"One Thing I Know"
John 9
Rev. Everett L. Miller
So often when we meditate on the Scriptures, it is easy for us to become bogged down with the many questions that come to mind about a passage, especially a passage this long, to where we actually miss the point. Why would the disciples think sin caused this man’s blindness? What is Jesus saying about sin here? Why in the world did Jesus use spit and mud on the man’s eyes when at other times he didn’t even have to be in the same town as a person to heal them with only his word? Why did Jesus tell him to go wash in a pool? Why do the Pharisees care if Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath? Shouldn’t they just be happy for the man? These are the kinds of questions I require my New Testament students to ask when they write their exegesis papers, and these are the kinds of questions I ask on Monday mornings when I sit down to read the next Sunday’s passage. But although these questions may be important at one time or another, if we tried to explore the answers to them all in one Sunday sermon we would have to hand out sack lunches because we’d miss dinner and we’d probably want to pass out pillows and blankets because not only would the sermon be long, but it would be terribly boring. In a Sunday sermon we have to find one meaning for this particular day and meditate on that meaning.
John’s Gospel, like much of the New Testament is not only concerned with the history of Jesus back then but with experiencing Jesus today. In other words, knowing about Jesus Christ is not the same as knowing Jesus Christ. One of the great criticisms of the traditional Protestant churches like the Presbyterian Church is that we very often replace knowing Christ with knowing about Christ. And it is the importance of the experience of knowing Christ that is the meaning of this passage for us today.
After Jesus puts the mud on the man’s eyes and sends him off to the pool, Jesus goes on his way. And after the man struggles to make his way to the pool and carefully bends down to use his cupped hands to splash water on his face he opens his eyes and he sees for the first time in his life. People are amazed by this and by the man’s answer, that “the man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” His neighbors then take him to the religious experts that they respect so these experts, the Pharisees, can see what has been done. They are going to answer the question of whether or not this is the work of God or the work of a charlatan. The man has already told his neighbors what he experienced, but they want a more educated religious opinion.
The Pharisees begin questioning him and they seem to miss the fact that this is a wonderful day for the man who once was blind but now can see. They don’t even seem to really doubt that Jesus performed this healing. Initially they are more concerned by the fact that Jesus performed it on the Sabbath. The Pharisees are the experts, those with the credentials. Who does this Jesus fellow think he is? He is a sinner, that’s who is. The healed man responds that he thinks he is a prophet.
The young man’s parents are brought in to be questioned. Was he really born blind? Yes. How does he see now? Ask him, they say. So the healed man who was probably out rejoicing in the sights we all take for granted is hauled back in and commanded to tell the truth about Jesus being a sinner. Up to this point nobody seems to be concerned with what the young man has experienced. They want answers, answers that make sense to them. They want him to say that God did it but that Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with that. “Give glory to God!,” they say. “We know this man is a sinner.” Then the young man gives an answer that is one of the greatest one-liners in all of Scripture. If chapter nine was being acted out on a stage I imagine the crowd clapping and laughing when they hear it. “I do not know whether he is a sinner,” the man says. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
They could ask him all day and all night to interpret what happened to him, to give good theological explanations that are acceptable to the religious experts. They could coax him and coach him and coerce him all they want but he’s having none of it, because the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t know any more than he has told them and as a matter of fact he doesn’t care. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” He is so happy that he has been healed, that the darkness has been lifted from him by the work of Jesus. He cares more about seeing the clouds move across the sky for the first time or looking into the eyes of his mother and father who have loved him since birth but who he has never seen. His life is changed, transformed, made new. What else matters? “I was blind, now I see.”
But they won’t quit. What did he do? How did he do it? Then the young man gets sarcastic with them. Do you want me to tell you again? You didn’t listen the first time. Why do you want to know? Do you want to become his disciples too? That makes them mad. I really gets them going. “We know a lot of things. We know God has spoken to Moses. But we don’t know who this Jesus guy is.” They are the religious experts and something has happened that doesn’t fit with what they know. So instead of rejoicing in the mystery or changing what they know, they just deny the goodness of what has happened. Then the man shows them up by basically saying, “You know all kinds of stuff. You have all kinds of credentials and knowledge. But now you are stumped. You are the experts yet you just can’t grasp what has happened here. I was blind, now I see. Jesus did this.” So they kick the healed man out, totally discounting his experience.
This man who has been healed has learned a lesson that the religious experts cannot find if they only look in the pages of books. In this passage the Pharisees are really representative of all religious people who allow tradition to nullify experience, instead of allowing tradition and experience to inform one another. Because of his experience, this healed man has become wiser than the highly educated and overly credentialed religious leaders. He may not have a seminary degree and he may not be able to interpret his experience with Christ very well as of yet but as he says, “I don’t know if he is a sinner or not. What I do know is that I was blind but now I see.” In other words, “I was in darkness, now I am in the light and it was Jesus who did it. I can’t quote the Bible to you from memory. I can’t quote great theologians. But my life was in shambles and Jesus turned that around.” His real life experience made him wiser than those considered wise by this world. He has learned through experience that what we learn of the healing love of Christ during times of darkness is of much greater value than what we could learn about it from reading 1,000 books.
John’s Gospel, like much of the New Testament is not only concerned with the history of Jesus back then but with experiencing Jesus today. In other words, knowing about Jesus Christ is not the same as knowing Jesus Christ. One of the great criticisms of the traditional Protestant churches like the Presbyterian Church is that we very often replace knowing Christ with knowing about Christ. And it is the importance of the experience of knowing Christ that is the meaning of this passage for us today.
After Jesus puts the mud on the man’s eyes and sends him off to the pool, Jesus goes on his way. And after the man struggles to make his way to the pool and carefully bends down to use his cupped hands to splash water on his face he opens his eyes and he sees for the first time in his life. People are amazed by this and by the man’s answer, that “the man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” His neighbors then take him to the religious experts that they respect so these experts, the Pharisees, can see what has been done. They are going to answer the question of whether or not this is the work of God or the work of a charlatan. The man has already told his neighbors what he experienced, but they want a more educated religious opinion.
The Pharisees begin questioning him and they seem to miss the fact that this is a wonderful day for the man who once was blind but now can see. They don’t even seem to really doubt that Jesus performed this healing. Initially they are more concerned by the fact that Jesus performed it on the Sabbath. The Pharisees are the experts, those with the credentials. Who does this Jesus fellow think he is? He is a sinner, that’s who is. The healed man responds that he thinks he is a prophet.
The young man’s parents are brought in to be questioned. Was he really born blind? Yes. How does he see now? Ask him, they say. So the healed man who was probably out rejoicing in the sights we all take for granted is hauled back in and commanded to tell the truth about Jesus being a sinner. Up to this point nobody seems to be concerned with what the young man has experienced. They want answers, answers that make sense to them. They want him to say that God did it but that Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with that. “Give glory to God!,” they say. “We know this man is a sinner.” Then the young man gives an answer that is one of the greatest one-liners in all of Scripture. If chapter nine was being acted out on a stage I imagine the crowd clapping and laughing when they hear it. “I do not know whether he is a sinner,” the man says. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
They could ask him all day and all night to interpret what happened to him, to give good theological explanations that are acceptable to the religious experts. They could coax him and coach him and coerce him all they want but he’s having none of it, because the truth of the matter is that he doesn’t know any more than he has told them and as a matter of fact he doesn’t care. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” He is so happy that he has been healed, that the darkness has been lifted from him by the work of Jesus. He cares more about seeing the clouds move across the sky for the first time or looking into the eyes of his mother and father who have loved him since birth but who he has never seen. His life is changed, transformed, made new. What else matters? “I was blind, now I see.”
But they won’t quit. What did he do? How did he do it? Then the young man gets sarcastic with them. Do you want me to tell you again? You didn’t listen the first time. Why do you want to know? Do you want to become his disciples too? That makes them mad. I really gets them going. “We know a lot of things. We know God has spoken to Moses. But we don’t know who this Jesus guy is.” They are the religious experts and something has happened that doesn’t fit with what they know. So instead of rejoicing in the mystery or changing what they know, they just deny the goodness of what has happened. Then the man shows them up by basically saying, “You know all kinds of stuff. You have all kinds of credentials and knowledge. But now you are stumped. You are the experts yet you just can’t grasp what has happened here. I was blind, now I see. Jesus did this.” So they kick the healed man out, totally discounting his experience.
This man who has been healed has learned a lesson that the religious experts cannot find if they only look in the pages of books. In this passage the Pharisees are really representative of all religious people who allow tradition to nullify experience, instead of allowing tradition and experience to inform one another. Because of his experience, this healed man has become wiser than the highly educated and overly credentialed religious leaders. He may not have a seminary degree and he may not be able to interpret his experience with Christ very well as of yet but as he says, “I don’t know if he is a sinner or not. What I do know is that I was blind but now I see.” In other words, “I was in darkness, now I am in the light and it was Jesus who did it. I can’t quote the Bible to you from memory. I can’t quote great theologians. But my life was in shambles and Jesus turned that around.” His real life experience made him wiser than those considered wise by this world. He has learned through experience that what we learn of the healing love of Christ during times of darkness is of much greater value than what we could learn about it from reading 1,000 books.
Now, we always have to be careful not to lift up experience alone. But let me ask you this: Would you rather have a doctor who just graduated from med school with all A’s or a doctor who earned C’s in med school but who has twenty years of experience treating people with your illness? If you lost your child would you rather talk to someone who has read 20 books about what it is like to lose a child or would you rather talk to someone who lost their own child and has lived with that? Do you want to talk to people who’ve read about cancer or do you want to talk to people who’ve lived with it? Do you want to talk to people wwho have read about what it is like to be an alcoholic or do you want to talk to people who’ve been there.
The Pharisees aren’t interested in the healed man’s experience. They don’t care what the mud felt like on his eyes. They don’t care how much faith it must have taken for him to stumble his way to the pool. They don’t care how that first burst of light caused the man to give glory to God. After all, they’re the experts. They’ll tell him what happened. This Jesus guy sinned by healing you on the Sabbath, if you were in fact blind in the first place. That is what happened to you. They don’t want to hear him say “Again, all I know is I was blind, now I see.”
There is only one of us in this room who has a Master of Divinity degree from a seminary. While proper training to be a pastor is important, if you think that makes me more of a Christian because I may know more about Jesus Christ than you do, you are wrong. Because I’ve spent time with you all and you know Jesus Christ. Everyone in this room has experienced the grace of God many times and in many ways over the years. It could have been a moment when you were unusually aware that Christ was with you through the power of the Spirit. It could have been times when you had no idea but you met a child or a person on the street or you spent time with your friends or family and the grace of God shown through those people. It could have been on a mission trip or church camp or over dinner or in worship. You might have had a dream that comforted you. You may have been so surrounded by the people of God during your time of need that you experienced the body of Christ in a very real way. You might have been what seemed like hopelessly lost in sin and experienced the forgiveness of God. Whatever it was, you may not be able to explain it. You may not be able to quote Scriptures about it. You may not know what John Calvin or Dietrich Bonhoeffer said about it. But you know that before God touched you, things were darker than they were afterward. You know that the way you experienced love and peace before is absolutely dull compared to how you experienced love and peace after experiencing Christ’s presence and healing touch on your life. This happens over and over in our lives. After all, if we never experienced the presence of this Christ that we claim to believe in and we claim to worship I don’t imagine we’d keep showing up here week after week.
When we are touched by an experience of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, whether that comes through healing, through deliverance from addiction or trouble, through worship, or through the everyday interactions of people with one another, we carry that experience with us for the rest of our lives. When we experience the touch of God our eyes are opened to the fullness of life that we could not see before. There is such power in experience. You can share all you know about the Bible or all you know about theology or church history or Presbyterian polity but unless you can share your experience with the grace of God then all of that other stuff doesn’t matter. It is great in helping to interpret your experience and to grow spiritually, but it cannot replace experience. Knowing about Jesus Christ is a poor substitute for knowing Jesus Christ.
The Pharisees in this story come to find this out. Jesus goes to find the healed man and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The young man does not but comes to believe in Jesus while they are talking. Now not only his eyes, but the eyes of his heart have been opened by Jesus. Then Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Jesus is no longer talking about 20/20 vision here. Those who cannot see what God is up to are going to see it in the work of Jesus, in the experience of his touch. Those who think they know it all and claim to see when what they should be looking upon is right in front of their faces are in trouble. In fact, Jesus concludes by saying that those who claim to know it all are guilty by the very fact that they claim that. They’d be better off if they were clueless. But because they know about God, but don’t know God their sin remains. With their knowledge, they too must be open to experience.
So beneath all the questions we want to ask about this long passage—Why would the disciples think sin caused this man’s blindness? What is Jesus saying about sin here? Why in the world did Jesus use spit and mud on the man’s eyes? Why did Jesus tell him to go wash in a pool? Why do the Pharisees care if Jesus heals someone on the Sabbath?—and beneath all the questions the Pharisees keep asking the healed man and his parents—How’d you receive your sight? What do you say about him? Was he really born blind? How does he see? What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?—there is, at least for today, a meaning that comes not from a question seeking the certainty of knowledge but from an answer celebrating the mystery of experience. “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight…I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
