(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Formerly Known
As”, originally shared on March 11, 2026. It was the 403rd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams
of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
California has been known as the place where
people from all over can go to reinvent themselves. Jesus has another idea.
Today, we’re going to find out what it is.
You’d be wrong. Seeing a miracle is not your problem. Being a miracle
is.
We’ve seen spectacular weather recently. Aside from some recent winds,
our weather seems miraculous to people living almost anywhere else in our
country.
We
occasionally get some heavy rain, scorching heat, or strong winds in our area.
And, as a pastor, I’m sometimes get the wink and elbow from someone asking
something like, “Hey, ‘padre’, can’t you do something about this weather?”
Of
course, I can’t. That would be a miracle. So, I say, “I’m sorry. I’m in sales,
not management.” 😊
The main Bible reading that we’re looking at today, the one that will be
read in the vast majority of churches throughout the world this coming Sunday, John
9:1-41, raises a similar question.
Jesus did miracles. He healed a man born blind. Why don’t we see those
kinds of miracles today?
Good question!
The passage begins with a sight that is all but unheard of today but
which was not so uncommon back then, and is not so uncommon in many other parts
of the world even today, in John 9:1,
1As he walked along, he saw a man blind from
birth.
“Blind from birth.”
In
our country today, babies are given an antibiotic eye ointment shortly after
birth to prevent blindness. But being blind from birth didn’t mean the same
thing to people in Jesus’ day.
We
might say that being born blind meant that an infection, or some congenital
cause was the reason. People in Jesus’ day believed that things like blindness
happened to people as punishment for sin. The only question was whose sin it
was. The person’s or their ancestors’.
The disciples ask the question, in John 9:2,
2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who
sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Which is weird because the answer is one that changes over time in what
we call “the Old Testament” and what people in that day called “the
scriptures.”
The Bible says that God punishes people for the sins of their ancestors
near the beginning of the Old Testament, and it says that God does not
punish them for the sins of their ancestors near the end of the Old Testament.
Jesus takes the later view and so he shows a better grasp of the
scriptures than his disciples.
Jesus answers the disciples’ question, in John 9:3-5,
3Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his
parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in
him. 4We must work the works of him who sent me while it is
day; night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in
the world, I am the light of the world.”
Jesus is about to take his disciples to school. God’s works are about to
be revealed. Jesus is God, and the works that are about to revealed are the
gifts of God from the Creation of all things.
That’s what a miracle is. It’s not a suspension of the laws of physics.
It’s not something unexpected that just happens. A miracle is the restoration
of what God intended the world to be in the beginning of Creation and a sign of
what it will be when Christ returns and there is a new heaven and a new earth.
The world was created to be perfect. Human rebellion brought evil into
the world, and we can’t always connect the sin with what happens
afterwards, like when a factory owner has toxic waste to dump and dumps it in
the river behind the factory. He saves money, his business is more profitable,
his investors are happy and he sleeps well at night. Meanwhile, people drink
the water and, eventually, they get cancer. They don’t know why.
A
miracle is a sign that points to God’s Creation as it was intended to be,
and what it will be once again. Clean. Perfect. And, in this case, no
blindness.
Jesus, “the light of the world”, comes into the darkness of this man
born blind and the man sees Jesus. His sight is restored.
But first, it gets weird, in John 9:6-7.
6When he had said this, he spat on the
ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, 7saying
to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and
washed and came back able to see.
Did anyone, when you were a kid, usually an older female relative, ever
see dirt on your face and take out their hankie, dip it in their mouth, and use
their saliva to clean off the spot? Gross right? You probably make that “Ick!”
face, but you were clean. 😊
Have you ever heard someone make a toast by saying “Here’s mud in your
eye”? That expression started in England around 1930 and is either a reference
to life in the trenches during WW1 or a reference to this text, which kind of
makes sense, because it is a toast to one’s good health. In this text, it’s
about healing.
People back in Jesus’ day believed that saliva had actual healing
properties.
Jesus used it as a signal that a healing was about to take place.
The man’s neighbors, who have only known him as a blind beggar, have
questions.
And Jesus is not around. So, they bring the healed man to the Pharisees,
who also have questions, in John 9:13-15,
13They brought to the Pharisees the man who
had formerly been blind. 14Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus
made the mud and opened his eyes. 15Then the Pharisees also
began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on
my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.”
Do
you see where we’re going here?
If
you know one verse of the Bible by heart, it’s probably John 3:16. If
you know one hymn by heart, it’s probably “Amazing Grace”, and the first verse
in particular:
“Amazing grace!- how sweet the sound-
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.”
That hymn was composed by John Newton, an English slave ship captain who
came to Christ and repented of what he had done, left that work, and lived the
rest of his life campaigning against slavery. He lived a transformed life in
the grace of God.
That’s also what the Bible calls a miracle! A miracle is a sign that
God’s intention for creation is being restored.
But there’s a bigger issue.
At
least the Pharisees think there is.
Jesus has broken one of the 10 Commandments, they said, by healing, that
is, doing work on the sabbath, the day of rest. And Jesus told the guy who was
healed to go and bathe in the pool of Siloam, which they also considered to be
working on the sabbath. Those things, they said, could not be works of God.
They quizzed the man’s parents, and his folks don’t want to get caught
up in all the drama and risk being labeled as sinners by the Pharisees.
So, the Pharisees ask the guy who was healed about this “sinner”, Jesus,
the one who worked on the Sabbath when he had healed him, and he answers, in verse
25.
25He answered, “I do not know whether he is a
sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
That’s a good answer, and the Pharisees argue with the man born blind,
now healed, about his healing, but the man holds his ground and they drive him
out.
Jesus hears about what happened and finds the man, in verses 35-38,
35Jesus heard that they had driven him out,
and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36He
answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” 37Jesus
said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” 38He
said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.
There’s
the miracle! Again! It’s the miracle that is happening every day all over the
world, including right here, right now, in your life, right in front of you!
You can see a miracle today! Share your faith. Ask someone, “Have you
heard about Jesus? Really heard about him?” Share the good news of forgiveness
and salvation for them and invite them to open their heart to receive the
transformational gift of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, to become a new
Creation, to become a Christian.
Invite them to turn away from their old lives, to start over, to receive
a new life, seen in 2 Corinthians 5:17,
17 So if anyone is in Christ,
there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has
become new!
We
are not the light of the world. Jesus is.
But we can be reflectors of the light.
Robert Fulghum, in his book, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It,
told the story of a modern Greek philosopher giving a lecture who answered
Fulghum’s question on the meaning of life with his story about living on a
Greek island during the Nazi occupation.
One day, he said, he came upon a wrecked German motorcycle. He picked up
the broken pieces of the rearview mirror and, unable to put them together, kept
the largest piece, which he filed down to a circle with a stone. He played a
game with that mirror, seeing what deep pocket of darkness he could illuminate
by reflecting light into it.
He
said that he still had that mirror in his wallet and believed that it was the
key to the meaning of life: that he was not the light or the source of the
light, but that he could be a reflector, bringing light into the dark places of
life, and that though he didn’t have the whole mirror, he had a part of it, and
could do what he could with what he had.
How do we help people see this, to see the Light, with what we have? The
story of the healing of the man born blind concludes with its lesson, in John
9:39-41,
39Jesus said, “I came into this world for
judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become
blind.” 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to
him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” 41Jesus said to them,
“If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’
your sin remains.
Tricky.
Sin produces our separation from God, our lack of the relationship with the one
true living God for which we were created. Jesus says to the Pharisees that if
they were blind, it would not be because of their sin. But by saying “We see”
while not “seeing” the presence of God at work right in front of them, they
reveal that they are still in their sin. They don’t see God, which is worse
than any physical blindness.
And they’re not alone.
Think about all the people who physically saw Jesus do a miracle.
Thousands! How many of them stuck with Jesus to the end? Zero. I think it was
because they didn’t “see” Jesus.
Martin Luther, the 16th Century Church reformer, said, “I have
covenanted with my Lord that He should not send me visions or dreams or even
angels. I am content with this gift of the Scriptures, which teaches and
supplies all that is necessary, both for this life and that which is to come.”
The
Bible is our source for everything that is good in this world and the next.
It is the primary means by which God speaks to us. The Bible reveals to us the
power of the cross to restore that for which we were created: a living
relationship with the one true living God.
The Bible both describes miracles and enables us to see them. It enables
us to see ourselves as we really are and to see our Savior for what He has
really done.
We
cannot reinvent ourselves. We are sinners. But, at the cross, we are sinners
who have been reinvented by God.
We
are participants in God’s greatest miracles. We tell our stories. We point
people to God’s intention for human beings when he created them, and to the
power and agency of God to give them a new life, to make them into a new
creation. We point to Jesus as the agent by which a living relationship with
the one true living God for which we were created was made possible through
faith alone, by grace alone.
Maybe you’ve heard of the popular musician who changed his name to a
symbol and became known as “the artist formerly known as Prince”?
The man formerly known as blind from birth became the man known as the
one whose eyes were healed by Jesus. He told others what Jesus had done for
him.
He
who was formerly known as blind became the one who could say, “I was blind but
now I see.” He told others what Jesus had done for him.
We
who were formerly known as no people are now God’s people.
We
who were formerly known as cut off from God by our sin are now restored to God
by God’s amazing grace, forever.
We
can tell others what Jesus has done for us and show by our love for one another
and for the world that the new life that God gives to all who will receive it
is God’s greatest miracle.
And that, ultimately, everything and everyone who believes and is baptized will be healed!
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