Here’s mud in your eye
Of all the quirky, delightful and intriguing things that happen in John chapter 9, perhaps the most inexplicable is why Jesus bothers with the mud. You remember what happens—how Jesus sees a not-at-all random blind man as he passes by, then makes the morally superior disciples look stupid (again) by telling them that the blindness is not the result of the man's sin or his parents' sin; how Jesus then spits on the ground, makes mud with the saliva, anoints the blind man's eyes with it (although ‘anoint’ seems like too regal a word for mud), and finally sends him to the Pool of Sent to wash it off.
We can only wonder what was going through the blind man's mind during all this.
“Oh, thank you so much for reminding me that I am blind. I got up this morning and forgot. And thanks for sticking the sandal in at the same time. What do you want me to say? Yes, it's all my fault. I did some bad things in the womb, and came out blind! ... But wait a minute! Oh sweet! Apparently I've been sitting here blind all these years just so that the works of God might be displayed in me? I'd like to see that. Or perhaps grope about and maybe hear that!
“And now he says that it's nearly night time, when I could have sworn that I've only been sitting here for a couple of hours. Anyway. Oh, and what is that sound?! Is he spitting at me? This just keeps getting better. And what's he slapping on my face? Is that mud?! He's put mud in my eyes! Well, yes, I guess I will go off for a dip at the pool. Got to wash the mud off somehow. Thanks for everything, fella!”
And of course he goes and washes, and comes back seeing.
Perhaps my attempt at the blind man's inner voice isn't really fair, because, as the chapter unfolds, he emerges as a very likeable character. He is honest, courageous and quick-witted before the Jewish leaders (unlike his spineless parents), and, by the time Jesus meets him again at the end of the chapter, he is ready to believe in Jesus and worship him. His transformation from blindness to sight exactly parallels the descent of the Pharisees into blindness.
But why the mud? Jesus could quite easily have healed the man with a word, as he did so spectacularly with the official's son a few chapters earlier. So why the rigmarole with the saliva and the mud?
We get our first hint well into the chapter when John happens to mention in passing, “Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes” (v. 14). And in the ensuing Jewish interrogations of the formerly blind man, the exact manner of the healing and its implications for Sabbath-breaking are a constant issue. The Jews keep asking the ex-blind man how Jesus did it and the ex-blind man keeps hedging his answers.
So the thought begins to form in the reader's mind: is it possible that Jesus deliberately made the mud (which would be construed as Sabbath-breaking) to provoke the Pharisees? He could so easily have avoided offending them either by healing without making mud, or by coming back and making mud the next day. Was he trying to wind them up? And if so, why would he do this?
The answer comes in Jesus' final conversation with the ex-blind man where he summarizes the meaning of the sign he had performed: “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” (v. 39).
Jesus' mission was not only to save and rescue and heal and restore, but also to expose and divide and harden. He came to give sight, but also to give blindness. His parables and teachings and miraculous signs all had this twin effect. For those who had ears to hear—or, in this case, eyes to see—his words were the words of eternal life; for those who closed their eyes and stopped their ears, the ministry of Jesus only pushed them further into hardness of heart and unbelief. They thought they were sitting in judgement of Jesus and his message. But in reality the judgement was all running in the opposite direction.
Paul makes the same point about the gospel in 1 Corinthians 1. It was God's wisdom to bring salvation in such a weak and foolish way that the strong and clever of this world would despise it, and in their pride and arrogance bring shame and judgement upon themselves.
All of which puts a dampener on my natural instinct to want the gospel to be as attractive and winsome as possible to everyone at all times. I want the gospel to be reasonable and compelling and loved by all—and especially by the clever, powerful and influential people. I want them to see that Jesus really is the One, and to admire his gospel as the most glorious message in the world.
But if it's the true gospel I'm sharing with them, there's every chance that it will be a stench in their nostrils—that they will despise it as weak and stupid and irrational—that, claiming to see, they will, in fact, only be made all the more blind by their contact with Jesus and his word. God's judgement comes upon them even as they come within touching distance of his Son—like a strange, divine toast that wishes salvation to the world by saying, “Here's mud in your eye!”