John 9:1-7, 13-17, 34-39 - Jesus Brings Blind Justice - March 19, 2023

We’ve all heard of “blind justice.” “Blind justice” is the theory that the rulings handed down by our judicial system are fair and impartial because, by law, judges and juries are forbidden to consider the gender, race, religion – or any other external factor – of the person on trial. That’s why Lady Justice is often depicted as being blind-folded. Of course, everyone knows that justice dispensed by human beings is never truly blind – that every judge and jury is affected by a lot of baggage that skews their objectivity and fairness. Today’s text is about blind justice…not man’s, but God’s. And when it comes to God’s justice, it’s not he who is blind – but we who are blind and need him to open our eyes to see the justice of what may at first glance appear to be his unjust judgments.

Our text is a case in point. In what universe is it just for a baby to be born blind? Is there anything more heart-wrenching blind baby? It’s bad enough when someone goes blind on account of age or disease, but a baby has never had the chance to see anything. Now imagine being born in a society without schools for the blind, braille, Seeing Eye dogs, and Social Security. From the darkness of the womb you’re born into a world of darkness – a world whose size and scope you will never be able to grasp. The only thing you would be able to do for yourself was what the blind man in our text did: find a place where people are and beg for help from them.

How is what happened to this man justice? The disciples decided that it was retributive justice. Passing by this blind man on the road, they ask Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Now remember, these disciples had seen Jesus turn water into wine (John 2:1-11), heal a dying child (John 4:43-54), feed 5000 people (John 6:1-14) and walk on water (John 6:15-21) and yet they’re not expecting him to do anything for this poor man. Why not? Because in their minds either he or his parents had sinned and so he was simply getting what he deserved. You know what that’s called today, right? It’s called karma. What goes around comes around. You get what you deserve. It’s a popular philosophy because it’s intellectually easy – it doesn’t require much thought. Do good – get good; do evil – get evil. Sounds fair, right? If you don’t smoke, you won’t get lung cancer; if you wash your hands and stay away from crowds, you won’t get sick; if you exercise and eat right, you won’t have a heart attack or a stroke. But there is a catch. The catch is that sooner or later reality blows up the notion of karma. It becomes clear that God didn’t get the memo that good things should happen to good people and bad things to bad people. People who have never smoked get lung cancer. People who bathe in hand sanitizer and stay away from crowds get sick. People who diet and exercise religiously have heart attacks and strokes.

Ok. So karma’s out. What’s left? Chance. Fate. Bad things happen to people at random. Some get cancer; some get pneumonia; some have heart attacks and strokes. Sure, diet and exercise and genetics and lifestyle may play some role, but in the end it all comes down to some factor that no one can explain or quantify. What is the governing principle of life? Can it really be something as unpredictable as dumb luck? Is that all that life is: one giant roll of the dice?

Jesus rules out karma and chance with his own answer: It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that God’s works might be revealed in connection with him. Is that answer satisfactory to you? If you were this man or his parents, would you accept that he was born blind for no other reason than so that one day the Son of God could walk by him and heal him? Is that how God works? Is that divine justice? One thing is sure, not many people believed or saw Jesus as Light of the World in this miracle. Most were blinded by the light. When the Pharisees got wind of this miracle, they launched an aggressive investigation. They interviewed the man, his parents and neighbors. They couldn’t deny that Jesus had performed this wonderful miracle, but they could hurl accusations against him. Jesus had performed this miracle on the Sabbath day – strike one. He made mud – strike two. He applied this saliva / mud mixture to the man’s eyes – strike three. The interesting thing is: we know Jesus could have healed him without a word or a touch (John 4:50). He didn’t need to heal him in this manner. He did it this way intentionally. He deliberately violated their man-made Sabbath laws to force them to confront the fact that he was doing things only the Son of God – the promised Savior – could do. But they were blinded by the light and refused to believe.

God violates our laws, that is, our sense of justice, of right and wrong, all the time, doesn’t he? People who work hard, save up, and invest wisely can have financial struggles (witness the failure of some fairly large banks this past week – although, apparently, the rest of us will be privileged to bail them out). People who eat right, exercise, and follow their doctors’ advice down to the letter get cancer. People who obey traffic laws have their lives snuffed out by drivers who are posting to TikTok instead of watching the road. Christians have strokes and heart attacks. Children die. And it doesn’t seem fair, it doesn’t seem right, it seems anything but just. Even Christians get upset when God appears to be breaking our “laws” of right and wrong. We too are often blinded by the light – we too often accuse God of being unfair or unjust.

The divine irony is that the only one in this story could eventually see was the man who had been blind from birth. Although, if you read all of John 9, you see that even he struggles to see the truth. First, he says he doesn’t know anything about Jesus (John 9:11-12). Then he calls him a prophet (John 9:17). Then he simply says one thing I do know: I was blind, and now I see and drew the obvious conclusion that if [he] were not from God, he could do nothing. But he’s still feeling around in the dark. Even though this man had received his sight, he still didn’t believe. He didn’t kneel down and worship Jesus until Jesus tracked him down again and created faith in his heart. And how did Jesus do this? Through his Word!

So what’s the lesson here for us? It’s that we will never be able to make sense of God’s justice, his activities in our world and in our lives, on the basis of what we can see through our reason, our intuition, or our investigation. We will never know why one person gets cancer and dies and another person doesn’t. We will never understand why some couples can’t have children or some people have strokes or some good people have some really bad things happen to them by a careful investigation of the circumstances. We will never understand this world apart from God. Proverbs says evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand everything (Proverbs 28:5). And how does God give this understanding? Through his Word (Romans 10:17).

God has given us two distinct “words” that create sight in the spiritually blind. In the Law, God reveals what justice should really look like. It should be immediate death and a one-way trip to hell because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:9-18, 23). Short of that, it would be divine justice if we were all born physically blind. Since Adam and Eve sinned with their eyes lusting after the forbidden fruit, it would have been fair if from then on all humans were born physically blind. Could we complain? On what basis? That God’s not being fair? Adam’s sin is our sin (Romans 5:12). As evidence, look at what we’ve done with the eyes God has graciously given us. We’ve lusted, hated, envied, and coveted with them. And if that weren’t bad enough – our eyes have also led us to desire the things of this world more than the things of God, so that we have despised the gifts God gives us in his Word and Sacrament. According to the Bible, the wages of sin is everything up to and including death (Romans 6:23). No one could complain that God is being unjust if he were to damn us all to hell, no second chances, no appeals, no chance for parole.

But God didn’t do that. In his mercy, he gave us another “word” – the Gospel; he planned to execute his justice in another way: he determined that he would punish his Son, Jesus, in our place. No suffering we’ve seen or experienced can compare with Jesus’. In our reading of the Passion History in our midweek Lenten services we are reminded of what happened when the gavel of God’s justice fell on Jesus. In Gethsemane, his eyes stung with bloody sweat as he struggled to stand up under the weight of our sins (Luke 22:44). While Jesus was being held in custody they covered his face and struck him with their fists (Mark 14:65) and kept asking him, “Prophesy! Who hit you?” (Luke 23:64) On the cross, Jesus’ burden of our sin, our guilt, our shame was so disgusting that the sun went dark (Luke 23:44-45). And in the midst of suffering the hell we deserved he cried out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46) God’s justice blinded Jesus to the extent that he could not even see his Father’s loving eyes.

Do we still want to blame God for being unfair or unjust? It wasn’t fair that sinless Jesus should suffer the punishment we sinners deserve. It wasn’t fair – but it was our only hope. His payment on the cross, his taking our place under God’s judgment won him the right to heal our blindness. And the healing we need most is not physical but spiritual – which is why we need to gather to hear God’s Word and receive his Sacrament now as much as ever. Because unless you focus on how God has chosen to reveal himself through those means – life with its ups and downs and pain and hardship will never make any sense.

You can be physically blind and still see spiritual truth; but if you are spiritually blind you don’t even see the physical things properly. You see a miracle involving spit and mud as nothing more than the breaking of some manmade law as the Pharisees did. You see the Absolution as a man merely expressing some wishful thinking to make you feel better about yourself. You see Baptism and Holy Communion as nothing more than silly and trivial rituals. Today, you see wars and pandemics and economic uncertainty as evidence that God has lost control.

But when God opens your eyes through his Word, then you can truly see. You see that Jesus truly is the Light of the World. You see that because he is the only one who has come from heaven (John 3:13) he’s the only one who can illuminate the reality of life in this world for us. Where these eyes can only see a man pouring water over a baby’s head and muttering some words, God shows us that he is performing the spiritual operation of taking a child who was born dead in sin and breathing the life of faith into him. Where these eyes can only see a sinful man in a robe telling us that our sins are forgiven – Jesus opens our eyes to see that sins forgiven here on earth are forgiven in heaven (Matthew 16:19). Where these eyes and these hands and this tongue see and feel and taste only bread and wine, he shows us that we are receiving the only medicine that can ultimately cure all of our troubles, the medicine of immortality. And where the unbelieving world sees karma or dumb luck as the reason for sicknesses and wars and economic troubles, we see it as God’s clear call to repentance and faith (Luke 13:1-5). Because when we focus on the clear word of God rather than on the mysterious work of God in the world, we are led to see the clearest demonstration of God’s sense of justice ever given to the world: the cross of Christ. If you want to truly understand God’s justice, look to the cross. There you see God’s Son dying in your place. There you see how much it cost God to cure your spiritual blindness and answer your prayer to deliver you from evil (Matthew 6:13). In Jesus we find the justice of God which blinds those who see and gives sight – and salvation – to the blind. Amen.