Sight lines

There is blindness and then there is blindness. And there is sight and then there is sight.

Today we hear of a man who was born blind…healed by Jesus he gains both sight and vision.

The man born blind did nothing to deserve Jesus’ attention. He did nothing to earn the free gift of Jesus’ healing. But his healing revealed that there is sight…and then there is sight.

This long Gospel lesson is certainly a strange conversation, isn’t it? On the one hand, this encounter where the leaders interrogate the stubborn (and smart-mouthed) man who was healed sounds like a fight, a kind of verbal brawl. On the other hand, it’s a comedy. I swear, all this exchange needs to drive that point home is a laugh track.

So let’s re-cap. One day while Jesus is walking along, he meets a man born blind. Now the disciples are curious.

Jesus heals the man and tells him to go and wash in a pool that was supposed to be a place where the sick could be healed. Jesus makes a paste or a salve of mud and spit and says go wash. And when he does he is healed. And everyone is excited. But not everyone believes it.

The Pharisees and the religious leaders are skeptical. They try to say that he is not the same man, or that he pretended to be blind. And when those explanations fail, in utter frustration, they write-off the healing by saying he was born entirely in sin.

As I said, there is blindness and then there is blindness.

Jesus comes to the man. Good thing for Jesus he did not ask the man how he received his sight, because after the grilling he just came away from he might have hauled off and popped him one.  Instead, Jesus asks the man if he believes in the Son of Man—Jesus.  The man says “show me, and I will believe.” Of course, he is being shown because Jesus is standing right there. And the man does believe.

The most religious and righteous people in the land see Jesus and do not believe. But this man, who was blind now believes.

There is sight, and then there is sight.

Blindness can come from seeing too much. It can come from thinking we know how the world works and ought to work. It can come from thinking we have everything under control. It can come from thinking that we can get God on our side if we are good enough, smart enough, clever enough. Blindness can come from thinking that we have in ourselves everything we need, and that we don’t need anyone else—and that we above the need for spiritual help.  Often, when we think we see the most, this is when we are the most blind.

But sight can come when we can see the least. Have you ever wished you could see around life’s corners? Have you ever believed that what you thought you saw turned into something else? Have you ever been let down by what you thought you saw clearly? Have you ever been blind to the world around you—it’s gifts, it’s beauty, it’s possibility? Have you ever turned a blind eye to the people most in need of care, compassion and a taste of hope?

These are the people that Jesus touches. The ones who knew they had no sight, no hope, no direction, only dependence and fear and limitation and dead ends. These are the people Jesus touches and the one to whom he brings sight.

The man born blind did not just get up and dance around the room. There were skeptics. He did not see clearly. He knew that he had been healed, and he knew that his healing was a gift; but it took him time from his sight to become vision. His vision grew and grew until he saw and recognized Jesus. He knew the change in him came from God through Jesus and then it all clicked.

Vision is like that. The spiritual life starts with a dim awareness of grace.  And if we follow it, that awareness grows and grows. We know that God is doing something. We know that we are being changed. Those around us may not understand it, they may even discount it. But it is real.

There is something else going on here. In the Ancient Near East at the time of Jesus, well before there was a scientific understanding of how the eyes worked, there was the notion that the eyes not only recieved light, but projected it as well. If this were not so, it was reasoned, then why can, after our eyes adjust, see in an otherwise darkened room? Light came in. Light goes out. That's how it was understood. 

So Jesus' act of creation-- using the dirt and spit to make a mud plaster to put on the man's eyes-- allowed him to let be, as well as see light. Jesus "let there be light!." 

This was the message, the prophetic sign, that Jesus' healing was meant to convey. And Jesus doing this on the Sabbath was not simply a rhetorical stick in his opponents eye. No. Jesus did this on the Sabbath as an act of creation, or more precisely re-creation. He is showing us that not only can we receive light, we can be light. 

All the man knew was that he was healed. And the really odd part was that the more he was interrogated, the more his sight grows. And the really, really odd part, was that the people who were apparently the most equipped to see what Jesus was up to were in this instance the most blind to what He was up to. They could not celebrate the healing, because they forgot that the Sabbath was about our need to rest in God's abundant, creative, healing love, not simply have a day off for Church.

And for us, who are baptized into and fed by Christ's body, our sight grows as our awareness of God grows. We find that Christ is there. He was the one who touched us. He is the one making us whole.  He is the one who lifting us out of our blindness and allowing to more and more see the world for the first time—as if through God’s eyes.

There is blindness and then there is blindness. There is the blindness that comes from not being able to see. And there is the blindness that comes from choosing not to see what God has put before us.

And there is sight and then there is sight. There is the sight that comes from resting in our own knowledge, our own power, and our own keen sense of the world as it is. We may think we are being realistic in our skepticism, but we may simply be locking the door on grace. There is another sight, a sight that brings vision. That is beginning to see ourselves and creation as loved, cherished and worthy of being renewed.

There is sight that sees God at work in simple acts of kindness. There is vision to see God at work in the care for the poor, the outcast and the lonely. There is light that comes from encountering the face of Christ in every person that God brings to us.

The world sees Jesus as a long ago figure of history and myth. The realists in the world see our faith as a desperate allegiance to a good man who failed miserably on an executioner’s cross. The skeptics see us people sadly deluded. They can see that for themselves.

But we have been touched by Jesus, and washed in the waters of baptism, and who have seen the Christ in faith, in sacrament, in community, in the faces of our neighbors, have a different vision. We have seen a mere glimpse of what God sees: a people capable of love, of faithfulness, and compassion, and a creation full of wonder and possibility. We don’t claim to see everything, but we know that in Christ, God removes our blindness and gives us hope.