Do You Believe?

The man who had been blind all his life, received his sight, but lost his community. Blind from birth, he used to sit and beg. One day a man called Jesus, spread something on his eyes and told him to go and wash it off in the pool. When he washed his eyes he was able to see. He went home and his parents were amazed. Then he went around town, meeting voices he knew and seeing faces he had never seen. People could hardly believe it was the same man; not surprising because the facial expressions of people who can't see change when they do see.

The priests ordered him not to credit his recovery to the man called Jesus, because, said the priests, "We know he is a sinner."
"That's strange," replied the man, I have never heard that God would give the power to open the eyes of blind people, to a sinner."
Exasperated, the priests ordered him out of the place and announced that he was expelled. People feared being seen with him, because their law said they were not to mix with people who had been expelled from their society. Even his parents were nervous in case the priests expelled them too. He had received his sight but lost his friends. Much like to-day, when a person from certain religious societies believes that Jesus is God, that person shocks their family, and becomes unacceptable in society.

Sighted but alone the man wondered around town, seeing the hasty turning away of people whose voices he knew, and feeling the snubs of those who avoided meeting him. Jesus heard that he had been expelled and did what Jesus does: he went looking for him.

When they were sitting together, Jesus asked, "Do you believe in the Son of Man?"
"Tell me who he is," said the man who remembered voices, "and I will believe in him?"
"You have seen him," said Jesus "and he is the person speaking to you."
"Lord I believe," said the man born blind, and he began to worship Jesus.

The man born blind was a Jew. Jews worship God and no other, the command to worship God and only God is the first of their ten commandments. Jesus was a Jew, he kept the Jewish law, but he did not stop the man from worshiping him.

All over the wider community, religious people who worshiped God and no other, were beginning to worship Jesus, they believed that he had come from God and that the words he spoke came from God. The recently healed man was just one of many.

The gift of sight had opened his eyes to the world around him, but the gift of faith had opened his mind to the truth about Jesus. Today, Jesus is still looking for people who will believe him. He still speaks to us through the words of scripture. Many people hear and believe. What follows is that they are the same person but yet a new person. They have been born into spiritual life. They worship Jesus the message-bearer, Jesus the Son of God who became man for our sake.

The gospel of John, chapter nine, verses 1-41