Sermon Notes, Ascension

Much of this comes from a lecture by Jeff Meyers at a Biblical Horizons conference several summers ago.

INTRODUCTION
Forty days after Jesus rose from the dead, He ascended into heaven (Acts 1:3). As He had warned His disciples, He went away from them (John 14:28; 16:7). He promised that His disciples would not be orphans (John 14:18), and that He would come again for them (John 14:28). In the meantime, though, the disciples were to follow an absent Master. We do the same. What does this mean?

THE TEXT
“As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him . . . .’” (John 9:1-41).

REBORN OF WATER
The story of the blind man is a story of rebirth. He has been blind since birth (v. 1), but after his encounter with Jesus he sees (v. 7, 11, 14-15, etc.). He is so changed that some people don’t think he’s the same man (vv. 8-9). The method Jesus uses to heal him also suggests a rebirth. As God formed Adam from the dust and breathed life into him (Genesis 2:7), so Jesus forms clay from the ground and “anoints” the man’s eyes (John 9:6-7, 11). The fact that the man is renewed after washing suggests that this is a baptismal passage. After washing, the man is illuminated and reborn (cf. John 3:5).

SENT
The blind man is renewed in the waters of the pool of Siloam, which John tells us means “Sent” (John 9:7). After his “baptism,” the man becomes Jesus’ disciple and, following His new Master, is “sent” to be a witness to Jesus. He is a faithful witness even under intense pressure from the Pharisees to renounce Jesus (vv. 13-17, 24-34). The Pharisees have threatened to excommunicate anyone who follows Jesus, and the man’s parents are fearful because of this threat (v. 22). They put the man on trial, bringing witnesses against him, including his own parents. When the man defends Jesus against the Pharisees’ attacks, they put him out of the synagogue (v. 34). He chooses to be a disciple of the new Moses, while the Pharisees cling to the old Moses (vv. 28-29).

JESUS LOST AND FOUND
Jesus’ movements in the story are important. He sends the man to the pool named Sent, and then disappears. When the man comes back seeing, Jesus is gone. When the Jews ask where Jesus is, the healed man cannot say (v. 12). Jesus is the One born of the Spirit, who is like the wind, which we hear but we “do not know where it comes from or where he is going” (John 3:8). Throughout the trial scene, Jesus is absent, and the new convert is left to fend for himself. Jesus reappears only after the man is put out of the synagogue (vv. 34-35), and then He reveals Himself more fully to the former blind man (vv. 35-38).

FOLLOWING JESUS
Within John’s gospel, the story of the blind man anticipates the situation that Jesus describes in His Upper Room Discourse (John 13-17). Jesus is going away to His Father, leaving His disciples. They will have to begin to follow an absent Master. Like the blind man, they will face intense persecution from the Jews (15:18-16:3). Like the blind man, they will be tried and put out of the synagogue (16:2). So long as Jesus was with them, He was the object of the most intense hatred; once He leaves and is inaccessibly enthroned in heaven, the dragon will make war against the saints (cf. Revelation 12).

CONCLUSION
We are in the same position; this is what it means to follow an absent Master. Reborn and illuminated by water and the Spirit, we can expect persecution, particularly from religious establishments. They will hate us, and threaten to cast us out from their synagogues. Jesus, who suffered outside the gate, assures us by the story of the blind man that He will be waiting outside to welcome us.