John 9:10-15 (NIV)
“How then were your eyes opened?” they demanded.
He replied, “The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
“Where is this man?” they asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said.
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
This man had caused quite a stir when he had come home able to see after having been born blind. Things like that just didn’t happen! His family and friends plied the man with questions about how it had happened, but his answers were unsatisfying to them. He had heard the man’s name, Jesus, but other than that he had no information about the person who had healed him.
And his report of the method used was just as dissatisfying. Spreading mud on a man’s eyes and sending him to wash it off just didn’t seem like it should have done anything to restore his sight.
So, they brought the man to the Pharisees. Surely, they would be able to figure out what had happened. But instantly, the proceedings took a turn the man’s family and friends hadn’t anticipated. It was the Sabbath, and the Pharisees, self-appointed guardians of all things concerning the law, were more concerned about that than they were about the fact that the man could now see.
As far as the Pharisees could tell, Jesus had broken two, possibly three Sabbath laws. He had made mud with the intention of using it as medicine; He had applied the medicine to the man’s eyes in order to heal him; and He had possibly encouraged the man to walk further than was allowed on the Sabbath.
Of course, none of those things were actually against the Sabbath law that God had given to the Israelites through Moses. These were all man-made rules, written to define, clarify, and specify what God had meant when He simply commanded them to put aside their livelihood, their pursuit of wealth for one day each week in order to focus on rest, rejoicing, and worship. But those auxiliary regulations quickly took on a life of their own, eventually being accepted as being as binding as the words God had spoken.
In healing this man, setting him free from decades of darkness and letting not only the light of the world, but the Light of the world, shine into his life, Jesus was following God’s explicit direction, as well as fulfilling His mission to seek and to save what was lost. But the Pharisees weren’t able to understand that in the midst of the haze of their own religious system.
Father, keep our eyes and ears open, so that we can always be as responsive to Your commands as Jesus was, regardless of any pushback we might get, and help us to simply obey, and to never put limits around what You tell us to do based on our own limitations or beliefs about how You work. Amen.