What is it with Jesus and his healing on the Sabbath? It’s almost as though he was trying to upset the religious authorities of his day. Couldn’t he have healed the blind man on any other day of the week? Or was he doing it on purpose to get the attention of the religious leaders of the day?
As they tried to discern who Jesus was, some argued that he couldn’t be from God because he didn’t keep their Sabbath. Others argued that in spite of that fact, he was doing significant miraculous things which they didn’t believe a sinner capable of doing. This appears to be an ongoing argument among the leaders. Jesus simply confounds them. They thought they had it all right. But he keeps showing them they might not and it is upending their world. A ruling had already been made that anyone acknowledging Jesus as the Christ would be dismissed from their membership rolls. He just continued to be a problem for them and they didn’t want their people following this guy. They wanted to be the ones followed. They had spent their whole lives studying the Scriptures and thought they had it down pretty good.
When he was asked, the man who was healed said he thought Jesus was a prophet. Since they didn’t believe he had actually been healed, they called in his parents who acknowledged he was their son and that he had been blind and now could see, but they would not acknowledge how it happened. It was too risky for them. But the one who had been healed could not help but believe. He had been blind and now he could see. As he answered the questions, his belief became more and more sincere and his words became more and more bold. In the end, he called those questioning him on their reasons for it. “Do you want to become his disciples, too?” John 9:27 He knew very well that they did not, but they wouldn’t back off in trying to convince the one who was healed that the healer was not the real deal.
And when they told him that they didn’t know where Jesus came from, he answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” John 9:30-33 Having nothing more to say, and not wanting to accept what the man was saying, they removed him from their membership rolls and sent him away – a little bit like 2-year-old peek-a-boo!
When Jesus heard about this, he went looking for the healed man. I believe he wanted to clear up any confusion the man’s discussions with the religious authorities may have caused. Jesus confirmed for him that he was indeed the Christ. And then for the sake of the nearby Pharisees, he said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” John 9:39 The Pharisees asked him if he thought they were blind to which he responded, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” John 9:41 It is not a sin to not know something, but to refuse to be taught when the truth is available to you brings guilt upon yourself.
One of the things that upsets Jesus most is when leaders forget who they are responsible to and when they lose sight of who they are following. I think it bothers Jesus a great deal that these leaders who have studied the Scriptures and claim to know what God wants have missed the point – the relationship between God and mankind. They focus on the rules and defining them further and further until they have totally lost sight of the origin of the rules and what they were made for.
I love the relationship between Jesus and the man who had been blind. When the man risks everything and argues with the religious authorities, Jesus comes and finds him to assure him and encourage his new faith. It was no accident that Jesus chose this man to heal or that he did it on the Sabbath. As Jesus was giving physical sight to a blind man, he was putting a spotlight on the wrong teachings and misunderstandings of those who were given the job of instructing the people.
I wonder if all of the Pharisees were too full of themselves to hear Jesus that day or if maybe some of them began to examine themselves and what they believed. I wonder if some of them longed for God to be active in their lives and not just depend on the stories from their ancestors to know that God even exists.
And as I meditate on these verses from the Bible, I wonder what rules I have made up out of my own blindness and if maybe Jesus will put some mud on my eyes and ask me to wash it off so I can see what he is teaching rather than being stuck in my own agenda. Or worse yet, would be to discover that I am playing peek-a-boo with God and pretending he isn’t here when he is right here in the same room with me and touching me and I can’t see him simply because I choose to believe he isn’t here!
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