W E E K F O U R

‘I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.’ ~ John 10:9 ~

As you read John 9–10:10, take time to notice the characters, their responses and the themes you encounter.

How does Jesus reckon with both the brokenness and the dignity in people?

Notice …

9:1 – 9:22

JOHN 9 – 10:10

9 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him,
‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’

3 ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that
the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the
works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no-one can work. 5 While I am
in the world, I am the light of the world.’

6 After saying this, he spat on the ground, made some mud with the saliva,
and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 ‘Go,’ he told him, ‘wash in the Pool of Siloam’
(this word means ‘Sent’). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

8 His neighbours and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, ‘Isn’t this
the same man who used to sit and beg?’ 9 Some claimed that he was.

Others said, ‘No, he only looks like him.’

But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man.’

10 ‘How then were your eyes opened?’ they asked.

11 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.’

12 ‘Where is this man?’ they asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

The Pharisees investigate the healing

13 They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. 14 Now the day on
which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. 15 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.’

16 Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not keep
the Sabbath.’

But others asked, ‘How can a sinner perform such signs?’ So they were divided.

17 Then they turned again to the blind man, ‘What have you to say about him?
It was your eyes he opened.’

The man replied, ‘He is a prophet.’

18 They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight
until they sent for the man’s parents. 19 ‘Is this your son?’ they asked. ‘Is this the
one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?’

20 ‘We know he is our son,’ the parents answered, ‘and we know he was born blind.
21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is
of age; he will speak for himself.’ 22 His parents said this because they were afraid
of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged
that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23 That was why his
parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’

24 A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. ‘Give glory to
God by telling the truth,’ they said. ‘We know this man is a sinner.’

25 He replied, ‘Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know.
I was blind but now I see!’

26 Then they asked him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’

27 He answered, ‘I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want
to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?’

28 Then they hurled insults at him and said, ‘You are this fellow’s disciple!
We are disciples of Moses! 29 We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow,
we don’t even know where he comes from.’

30 The man answered, ‘Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes
from, yet he opened my eyes. 31 We know that God does not listen to sinners. He
listens to the godly person who does his will. 32 Nobody has ever heard of opening
the eyes of a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’

34 To this they replied, ‘You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!’
And they threw him out.

Spiritual blindness

35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said,
‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’

36 ‘Who is he, sir?’ the man asked. ‘Tell me so that I may believe in him.’

37 Jesus said, ‘You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.’

38 Then the man said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshipped him.

39 Jesus said, ‘For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see
and those who see will become blind.’

40 Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, ‘What? Are
we blind too?’

41 Jesus said, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you
claim you can see, your guilt remains.

The good shepherd and his sheep

10 ‘Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by
the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one
who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the
gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and
leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them,
and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 But they will never follow
a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognise a
stranger’s voice.’ 6 Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand
what he was telling them.

7 Therefore Jesus said again, ‘Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not
listened to them. 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They
will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill
and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

‘I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.
They will come in and go out, and find pasture.’

Her story

Mini: ‘If I refused, he would hit me again’

Most people wouldn’t consider themselves fortunate to be abandoned on a
roadside with two small children. But for Mini, it was an opportunity to be
rescued by a good Samaritan.

It was dark. Mini and her two daughters huddled together. The little one,
barely three years old, nodded off. It was close to 11 p.m. when the local
school principal saw the group by the side of the road. Between sobs, Mini
told him their story. Her husband had thrown them out of the house in an
angry outburst. If they returned, he would hit all of them.

She had no one to help her. The principal contacted a local non-profit
organisation (NGO) that took Mini and her two daughters in that night.
Little did they know that physical abuse was only a small part of her story.

Mini’s family had married her off when she was barely 16. Gopal, her 28-year-old
husband, was a government employee at a state-run hospital. For the first
two weeks of their marriage, Gopal seemed nice enough. He didn’t care much
for alcohol; at least he didn’t get drunk.

In a few days, however, Mini’s world came crashing down. He started with
beatings. ‘He would get angry and hit me with whatever he laid his hands on,’
says the now 23-year-old Mini.

She sits cross-legged on a bench, dressed in a floral top and pants; clearly
clothing that was donated to the shelter where she now lives with her two
daughters. Her face has a certain freshness to it as if the years of torture
haven’t touched her. But there’s no doubt that they have changed who she is.

‘There was one time he hit my head, and I had to have four stitches. Another
time, he fractured my hand, and I was in a cast for two months,’ she recalls.

Within a few weeks of their marriage, Mini made a terrible discovery. Their
house was not a home. It was a brothel. Her husband was pimping her out
to his friends.

‘About 20 of his friends would come in one day,’ she says. ‘If I refused, he
would hit me again and again.’ He took naked photos of her that he would
circulate via text to his friends. Even when Mini got pregnant with their
first child, he didn’t stop the men from coming home. Mini delivered a baby
girl, Tina. That’s when things became worse and spiralled into unimaginable
depravity.

No one is sure when it started, when Gopal started molesting his daughter.
He let his father molest her too. He started selling Tina for sex, texting naked
photos of his baby daughter to his colleagues and friends.

‘I couldn’t take it,’ Mini says, wiping her tears, her face clouded with anger.
‘It’s OK if he does things to me, but why bring an innocent child into this?’

She remembers the time she came home to find her three-year-old daughter,
naked, clearly drugged and worn out from being violated. ‘We took her to
the hospital, and they found ten pills in her system. Her dad had mixed pills
into her juice,’ she says.

When Mini got pregnant again, Gopal demanded an abortion. ‘If you
give me another daughter, I’ll kill you,’ he threatened. Mini delivered a
second daughter and the beatings and abuse increased. Suicide seemed the
best option. Mini took 20 sleeping pills that Gopal had brought from his
workplace. Her older sister, who lived in a neighbouring village, found her
motionless and rushed her to the hospital.

‘The police didn’t care. My husband had bribed them. They didn’t even file a
case at the hospital,’ she says. The abuse continued till that evening when she
was driven out and the school principal found Mini and her two daughters
on the road.

Since her rescue, it hasn’t been an easy journey for Mini. She exhibits
uncontrolled rage, especially toward her older daughter. She is unable to sleep
at night, having become accustomed to a schedule of servicing men at night.
When rehabilitation first began with her, she would act coyly toward the men
who worked at the shelter home. It’s hard to break old patterns. It’s hard to
control emotions that have built up over the years.

When she came to the shelter, she couldn’t close her eyes to pray. ‘I couldn’t
bring myself to read a word from the Bible. The words would choke me. When
I closed my eyes to pray, bad images would flash before me,’ she confesses.

But Mini is slowly learning to trust God. ‘I used to be deeply disturbed. I
would think to myself, What’s the point of God if he can’t protect me and my
girls? But I’m in a safe place now and I’m starting to understand him.’ She has
started reading the Bible in a vernacular language and praying on her own.

It will take years of counselling, care and intervention for Mini to heal
from past scars. Four-year-old Tina, robbed of her innocence, lives with
the psychological wounds of molestation and her behaviour is sometimes
disturbing. But there is hope for Mini and her girls. ‘If I didn’t have God, I
would be dead,’ Mini says with tears in her eyes.

Mini is being trained to bake and embroider at the shelter home. She also
helps in the home school at the shelter. ‘I love playing with the little kids. It
gives me so much joy to help others,’ she says. She dreams of a better life for
her girls. Her eyes light up as she talks of their future.

‘I want one of them to be a doctor and the other one an engineer. My life is
over. My life ended when I got married. My children are my life now.’

‘I would think to myself, What’s the point of God if he
can’t protect me and my girls? But I’m in a safe place
now and I’m starting to understand him.’

Reflect

The welcome of Jesus

God loves human beings so much that he sent his Son, Jesus, to rescue them.
By dying on the cross, Jesus became the door that leads out of human prisons
into the arms of God, where we can find peace and healing for the soul.
Through this door, Mini entered a safe place that she had sought and found.

Jesus said, ‘I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will
come in and go out, and find pasture’ (John 10:9). Passing through Jesus,
the gate, we can enter the safety of God’s kingdom. God forgives everyone
and welcomes them with joy and honour as beloved children. Starving souls
can enter the green pastures of unconditional love and acceptance they have
been craving.

We come to him, broken by experiences of rejection and abuse. Safe in his
care, the broken pieces of human lives come together as each one learns to
see themselves as God’s beloved children who are of value beyond measure.
He dismantles fear-based thinking patterns and awakens trust in the heart.
As our perspectives are transformed, it is possible to experience peace and
respond with love and wisdom in different situations.

Human love is complicated at best. People try to feed on the affections of
others around them, but receive judgment, rejection and abuse instead.
People end up in prisons built out of lies of self-hatred, shame, bitterness
and despair. Satan would like to keep human beings as his puppets, jerked
about by the lies they respond to. But on the cross, Jesus cried, ‘It is finished’
(John 19:30). He has completely broken Satan’s hold on humankind. As we
pass through Jesus ‘the door’, we pass out of darkness and become a child of God. Jesus
stands firmly shut against Satan’s plans to drag people back into slavery to bitterness
and hopelessness. Having entered through Jesus, we are held in God’s hand,
and no one can be plucked from there. As a hymn puts it, ‘He hideth my life
in the depths of his love, and covers me there with his hand.’⁸

When we enter through Jesus the gate, we receive a Father who integrates
people into his family of other rescued sheep who form the church. They feed
on the Word of God, share life and love together. They bear one another’s
burdens. Rooted in the love of God, they find strength to go out and face the
challenges of the world.

Engage

How does Jesus respond to both the brokenness and the dignity he sees in people?

  1. Identify
  1. Interpret
  1. Involve
  1. Intercede