162: Tom Rundel: Jesus Performs and Unauthorized Miracle

Mar 18, 2026

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Episode Summary

Jesus heals a man born blind using mud and spit — a deliberate echo of Genesis 2 and a declaration that the sacred arrives through the physical, not despite it. But the miracle is almost beside the point. The real story is what happens next: a twenty-verse interrogation by the Pharisees who cannot allow this healing to mean what it means, because it would unravel the world they've built.

The disciples' first question — "Who sinned?" — reveals a theology of retribution that places the cause of suffering in the body of the sufferer rather than in the structures that produced it. Jesus dismantles the question entirely: Neither this man nor his parents sinned. With one word — neither — he breaks open the either/or logic that has defined this man's entire life.

We also examine what it means that the man's parents are too afraid to speak, that the formerly blind man ends up being the freest person in the room, and why Jesus' final words to the Pharisees are among the most quietly devastating in all of Scripture: "Since you say you can see, your sin remains."

Lent is the season that teaches us how to see — not just what to see. This episode is an invitation to ask: what are we most certain about, and could that certainty be the very thing obscuring our sight?

Key Themes

The theology of retribution and why the church must repent of it
Incarnation: why Jesus healed with mud, not just a word
The Pool of Siloam and its prophetic significance
Power, narrative control, and how systems respond to unauthorized transformation
Perceptual confirmation bias as a spiritual condition
The freedom of those who have nothing left to lose

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