from God

It was a puzzle: somehow, a blind man could see. He didn’t know who healed him, and the Pharisees couldn’t figure it out either. The story is told in John 9.

The position of the Pharisees is summed up in verse 16: “Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.’” Hey, this guy doesn’t follow our rules! He must be wrong!

The healed man saw things differently, as he explained in verses 30-33: “The man answered, ‘Now that is 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 person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’” In other words, God wouldn’t perform a miracle for someone who doesn’t follow him. My healing itself proves he is from God.

And then, in verse 34, the Pharisees countered with scintillating logic: “To this they replied, ‘You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!’ And they threw him out.” With nothing left to say, they used their authority to demean and silence.

This is a cautionary tale for any who lead in church or the home, because we want to judge people the way the Pharisees did. People who do God’s work the way we expect, in conformity with our rules and culture, we like. People (sometimes our kids) who don’t know all the rules and expectations seem to us to be disruptive, and we try to silence them.

But Jesus was disruptive. Jesus was counter-cultural. And in fact Jesus had healed the blind man. He not only was from God, he was God. 

If Jesus came among us today with his radical message and outlandish expectations, would we listen? Or would we try to silence him? Of course we want to say we’d listen, but then why are we so averse to some of his disruptive messengers?