Michael was born blind. He spent his days begging for money—until a strange man approached him one day. The strange man gave him his sight—and then was gone. The Pharisees threw a fit. They wanted to know the identity of this man and what right he had to heal in the name of God. Michael would later discover the man in question had been executed, which made Michael wonder.

With his newly regained sense, Michael goes on a long journey to discover other people touched by this magical man. He searches for a man named Lazarus, who they say was raised from the dead. He reaches out to the lepers, in search of those also healed by Michael’s healer. He seeks Zacchaeus, a tax collector who changed his unruly ways. They are strangers spread across a country, and yet they have one man in common: Jesus.

Based on a story in chapter nine of the gospel of John, Michael’s Eyes is one man’s journey to discover his savior, even after his savior has been crucified and raised to heaven. Michael continually asks, “Why?” Why was this man Jesus rejected and executed? Why was he punished for healing the sick? And how can Michael use his blessed gift of sight to help others in need, in the name of the Lord?

Michael’s account

The Pharisees called me to account. They are a group with little humor and less patience with the likes of me as I was in those days. Now, writing this many years later, I have a better understanding. Their authority in the synagogue was challenged by someone claiming to speak directly from G-d. The world, of course, is full of madmen who have messages from the Master of the Universe. In this case the madman was said to be performing miracles of healing, giving himself standing and credibility to claim his connection to the Blessed One. Such madness must be confronted and disproved once and for all. And I was the test case.

At first they addressed me reasonably but with condescension. I should explain my heritage: who was my father; who was my father’s father, and so on. I knew our family tree back for at least 4 generations, and I recited them by name and position. The same question was asked about my mother and her ancestry, which I answered in detail. (The benefit of blindness is the development of a memory for all kinds of abstract data and for a blind man most of life is an abstraction.) Then I had to describe my father’s position in the community, a matter well known to the elders of the synagogue, but it was clear that these experts of the Law must first authenticate my heritage and identify me as a legal Jew and as a member of the community.

Satisfied with my relationships they started in on my condition of blindness: How long had I been blind? When did I first realize that I was blind? Was this actually blindness? Couldn’t it have been a form of hysteria? Was I merely imagining my blindness? I answered patiently with a long recitation of my history from my earliest recollection. I was always blind, I explained, and there was never a time when I “realized” that I was blind. A child blind from birth cannot understand sight so is not capable of realizing the condition of blindness. I had no answer for the psychological questions; at that time I was ignorant of such concepts. I could only explain that at first I could not see but that now I see.

“If you haven’t been there you can never understand,” I said.

After a few moments of an uncomfortable silence, while the learned men searched for the next approach, one of them, much older than the others, stood up and began a new line of questioning. Now the subject was the man who was supposed to have cured me of blindness. Who was he? What did he look like? What did he say; what did he say about himself – did he claim to be a man of G-d? By the way, where is he now, he wanted to know. I answered that I did not know who he was – not even his name. And of course I had no idea what the man looked like; I was blind at the time! He told me nothing about himself and made no claims for himself. In fact he hardly spoke to me at all. To me he seemed humble and kind but perhaps I was in no mood to be critical of him, as you might understand.

“As to where he is now, I have no idea. Perhaps he is performing his good works somewhere else,” I said. This last was met with angry scorn by the Pharisees, whose real mood was becoming apparent.

My inquisitor finally got to the key question: What did that man do to me that I now claim he gave me my sight? My answer was brief and simple. He rubbed some mud on my eyes and sent me to the pool of Siloam to wash it off. That’s all. I did what he said and I must admit that I went grudgingly, not enjoying the feeling of mud on my useless eyes. This brought some of the Pharisees to their feet, shouting that here was the final proof: the man “could not be from G-d; he does not keep the Sabbath!” But someone else argued, “how could a sinner do such miraculous signs?” At that point the meeting descended into chaos.

After a few minutes the elder of the Pharisees demanded quiet, then turned to me again. “So what do you say about the man – it was your eyes he supposedly opened?” I had begun to think these men were trying to trap me. If I said the man was from G-d I would be accused of blasphemy, settling the Pharisees’ case. Perhaps I should just back down and say, no, the man did nothing for me. But I chose the middle ground, shrugged my shoulders, and suggested the man was a prophet.