Is that You?
Scripture Reading: John 9:8-11
Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was [a]blind said, “Is not this he who sat and begged?”
Some said, “This is he.” Others said, [b]“He is like him.”
He said, “I am he.”
Therefore they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”
He answered and said, “A Man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to [c]the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and I received sight.”
John chapter nine is the story of Jesus’ healing a man who was born blind. While gaining sight was central to what happened to the man, other changes happened. Because of his condition, he was reduced to begging for a living. It is implied in the story that this affected everything about the man. After he was healed, people who were well acquainted with him were questioning whether or not it was him they were seeing before them.
The religious leaders were so skeptical that they had to get his parents to testify that this man was their son who had been born blind. When the man’s neighbors were asking each other about his identity, he had to repeatedly tell them, “I am the man.”
A radical change happened.
I recently watched a video in which a homeless man was brought into a stylist’s shop. His hair was long and matted. He had a beard that hadn’t been trimmed or washed in months. His eyebrows were long and shaggy. He was a dirty mess. The stylists went to work, scissors, trimmers, and razors were like ballet dancers in a bombed-out theatre. Little by little a dramatic transformation happened. When it was over, the man who came in looking like a hopeless street bum was left looking like a Fortune 500 executive.
That man’s transformation was merely external. I don’t know what happened to him afterward. If he had no change of heart, he likely descended back into a life of misery on the streets. In the case of the man in John nine, more happened than the healing of his eyes. He finds Jesus again, believes in him, and worships him. He was changed on the inside. His heart was made new.
Jesus goes on to point to the healing as a metaphor for what he does for our hearts. He says he came that, “Those who do not see may see…” Often, the change that takes place in the life of a person who believes in Christ is so radical that those who know them best are asking, “Is that him?”
May it be so for you.
