John 9:1

Sinner Or Saviour?

Joh 9:1

Why did he pass that way? Could he not have gone by some other path? The answer is, No. Grace has its necessities; love has its predestinations. Jesus Christ always looked out for opportunities of doing good. He knew which road to take; he said, The blind man is down this road, therefore this is the road along which I am about to travel. This is how he came to find so many opportunities of doing good: he sought for them. We never see any openings for doing good: how can we? we do not look for them. Jesus Christ made it his business to find out who wanted him. He even stands at the door sometimes, and knocks. In a sense, does he not thrust himself upon men who need him? so graciously and quietly that it has no appearance of obtrusiveness or aggression; still he makes himself felt by events, by appeals, by sudden recollections, by suggestions from friends, by Church service and sacrament, yea, a thousand ways he sends us hints that he is there, and has with him all the resources which are needed for our redemption, purification, and final coronation in heaven. When you felt inclined to pray it was Jesus Christ who moved you in that direction. When you said, I think I see more clearly today; truth seems to be enlarging, it was Christ who was performing a miracle upon you. Trace all happy impulse, all sacred inspiration, all ennobling influence, to the touch, the glance, the benediction of Christ He undertook work of the kind described in this chapter simply as introductory. Physical miracles were not worth doing if there had not been something more important to follow. The prologue was too sublime for the little drama if Christ came only to heal diseases, and to relocate broken joints, and to give eyes to the blind or hearing to the deaf. All this was symbolic, introductory, and was intended merely to secure a kind of foothold for him, standing on which he might do his larger, nobler work. That is the reason he gives us bread in the morning. The bread is nothing and the body is nothing. Bread is only a kind of bribe to hunger, at best a species of compromise or truce; for the wolf comes back again with wider mouth and sharper teeth. But he gives the bread that he may give his flesh himself.

What an advantage he had in performing physical miracles compared with the delivery of his profound yea, his unfathomable discourses. Everybody could see a miracle: only a man in a multitude of instances could understand a discourse. The vulgarest onlooker knew when a miracle was wrought: it took an almost-angel to catch the first hint of the meaning of the Beatitudes. This is Christ's opportunity, therefore; he says in effect, This man wants sight; having given him sight I shall call attention to the work, I shall start a process of inquiry and thought in this man's mind at least; and who can tell but that an opened eye may mean an opened soul? let me, therefore, continued the blessed tender-hearted Messiah, begin where men will allow me to begin: they want their bodies healed; perhaps having felt my touch in that direction they may ask me to heal their souls. A medicine man has an infinite advantage over a gospel speaker, if he succeed in his work; and he is more likely to succeed, in some degree at least, than is the spiritual thinker and reformer. Who cares for a thought? There are men who have succeeded in allowing ten thousand jewel sentences to pass before them without seizing any one of them and keeping it as property. There are men who have seen perfect Niagaras of jewels rolling over the cataract who have never yet seized any one of them and taken it home as a treasure and a pledge of better things. There are souls on which I will not say on whom, for I will not put grammar to base uses all Shakespeare and Milton would be lost; they would as soon hear some street ballad with nothing in it but a running jingle, as the music of Eternity. But because it is the music of Eternity it can wait. Its opportunity will come. There are some enjoyments we get through; they perish in the using; they amuse, they excite, they please, they gratify for the moment, but there is no wearing in them, they cannot bear stress; they are good as the climate is good, as the immediate health of the possessor is good; but they abide not day and night, ever and ever, in the soul, friends that can charm darkness and assure continual day and peace.

Christ excited surprise by his works more than by his thoughts, yea more than by his personality. The neighbours said, Is not this he that sat and begged? They would have cared nothing about him if he had received a new idea into his soul. The moment he began to worship he was forgotten. As long as he was a curiosity men came around him and asked him questions, and endeavoured to provoke and exasperate him, so that he might deny the very hand that had touched his sightless eyeballs. Providence excites more attention than theology. Understand by "providence" great historic movements, the events of the day, the miracles of the transient hour. Men make their fortunes by telling lies about these things. They publish in the evening what has to be contradicted in the morning; they misreport everything they hear in order that they may work out some ulterior purpose, as a felon only can work on stealthy feet and with velveted fingers. There are men who can create wars, who can bring messages from foreign courts without the slightest authority for doing so, and who can send the business of the world into tremor and panic by a lie. Men are more sensitive about their money than about their souls, their thoughts, their hopes of future life, their aspirations after God, You could take away any man's sleep to-night by telling him that by to-morrow morning all his property will have fled away like a frightened bird. Jesus Christ excited attention by his miracles, his works, his wonderful signs and tokens. The people ran away and talked about them. One woman left her water-pot and fled away in the greatest haste to say that she had met a man who had told her all the things she ever did in her life. We never heard of any one running down the mountain to report a single beatitude. It is infinitely difficult to get attention to spiritual thinking and spiritual inspiration. A story will scatter an argument. Yet Jesus Christ worked on, doing the miracles, and hoping that some opportunity would occur through them of doing his greater work.

We find Christ enriching the Sabbath with holiest memories. This was a complaint that was made against him: "And it was the Sabbath Day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes," and gave him two Sabbaths for one, a whole heaven in exchange for a little cold earth. How many men can gratefully say, "and it was the Sabbath Day when Jesus " then comes the particular incident, the personal recollection, the tender memory, the blessed thought! Who may not make music out of this or turn it into a refrain charged with pathos? It was the Sabbath Day when Jesus touched my heart, opened the eyes of my soul, gave me a new view of truth, charmed me out of my despondency, lifted me out of the darkness and set me on a hill bathed in morning light. It was the Sabbath Day when Jesus opened heaven, so that I saw him standing at the right hand of God. This is the kind of Sabbath that legislation can never protect, and that iniquity can never put down. What is your Sabbath? If it is only 3 set of hours, then it may be handled by men, it may be ordered to begin at a certain time and close at a certain hour; the law may step in and meddle with it; but if it be a Sabbath of real piety, of real sympathy with goodness, an opportunity of prayer, an opportunity for deeper study of the Word, if it be a time in which great miracles were wrought in the soul, a time when tears were dried, and bonds relaxed, and heavy burdens were lifted from the trembling back, then there is no need to protect this Sabbath; the heart knows when it comes, the heart knows how long it continues, the heart knows with what worship to mark the blessed gift. Entrust the keeping of religion to the heart of the people. It cannot be written in a statute book; it cannot be a supplement to an Act of Parliament; it cannot be regulated by men who know nothing about it: religion, true, pure, before God and the Father, undefiled as untrodden snow this must be in the keeping of the renewed heart; and this must be the fountain of the Church, its daily inspiration and nourishment, its establishment and its endowment; and if there be not this to begin with, to build upon, and to give assurance of security, then all patronage is burdensome, all protection is but violent weakness. Religion is of the heart, or it has no assured existence in the world. Could the restored blind ever forget the Sabbath Day? It came back week by week, and there needed no church bell to call the man to the renewal of that sacred memory; he understood the time; it quieted him like a mother's blessing; it opened some unsuspected door in the sky, and brought the glory upon him from uncalculated quarters. Never profess to keep the Sabbath if you do not keep it in reality. If you have nothing to keep, say so, and be good plain infidels, definite and estimable liars. Those men who have memories of the Sabbath Day ought to embalm those memories, sanctify them by enlargement of worship, by increasing publicity, and ought to make the name of Jesus known wherever there is another blind man. Tell who healed his address his name in full abbreviate it not. Let it be, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, the Man of the Cross, the Conqueror of the tomb.

Here we have Jesus Christ dividing the thoughts of men:

"Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them" ( Joh 9:16 )

Here is Christ creating personal witnesses. The man said, "Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not," I am not a metaphysician, "one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see," I the very man myself: look at me: I am not speaking about some man a thousand miles off. There are some persons who are very much afraid of egotism they are the greatest egptists in the world. You find a man who writes in the newspaper about some other man that he is "awfully egotistic," and you may be sure he dipped his pen in the inkhorn of his own infirmity. This man said "I was blind, now I see." There is a heroic egotism, there is a grateful egotism, there is an egotism of pure sincerest thankfulness for blessings received, and if a man should prove himself to be awfully humble by speaking of himself in the plural number, let him do it. It is a singular pride that gives a man the right of plurality, talking about himself under the nomenclature "we." A suspicious humility! Suspicious? Let that word be withdrawn, and another take its place a proved hypocrisy!

Christ completes his own work: "Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him " how did he happen to go that way? For the same reason that he went the way in the first instance. He knows all the roads the little cross-road that runs up to yonder farm; that little well-hedged path in which you walk at eventide to meditate; the back way, the front way: he knows all the roads to human dwellings and human halting-places. "Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" He had a right to ask the question. He who has done good to the body has established a right to ask about the soul. He may do so without affront or roughness. The largeness of the first miracle is an introduction to any mind that remembers the wonder that was done. Now we come to the real pith and purpose of Jesus Christ's mission "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" Was it not enough that the man could see, that one of the senses had been brought back again or had actually been created for the occasion? Was it not enough that the man had a sound body? He had eyes, and ears, and hands; he could smell the flowers, he could touch the very bloom of creation was it not enough? Jesus Christ must needs go to the inner man, and ask the all-involving question "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" O man, if thou dost not so believe thou art not a man in the full sense of the term; thou hast not yet begun to live. It is in this belief we see and feel and realise our life. Without faith we cannot fly, we cannot be in heaven, we cannot get past the black horrible tomb, we cannot cope with death and throw the monster in the last wrestle. "Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?" We know some men by their tone, by their touch. This man seemed to realise already in whose presence he was. We sometimes speak with men from whom we expect the veil to fall any moment, that we may see the revealed angel. Sometimes we feel in talking to certain men that if they went one sentence further they would go beyond the common boundary and speak to us from another world. They are magnetic men, inspired men, men of sympathy and enthusiasm; men who know the mystery of the over-soul, and touch all other men as by a miracle of sympathy. "Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen," how appropriately that word occurs in this interview "Thou hast both seen " to this use have thine eyes been put; thou hast seen the figure, the body, the open and patent reality "and it is he that talketh with thee." Oh, sweetest words! He might have known who it was: never man spake like this man. What a voice! what subdued thunder! what tender sympathy! what suggestion! what music about to utter itself! "it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe," and he stood there a man!

Prayer

Almighty God, do thou always show us to what higher height we may climb, in what brighter light we may live our day, and what purer joy we may realise in all the wondrous ways of life. Forbid that we should look down; enable us evermore to look unto the hills, whence cometh our help. Thou hast made the high places of the earth as altars; men worship there, they begin in wonder, they end in praise. They say, Lo, God is here; we knew it not. This is none other than the house of God, though in the open air, and this is the gate of heaven, made without hands. If thou wilt show us these higher heights and brighter glories, and fill our souls with the Holy Ghost, we shall go on from one degree to another of quality and of life, until we shall hardly regard heaven itself as a great surprise. Enoch walked with God, and he was not: without sound or violence or rush of whirlwind, he passed into his proper place. May we so live that we shall not die. When we come to what men call death may we know that it is but an ascension, a rising into the land of morning and the city of peace. We have learned these things at Bethlehem, we have seen Christ's star, and have been led to worship him; we have seen Christ's Cross, and have been led to cry out, God be merciful to me a sinner! May the star and the Cross always be before the vision of our hearts, then there shall be no darkness, and there shall be no despair. We bless thee every day and every moment for the Cross: ft is heaven's gift, it is the gate of heaven, it is the answer of God to himself, it is eternity revealed in all its higher thought and issues. God forbid that we should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are there now; our arms are round about it in the embrace of love; our eyes are fixed upon the Victim and the Priest, and we find in the Lamb of God the Saviour that we need. Help us to be wise readers of all things; may we read one another clearly, may we read all nature and gather learning, may we read thy Book, and see that it is all good books in one. Help us to read Providence, and redemption, and inner ministries, and all the mysteries which make up the secret of life, and may we so read as to be masters of Israel. Pity the heavy laden; give the weary rest That is all they ask for; they ask, not for riches, but for rest. Oh sweet, sweet rest! Not sleep, but rest; not unconsciousness, but rest. Give them such rest as Christ only can give. Amen.