Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Jesus’ healing of a blind man appears in all four gospel narratives. Common in all four stories are the man being a beggar, Jesus touching the man’s eyes, and the use of spit in the healing. Though, as is true for all of John’s Gospel, this account does not seem directly dependent on any of the synoptic accounts, but seems to draw from its own fund of Jesus traditions.
• V. 1-5 set the situation for the miracle healing. Interestingly, the man born blind is nothing more than a set piece at this point. He did not approach Jesus requesting healing, but the healing came out of a conversation between Jesus and the disciples about conventional theological concerns as to the cause of suffering. It was commonly believed that physical ailments were punishment for sin. Since the man was born blind, the sin would have either had to have been committed by his parents, or prior to his birth (the struggle between Jacob and Esau in Genesis open the possibility of sinning in the womb).
• Sin in John’s Gospel is not a moral category of behavior, but a theological category dealing with how one responds to the revelation of God in Jesus. The need that evokes the miracle is not the man’s need for forgiveness for the moral sin that caused his blindness, but the need for God’s works to be revealed.
• The Pool of Siloam was the source of water used during the feasts at the Tabernacle. Translating Siloam as “sent” connects the water itself to Jesus, because Jesus is referred to in John’s Gospel as the one who is sent by God.
• The traditional motif for a miracle story ends with witnesses testifying to the miracle. In this story, the neighbors’ doubts about the identity of the man allow him to testify for himself about the miracle that has happened to him. While he was silent to begin the story, he became the central witness as it continued to unfold.
• One of the conflicts in the story is the timing of the healing occurring on the Sabbath. Kneading (the verb used when Jesus “made mud”, v.6) was an action explicitly forbidden on the Sabbath. Violating Sabbath law challenged the traditions that bound the Jewish community together as a covenant community and the Pharisees’ role in interpreting those traditions, so a threat to the Pharisees’ power. The Pharisees thus accused Jesus as being not from God, an irony because, as the man born blind correctly noted, the miracle of the return of his sight was a revelation of the work of God.
• The man born blind came to recognize Jesus’ identity more and more (“man called Jesus” v. 11, “he is a prophet” v. 17, “if this man were not from God” v. 32, “Lord, I believe” v. 38). Meanwhile the Pharisees moved more and more away from recognizing him (“this man is not from God” v. 16, “we know this man is a sinner” v. 24, “we don’t know where he comes from” v. 29, “you were steeped in sin at birth, and they threw him out” v. 34). Blindness is not determined by physical sight, but by recognizing the revelation of the works of God in Jesus.
• V. 22 “His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogues.” This verse looks beyond the scope of the time of Jesus to the life of the Johaninne community. The parents could not have been afraid of “the Jews” as a group, because they, their son, and Jesus himself, were all Jews. The fear of being “put out of the synagogues” probably relates to what was called the “Benediction Against the Heretics,” a prayer directed against outside religious groups dating from at the least later than 70 CE, probably between 85 and 95 CE. The Johaninne community in that time was experiencing persecution by the religious leaders, and by writing that tension into the story of the man born blind, the writer of John’s Gospel helped his community to see themselves and their conflicts as part of Jesus’ overall story.
• “Give glory to God” (v. 24) is a traditional oath to urge someone to tell the truth or confess their sin. The irony is the man born blind does tell the truth, and thus is “giving glory to God.” It is the authorities who turned their back on the revelation of God.
• “We know” (v. 24) echoes the conviction Nicodemus had in Jesus’ identity that led to his misunderstanding, and the woman at the well’s uncertainty, which led to her understanding. The man born blind did not engage the Pharisees on the law, their area of expertise, but on his experience, and thus his knowledge, of who Jesus was. Experience, seeing Jesus, trumps education.
• While the man born blind came to a close recognition of Jesus, final recognition and full confession of faith did not come until Jesus identified himself in v. 37.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
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