Judging Blocks Compassion -- John 9:1-17, 35-41 • Geoff Bradford

Hey, a couple words before I jump into today's sermon. This week marks the beginning of our community groups for the fall and we know that this has been such an odd time even to consider becoming a part of a community group may feel uncertain. And we want to just encourage you, if you can look on our website, ctkreilly.org/groups, we have a list there of all of our groups. Our groups are located geographically in different neighborhoods all around the city. They're all open groups. You can contact the group leader and find out more about the specifics of how the group is meeting and ask all your questions. They can give you all kinds of answers about how the groups are set up.

But we want to encourage you to take a step. We know that lots of us feel really displaced and isolated, and that's just been sort of a new fact of life for many of us. We don't want that to be the normal. And so we want to encourage you to take a step in this next week and investigate being a part of a community group, whether for the first time or whether you've kind of dropped out, come on back. We'd love to have you.

Scripture Reading

We're going to look this morning at John chapter nine. I want to invite you to read with me. I'm looking at John nine verses one through 17 and then 35 through 41. Listen as I read God's word.

As he, that is Jesus, passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sent this man or his parents that he was born blind? Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent. So he went and washed and came back seeing. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, is this not the man who used to sit and beg? Some said, it is he. Others said, no, but a man like him. He kept saying, no, I am the man. So they said to him, then how were your eyes opened? He answered, the man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and received my sight. They said to him, where is he? He said, I do not know. They brought him to the Pharisees. They brought to the Pharisees the man who'd been formally blind. And it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees, again, they asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, he put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see. Some of the Pharisees said, this man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath. But others said, how can a man who is a sinner do such signs? And there was division among them. So they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him since he has opened your eyes? And he said, he is a prophet. And then the last part of this passage, they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out and having found him, he said, do you believe in the son of man? He answered, and who is he, sir? That I may believe in him. Jesus said to him, you have seen him and it is he who is speaking to you. He said, lord, I believe and he worshiped him. Jesus said, for judgement, I came into this world that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind. Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things and said to him, are we also blind? Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no guilt. But now that you say, we see, your guilt remains. — John 9:1-17, 35-41

Would you pray with me? Father, I pray that the words of my mouth, the meditation of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

This spring, the actor John Krasinski of The Office fame, who is also famous for his role as Jack Ryan, created a YouTube channel and show called Some Good News or SGN. Some Good News went viral almost instantly. Within just twelve hours of uploading, the channel had hit 1,000,000 views. And the channel, even though it's been dormant since May, still has 2,600,000 subscribers.

I thought about this. I wondered if you watched this, what made this such a big deal? What was the secret of Krasinski's success? Well, one thing is clear, it wasn't production value. Krasinski did this show in his house with a low budget camera with his kids drawing the logo for SGN on construction paper. It wasn't his guest list. I mean, he had some celebrity cameos, but for the most part, lots of the guests were people who were having their fifteen seconds of fame. These were normal people just like us.

But what was it? If you watch the show, don't you know?

You know, if you watch the show, here's what was the secret of success. It was compassion. You know, it's just stories of normal people doing extraordinary things that demonstrated compassion. It was the FedEx driver who, on his route, was delivering packages and found out the woman he was delivering packages to, it was her birthday, she couldn't gather with her family, and he opens up his voice and sings Happy Birthday to her. It's the parades of people, the socially distant parades, celebrating those who recovered from COVID coming out of the hospital. It was the story of a 99 year old man in England who started walking across his garden to raise money for Britain's National Health Service. He wanted to raise £1,000. That's about $1,250. But to his surprise, twenty four hours after he started this walk to raise money, he'd raised about $8,750. In the next week, donations leapt to 1,200,000, and when he finished his final lap, two weeks after he'd started, the figure hit $15,000,000.

Now what caught people's attention about some good news were just these incredible stories of normal people demonstrating extraordinary compassion. Compassion is big news. In a world that's filled with meanness right now, and comparison, and name calling, and apathy, compassion is big news. It matters.

And today, I want to focus our attention on this passage. The contrast between this, the story of blindness and sight, judgment, and compassion. You know, Jesus was a man of compassion. As I said last week, the Gospel writers had to coin a phrase when they saw Jesus. They coined the word compassion in Greek. That word didn't exist in Greek, in ancient Greek or even in the Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament in Greek. There was no word for it until Jesus came along. The gospel writers coined this as they saw Jesus. Some famous theologians have said things like this: the emotion which we most frequently attribute to Jesus is no doubt compassion. Or here's another one: Jesus reveals in an exceptionally human life what it is to live a divine life, a compassionate life. In other words, I think Jesus would have been on every episode of Some Good News. Let's take a look.

The Counterexamples

Before we look today at the compassionate one, we're going to look at two counterexamples of compassion, of what it means to be uncompassionate from John nine.

The Disciples

Look at verses one through five. Notice this scene. Jesus and the disciples are passing by. They're on their way somewhere else, and Jesus and the disciples respond very differently to a man that they both see.

Verse one, it says Jesus sees the man.

And the verses that follow, the disciples also see, but their response is different. They discuss the man. Jesus sees, they discuss. Now, I want you to think about that for a second. They discuss the blind man. They analyze his situation. They postulate about what are the causes behind this man's condition. They want to know the backstory. They want to know what caused him to be in this condition.

So they think things like this. Maybe this was somehow God's punishment for something his parents did wrong. Or even more humorous, I think this one's really funny. They say, "Well, what about it? It's the blind man. It's told this is a man born blind, so I can't imagine how a baby in utero could have done something that deserves blindness." But this is—it's almost laughable how ridiculous their question is.

But don't we do this all the time? I have a family member who used to love people watching and would point out a person and ask the rest of the family the question: diagnosis? Which means, hey, what's the story there? We do this all the time.

What's so wrong with discussion or analysis? Their analysis was, and I would say still is, a pretty convenient way of remaining aloof from this person, from the blind man. Analyzing provides the disciples with a safe kind of tidy world where everything keeps its place. They can engage, but not engage. They can see him, but not get involved. It's one thing to notice the blind man. It's another thing to actually get to know him. It's another thing to engage him. You know, he might ask me for something, or who knows, this blindness might be catching in some way.

You know, the disciples see this man as a problem to solve, not a person to know. In their grid, either he or his parents are to blame for the condition, and they just need Jesus' help in figuring out the Rubik's cube. They're just trying to figure out, okay, Jesus, help us figure out what went wrong here.

And they show themselves by doing this to be blind, in a sense. They're blind to this man, seeing him even as a person. I mean, case in point, did you notice where they were when they were discussing this man? They're right in front of him. They're right there, as if his problem was that he was deaf, not that he couldn't see.

I mean, he's right there. He can hear everything that's going on. And Jesus cuts through their analysis by telling them that the blind man didn't fit in either of their boxes. The disciples see a blind man. Jesus sees a man born blind. The disciples see an item for debate. Jesus sees an image bearer of God. The disciples see a tragedy, and they're trying to figure out who's the villain. Jesus sees a story half told, and he says the best is yet to come. That's what he sees.

If you grew up with the Bible, maybe you know the story of the Good Samaritan, the man who was robbed and beat up and left on the side of the road and three people pass. There are two religious figures and then there's the Samaritan. And the Samaritan gets involved. He gets his hands dirty. Anytime we engage another person with compassion, it's going to cost us something. And this is what's hard. This is why many times it's easier to analyze or discuss because it's always going to cost something to engage another person with compassion. It's going to cost time. It's going to cost bother. It's going to cost money. Compassion costs. Analysis blinds. Maybe that's why we go to analyzing so quickly. It makes us feel like we're doing something at least.

I think it's true that we often notice things that are wrong with other people, or we notice things that are different. But here's the question: what do you do after that initial look? Does that initial look lead to compassion or analysis? Compassion and analysis are two very different ways of seeing another person.

I wonder what this man thought about the conversation that happened. I wonder if he was like, "Yeah, I've heard this before. What's wrong with me?" And yet, I wonder if he was startled at how the conversation turned. Because here, Jesus says and vindicates this man—he didn't do anything wrong. His parents didn't do anything wrong. And I wonder how surprised he was to hear Jesus say about him, "Look, this is an opportunity for God's glory. God's been involved in this, and God is going to rejoice in this." Can you imagine what that would have been like for him?

The Pharisees as a Counter-Example

The second group that we see, or that are sort of the counter-example of compassion, are the Pharisees. Look at verses 13 through 17. And I've got to caution us—we have to be careful, especially if you've been around the Bible for a while, when you hear the word Pharisee. We tend to think of them as the bad guys. They were actually, in the first century, the good guys. These are morally upright, good people who love God's word and were trying to do it and live it.

A lot of times when we hear about the Pharisees, we have kind of wrong narratives about them. It is not true that the Pharisees thought that you could earn your salvation. It's not true that the Pharisees were the morality police. It's not true that the Pharisees hated parties. It's not true that they were concerned to make sure that no one was having a good time. None of that is true about the Pharisees. Those are all mischaracterizations, and it's easy to cartoonify your New Testament.

Instead, think about this: the truth is that every person who comes to our church, every person who's part of CTK, if you want to find yourself in the pages of the Gospels, if you want to figure out who you are in these stories, most often we're the people who would have fit into the category Pharisee. That's true. These are our kind of people. These are people who loved God, who loved His word, who wanted to do what's right. And the Pharisees here are deeply offended by Jesus. Do you see this in verse 16? Do you hear the real beef with Jesus? It's that He healed on the Sabbath day. We'll talk more about this in two weeks. But their concern about Jesus breaking the rules keeps them from seeing. And it's remarkable in this passage how blind the Pharisees are.

They're cross-examining this blind man, and the formerly blind man is rather astute in his observations. We didn't read this part, but the Pharisees cross-examine him two times. And the second time, the blind man gets more and more salty with them. He's like, "It's surprising that you keep asking me all these questions. Do you want to become his disciple?" You can hear the sarcasm. Or they say, "We don't know where this man Jesus comes from." He says, "Well, now that's a remarkable thing. You're the religious leaders of Israel, and you don't know where this man comes from? This man has done something like nobody else has ever done before, and you don't know where he comes from?"

And finally, the Pharisees just had enough. They finally just judge him and kick him out.

They say to the blind man, "You were born in utter sin, and you would teach us?" I want you to think about this. Judging is one of the most delicious of human activities. We all do it, and we do it because we think we know better. We think we sit in this exalted place where we can see what other people don't see. We're able to see through other people. And that's why judgment is the arch enemy of compassion. They can't coexist in the same place.

Chuck Swindoll is a famous preacher, pastor, and radio personality. He was speaking one time at a week-long camp in California, and a man came to him and said, "Doctor Swindoll, I've waited so long for this week. I'm going to eat up everything you have to say." Swindoll thanked him. So the camp started Sunday night, the man's sitting right there in the front row, and wouldn't you know it, he falls asleep. He nods off in the middle of Swindoll's sermon. And Swindoll's thinking to himself, "Well, he's had a long trip. Maybe he's just had a long drive today. He's tired."

But Tuesday night comes around, and the man's head is nodding in the front pew again. Wednesday night, same thing. Front pew, sound asleep. Thursday night, same thing. Friday morning though, the woman who was sitting next to this man came to Swindoll and said, "Hey, I just want to thank you for your ministry this week. My husband has been dying to come here, and I'm just really sorry. I want to apologize. I know he's been falling asleep on you, but he has two weeks to live. He has terminal cancer and the doctors have given him just a couple of weeks. When we heard that you were coming to speak, we had to be here. It was my husband's dream. He said, 'I've got to hear Chuck Swindoll.' But the medicine they've given him makes him really sleepy. It knocks him out. I just want to apologize for that, but I want you to know that you've made this one of the best weeks of his life."

Swindoll said, "I wanted to crawl under the chair." Because he realized his blindness and the way he'd been judging this man all week long. Judgment always precludes compassion. They can't coexist in the same atmosphere.

Judging is easy. It's a quick thing. It feels good. You can make a decision really quickly. Compassion requires you to slow down and ask questions. It requires us to be thoughtful.

Henry Nouwen was on the faculty at Harvard University and quit that to care for disabled adults. A lot of his peers thought that was professional suicide, but he saw it differently. And this is what he wrote:

In order to be of service to others, we have to die to them. That is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and our purpose and value against the yardstick of other people. To die to our neighbors means we stop judging them. We stop evaluating them. And thus, we're free to actually be compassionate toward them. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment always creates distance, which prevents us from really being with another person.

Jesus said:

Do not judge and you will not be judged yourselves.

But in that phrase, he gave us the secret to compassion. He gave us the secret to compassion: not judging, to give up on judging.

So you have these two counterexamples. You have the disciples who are blinded by their analysis of this man. You have the Pharisees who are blinded by their judgment of this man. And then you have Jesus—Jesus, the one who sees. From the very first part of this passage, that's the little statement that's given to us. Jesus sees the man, verse one. And he also sees more than that. He sees not only this man's physical blindness, he also sees the Pharisees' spiritual blindness and the disciples' spiritual blindness.

I've always wondered about this, maybe you have too. Why did Jesus make the mud? There are so many other places in the Gospels where Jesus can heal with a word or with a touch. Another person touches his garment and they're healed. Why did Jesus spit on the ground and make mud out of it? It's kind of a gross scene. Jesus takes it and puts it on the man's face. It's kind of odd. I've looked back while studying for this, and there are so many different theories about this over centuries. People saying, "Well, maybe the saliva represented his humanity and the mud represented his deity," or I don't know what all those things. But as I thought about this, I think it's much more simple.

For a person who cannot see Jesus, this is Jesus letting the person know he's there and that Jesus sees him. Think about this. He touches him. And not only does he touch him, he touches him on his face.

Now, if you've watched blind people learning to recognize another person, they put their hand on another person's face to recognize their features. But touching a face is so intimate. Who touches your face? Very few people touch your face. This is why a slap to the face is such an insult, because our faces are such a place of intimacy. And I think that this is all there is behind all the mud. Jesus making this mud and putting it on him. He's touching the man. He's saying, I see you. You're a person to me. I have compassion on you. He touches him on the face.

Jean Paul Sartre once said, one of the most unnerving experiences of life is to be looking through a peephole in a door and to realize that someone's looking through the peephole at you. You know what a peephole is? It's a little round glass thing. Someone looking, you go up to the door to look through, and you realize there's an eyeball right there. Someone's looking back at you. This is the unnerving thing about Jesus. We see over and over in the gospels, Jesus seeing us.

This is what's happening in the story. It's all about blindness and sight, but Jesus sees right through. He sees the disciples when they're not able to see this man. Jesus sees the Pharisees when they don't see this man. Jesus looks, but his look is one of compassion.

Here's what's shocking to me about John 9. It's not simply an account of Jesus' compassion for this blind man, blind from birth. It's like Jesus set up three giant targets, three giant bull's eyes in the field. And he said, I'm not just going after the blind man. I'm also going after the disciples and the Pharisees too. Jesus is ministering compassion.

Think about Jesus with the disciples. Jesus engages the blind man right in front of them. They're there right in front of this blind man having a discussion about him, and Jesus does the miracle right there. What do you think they were looking at while Jesus makes the mud? They're watching Him make the mud. And what do you think they're looking at when they watch Jesus put that on the man's eyes? They're watching Jesus. They're watching Jesus show compassion. He makes them see this man. And then Jesus says a remarkable thing:

It's not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must be doing the works of him who sent me. We?

I mean, if I was Jesus, I'd be like, you disciples are kicked out of the disciple club. I'm gonna go find me some more guys because y'all are terrible. Right? He does this miracle in front of them and says, we're gonna keep doing it. Come on. You're exactly what I need. Isn't this amazing? God uses blind people to show off his own light. Jesus says in this passage:

I'm the light of the world.

And Jesus can use anyone, even failures like these disciples. Jesus could take those who should know better, who failed to show compassion, who don't get it—this is encouraging. You too, with all the ways you failed, all the times you've been blind, you failed to show compassion, you don't get it, Jesus said, come on. You're still on the team. I still need you.

Jesus' Compassion for the Blind Pharisees

I didn't notice this until I was preparing this sermon. The man has been kicked out by the Pharisees. They had a little kangaroo court, they brought him up, and then they kicked him out and said, don't know what you're talking about. You're sinful from birth. And Jesus goes and finds him.

I guess when I've read this before, I've always thought Jesus went to the guy's house, or Jesus met him in a private place. But if you look at this carefully, he goes in public to talk to this formerly blind man. And he goes in a place where the Pharisees are right there. In fact, they hear the conversation between Jesus and the blind man. They hear every part of it.

Why is he doing this? Is this like Jesus dunking over somebody and going, you know, I got you. No. This is Jesus. He's not shaming them. There's an invitation. Again, there's an invitation, just like with the disciples. Jesus is making a point. He's giving them a warning and an invitation. They say, Jesus, what are you saying? Are we blind? And Jesus says:

I came into the world so that those who don't see may see, and those who see may become blind.

Jesus is saying, yeah, you should know better. Yes, you who love the Bible, but even you, I've come to give compassion to you.

I want to just say this very bluntly this morning. Jesus loves Pharisees. Do you know that? I can attest to this. I can bear witness to the fact. The biggest Pharisee in our church is the man delivering the sermon today.

This is my story. Jesus rescuing me from my own goodness. And if Jesus can rescue me and use me and change me, he can do that with anybody in our church, anybody in our city. Jesus loves Pharisees.

Question for you. What does it feel like to be on the receiving end of compassion? Have you ever had someone show you kindness that you knew was just so undeserved? And there's something about that that doesn't make you feel bad, that makes you feel okay. It's so humbling and yet so refreshing. It's so freeing. This is the heart of Jesus toward you, it's compassion.

Last week, we talked about the aggressive compassion of Jesus. Today, I want to use a different word to describe his compassion: indiscriminate. The indiscriminate compassion of Jesus.

One writer said it this way. Take a look at a rose. Is it possible for a rose to say, "I'm gonna give my fragrance to good people and not bad people"? Or can you imagine a lamp that withholds its rays, its light from a wicked person, but shines it for a good person? It would cease to be a lamp. Or what about how indiscriminately a tree gives shade to everyone—good and bad, young and old, high and low, animals and humans, every living creature, even to the one who cuts it down?

This is the first quality of compassion: its indiscriminate nature. And I want to remind you, Jesus is such a rose, and Jesus is such a tree, and Jesus is such a lamp. I mean, even this passage, he's called the light of the world. And look at the indiscriminate way that Jesus just pours out compassion in this passage—on the man born blind, on the Pharisees who should see, on his disciples. He says, "Come on, we'll keep going."

Here's my question for us. You, who've heard and have experienced the indiscriminate compassion of Jesus in your life, can you pivot off that? You know, in basketball, they pivot. They plant one foot and turn. Can you pivot off the compassion that's been shown you and give this to other people and show this to other people?

You know, if I have one concrete action I have for people of CTK watching this this week, brothers and sisters, it would be this request. Would you consider getting off social media till November 4? Social media hones your analysis. It sharpens your judgment skills toward other people, your comparison skills. You're putting people in boxes. Especially, my appeal is get off of social media until this horrible election is over. It's not going to do any good to your soul. In fact, it's going to make you think only bad thoughts of people who formerly you've thought of as friends. You're going to divide people into camps, and it's just going to make it really hard. It's going to make you really blind to be able to offer compassion.

So here's my request in a positive way. What would it look like for you this week to follow Jesus, the light of the world, into dark places, to other blind people? What would it look like?

Can you have compassion for other disciples? For other disciples like Jesus did. Those who you're like, they should know better. Can you have compassion? Can you have compassion for Pharisees like Jesus did? The ones who are offended by Jesus. Can you have compassion for them? Can you show indiscriminate compassion? Can you move this week toward other blind people?

You know, as good as "Some Good News" was—John Krasinski's show—it was short lived. It was only eight weeks. And I personally felt, my family felt a letdown from that. I know a lot of people did. We're like, we want this to keep going. But see the opportunity for us, the church of Jesus Christ, who know lots of good news. We have an opportunity to keep this going. Would you help make compassion normal again?

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Would you join me in prayer? Father, we come to you and Lord, your word is hard at times. It shows us the hard places in our hearts. It shows us places where we are judgmental, quick to dismiss other people. Father, I pray that you'd bring us conviction of sin, hope, renewed hope in the grace of the gospel. And Lord, we pray that we would have Jesus' eyes this week for those around us. Lord, lead us out into this world in compassion. We pray in your name. Amen.