One Thing I Know

In Jerusalem he saw a man blind from the day he was born, begging where he always sat.

And his followers asked him, “Rabbi — whose fault is this? Did this man do something wrong, or was it his parents, that he was born blind?”

And Jesus said, “Neither. It was not this man’s doing, and it was not his father’s or his mother’s. He was born blind so that the works of God could be shown in him. We have to get on with the work of the one who sent me while it is still day. The night is coming, and when the night comes nobody can work at all. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Then he spat on the ground, made mud out of the dust and the spit, put it on the man’s eyes, and said, “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam.”

Siloam means Sent. The man felt his way to the pool, and washed, and came away seeing.

And then the arguing started, and it went on all day.

His neighbors could not agree about him. “Is that not the man who used to sit here and beg?” “It is him.” “No, it is not. It only looks like him.”

And the man kept saying, “I am the man.”

So they said, ‘Then how did your eyes get opened?’ “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes and told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went, and I washed, and now I can see.”

They said, ‘Where is he?’ And he said, ‘I do not know.’

They took him to the Pharisees. The day he was given his eyes had been a Sabbath, when no work was allowed.

They asked him how he had come to see, and he told it again, shorter: “He put mud on my eyes. I washed. I see.”

And they could not agree either. Some of them said, “This man cannot be from God. He does not keep the Sabbath.”

And others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do signs like these?”

So they turned back to him. ‘They are your eyes. What do you say about him?’ “He is a prophet.”

They did not believe he had ever been blind at all, so they sent for his father and mother. “Is this your son? Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that he can see now?”

His father and mother were frightened. Anybody who said out loud that Jesus was the Christ was to be put out of the meeting house. So they said, “We know this is our son, and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, we do not know; and who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him. He is old enough. He can speak for himself.”

And they left him standing there on his own.

So they called him in a second time. “Give the glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.”

He would not argue about anything he did not know. He said: “Whether he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I know: I was blind, and now I see.”

They asked it all over again — what did he do, how did he open your eyes — and he had had enough: “I have told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his followers too?”

They shouted at him: “You are that man’s follower. We are followers of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses. As for this one — we do not even know where he comes from.”

And the beggar answered the teachers of the law: “Well, this is the astonishing thing — that you do not know where he comes from, and he opened my eyes. We all know that God does not listen to sinners; but if a man fears God and does what God wants, God listens to him. Since the world began nobody has ever heard of anybody opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing at all.”

‘You were born in sin, the whole of you,’ they said, ‘and you are teaching us?’ And they threw him out.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and found him, and said, “Do you trust in the Son of Man?”

And the man said, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I can trust him.”

And Jesus said, “You have seen him. He is the one talking to you now.”

‘Lord, I trust,’ he said, and he bowed down in front of him.

And Jesus said, “I came into this world for judging: so that the ones who cannot see would see, and the ones who say they see would go blind.”

Some Pharisees standing there heard him and said, “You are not saying that we are blind too?”

And he said, “If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say, ‘We see.’ So your sin stays.”

And then he began to talk about sheep. “I tell you the truth: the man who does not come into the sheepfold through the door, but climbs in over the wall somewhere else, is not the shepherd of the sheep. That one is a thief, and he is a robber. But the one who comes in through the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The man who watches the door opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice and lift their heads; and he calls his own sheep by their names — every one of them has a name, and he knows it — and he leads them out. And when he has brought out all his own, he goes on in front of them, out to the grass, and the sheep follow him — because they know his voice. They will never follow a stranger. If a stranger calls them they will run away from him, because they do not know a stranger’s voice.”

They did not understand a word of it. So he said it again, and this time he put himself into it. “I tell you the truth: I am the door of the sheep. Everybody who came before me was a thief and a robber, and the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anybody comes in through me, he will be kept safe; he will go in, and he will go out, and he will find grass to eat. The thief does not come for anything at all except to steal, and to kill, and to spoil. I came so that they can have life — and have plenty of it.”

And then this. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired man is not the shepherd, and the sheep do not belong to him. He sees the wolf coming, and he leaves the sheep standing there and runs away — and the wolf snatches them and scatters them everywhere. He runs because he is only a hired man, and the sheep do not matter to him. I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me — the way the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”

And then something nobody there was expecting. “And I have other sheep, that are not in this fold. Those ones I must bring as well, and they will hear my voice; and there will be one flock, and one shepherd. This is why the Father loves me: because I lay down my life, so that I can take it up again. Nobody takes it away from me. I lay it down myself, of my own will. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to take it up again. That is the command I was given by my Father.”

They argued about him all over again. Many said he was out of his mind and had a demon in him.

But others said, “These are not the words of a man with a demon in him. Can a demon open the eyes of a blind man?”

It was winter when he was in Jerusalem again, walking in Solomon’s colonnade, and they came round him in a ring. “How long are you going to keep us hanging? If you are the Christ, tell us straight out.”

And he said, “I told you, and you do not trust me. The things I do in my Father’s name — those speak for me. But you do not trust me, because you are not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them everlasting life, and they will never be lost, not ever; and nobody will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than everything there is, and nobody is able to snatch anything out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

And they picked up stones to throw at him.

And he said, “I have shown you a great many good things from the Father. Which one of them are you stoning me for?”

And they said, “We are not stoning you for a good thing. We are stoning you for insulting God — because you are a man, and you are making yourself God.”

And he said, “Is it not written in your own law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If it called them gods — the people the word of God came to, and what is written cannot be broken — then what about the one the Father set apart and sent into the world? Do you say to him, ‘You are insulting God,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not trust me. But if I am doing them, then even if you will not trust me, trust the works — so that you may come to know, and go on knowing, that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

They tried to take hold of him again, and he went out of their hands, and away across the Jordan to the place where John used to immerse people at the very beginning; and he stayed there.

And many came out to him there, saying that John never did one single sign — but everything John said about this man was true. And many of them trusted him.