Sixth Sunday of Pascha: Sunday of the Man Born Blind; The Third Finding of the Precious Head of the Holy, Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John; Blessed Mykola Tsehelsky, Priest and Martyr.
Acts 16:16-34; 2 Corinthians 4:6-15; John 9:1-38; Matthew 11:2-15.
Read John 9:1-38
Who speaks for God? Every day many people speak about spiritual realities with unwarranted confidence. Sometimes we might even catch ourselves doing that. Other times we may find ourselves on the receiving end, believing things passed along authoritatively that upon closer inspection just don’t add up.
Jesus’s disciples ask a question about who sinned, assuming that someone must have sinned that a man should be born blind. The question quickly shifts to whether Jesus sinned by healing on the sabbath. Those who were certain that he must have, overconfidently spoke for them all saying, “We know that this man is a sinner.” The Man Born Blind challenged that saying, “We know that God does not listen to sinners…If this man were not from God, he could do nothing,” only to be dismissed by the received wisdom, “You were born in utter sin.”
Jesus, on the other hand, says that whole event is “that the works of God might be made manifest in” the Man Born Blind. Those works were done by Jesus: “he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man’s eyes with the clay.” This takes us back to the time before anyone sinned, when “the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground”. Jesus is doing the work that only God can do – a new creation.
Who speaks for God? Jesus does because he is God incarnate. At the transfiguration on the mountain, the voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”