The Man Born Blind Who Could Finally See

The stones were out again. Soon after the woman's accusers dropped their rocks, people in the temple picked up stones to throw at Jesus himself. He slipped away, and beside the road sat a man who had been blind since the day he was born.

"Teacher," Jesus' friends asked, "who sinned, this man or his parents, so that he was born blind?" (In those days many people thought every trouble was a punishment. They only had to work out whose.)

"Neither one," said Jesus. "This happened so that God's work could be seen in him. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

Jesus spat on the ground. He stirred the spit and dirt into mud, spread it on the man's eyes, and said, "Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam." (Siloam means Sent.)

The man felt his way to the pool, splashed the mud away, and blinked. He saw water, and sky, and his own two hands.

His neighbours stared. "Isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?"

"It's him!"

"No, it only looks like him."

"I am the man!" he kept telling them. (It is hard work to convince your own street that you are you.)

They took him to the Pharisees, the leaders who studied God's law. It was the Sabbath, the day of rest, and their rules said no kneading on the Sabbath, not even mud.

"What do you say about him?" they asked. "He is a prophet," said the man. But they would not believe he had been blind.

His parents were called in, and they were afraid. Anyone who said Jesus was the Messiah would be thrown out of the synagogue, the town's house of prayer. "He is our son, and he was born blind," they said. "How he sees, we don't know. Ask him. He is old enough."

The leaders called him back. "We know this Jesus is a sinner."

"I don't know about that. One thing I do know. I was blind, and now I see!"

"What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?"

"I told you already! Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?"

"You are his disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We don't know where he comes from!"

"Well, this is amazing!" he said. "You don't know where he comes from, and he opened my eyes. If he were not from God, he could do nothing."

"You were born in sin, and you are teaching us?" they shouted. And they threw him out.

Jesus went looking for him. "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"

"Who is he, sir, so I can believe in him?"

"You have seen him," said Jesus. "He is the one talking with you."

"Lord, I believe," said the man, and knelt and worshiped him.

His eyes had opened all at once. His heart opened a step at a time, until he was on his knees calling Jesus Lord. The leaders had watched it happen with their own eyes, and they shut them tight.

The pool's name had been a clue. Sent. The Father had sent Jesus to be the light of the world. Soon the leaders would try to put that light out on a cross, and it would not stay out. That day, he walked past the synagogue's shut door to find one man, and the first time the man looked at the Light of the world, the Light was already looking back.