The incident that follows fits comfortably with the issues raised in the discussions between Jesus and the Jewish crowd during the Festival of Booths, and colourfully illustrates some of the arguments raised by Jesus. When precisely it took place is more difficult to determine. The narrative had located the previous discussion on the last day of the festival, the great day [7:37], though it had also made reference to a further day following on that [8:2]. When the episode took place was apparently not of great interest to the author. Its message was what mattered.
The disciples’ question reflected a theory common at the time (and still, sometimes, today) that illness or disability was, somehow, the penalty of sin. In the culture, physical impairments were seen as somehow incompatible with sacredness and ritual purity. Physical impairments excluded from participation in the worship of Israel. The disciples’ question about sin clearly presented the context for the discussion that would ensue. Behind the assumption was a sense of God who arbitrarily excluded and who, in the process, was vindictive and violent. The incident would make clear that exclusion, vindictiveness and violence were precisely the real marks of sin.
3 Jesus answered, "Neither he nor his parents sinned. This has come about so that the workings of God may be clearly seen in him.Jesus’ response clearly insisted that there was no direct link between disability and sin. In this case, however, the man’s disability happened to be providential because, through it, the workings of God would become obvious. The significant and relevant exercise of God’s power would lie in the man’s inner conversion and achieving of insight, brought about by the on-going creative and life-giving energy of Jesus that would enable the man to see. Sin would be seen for what it truly was – the power behind moral blindness and choices to exclude. At the same time, the God who loves, as revealed in Jesus, would be seen as life-giving, creative and inclusive. Jesus’ freedom to do the work on a Sabbath [verse 14] reinforced his sense that his Father’s creative activity, rather than stop after the sixth day of creation, continued bountifully across time, and would reach beyond time into eternity.
Due to technological ingenuity, the modern world has lost touch with the darkness of night and the consequent impossibility to work. The Gospel would make much of the symbolic contrast of night and day. It had already spoken of Nicodemus coming in from the night in order to dialogue with Jesus [3:2]. Night and darkness would figure again in the betrayal of Judas and the denials of Peter.
Jesus repeated his consistent claim to having been sent by his Father. The narrative had also raised the issue of Jesus’ doing the works of his Father, and identifying himself as the light of the world [8:12].
Jesus’ use of the plural: We must do the works ... would seem, somehow, to associate the disciples in his mission. After the supremely revelatory event of his death and resurrection, Jesus would commission them to continue the work on which he had been sent: As the Father has sent me, so I send you [20:21].
6 After he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay with the spittle. Then he spread the clay over his eyes,Jesus used sign language to communicate more forcefully with the blind man. In the culture, saliva was under stood to be a healing agent, as was dust. More importantly, the gesture alluded to God’s actions in creating the first human being:
the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;and the man became a living being [Genesis 2:7].The man had been blind from birth; he had never had the capacity to see. His need was not healing, but new creation.
7 and told him, "Go and wash in the pool of Siloam [which when translated means 'Sent'].” So he went and washed, and came back seeing.The author connected the creating agency of the water of Siloam with the person of Jesus, the one whom he had just identified as sent by God. The topicality of Jesus’ direction was connected to the procession of priests and people to the pool of Siloam during the Festival of Booths. The liturgy remembered and celebrated how God, through the agency of Moses, had saved the Israelites from dying of thirst in the wilderness. In Jesus, the Christian community had someone greater than Moses: not only would Jesus give saving drink to the thirsty, he was the light of the world, giving sight to the blind and enabling them to do God’s works.
In a masterly way, the narrative would record two contrasting movements. The blind man would move to clearer insight and faith; the Pharisees would descend into darker blindness.
Next >> John 9:8-38