Study Desk

and told him, "Go and wash your face in the Pool of Siloam." (This name means "Sent.") So the man went, washed his face, and came back seeing.

His neighbors, then, and the people who had seen him begging before this, asked, "Isn't this the man who used to sit and beg?"

The day that Jesus made the mud and cured him of his blindness was a Sabbath.

The Pharisees, then, asked the man again how he had received his sight. He told them, "He put some mud on my eyes; I washed my face, and now I can see."

The Jewish authorities, however, were not willing to believe that he had been blind and could now see, until they called his parents

His parents answered, "We know that he is our son, and we know that he was born blind.

But we do not know how it is that he is now able to see, nor do we know who cured him of his blindness. Ask him; he is old enough, and he can answer for himself!"

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, who had already agreed that anyone who said he believed that Jesus was the Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue.

That is why his parents said, "He is old enough; ask him!"

"I have already told you," he answered, "and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Maybe you, too, would like to be his disciples?"

The gatekeeper opens the gate for him; the sheep hear his voice as he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out.

When he has brought them out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice.

They will not follow someone else; instead, they will run away from such a person, because they do not know his voice."

We know that what the scripture says is true forever; and God called those people gods, the people to whom his message was given.

Thomas (called the Twin) said to his fellow disciples, "Let us all go along with the Teacher, so that we may die with him!"

Mary arrived where Jesus was, and as soon as she saw him, she fell at his feet. "Lord," she said, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died!"

Jesus saw her weeping, and he saw how the people with her were weeping also; his heart was touched, and he was deeply moved.

He came out, his hands and feet wrapped in grave cloths, and with a cloth around his face. "Untie him," Jesus told them, "and let him go."

Actually, he did not say this of his own accord; rather, as he was High Priest that year, he was prophesying that Jesus was going to die for the Jewish people,

because on his account many Jews were rejecting them and believing in Jesus.