“I Was Blind, Now I See...” | Rev. Derek P. Elphick

(John 9:25) Like the man born blind in this account, we are “blind” from birth. We can certainly see the world around us, but we need knowledge from the Lord to interpret what it is we’re looking at otherwise we remain “blind” to the true significance and beauty of life in this world. The sequence of events that happen after this healing miracle reveals the remarkable conversion the formerly blind man goes through as the blind spots of his understanding are removed.

Readings: John 9, Apocalypse Explained 815, Divine Providence 221

Minister: Rev. Derek P. Elphick

Delivered July 26th, 2026 at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral in Bryn Athyn, PA.

The Bryn Athyn Church is a congregation of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, located in Bryn Athyn, PA. We are committed to helping each other draw closer to the Lord God Jesus Christ through lives of love and useful service, guided by the Old and New Testaments and the Heavenly Doctrine for the New Church (contained in the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg). Please join us for worship on Sunday mornings; services and times can be found at brynathynchurch.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Good morning and welcome to our 11 o'clock adult service and welcome to those of you joining us online. The topic under consideration today is the gift of sight. And we will be looking at the account in the Gospel of John, chapter 9, in which a man receives sight. And the remarkable thing about this account is that the miracle is in two parts, where the man receives his physical sight, being born blind from birth, and then his interior sight, or the sight of his understanding, is healed, as the account unravels. Now as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. Then he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said to him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam. So he went and washed, and came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was blind said, Is this not he who sat and begged? Some said, This is he. Others said, He is like him. He said, I am he. So they said to him, How were your eyes opened? And he answered and said, A man called Jesus, made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me, Go to the pool of Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and I received sight. Then they said to him, Where is he? And he said, I do not know. So they brought him who was formerly blind to the Pharisees. Now it was a Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also asked him again how he had received his sight, and he said to them, He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see. Therefore some of the Pharisees said, This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath. Others said, How can a man who is a sinner do such signs? And there was a division among them. They said to the blind man again, What do you say about him because he opened your eyes? And he said, He is a prophet. But the Jews did not believe him that he had been blind and received his sight, until they called his parents, and they asked him them, saying, Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see? And his parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind, but by what means he now sees we do not know, or who opened his eyes we do not know. He is of age, ask him, he will speak for himself. So they again called the man who was blind and said to him, Give God the glory. We know that this man is a sinner. He answered and said, Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know. One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see. Then they said to him again, What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? He answered them, I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples? Then they reviled him and said, You are his disciple, but we are Moses' disciples. We know that God spoke to Moses, as for this fellow, we do not know where he came from. The man answered and said to them, Why, this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where he is from, and yet he has opened my eyes. Since the world began, it has been unheard of that anyone open the eyes of one who was born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. They answered and said to him, You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us? And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and when he had found him, he said to him, Do you believe in the Son of God? And he asked and said, Who is he, Lord, that I may believe? And Jesus said to him, You have both seen him, and it is he who is talking with you. Then he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. Turning to the teachings of the new church, first from the book Apocalypse Explained, number 815. The Lord healed people on earth according to their faith, according to their belief that he was God Almighty. Without this faith, no church could have been established. There were three reasons why faith in the Lord healed people. First, they acknowledged his divine omnipotence or power, and that he was God. Second, this acknowledgement brought presence, a common phenomenon in the spiritual world. And third, natural diseases represent and thus signify spiritual diseases. And spiritual diseases can only be healed by the Lord by looking to his divine omnipotence or power and by repentance of life. Faith brings the Lord present, but faith in him merely as a man will not draw near his divine omnipotence. Therefore, the Lord could not do miracles in his own country. They had seen him from infancy like any other man, and were unable to add to that idea the idea of his divinity. From the book Divine Providence, we are not granted inner access to the truths of faith and the goods of charity except to the degree that we can be kept in them to the end of our life on earth from divine love and wisdom. Thinking from what we see with the eye closes our understanding, whereas thinking from our understanding opens the eye. And from Matthew. And so Jesus said, This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Amen. And may the Lord add his blessing to the reading and hearing of his word. And our text is taken from the Gospel of John, chapter 9, verse 25. One thing I know that though I was blind, now I see. Like the man born blind in our story, we are blind from birth. We are born without knowledge, without the gift of intellectual sight, without understanding how the world works. We can certainly see the world around us, but we need knowledge, especially knowledge from the Lord, to interpret what it is that we're looking at. Otherwise, we remain blind to the true significance and beauty of life in this world. Thankfully, the Lord gifts us with a deeper kind of sight. We start acquiring knowledge, lots of it, and the eyes of our understanding are opened. We learn how to process information and make sense of it and draw conclusions and develop theories. We learn how to think rationally and do uniquely human things like laugh and smile and talk and invent and calculate and plan and anticipate a future for ourselves. But even with all this sight, we still remain blind to many things. This is what the Lord meant in the Gospels when he said, seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear. As we read this morning, if we believe only what the eyes of our body tell us, we will understand very little. The teachings of our church explain why this is. It's because our sight, even our physical sight, is connected to what we love, so that our eyes only see what they want to see. This is the way the book Divine Love and Wisdom begins. Love is the life of a man or a person. In other words, love is in the driver's seat and controls everything that we think about, talk about, and do. But since we are born with an inclination toward evils of every kind, not everything that we choose to look at or focus on is healthy or useful. So this is where we get the idea of turning a blind eye to something. If we love something, we will look at it, maybe study it, seek to understand it better, and ultimately incorporate it into our lives. But if we don't love it, we're not particularly interested in it. And it's almost as if it doesn't exist. This is where we get the idea of someone having a blind spot. A blind spot could be an area of ignorance with a person, or a bias that they have, or an unwillingness to change their mind. Whatever the particular habit or attitude may be, the person fails to see it in themselves, even when it's obvious to others. We call this a blind spot. In our account from the Gospel of John, the man born blind was given the gift of physical sight by the Lord. And as incredible as that was, it was only the first part of a larger miracle. What happened next was even more astonishing. It shows the formerly blind man's process of discovery as the blind spots in his understanding were systematically removed. Because he goes from thinking that Jesus is merely a man to thinking he must be some sort of prophet to realizing that he must be from God or be God. It's noteworthy that this process of discovery happened under extreme duress, which is spiritually significant in that our own spiritual growth almost always involves a battle, a struggle, a trial of some sort. In the case of this poor man, the Pharisees engaged in a ruthless, all-out assault with the goal of discrediting him and the Lord's miracle. But their strategy backfired. Their attack only strengthened the man's resolve to decide for himself who Jesus really was. He was prepared to face his blind spots. He wanted to understand what had just happened to him. This account from John 9 presents an accelerated version of our own faith journey. The development of our faith tends to be slower and without any kind of obvious resolution, because we are in a constant battle between doing what our old self wants us to do and what our new self wants us to do. Will we serve God or mammon, ourselves or the neighbor? This explains why we don't see everything we need to see all at once. It's because there are certain truths, certain realities that we aren't ready to accept or incorporate into our lives. One of our lessons today reminded us of the fact that, quote, we are not granted inner access to the truths of faith and the goods of charity except to the degree we can be kept in them to the end of our lives. This explains why we have blind spots. We don't always see the things we need to see because we simply aren't ready for them. And from the Lord's perspective, that's okay. As we read in our recitation today, my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. Take reading the word by way of example. How many times have you heard or read a story and said to yourself, I don't remember that verse or that phrase? That's because we are changing. As the old proverb goes, no one steps in the same river twice. The point is that our wants change and mature over time. Our tastes and sensibilities change too. Our priorities change. And as we combat selfish wants and needs, what happens is, as one teaching beautifully puts it, new thoughts, new thoughts contrary to those we had before, arise. So the point is, our faith needs time to grow and mature. Now, one of the deep underlying narratives in the Gospel accounts is the gradual unveiling of the Lord's identity. The New Testament reveals a process of people discovering who Jesus really is. You can think of it as a process of people discovering their blind spots. Take, for example, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus asked his disciples, saying, Who do people say I am? And so they said, Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. And Jesus said to them, But who do you say I am? And it was Peter who said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, to which the Lord replies, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. And that word Christ means king or final authority. And at the end of the Lord's ministry, when the Lord predicts that his disciples will abandon him, it was Peter who said, Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. And after the Lord had risen from the dead, he says to Thomas, Reach your finger here and look at my hands, and reach your hand here and put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing. To which Thomas says, My Lord and my God. This is the central issue surrounding the account of the man born blind. It's about his process of discovery. It's about using the eyes of his understanding to see what others couldn't see or refused to see. The interrogation centered on one question: Is Jesus from God or not? As mentioned already, the Pharisees were ruthless in their attack of the man born blind. First, they tried to claim that he hadn't been blind from birth and even called in his parents to sow the seeds of doubt. But that didn't work. So they continued their interrogation of the man, which ultimately backfired on them because the harder they pressed him, the stronger he grew in his conviction that Jesus was God, saying, If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. The Pharisees openly denied the divinity of Jesus. And their representation is very important. They represent the strong negative spiritual forces in and around us that work to glorify the material pleasures and conveniences of this world while simultaneously weakening all that is sacred and pure. These dark, hidden influences work to discredit the Lord's saving power, specifically the Lord's saving power in his word. This gets played out in a lot of different ways. Our faith gets tested, interrogated, if you will, by the struggles of life that we all undergo, serious health issues, accidents, a loss, a broken relationship, and fear and anxiety. Our faith gets tested, interrogated by crises of faith, where we end up not being sure what we believe, or by hard sayings, tempted to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater when we come across a hard teaching in the Lord's word. Our faith gets tested, interrogated by the comforts and pleasures of the world who needs God. And by questioning the use of organized religion, why go to church? Why do those religious things? Well, there's a striking qualifier in the Gospels that reminds us that our relationship with the Lord is reciprocal. Sometimes the Lord couldn't perform miracles even when he wanted to. Think about that. The Gospel of Mark says that Jesus could not do any miracles in his own country except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. You heard the remarkable explanation for this in our reading this morning. It was because, quote, the people in his hometown had seen him from infancy like any other man, and were unable to add to that idea the idea of his divinity. In other words, because they couldn't get their head around the idea that Jesus was God, they couldn't be healed. This principle holds true today. There are many people who still don't believe that Jesus is God, which means by extension that the truths of his word don't contain any power to heal people of their pain and anguish, to heal people of their confusion and sorrow. In that reading, we also learned that natural diseases represent and thus signify spiritual diseases, and spiritual diseases can only be healed by the Lord, by looking to his divine omnipotence and by the repentance of life. This is the ultimate test of our faith. We need to be able to see the Lord's truths in his word as having the power to change us and heal us and give us new sight. Otherwise, these truths remain just as words on a page, important words, inspired words, but not powerful enough to effect real change. The book True Christianity says, it is on everyone's lips that the word comes from God, is divinely inspired, and is therefore holy. But until now it has not been known where the divinity is in the word. People who respect nature more than God or as God, and who therefore think under the influence of their own ideas, can easily fall into the wrong perspective of the word, and even into contempt for it. When they read the word, they say to themselves, What is this? Is this divine? Would a God who has infinite wisdom talk like this? No matter what obstacle the formerly blind man encountered during his interrogation, he refused to give up. He recognized that this man who had the power to restore the eyes of his body also had the power to restore the eyes of his understanding, which turned out to be an even greater gift. Listen to these teachings. As to the power, namely the power for us to think or will or perceive, do good, believe or shun falsity and evil, it all comes by means of truth. Or this one. Everyone can shun evils as if of themselves from the Lord's power if they implore or plead for it. And this the smallest amount of divine power is enough every time it is called upon to tame instantly the entire devil's crew, even if it consisted of millions. The Lord's truth has a wonderful and mysterious way of growing and gathering momentum in us when we accept it with humility as God speaking to us. It happens when we say, What am I missing here, Lord? What am I not seeing? This is how the power of truth is unleashed. It's done by making ourselves vulnerable, by letting the Lord show us our spiritual diseases, our blind spots. These might be pride or arrogance, these might be rationalizations and justifications that we use, could be sarcasm and cynicism, or it could be a stubborn insistence that we will do things our way. But when we can say sincerely and honestly, I was blind and now I see, a miracle will unfold. There will be a transfer of power. The Lord will show us things that we couldn't see before. The eyes of our understanding will be opened and we will be given new loves, ones so much more edifying and wholesome, ones that we didn't think were possible. So let the Lord be the interpreter of life's ups and downs. Let the truths of the Lord's word heal your hurt and pain, heal your frustration and anger, heal your grief, heal your broken spirit. Let the truths of the Lord's word change the way that you think and feel and act. May the Lord open your eyes to the true significance and beauty of life in this world, because there is so much to be seen that we don't see yet. And let us thank the Lord for the gift of sight, for the miracle of sight, for giving us eyes to see all that is beautiful, kind, uplifting, wholesome, and true. This happens when we can say, One thing I know that though I was blind, now I see. Amen.