The man born blind sees, Pharisees quiz him, he quizzes them back, they kick him out. Jesus looks him up, puts the crucial question, gets an answer for the ages. All in a day's work for the Savior.

Translating the translation, with comments.

Jesus spotted him, well-known to his neighbors, blind from birth. His disciples asked who was guilty of the sin that caused it, the man or his parents?

Neither. It happened so that God’s work might be seen in him, Jesus explained.

Theirs was common enough thinking. We take Jesus’ answer for granted. But think on it. Everything he says is groundbreaking. He is God on earth, manifesting, even announcing himself to chosen individuals, as to the Samaritan woman at the well and as this episode unfolds, here as well.

He’s on a three-year tour, is he not? Breaking open the mixed-up, wayward thinking of his day. Thanks, I (we) needed that, they could say, as he slaps down prejudices, misgivings, pedestrian inadequacies, one after another.

He has a plan, explains it to his followers soon to be partners:

“While daylight lasts, I must work in the service of Him who sent me; the night is coming, when there is no working any more. As long as I am in the world, I am the world’s light”!

He has the moves:

With that, he spat on the ground, and made clay with the spittle, spread the clay on the man’s eyes and told him to go to the pool of Siloam. So the man went and washed there, and came back with his sight restored.

Glory be.

The man’s neighbors and others who had regularly seen him begging, began to say, Is not this the man who used to sit here and beg? Some said, This is the man, and others, No, but he looks like him.

And he told them, Yes, I am the man.

“How is it, then,” they ask, “that your eyes have been opened?

He told them.

A man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes with it and said to me, “Away with thee to the pool of Siloam and wash there.”

“So I went there and washed and recovered my sight.”

“Where is he?” they asked, and he said, “I cannot tell.”

They took him to the Pharisees, recognized judges in such matters, who asked him how he had recovered his sight.

“Why,” he said, “he put clay on my eyes and then I washed and now I can see.”

On the sabbath?

“He cannot be a messenger from God if he does not observe the sabbath,” some of them said.

Others questioned that, asking how a man could “do miracles like this and be a sinner?”

They questioned the man further. “What do you think happened?” And “How did he open your eyes?”

“He must be a prophet.” It’s what prophets do.

They thought that was coming.

They sent for his parents to confirm he’d been blind.

“Is this your son? Was he born blind? How now is he able to see?”

“We can tell you he’s our son and he was born blind. We cannot tell how he is able to see now. We have no way of knowing who opened his eyes for him. Ask the man himself. He is of age. Let him tell you his story.”

Cautious they were, knowing who was asking.

The Jews had by now come to an agreement that anyone who acknowledged Jesus as the Christ should be forbidden the synagogue.

The fix was in.

They called the man back, telling him to “give God praise. This man, to our knowledge, is a sinner.”

“Sinner or not, I cannot tell. All I know is that once I was blind, and now I can see.

Ball in their court.

They asked him again, “What was it he did to you? What did he do to open your eyes?”

They can’t give it up.

“I told you already, and you wouldn’t listen. Why do you have to hear it again? You want to become his disciples?”

Beautiful.

They didn’t like that, telling him, “Keep his discipleship for yourself, we are disciples of Moses.”

Their theme, their fallback point.

“We know God spoke to Moses,” one of them said. “We know nothing about this man, or where he comes from.”

And were not about to ask.

The once blind man was not going to let that go.

“Here is matter for astonishment; here is a man that comes you cannot tell whence, and he has opened my eyes.

“And yet we know for certain that God does not answer the prayers of sinners, it is only when a man is devout and does his will, that his prayer is answered.

“That a man should open the eyes of one born blind is something unheard of since the world began.

“No, if this man did not come from God, he would have no powers at all.”

Let’s hear it for this dude!

Seems he learned a lot in his years. Did a lot of listening, was not about to humor these double-talkers who had little to say to him, except to get lost.

“Are we to have lessons from you,” one of them asked, “all steeped in sin from birth?” mouthing the superstition of the day, what Jesus had explained away when his disciples had wondered about it.

They sent him away.

Jesus heard they had dismissed him, saught him out, and asked, “Do you believe in the Son of God?”

“Tell me who he is, Lord,” he said “so I can believe in him.”

“It is I,” said Jesus.

Dropping to his knees, the man announced, “I believe, Lord.”

Jesus: “I have come into the world so that a [juridical] sentence may fall upon it, that those who are blind should see, and those who see should become blind.”

Some Pharisees who were in his company heard this, and they asked him, “Are we blind too?”

“If you were blind,” Jesus said, “you would not be guilty. It is because you say you can see, you are.”