Church Sermon - February 27, 2005

Rev. Mark F. Bartels

Old Testament Lesson; Isaiah 42:14-21
Gospel Lesson; Ephesians 5:8-14
Sermon Text; John 9:13-39

I read an autobiography, written by a grown man by the name of Frank. He wrote a great deal about his childhood. You see, when Frank was born, he was born with a disease, or a condition, that caused his face to be very deformed. There was something about his tongue and the glands in his neck that caused his tongue to swell up and be huge. It would hang out of his mouth, and turn black. Slime and saliva would cover his tongue, and it would drip down on his clothes, turning his clothes black and crusty. His neck was also all swollen.

And, because of this condition, his growth was stunted. And so, he was very weak, spindly, and much smaller than the average child. Poor little guy.

By the time he was five years old, he had already had a number of operations. However, his face was still deformed and his tongue still hung out of his mouth.

And, then it came time to go to school, for the first day. He painfully describes what it was like to go to school on that first day, and how the kids laughed at him, made fun of him, and the teachers didn’t seem to do much about it. Through the rest of the book, he tells about how he grew up in his grade school years, and then into his high school years. He couldn’t talk right, because of the way his tongue was. People would laugh and tease him. When he got to high school, he was so small that they would beat him up, rough him up, and laugh at him.

As I read that story, my heart went out to that poor, young man. I thought to myself, "How could everybody be so blind? How could they be so blind to what they were doing to that poor young boy? How could they be so blind to the fact that they were hurting his feelings over, and over, and over? How could they be so blind to what they were doing to that poor young boy? How could they be so blind?"

In today’s scripture reading, we find the same type of thing happening, with some people called Pharisees. We have to ask ourselves, "How could these people be so blind?"

There was a young man who had been born blind. Jesus had taken some mud and some spit, mixed them together, and put it on the blind man’s eyes. Then, He told the blind man to go and wash himself in the pool of Siloam. And, that young man was healed of his blindness. How happy he must have been!

Now, this happened on the Sabbath Day. The Pharisees, who made up all kinds of laws that were not in scripture, had made up a law that it was a sin to heal somebody on the Sabbath Day, because that was work. So, when the Pharisees heard what had happened, in their hearts, they came to what they believed to be the truth. In their hearts, they believed, "This Man, Jesus, was a dirty, rotten, sinner! Here He was going around, posing as if He was someone great. He was even posing, as if He was the Messiah. And, He was sinning, by healing people on the Sabbath Day."

Their hearts were made up. Their minds were made up. They were determined that Jesus was sinner. And, their eyes were going to be shut, from that time forward, to the truth. And, no matter what truth was presented before them, they were going to keep their eyes shut. They were going to stay with their own thoughts and their own opinions.

Well, here is what happened in between the verses we read. You see, it goes from 13 to 17 and then it skips 18 – 33, and then we pick up again in verse 34. I want you to hear what happened in those intervening verses.

The Pharisees had this young man brought to them, and asked him how he received his sight. They wanted to hear that Jesus had done work on the Sabbath Day, so they could accuse Him of ‘sin’.

"He put mud on my eyes", the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see…He is a prophet."

The Pharisees closed their eyes shut tight. They didn’t want to see that Jesus could possibly be a prophet. They had their minds made up. They were not going to be confused by the truth that was out there. And so, they thought, "This can’t be true. It can’t be true. It must be a fake miracle. This is not really a man who was born blind. He is just pretending to try to give credence to Jesus being the Savior."

And so, they called the man’s parents, because they thought surely the parents would say, "That is not our son. He is not the one who was born blind."

They asked his parents,

"Is this your son?" "Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?"

They were hoping to hear the parents say, "That is not our son. He wasn’t born blind."

But, the parents said,

"We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind. But, how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age."

Well, they did know how he got his sight back. The Bible tells us,

"His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue."

And so, they were afraid to tell the Pharisees, because they had already determined anybody who said Jesus was the Messiah would be excommunicated.

The Pharisees’ eyes were ‘blind’ and they did not want to hear. They kept their eyes shut tight.

So then, they said to the young man,

"Give glory to God. We know this man is a sinner."

In other words, they were telling him, "Now is your chance to give glory to God and admit to all of us that He sinned, when He healed you. He should not have healed you on the Sabbath."

The young man looked at them and said,

"Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"

‘Then they asked him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?"’

They wanted to hear him say, "He healed me on the Sabbath", because, that was a ‘sin’ to heal on the Sabbath.

The young man responded to them,

"I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?"

Now, they really shut their eyes tight. They did not want to become His disciples. So they said to the young man,

"We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from."

To which the young man responded,

"Now that is truly 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."

And then he said,

"If this man were not from God, he could do nothing."

All of the evidence was right in front of them and the Pharisees closed their eyes even tighter. At that point they said,

‘"You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us." And they threw him out.’

Now they brought a personal attack on him. "You are nothing but a dirty, rotten, sinner yourself, and don’t you assume you can tell us the truth."

You see how the Pharisees continued to shut their eyes to the truth and remained in their blindness, no matter what? How could that be, when the evidence was all in front of them? Here is how it could be. That is a picture of you and me, by nature. The Bible tells us, by nature, we were born blind. Our eyes were shut to the truth. We, by nature, want to keep our eyes shut from the truth. We do not want to see the truth. We do not want to admit to the truth, no matter what. You and I still have that sinful nature hanging about our necks, which wants to be blind to the truth.

Let’s go back to that little boy named Frank, who I talked about earlier. I asked, "How could it be that those people were so blind, that they would do that to that little boy?" Now, I want you to think about something. (And, this does not feel good for us to hear.) Did you know that here, in our school, at Holy Cross Lutheran School, children do sometimes make fun of other children? Sometimes, they get their feelings hurt, terribly badly. Our natural reaction is to say, "No. That can’t happen. That can’t happen here. This is a Christian school." We want to close our eyes to the truth. We don’t want to hear that we, too, can be like that. We want to keep our eyes blinded from the fact of the way we really are.

Another example is when a sermon is preached on some topic that may really touch us, because we are holding on to something sinful more dear to us, than we should. For example, if I preached about the stewardship of money,

Sometimes our natural reaction is to bristle at that, close our eyes, and say, "No. That can’t be true. That can’t be right. That’s not me." Our sinful nature wants to be blind to the truth.

Why is it in our homes, in our own homes, with the people we love the most, we are blind to our own faults? We don’t see how we may hurt our husband, or our wife. We don’t see how our actions hurt our children. The children don’t see how their actions hurt their parents. By nature, we are blind, we don’t see our sin, nor do we want to see our sin.

Why is it when somebody, at home, may point out my faults, or my sin, my natural reaction is to bristle, and to say, "That is not true. That’s not the way I am. It is because of the way you are."

I want to turn it right around and say, "I don’t have faults. You are the one who has faults."

By nature, we are born blind. We want to keep our eyes tightly shut. Our sinful nature does not want to hear that we are sinners.

That ought to concern all of us, a great deal. The awesome thing that we see in today’s scripture reading is that this young man, who was born physically blind and received his physical sight, received a far greater gift than that. He, too, was born spiritually blind, just like you and me. But, he received something far greater than physical sight. He received from Jesus spiritual sight. After that young man had been thrown out of the synagogue, Jesus went and found him. That young man looked at Jesus with eyes that had been healed, and Jesus asked him,

"Do you believe in the Son of Man?"

The young man said to Jesus,

"Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him." ‘Jesus said, "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you."’

The Bible says the young man said,

‘"Lord, I believe," and he worshipped him.’"

His eyes were wide open. He saw Jesus. He saw something he had never seen before. He saw the Savior of the world. He saw, for the first time, the One who forgives all our sins.

There was a man who had been born blind, not too many years ago. He was about forty years old. He had been blind all of his life. The doctors discovered that his blindness was caused by something simple that they could repair. So, they did surgery, simple surgery.

For the first time in his entire life, that man, who had been in darkness all of his life, could see! Someone asked him what it was like. He said it was so awesome! It was beyond what he could imagine. "The yellows are so yellow! The red! It is my favorite! It is so red! It is so awesome to look into the sky and actually see an airplane fly and see the vapor trail behind it. And, to look at the moon in the sky!" He was so excited that he had gotten his sight back!

Then, there was a little girl who was born blind. The doctors couldn’t do anything about it. She was going to be blind the rest of her life. Somebody said to her, "That is really awful that you are going to be blind the rest of your life."

This little girl said to them, "I would rather be blind all of my life and see Jesus, than have my sight all of my life and never see Jesus."

You see, that is even better, isn’t it? It is even better to see Jesus, than it is to have our physical sight. You and I have been brought to the light. We do see Jesus. We see Jesus by a miracle that has happened to you and me. Jesus healed that young man, when he washed in the water. And, it is when you and I were washed in the water of Baptism that the Holy Spirit came into our hearts and those scales fell from our eyes. The Holy Spirit brought us to faith, so that we see something that we could not see on our own by nature. We see Jesus!

You and I, all of us have to say, (like that man who said), "The yellow is so yellow".

The purple is so purple. That purple robe, that kingly robe Jesus wears, He left behind, in His throne in Heaven.

That purple is so purple!

The red is so red. The red of the blood of Jesus, that runs from His hands, that runs from His feet, that runs from His side, that runs from His thorn-crowned head, that red is so red.

The white is so white. Jesus has covered me up with His holiness and I am dressed in the white robes of Jesus’ righteousness. That holy life of Jesus is so white!

Our sight has been restored! We see something that we could never see, had not the Holy Spirit, through baptism and now through the Word, led us into the light. Now, we can see! Our Epistle Lesson says we are children of light.

"Live as children of the light.

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness"

Now, as God’s People, who can see, who can see Jesus (and what an awesome thing that is),

Now, we want to live as the children of the light. And you know what that means? I want Jesus and His Word to shine that light on my sin. I want to see it all. I want to see it all, even though it hurts, because I want to repent of it all. In His Word, I want to see Him shine on me that Gospel message that He forgives all of my sins. And in His Word, I want Him to shine that light, (which is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path), that shows me the way I should go, instead of walking in those sins of blindness that I have.

Amen.

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