the man blind from birth; the Pharisees also say the man blind from birth was born in utter sin; and, at the Reading’s end, Jesus says the Pharisees’ guilt (or “sin”) remains.
The Pharisees certainly are an interesting case in today’s Gospel Reading. They repeatedly questioned the man blind from birth about his receiving his sight, but they did not listen to him, and they did not even believe that he had been blind and received his sight, until they questioned his parents. Then, they claimed both to know things that were not true and not to know things that were obvious to others. Not surprisingly in St. John’s Gospel account, Jesus’s words and deeds often have a double sense. Like the blind dedicated servant of the Lord in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 42:14-21), the Pharisees may have seen physically, but they were blind spiritually, as we all are by nature. Like the man blind from birth, we are sinful and so alienated from God from birth. As the psalmist says, we were brought forth full of iniquity, even conceived sinful (Psalm 51:5). Jesus, the Light of the World, shines on us, but we may be just as wrong as the Pharisees, maybe even claiming to be agnostic—not to know about this or that. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus says He came into this world for judgment, and, apart from faith in Him, His judgment means death here in time and torment in hell for eternity.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus patiently led the man blind from birth to realize at first that Jesus was a prophet, then that Jesus was from God, and finally that Jesus was the Son of Man, so that the man blind from birth confessed faith in Jesus and worshipped Him. Similarly, Jesus displays the works of God for us. Jesus calls and thereby enables us to confess our sins and believe in Him, to worship Him with the highest worship of the Gospel: seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins from Him, through His Means of Grace. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sin of mistaken knowledge and our sin of claiming not to know things He has revealed. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God even forgives our sinful natures themselves. God graciously forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus said that the man was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Those works of God can be said to include God’s giving the man his sight and creating faith in Him, but those works of God surely also include Jesus’s coming from God, His being sent by God to redeem the world, His calling us to repentance and faith, and ultimately His judging between those who repent and believe and those who do not. As St. John wrote by Divine‑inspiration earlier in his Gospel account, in the beginning was the Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; He was in the beginning with God. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, shining His true light in the darkness, making known the Father, and, when the hour came, finishing His work of redemption on the cross. (John 1:1-2, 4, 14, 5, 18; 19:30). There on the cross, the Lamb of God was sacrificed to take away the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins (John 1:29, 36). As we receive Him, as we believe in His Name, He gives us the right to become children of God, born of God (John 1:12-13). All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:3). Now, we are re-created by His working the works of God through His Means of Grace.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva, then He anointed the man blind from birth’s eyes with the mud, and sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam (which name means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing. At first we might be repulsed by Jesus’s use of saliva and dust from the ground (Genesis 2:7), but we see the restoring water flowing from Jesus Himself (P. Scaer, 25), as it flowed from His side on the cross (John 19:34). That living water from Jesus and the washing in the pool of Siloam point us to Holy Baptism and the birth that we have from above of water and the Spirit, administered by those whom God has sent, that gives us entrance into the Kingdom of God (John 3:3, 5; confer P. Scaer, 25). Holy Baptism has long been understood as “enlightenment”, leading us to individual Holy Absolution and to Holy Communion in the Body and Blood of Christ.
Through God’s Means of Grace, He works His works in us—forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation—and in turn we also work the works of Him Who sent Jesus, in the time that God gives to us to do them. We display those works of God that He has worked in us, and, as St. Paul describes in today’s Epistle Reading (Ephesians 5:8-14), we walk as children of light, producing the fruit of light, all that is good and right and true, and trying to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. As did the man blind from birth, we confess Jesus to be the Christ and all that goes with that. Such confession might bring division, as it did for the Pharisees, and even excommunication, as it did for the man blind from birth, but such is the discipleship to which God has called us! We may suffer physical afflictions as indirect or direct consequences of our sin, but we know that God forgives our sin by grace through faith in Jesus Christ now and one day will deliver us from all our afflictions for eternity.
I mentioned at the outset that Jesus’s answer that the man was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him was anything but simple. We must be careful not to imagine that God’s primary active will was for the man to be born blind (confer P. Scaer, 26). The Lord does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of men (Lamentations 3:33). To be sure, God used the man and his blindness to display the works of God—to the man, the disciples, his neighbors, the Pharisees, people for two millennia, and also for us today. And, even without statements like that of today’s Gospel Reading about our sufferings, we still can be sure that God has a good purpose in permitting them, namely, conforming us to the image of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Romans 8:28-29; confer Lenski, 676)—by His mercy and grace, all spending eternity with Him in heaven.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +