3-15-26      John 9: 1-41

May you see clearly the grace that comes to you in your life through Jesus Christ. 

Do you have min-blinds on your windows? We use them to keep out glare, the harsh light and the direct sunlight that can heat up the room. They will also impede your vision to the outside which may distress you. But you do use them to keep others from looking into your home. When that blind man received sight, we see how other people drew their personal blinds closed, not willing to look at what was really going on. 

It seems it became too difficult to look directly at the scene. They determined that this healer, Jesus, couldn’t really be from God because he did this healing on the Sabbath. It was a day when no work was supposed to be done. So that marked Jesus as not being from God. This was the mini-blind of the law.

Then there was the suggestion that the man really had not been blind, so no true healing had been done. This was the mini-blind of denial.  That is when a fact doesn’t fit with your view of reality, so it just didn’t happen. People still use this excuse for rejecting Jesus as Lord, for he doesn’t match their image of a Savior - figure.

Another mini-blind excuse was his lack of appropriate credentials to qualify him as a healer. There were channels to follow, correct ways to do things, and this wasn’t it. They said, “We don’t know where he comes from.” They had questions about his lineage, social station, his status, and did he associate with the ‘right’ people? These blinds will close out the light and we call it prejudice. 

In an effort to convince the doubters, the former blind man tried to use simple logic, following the very presuppositions that those religious leaders held.  Fact #1: “God doesn’t listen to sinners.” Fact #2: God does listen to those who obey His will!  Fact #3: Only someone who obeys God could open eyes that were blind.  Fact #4: “I was blind, now I see.”  The reasonable conclusion then is: The one who cured me must be doing the will of God.  He had his facts straight. His conclusion was very logical. Yet, they didn’t want to accept his conclusion.  Consequently, they discredit the messenger. After all they were the religious elite with recognized authority. This man was a beggar, he was a nobody, what would he know about such matters? He was nothing compared to them! So, his conclusion gets rejected.  Here was the mini-blind of power.

Mini-blinds are popular today. If we are not careful, we will find ourselves using them. The danger is not if we put them on our windows, but when we place them on our hearts. The truth may be hard to look at, its light too bright. We may rather sit comfortably in the shade. We can become very good at denial, ignoring what is right in front of us. 

There is hope. The blind man who was healed explained it: “Lord, I believe.”  A contemporary version was phrased by Saul Alinsky: “We’ll see it when we believe it.” And when we do, let us also do as the man then did: he worshipped Jesus, giving thanks, right then and there, where they were.

Remember what Jesus told his disciples when they asked about who sinned that this man had been born blind! “Neither this man nor his parents sinned: he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

With that in mind, consider this ordinary man’s experience. Kent Nerburn drove a cab for a living. One night he received a call at 2:30 am to go to a small brick fourplex. Thinking he was going to pick up some late-night partyers he was surprised when a tiny woman in her eighties answered the door. 

She wore a flower printed dress and an old-fashioned pillbox hat. She had a small suitcase by her side. Her apartment was empty, except for a few pieces of furniture covered with sheets and box filled with photos and glassware. The driver grabbed her suitcase and helped her into the cab. She gave him the address and then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”

“It is not the shortest way,” he told her.  “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said, “I am in no hurry. I am going to the hospice house. I have no family left to visit. The doctor tells me I don’t have very long.”

The driver reached over and shut off his meter.  He then asked, “What route would you like me to take?” For the next two hours they drove through the city. She pointed out the building where she had worked as an elevator operator, the house where she and her late husband lived as newlyweds, the furniture store that once was a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she’d ask him to slow down in front of a certain building; then she would just sit staring out into the darkness, saying nothing.

As dawn broke over the horizon, she said, “I’m tired, let’s go now.” So they drove to the small house that served as the hospice center. Two attendants came to help her out of the cab and took her bag. 

She asked the driver how much she owed for the fare. “Nothing!” he said. “But you have to make a living,” she insisted. “There will be other passengers,” he replied. 

Almost without thinking, he bent over and gave her a hug. She held him tightly. “You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said. “Thank you, so much.”

In the dim morning light, he watched her walk into the hospice home.

Kent recalls that event, explaining: “We are so conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. Yet the truly great moments often catch us unaware. When that woman hugged me and said I brought her a moment of joy, it was possible to believe that I had been placed here for the sole purpose of providing her with that last ride. I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.”

Jesus claimed that the man’s blindness was to become a manifestation of the works of God. So it may be in the most ordinary aspects of life, in making a living, or just making it through the day, that a moment comes when the works of God are made known through you. Let go of blindness, don’t close the miniblinds, in the light look and see the people around you.