Welcome to Jesus Spa Treatment

A couple nights ago I told my kids, "Guys, I want to read to you something really funny in the Bible. I think you'll have a good crack at it." So we started reading John 9. John 9 happens to be one of the most, literally and figuratively, awesome chapters in all of the Bible. It's a chapter that hinges on a miracle performed by Jesus and all the circumstances surrounding it. It's a chapter that brings to the fore the power of Christ not just to heal but to redeem and not just to bring about eyesight but spiritual sight.

One of the most important features of this chapter is Christ's "disappearance" from the picture right after the blind receives his eyesight. In fact, Christ disappears from the picture even before the blind man receives healing.

The process or method Jesus used to heal this man prompted my oldest son to interrupt me and rehearse the event right in front of me and his siblings. It went something like this,

"Welcome to Jesus' Spa Treatment!" Right then he did all the motions of someone spitting on the ground, grabbing the freshly made "mud" in his hands and them proceeding to put the "product" on my eyes! Yeah, I know! Not funny!

He then decided that "Jesus' Spa Treatment" wasn't the proper name for Jesus personal healing "business" so he changed it to "Jesus Eyecare Treatment". Somehow my son found Jesus' way of healing this blind man quite amusing - so do I everytime I read John 9.

So Jesus tells the man "go and take all that mud off your eyes". It's interesting that the guy has to get his eyes all muddied before he can actually see. It's the same story with us. Our eyes were all muddied. Our souls were all muddied. Our hearts were all muddied. We, just as the blind man, needed cleansing before we could actually see.

Jesus is quite a funny guy. Check this out - he tells the BLIND man "go and clean yourself up"! He didn't take him. Didn't help him go where he needed to go - where the cleansing water was. I wonder if the man made it on his own (that's what we understand from a plain reading of John 9) or if someone present helped him get there. All we know is he got there, where the cleansing water was.

The blind man does as he's told and the blind man then sees. And what ensues is one of the most if not the supreme chapter of comedic (should I say cosmic) genious in all of Scriptures. What I find fascinating is that Jesus is not physically present while the blind man is being deposed by the (im)proper authorities. I like to think Jesus is somewhere around hiding, looking from afar at the whole scene his miracle has created, laughing his heart out. But actually, he isn't. Apparently, he isn't even aware of what's going on.

Jesus healed and moved on... Jesus rose the dead and moved on... Jesus suffered, died and rose again for you and me and moved on...

Jesus was a man on a mission. He wanted all of us to get his Spa Treatment and share the love as well. And keep moving on...