SUNDAY SERMON: Only the blind man can see
By Rev. Stephen Baldwin
NT: John 9.1-7
Whenever I read Bible stories, I try to picture them. Where is this happening? Who is there? What’s their relationship? What is going on?
That mental picture helps me gain a clearer picture of what might be going on in the story. And this week’s passage…boy oh boy…did it paint a picture.
Jesus walking through the streets of Jerusalem. A man born blind on the sidewalk. The disciples following in tow. The desert sand, interrupted by Jesus’ spit. Which he uses to make mud and wipe in the blind man’s eye. The pool of Siloam, where he washes the mud off. And then, poof…the man can see. For the first time ever. He sees the city and the disciples and the desert and the buildings and the people and finally the man, Jesus, who saved him.
Quite the scene, isn’t it? Made me wonder, what is the pool of Siloam like? I wasn’t sure how to picture it. Was it a little, old water fountain? Was it a public bathing area? What was it actually like, this place where Jesus makes a blind man see?
Turns out that the pool of Siloam was just discovered a couple of years ago. If you had gone to Jerusalem to visit the Holy Land anytime before 2004, they would have shown you a little rectangular reservoir, sitting low on the city’s edge, that they believed was the pool where Jesus made the blind man see. It was a hold in the ground. Nothing much to see.
But then in 2004, while city employees were replacing a water pipe, they found a large stone, that turned out to be a step, that turned out to part of the entrance to a very large pool. Once they were done excavating it, it was more than 225 feet long in the shape of a trapezoid. Almost ¾ the length of a football field! It had five steps from the main level down to the pool, all the way around it, allowing people easy access to the water from anywhere, at different depths.
The most interesting part of the discovery is how they dated it. There were Roman and Jewish coins in the plaster that formed the pool, and they date to that time period from 100BC to 100CE, before and after the time of Jesus.
Why does all this matter? Because if, like me, you pictured Jesus rubbing mud in a man’s eye and telling him to go wash it off in a little pool where no one would see, then you–like me– would miss the entire context of the story.
This wasn’t some small miracle done in the shadows. It wasn’t as subtle as telling the woman at the well her life story in private. This was an epic show of force by Jesus, meant to turn heads and change minds.
The pool of Siloam was almost ¾ the size of a football field, filled with water, in the middle of the desert. It would’ve been the place to be. Especially on the Sabbath! Jesus could have simply healed the man, but instead he told him to go wash in the waters of Siloam, a place that was surely brimming with people.
According to John, the crowd was confused if this was the same blind man. So they ask him, how did this happen? “The man called Jesus,” he replied.
Can you imagine the electricity around that pool that day as word begins to spread about what happens? Jesus had told the crowds in John 8, “I am the light of the world.” Blindness is the absence of light. Now, in chapter 9, he’s revealing the light. In broad daylight. At the city pool! For a man born blind, and everyone else to see! As private and personal and secretive as Jesus often is, in this story he is anything but. This is a spectacle meant to show his immense power.
But instead of rejoicing in celebration, the people aren’t convinced. The leaders doubt. They put the once-blind man on trial. They ask him what happened? He tells them about Jesus, but they don’t believe him and call his parents to testify. The parents don’t have any answers, so the Pharisees go back to the once-blind man again. They tell him he’s a sinner, that he was not healed, and kick him out of the city.
Can you imagine the rollercoaster this man has been on? And now he realizes…that he’s the only one who can see. He’s the only one in that entire crowd at the pool who can see what Jesus had done for him, as public and as pronounced and as powerful as it was.
Do you ever feel like him? Like you’re the only one who can see? Like you’re the only one who knows what God has done? Like you keep telling your story but no one understands?
I have good news for you. Jesus keeps coming back. He comes back for the blind man. He comes back for the woman at the well. He comes back for the disciples. He comes back to Nicodemus. He comes back for us, blind as we are, out of the sun and into the mud.
Joaquin Phoenix played Jesus in the movie “Mary Magdalene” a few years ago. This scene from the pool at Siloam was in it, but Phoenix refused to rub mud in the man’s eyes. He thought it was a rude thing to do a blind man, so they changed it. He licked his finger and rubbed the blind man’s eyes. Which unfortunately misses the point of the miracle. Jesus rubs mud in his eyes so that he has to go to the pool of Siloam, in broad daylight, in front of the whole town, right outside the temple, in order to become clean.
We all need that kind of cleaning right now. Our world needs it, our leaders need it, we need it ourselves. We need a healing only God can provide. And even if we’re the only ones who can see it, so be it. Because God is surely providing that same kind of healing for our brothers and sisters too. We might be blind to theirs, and they might be blind to ours, but God is not. God keeps coming back for us, to heal us where we are broken. Amen.
