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Luke 18:35-43
A Blind Beggar Receives His Sight
35 As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. 36 When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. 37 They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.”
38 He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
39 Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
40 Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, 41 “What do you want me to do for you?”
“Lord, I want to see,” he replied.
42 Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” 43 Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God.
In a sense, this is a simple healing story. Jesus comes upon a blind man and restores his sight. But like many of the stories of Jesus – and like the story we looked at yesterday – some careful attention to the details reveals additional layers of meaning.
The blind beggar Jesus encounters is physically blind, but he seems to ‘see’ something about Jesus that most of the people around him were missing. That ‘something’ is Jesus’ role in salvation history. When the blind man hears that Jesus is passing by, he cries out to him for help. And notice how the blind man addresses him: as “Jesus, Son of David.” The text doesn’t tell us how the blind man knew that Jesus should be addressed this way. But however he knew it, it was definitely a significant fact.
And the blind man was correct in two different ways. First of all, Jesus’ earthly father was Joseph, who was a descendant of King David. In that ancient culture, an adopted son was considered just as much a son as a biological child. So as someone who grew up in Joseph’s household, Jesus would have been considered to be a true “son of David.”
But of course, in Jesus’ case, there was another meaning to the phrase ‘Son of David.’ The prophets had foretold that the Promised Messiah would be born into the house of David. It’s unlikely that the blind man would have had any idea who Jesus’ father was, so it seems much more likely that the Holy Spirit revealed to this blind beggar that Jesus was in fact the long-awaited Messiah. If that’s really what happened here, it would be a case of a man being given ‘spiritual sight,’ – the power to discern things that were hidden from most people. And that spiritual sight came before Jesus restored his physical sight.
This story reminds me of another story in which a man who is physically blind winds up being able to ‘see’ in a spiritual sense better than the religious leaders of his people. That is, he can perceive spiritual reality better than others whose eyes have always worked just fine. It’s one of my favorite gospel stories – one that appears in the ninth chapter of John. Jesus gives the man physical sight, but then it turns out that the man has the ability to discern the spiritual blindness of the religious leaders. In fact, the man who was formerly blind winds up mocking the leaders for their spiritual blindness.
The text says that the people who “led the way” tried to get the blind man to shut up. It’s not clear whether that meant the people who were walking along with Jesus, or the people who led the blind man around. Whoever it was, the story says that in spite of them urging him to be quiet, the blind man “shouted all the more” to Jesus as he passed by. It reminds me of the persistence of other characters in the Bible – like the men who tore a hole in Jesus’ roof to get a crippled friend into his presence. And also Jacob, who refused to give up when he was wrestling in the night with God. Like them, this blind man refused to give up. He continued to cry out for the blessing that only God could provide. And his persistence paid off in the end.
It strikes me that there’s also something especially moving about Jesus stopping and having the man brought to him. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem to face a horrific death. But even at such a critical point in his life and ministry, Jesus seems to have found it almost impossible to pass by a suffering person without stopping to help.
It seems that from Jesus’ perspective, giving sight to the blind and healing to those who were suffering was the very heart of his earthly ministry. You might remember that at the beginning of his ministry when he preached in his hometown synagogue, Jesus read a passage from the prophet Isaiah which foretold that the Messiah would proclaim “freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind.” And Jesus said that he had come to fulfill this ancient prophesy. So I suppose that for Jesus, stopping to restore sight to a blind man wasn’t an annoying interruption of his ministry, but rather what his ministry was all about.
You might also remember that when John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was really the Messiah, Jesus didn’t give them a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Instead, he told them, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” Healing was central to Jesus’ ministry, and healing blindness was a powerful metaphor for his mission in the world.
As in many stories in the gospel of Luke, at the end of this story all those who witnessed it are led to praise God. First the formerly blind man gets up and follows Jesus, shouting out praises as he goes. And then, Luke tells us, “all the people” see what has happened, and they join their voices in the joyful worship, too. In Luke, when people see Jesus perform a miraculous “sign,” they are led to worship God.
At first glance, this story of the healing of a blind man seems pretty simple and straightforward. But when you take a second look, there are all kinds of connections with the other parts of the ministry of Jesus and with the prophesies that had foretold his coming.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the way you have opened our eyes to the great truth of what you have done in the world in Jesus. And we thank you for all of the miracles he performed – miraculous signs of your heavenly kingdom, in which we place our hope. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
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