You’ve got to feel sorry for that blind man! Jesus practically accosts him and orders him about, even if it is to heal him. Then, before he knows it, he becomes the object of curiosity for the people who had been used to seeing him blind and who then cart him off to the Pharisees for investigation. The Pharisees don’t believe he had ever been blind to start with and pretty much harass him with repeated interrogations. In the end, they expel him from the synagogue for daring to contradict their negative judgment about Jesus. Not even his parents speak up in his defence. Finally, Jesus accosts him for a second time and questions him about his faith. Not what you’d call an easy day for him! You can imagine him with a large question mark over his head!

But there’s something else going on as these events unfold. He doesn’t yet realise it, but Jesus basically tells his disciples that this man was born blind for God’s purposes: that Jesus, the Light of the world, could perform this very work of healing. The man’s physical blindness represents the blindness of all humanity as the result of original sin. “In guilt I was born; a sinner was I conceived” as Psalm 50 tells us. Jesus accosts humanity in its existential night and heals it by His Cross and Resurrection. Christ the Light first restores the physical sight of this man. He anoints him with a muddy paste as a prelude to washing, almost as if it were the anointing with the oil of the catechumens, which our elect will receive on Holy Saturday morning. The pool of Siloam means the pool of the one who is sent. That one is not so much the blind man as Jesus Himself who has just said to his disciples that “we must work the works of him who sent me.” In other words, the pool in which the blind man is truly washed is not the physical one but Christ Himself. He is washed in Christ, the living baptismal font, and receives the light of faith, as yet in seed form.

As the story unfolds, so does the man’s faith, a bit like it did for the woman of Samaria from last Sunday. At first, he just describes Christ as the man Jesus. Then, under interrogation from the Pharisees, he calls Jesus a prophet. And you can sense the man’s faith growing because each time he is questioned by the Pharisees he gets bolder and bolder in responding, to the point of daring to ask them if they, too, want to become disciples of Jesus. But his increasing boldness provokes their increasing anger, both at Jesus and at the man himself: they already “know” that Jesus is a sinner and so they dismiss this man with contempt saying, “you were born in utter sin.” But by this point, the man doesn’t care what they think. The light of faith is already burning in his soul. They cast him out, but Jesus finds him and asks him the question which will bring his faith to full fruition: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”, that is, in the Son of God made man. In the end, the man does not only believe in Jesus as the Son of Man, but calls Him, “Lord.” He had started by calling Him “the man Jesus”, but he ends by calling Him Lord. The eyes of his soul are now wide open to the Light of Christ. The real work of God was not to restore his physical sight, but his spiritual sight, that is, faith. This is what baptism confers on those who accept and work with its grace. A new vision of reality, of God and of self, which is bold and confident and fearless.

The drama also includes others. We hear of the man’s neighbours and those who would see him begging. They are divided when they witness him now able to see: is it him or is it not? The man himself insists that he is the former blind beggar, but some must have thought that it was a hoax and felt that the intervention of the authorities was needed. When the Pharisees do eventually hear the man’s account, they are divided, too – not so much about the man himself, as about Jesus. The man’s witness to Jesus is met with increasing hostility and incredulity by some Pharisees. We hear nothing more about those who believed the man and did not consider Jesus to be a sinner. The sceptics try, first, to deny that the man was born blind, since that would put an end to the matter and show Jesus up as an impostor. But the man’s parents shot that down. They testify that he was indeed born blind. The repeated interrogations by the Pharisees become increasingly desperate and irrational: they seek proof of something that is literally staring them in the face; they want proof of what can only be believed. Their frustration ends in the angry expulsion of the man whose obvious healing challenged their hardened prejudice. The Light of Jesus now shone in this man’s eyes and soul and it was cast onto the unbelieving hearts of those who rejected him. Christ’s Light judges of itself because it shows up what’s in the heart. The Pharisees were faithless and refused to believe; that is, they were blind and refused to see. But because they said they could see, even when they couldn’t, their guilt of refusing faith in Jesus remained. And let’s not forget the disciples of Jesus. They are mentioned at the start, but not again. Perhaps like us, they are bystanders, but can that be all? Is not the heart of the bystander, the listener, to be enlightened?

So, for our elect and for ourselves, this powerful drama of the Gospel scrutinises our own hearts. Am I willing to be accosted by Jesus when He decides, as the blind man did? Do I truly welcome Jesus as a sheer gift of love sent to me by the Father, as he did? Do I take my stand beside Jesus boldly in the face of temptation or of hostility, as he did? In the face of the Light of Jesus, the demands of His Truth, is my response scepticism, cynicism or a divided heart, or can I say simply and sincerely with the healed blind man, “tell me, Lord, what to believe and I will believe it”? Are the lights I use to guide my opinions, outlook and decisions from Christ or compatible with Christ? Do I perceive and judge the world, and my own life in the world, in the Light of Christ, or do I perceive and judge Christ in the light of the world and of my own ideas? Has the light of my faith in Christ developed to the maturity of calling Him “my Lord” or do I only see Him as “the man Jesus”, at best the “prophet Jesus” or even as the “baby Jesus”?

Lord, anoint and reanoint the eyes of our souls with the Light of Your grace as you did on the day of our baptism. Give us the courage and boldness of the blind man and of the woman of Samaria to open up and out to You, to live for and from within You, and to witness to You. Dispel the darkness within us, heal our divided hearts and grant us truly to worship You here and in eternity in Spirit and in Truth, with all that we are and have. Amen.