The Pool of Siloam

Today's Scripture

John 9:1, 6-7 — "As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth... Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam' (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing."

Isaiah 35:5 — "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped."

The Big Idea

In 2004, a broken sewage pipe in Jerusalem led to the discovery of the real Pool of Siloam — the exact pool where John says a man born blind washed mud from his eyes and saw for the first time. Today is about a Gospel writer who recorded what actually happened, a pool that could wash but could not heal, and the God who sees us long before we can see him.

Reflection

Found under a sewage pipe

In the summer of 2004, a city crew was repairing a broken sewer line in the old City of David neighborhood, just south of Jerusalem's walls, when their equipment scraped against ancient stone steps. Archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron were called in. What they uncovered was a monumental stepped pool from the Second Temple period — the era of Jesus — roughly 225 feet long, with broad flights of steps descending into the water. Coins sealed in the plaster confirmed the dating.

For centuries, pilgrims had been visiting a small Byzantine pool up the valley, assuming it was Siloam. The real pool — the one in use when Jesus walked Jerusalem — had been sitting under dirt and a sewage line the whole time. And some scholars, finding John's geography too neat, had suggested the pool was a literary invention, a symbol rather than a place. Then a backhoe found the steps, exactly where John's story needs them to be.

John would not have been surprised. He tells us plainly why he wrote his book. John 20:30-31 — "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." Written so that you may believe — not "imagined to inspire you." John stakes everything on things that happened, at places you can now walk down steps into.

A storyteller with mud on his sandals

Read the miracle again in John 9:1-7 and notice the texture. Spit. Dirt. Mud rubbed on a stranger's eyelids. A specific pool with a name — and John even pauses to translate the name: Siloam means "Sent." A man sent to the pool called Sent, by the One who was himself sent from the Father. The detail is so particular it is either eyewitness memory or fiction centuries ahead of its time.

C.S. Lewis was a professor of literature at Oxford and Cambridge. He spent his life reading ancient stories for a living, and when critics called John's Gospel a legend, he answered as a professional:

"I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this." — C.S. Lewis, Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism

And in that very essay, Lewis points to John's dialogues — including, specifically, "that which follows the healing of the man born blind" — as the kind of realistic reporting ancient legend simply did not produce. The interrogation scene in John 9 reads like a transcript: the neighbors arguing about whether it's really him, the parents dodging because they're scared, the experts demanding the man denounce Jesus.

And through it all, the healed man holds onto the one fact nobody can take from him. John 9:25 — "Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." He cannot win the theology debate. He does not have to. A changed life is the world's most stubborn piece of evidence. Twenty centuries later, that is still the testimony no skeptic has found a way around: I know what I was. Look at me now.

What the pool could not do

Here is a question worth sitting with: did the pool heal him? Siloam's water could rinse mud off eyelids. It had been doing that for years — the man may well have washed there before. But no pool in the world can build sight into eyes that never worked. The prophets knew where that power lived. Isaiah 35:5 — "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened" — given as a sign of God himself coming to save. Psalm 146:8 — "the LORD opens the eyes of the blind." In the Old Testament, that is God's signature move, listed among the things only he does.

So when Jesus opens eyes that were born closed, he is not performing a generic wonder. He is signing his name. One chapter earlier he had announced, John 8:12 — "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Then he proved it on the one man in Jerusalem who had never seen light at all.

And this is where the story turns toward us, because physical blindness is not the only kind. Jonathan Edwards preached a famous sermon about the sight nobody is born with:

"There is such a thing as a divine and supernatural light, immediately imparted to the soul by God, of a different nature from any that is obtained by natural means." — Jonathan Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light

Edwards meant something simple and humbling: you can know every fact about God and still not see him — the way you can read sheet music without hearing the song. Real sight has to be given. Paul says it took the same power that lit the universe: 2 Corinthians 4:6 — "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

This is exactly why archaeology, for all its gifts, has a limit. The excavation can show you the steps the blind man walked down. It cannot make you see what he saw. Augustine knew this blindness from the inside — brilliant, educated, and unable for years to see the God who was nearer to him than his own thoughts:

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you." — Augustine, Confessions

You can stand in the right place your whole life and still need a miracle.

Seen before he saw

Now go back to the very first verse of the story, because the gospel is hiding in it. John 9:1 — "As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth." The man did not call out. He did not ask for anything. He could not have picked Jesus out of the crowd if he had wanted to — he had never seen a face in his life. Everyone else saw a theological puzzle ("who sinned, this man or his parents?"). Jesus saw a person. The seeing started on Jesus' side.

Tim Keller has a way of describing why being seen like that is the thing we want most and fear most:

"To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God." — Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

The man's story ends with both. After the experts throw him out of the synagogue, Jesus goes looking for him — found by the same one who saw him. John 9:35-38 — "Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, 'Do you believe in the Son of Man?'... 'You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.' He said, 'Lord, I believe,' and he worshiped him." First the man received his eyes. Then he received the only sight that finally satisfies them: the face of God in the face of Jesus. Irenaeus, a pastor in the second century, said that this is what human beings were made for:

"For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God." — Irenaeus, Against Heresies

The church has been singing this man's testimony ever since, because it is every believer's testimony. John Newton, the slave trader turned pastor, put it in the most famous hymn in the English language:

"Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see." — John Newton, Amazing Grace

Charles Wesley described the moment sight came as a prison break:

"Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night; thine eye diffused a quickening ray — I woke, the dungeon flamed with light; my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed thee." — Charles Wesley, And Can It Be

Notice whose eye starts it in Wesley's verse: "thine eye diffused a quickening ray." Seen first, then seeing. That is the order of grace. And it cost the Light of the world everything to give it: at the cross, darkness covered him so that light could reach us. The pool by the broken sewer pipe is real — you can visit it. But the miracle it witnessed is still being repeated, every time God says again, "Let light shine out of darkness," in another human heart.

Which is why Paul prays the way he does for people whose physical eyes work perfectly well. Ephesians 1:18 — "having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you." There is a kind of seeing that no excavation, and no education, can give you — and God loves to give it to people who ask.

Going Deeper

Write out John 9:25 — "One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see" — and then write your own version underneath: "One thing I do know: ___." Fill in the blank with something God has actually done in your life, however small it feels — a fear that shrank, a grudge that loosened, a truth you suddenly saw. If the blank stays empty, turn Ephesians 1:18 into your prayer tonight: "God, give light to the eyes of my heart." It is a prayer he has been answering since a man walked back from Siloam, dripping wet and seeing everything for the first time.