It seems
like just yesterday we were cooing over a chubby 8oz little baby Jesus sleeping
serenely in a manger full of hay, his cherubic face lit by glimmering fairy
dust falling from angel wings in the rafters, the shepherds tiptoeing around
the barn so as not to disturb him. In the distance, children are singing carols
in piping, dulcet tones. It is inexplicably snowing.
Then
the holidays are over, we get back to real life at work and school, and on
Sunday we flip to John chapter 9 and see Jesus spitting and slapping mud on a
man’s face and hear him talking ominously about how night is coming, about
judgment and about guilt. We may feel this is a bit of a bait and switch. What
happened to our cuddly baby Jesus? What happened to candy canes and hot chocolate
by the fire, what happened to our warm spiritual snuggles?
Well,
the truth is that if this seems like a very different Jesus than the Christmas
Jesus, then we may not truly understand who Jesus is and what exactly he came
to do. He didn’t leave his heavenly throne and put on the aching, dying body of
a man just to give us warm hugs. Jesus says in John 9:35, “For judgment I have come into this world,
so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
Don’t despair. In fact, if we learn anything from this chapter, it
is that we are all born spiritually blind, and so it should come as no surprise
that we cannot see Jesus rightly. The important thing is that Jesus sees us. Jesus sees us as he saw the blind
man, sitting alongside the road, desperate for salvation. And he sees us as he
saw the Pharisees, puffed up with religiosity and self-importance, blinded to
our own blindness. We are not only blinded to who Christ is but we are blinded
to our own sin. We utterly unable to save ourselves. We are dead in the
water.
“But God, being rich in
mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead
in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been
saved” (Eph. 2:4-5). But God. As Jon
Bloom puts it, “These two words are overflowing with gospel. For sinners like
you and me who were lost and completely unable to save ourselves from our
dead-set rebellion against God, there may not be two more hopeful words that we
could utter.”
In his great mercy, God sent Jesus to become a snuggly little baby
who would grow up into a rule-flouting, Sabbath-breaking, literal mud-flinging
savior who would turn the world on its head and give us true sight. He sent
Jesus to walk down muddy roads to seek and find us, the lost, and bring us
home. Only after Jesus has seen us and transformed us can we begin, by the
power of the Holy Spirit, to see him for who he is, to understand his mission
here on earth, and to joyfully take part in the work alongside him.
The blind man in John chapter 9 embodies the journey of the
Christian life, all in one emotional roller coaster of a day. He first calls
Jesus a man (verse 11), then a prophet (verse 17), then Lord (verse 38). The
blind man shows us how acting in obedience to God’s commands brings blessing
and joy. And he shows us that Jesus never leaves us where we are; from the
moment he first calls us to himself (verse 7) he stays with us throughout all
the hard times when it seems we are all alone (verse 35). The blind man teaches
us that even when we cannot see grace in our lives, even when we do not
understand his ways, God is moving and working. All we have to do is act in
obedience.
That’s what the cuddly Christmas baby teaches us too, more than
thirty years later when he prays in the garden of Gethsemane, “Your will be
done” (Matt. 26:42). Jesus says in John 5:25, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an
hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son
of God, and those who hear will live.” Are you listening? Do you see him?
Written By: Jess Upshaw Glass