Sally A Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary
John 9:1-41 presents Jesus’ encounter with a man born blind. It is a drama in six short scenes. The entire text should be read, but sermons will be more successful if focused on just a few key turns in this drama. Interrogations on the part of the disciples, townsfolk, Jesus’ opponents, Jesus himself, and the healed man structure these scenes. As elsewhere in John, a rhetorical strategy of “doubled” semantics, especially around physical/spiritual blindness and sight, is a key interpretive element.
Scene 1, vv 1-7: Jesus and his disciples encounter a man born blind. The disciples ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Jesus rejects the assumption, still haunting us, that disability results from moral fault. Declaring the disability an opportunity for divine power to be revealed, Jesus coats the man’s eyes with mud and sends him to wash (baptism?). The man returns “able to see” (v 7).
Scene 2, vv 8-12: Townsfolk interrogate the man. So astonishing is his transformation that they claim he can’t be that blind beggar they’ve known for years. He insists that he is indeed that same man. His doubting neighbors ask, “Who could heal a man blind from birth!?” We may recognize something of ourselves in their skepticism. Is life-changing transformation truly possible for any of us?
Scene 3, vv 13-17: The stakes are higher now: the man is interrogated now by local Pharisees. A dispute breaks out. Clearly, whoever spread mud on this man’s eyes is a Sabbath-breaker! Yet, how can one who has healing power NOT be of God–? Divided, the Pharisees turn on the healed man. Perhaps they hope to trick him into making a blasphemous claim: “Who do you say he is?” Pressured, the healed man declares his healer is “a prophet.” He will not be cowed by these “experts.” Spiritual insight is a gift for those open to receiving it. This man has received sight, both physical and spiritual.
Scene 4, vv 18-23: The Pharisees, who do not believe that the man could have been born blind, question his parents. They evade the question of Jesus’ identity. V 22 tells us why: anyone who hints at the possibility that Jesus is Messiah will be put out of the synagogue. Frightened, the man’s parents turn the question back to their son. It is hard to own the truth when there is so much to lose.
Scene 5, vv 24-34: The Pharisees now convene a religious tribunal commencing with the oath, “Give Glory to God!” (indicating that this is akin to a heresy trial). They challenge the healed man to agree that whoever “healed” him is a sinner. He refuses and questions them: Doesn’t his healer meet their very own criterion for righteousness—doing deeds of power like those of Moses, whose disciples they claim to be (vv 28-29)? Willfully blind to the evidence in front of them, the tribunal resorts to the very notion that Jesus has flatly dismissed: that this man was “born entirely in [of] sin” (v 34).
Scene 6, vv 35-41: Jesus seeks out the man, who has been banished from the synagogue (a fate likely suffered by many of John’s early readers). John echoes baptismal liturgy as Jesus asks the man to declare his faith in the “Son of Man.” The man asks: “Who he is, that I may believe?” Jesus replies: “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is he.” The man confesses: “Lord, I believe!”–Credo!”—and worships. Early readers of John would recognize their own path to conversion here: seeking the Light, hearing the Word, confessing faith before the community, and joining in worship. A paradoxical epilogue closes John’s drama. Those who know their own spiritual blindness shall receive spiritual sight; but those who claim they possess spiritual insight shall remain blind, unable to perceive in their very midst the glorious inbreaking of God’s world-transforming, illuminating power.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 