Jesus meets the Man Born Blind

[John 9:1-34]

Intro: Who have we seen Jesus meet already? The wise men are completely opposite to the shepherds; rich, educated foreigners and Jews in a rubbish job. Nicodemus is a highly religious Jew who visits Jesus in the middle of the night and in the middle of the day Jesus met a Samaritan woman who no-one thought he would talk to. Philip, who is so sure that Jesus is the Messiah and Nathanael who starts off equally sure that Jesus can’t be, just because of where Jesus is from.

Games: to introduce the concept of living with blindness

1. Blind man’s Bluff - Blindfold one child who must then catch others (you may need to limit the play space if they are finding this difficult) and, when they have caught someone, guess who they are before they can take the blindfold off and the named child becomes the next blind man.

2. Pin the tail on the donkey - It doesn’t have to be a donkey but any picture with a part missing; be creative! Blindfold a child and spin them around a bit. Hand them the tail with either a pin or bluetack and allow them to fix it to donkey (if using pins the picture should be stuck on a corkboard or other pinable surface) where they believe the tale should go. At a table then spin the picture in middle around. Or have multiple people going at the same time (use blutack rather than pins if you’re doing this!)

3. Blind Pictionary - Put the children in teams. One person from each team should come and get a word from you and return to their group. They must draw until their group guesses the word but without speaking, writing letters or numbers or opening their eyes. You can ask the teams to race by sending up a person to get a new word if they can tell you the last word. Or you can have each round as a new competition.

Drama:

Make some sketches based on the first time the man sees something: suggestions are: his parents, his home, his reflection, a camel, a frog, a candle etc.

Ask someone to act as the Man Born Blind and read this Script. This one is in two parts requiring acting blind for the first one and being able to see for the second. We had a ‘special guest’ from our church come in each week of the series as the character in modern dress. The Man Born Blind was begging so don’t have him dressed too nicely. You could easily have a leader or an older child read it out.

Activity: to reinforce what has been learnt about who Jesus is

A really useful thing to do is make two of the leaders available to answer questions the kids had. You could make the above drama sketches optional so that they don’t have to ask in front of everyone. When we tried this not all of the kids came to ask us stuff, but a few did with really good questions.

Use questions from this quiz as reminders of the lessons learnt so far:

• What was the name of the friend who Philip brought to see Jesus? Nathaniel/Nate

•  Why did Nate go with Philip to see Jesus?
  a) because Nate was so excited about finding God’s chosen one.
  b) because Philip was excited about finding God’s chosen one.
  c) because he wanted to see Jesus the miracle worker.

• Nate was surprised that…
  a) Jesus knew all about him but still wanted to be friends?
  b) Philip had told Jesus all about him before he met him?
  c) Jesus didn’t know anything about Nate; he wanted to be friends anyway 

• What had Nate been doing under the fig tree? We don’t know (but Jesus did!)

• What does Nate’s story about meeting Jesus show us about being friends with God? God still wants to be our friend even though he knows all about us/all the bad things we’ve done

• What was the name of the man who came to see Jesus in the middle of the night? Nicodemus

•  What was his job? Pharisee/religious teacher 

• Jesus told him he needed to be born again. Did Jesus mean…
  a) if he followed Jesus he would have to make a new start in life and do things better?
  b) the Holy Spirit would give him a new life to help him live like Jesus?
  c) God would make him an actual baby again to give him a second chance at life? 

• Why did Nicodemus go and see Jesus in secret? He didn’t want the other Pharisees to know/he was afraid he would get into trouble

•  Nicodemus found you could be born again only by trusting Jesus. How did he used to think you could be friends with God?
  a) you had to be a Pharisee.
  b) you had to know your Bible really well.
  c) you had to be a good person and keep all God’s laws.

• Jesus met a woman while travelling through another country on the way to Judea. Where was the woman from? Samaria

•  Which of these wasn’t a reason the woman surprised Jesus spoke to her?
  a) Jews didn’t talk to Samaritans… ever.
  b) Religious teachers didn’t talk to women.
  c) Nobody spoke to anyone if they were out getting water.

•  How many husbands had the woman had? 5 (and the man she was living with was not her husband)

•  Jesus offered her living water. Did he mean…
  a) the best tasting water she had ever tried?
  b) if she drank it she would never get thirsty again?
  c) a chance to live forever as a friend of God?

• What did the woman do when she realised Jesus was God’s chosen one? She went to tell everyone she knew that she’d met the Christ.

•  The man who met Jesus on the road to the temple had a disability. What was it? He was blind.

•  Why was the man blind?
  a) his parents had sinned
  b) he was born that way
  c) he had committed a big sin

•  When they saw the blind man could see not everyone believed it was a miracle. What did they think happened? This was a different man who just looked like the blind man.

•  What did Jesus say he was right before he healed the bind man? The Light of the World

• Like the people who heard about the miracle we have a choice when we find out what Jesus can do. What did the Pharisees do?
  a) praised God that he’d healed the blind man.
  b) asked questions because they wanted to find out more about Jesus
  c) ignored the evidence they were shown so they could continue ignoring Jesus.

Songs:
He must be God - Emu Music
The Light of the World - Seeds Family Worship

Memory Verse:

John 1:13  children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Write the words on a big whiteboard if you have one or on prieces of paper you can blutack to a wall, or even in a powerpoint. Say it all together then take away a couple of words each time and get them to repeat it remembering the missing words. You’ll probably want to recap the previous verses, 10-12, so that this one makes sense.