Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.
John 9:2
Another unusual question.
Unusual to us, but this question is from the disciples to Jesus as they see a blind man at the side of the road. And for them the idea that illness or deformity or suffering was the result of sin was common.
It is retributive justice. It was and is common in many cultures, even today (even in the United States). Examples are common throughout the Old Testament, beginning with that incident in the garden [check Encounter 1], threaded through the Law of Moses (think eye-for-eye, etc.), up to the Pharisees who confronted Jesus.
But look at Jesus’ response: Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him, [9:3].
No one’s actions caused the man’s blindness, but Jesus is going to use the situation to show God’s glory. Jesus then tells the disciples he is doing God’s work and that he is “the light of the world.” (He also made this claim to the Pharisees who wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery: I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life, [8:12]).
Jesus then spits on the ground, makes a little mud, puts the mud on the man’s eyes, and tells him to go wash it off in the Pool of Siloam (which was near the temple). The man follows the instructions and comes back seeing!
Wow! Great! A miracle! A demonstration of God’s healing power!
But it’s the Sabbath! No Jew is supposed to “work” on the Sabbath. (The Pharisees even had a limit to how far you could walk before you had committed “work.”)
So Jesus broke the law (“sinned”) when he healed the blind man. But he did heal the blind man. How can a sinner do God’s work? It wasn’t supposed to work that way.
And that’s exactly what Jesus was saying and demonstrating: God doesn’t work “that way.”
We live in a world of cause and effect, of actions and consequences, of transactions. From at least grade school on we learn that doing something the “right” way results in a reward (a “good” grade) and doing something the “wrong” way leads to an unpleasant outcome (a “bad” grade). The same kind of thing happens when we go to work: right actions lead to more pay, advancement or other positive outcomes; and wrong actions lead to poor evaluations and possible loss of income. This is the way the world seems to work.
But Jesus says God’s world works differently. Our actions, whether good or not good, do not affect how God sees us or loves us. Jesus wants us to see and understand how things work in God’s kingdom. So he demonstrates with the man born blind.
When the Pharisees question the man about what Jesus did – on the Sabbath, remember – to give him sight, he says, Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see, [9:25].
Jesus gave the man his sight in this world. He wants to give us the sight – the light – to see God’s world, so we do not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.