Who is Blind? And Who Can See? by The Rev. Dr. Donald L. Hamer, Rector
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Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut
Year A – Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 26, 2017
1 Samuel 16: 1-13 Ephesians 5:8-14 Psalm 23 John 9:1-41
Who is Blind? And Who Can See?
Gracious God, illumine our hearts and minds in the Scriptures, so that by the power of your Holy Spirit we may see what is good and right and true. And seeing, help us to do what is pleasing to you, so that your glory becomes visible in our words and deeds. In Christ’s name we pray. AMEN.
This morning’s words from Holy Scripture reflect a common theme around eyesight or, more broadly, vision or perception. The passages from the 1st Book of Samuel, the letter to the Ephesians and the Gospel of John all make specific references to being able to see and how we see it. We make a mistake, however, if we hear these words and take them at face value. We would be just scratching the surface of their richness if we don’t delve further into what the writers want us to hear.
In the 1st Book of Samuel, Samuel is being tasked for the second time to identify a king for Israel. He is nervous -- the first time didn’t go so well – it wound up with the selection of Saul, who quickly lost God’s favor.
This time, the Lord tells Samuel to go interview the sons of Jesse, and there he will find the man that God has selected to replace Saul. To which Samuel understandably responds, “How can I go? If Saul finds out, he will kill me!” (16:2). And in the Lord’s response, we find our first reference to sight, although the word is not used. The Lord says, take a heifer with you, invite Jesse to the sacrifice, “and I will show you what you shall do…” Samuel is essentially flying blind, depending only on the guidance of the Lord. He’s going without a plan, relying only on God.
Then in verse 6, we have a second, but slightly different reference to sight. “When they came, he looked on the oldest, Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” And we all should know how the story ends – Samuel interviews all of the sons that Jesse has presented to him, and the Lord has rejected each and every one, leading Samuel to ask Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” (v.11). And of course, they are not. Jesse summons the youngest son whom he didn’t even invite to the sacrifice but left to tend the sheep. It is David, the youngest, whom the Lord chooses to succeed Saul.
The Gospel passage for today is that wonderful story from the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John in which Jesus restores the eyesight of a man who was blind from birth. The passage is 41 verses long -- and yet only 2 of those verses are about the healing itself. The rest of the passage is not about the healing, but about the reaction of the rest of this man's world: His neighbors and those who had known him as a blind beggar; the disciples; the Pharisees; and even his own parents!
n His neighbors and those who had known him as a beggar don’t even recognize him. Imagine that, we don’t know how old he is but we do know he is an adult. And to these neighbors and casual passersby, he was only recognized by his blindness. He was essentially dehumanized of all other characteristics – he was the blind beggar.
n The disciples, following popular belief of the time, thought the man’s blindness was someone’s fault, the result of someone’s sin. They ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?” And Jesus’ reply is that no one sinned – he was born that way so that God’s works might be revealed in him. And with that, Jesus restores his sight.
n The Pharisees refuse to believe that the man was born blind until they talk to his parents. They actually ask the man three different times to describe what happened and to admit that Jesus is a sinner. He replies in frustration, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
n The man’s own parents refuse to get dragged into this debate, knowing it is a no-win situation for them. If they take the son’s side, they risk being thrown out of the synagogue. So they simply respond, “He is of age. Go ask him.”
So the irony of this Gospel passage is that while the young man had been blind from birth, by the end of the passage the only two people who can see are the man himself and Jesus. Everyone else is blind to the truth that Jesus is offering. Jesus says as much at the end of the passage: I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind. And when the Pharisees ask, “We are not blind are we?” Jesus replies, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”
What do you think Jesus is trying to tell us?
At this point I would ask you to consider friends or acquaintances you may have who are, in fact, blind. I remember well a high school friend of mine, Kathie, who was blind from birth – I was actually good friends with her brother. Until I got to know her, I kind of pitied her, not being able to imagine life without eyesight. In fact, her life was rich and full: To be sure, she had to learn a large measure of adaptation to navigate in a world that is designed around those with eyesight. And she had to teach us – teach us how to live with her – LIVE with her, not change her. That was OUR blindness – even if we were to blindfold ourselves for a day or a week or a month, or develop some later loss of vision, we who have experienced eyesight can NEVER know what it is like to be blind from birth.
This is a delicate point, but it is necessary for us to wrestle with it if we are going to enter into this passage. It calls us to consider blindness as a state of being or a place to be, not an ethical world of sinfulness or being less than fully human. Professor Anna Carter Florence of Columbia Theological Seminary reflects:
What is it like to be born into one experience of the world that will never change or, we might add, seems like never will? What is it like to live and move among others whose experience of the world is so radically different? What is it like to try to understand their world, and describe ours to them? . . . Before we can enter this text, we have to try to place ourselves there – in a world that is radically different from the one we know.
This is a question that is much broader and deeper than physical eyesight. It applies equally to any condition of life, and it is a factor to be considered in our churches, in our communities, and in our country. It is at play in our local, state and national civic life. The same dynamic that Jesus addresses with the blind man can be applied to any other demographic that society traditionally places on the margins -- the poor, the homeless, those lacking a basic education, those belonging to a racial group other than Caucasian in the United States, those who are members of the LGBTQ community, Jews, Muslims – I could go on and on.
That is one of the things that have always troubled me, for example, about church groups who think that by sleeping in a box on a cold winter evening they can better understand the plight of the homeless. To do this exercise is not only unrealistic – all it proves is that it is cold to sleep outside in a box in the winder. Worse, it mocks the realities of the very demographic that the church group is trying to understand. They can’t begin to experience the hopelessness of being stuck in a situation and having no clue, no plan, no means, no resources to make things different. Those of us who do not belong to one of those groups can never reproduce the experience – we can only begin to enter into an appreciation of it by seeing as God sees -- not just the outer person and his or her physical characteristics, but the inner person, the child of God, and to listen to that person’s story.
In his recounting of this story, John is trying to get us to understand that moving from blindness to sight is not just about eyesight. In Jesus miraculous healing, the blind man experiences a conversion not only of body but of spirit as well. Going back to Transfiguration Sunday, we might say the man was transformed or even transfigured – and to those who saw him through God’s eyes, and not human eyes, they were able to perceive the person he really was. The problem was that without an inner conversion, the disciples, the Pharisees, and even the man’s parents could not see.
Maybe this passage is more about transitions than it is about status. John is calling us out as being in the position of the Pharisees and the disciples. We are the ones who still experience blindness, and we are the ones who need conversion. John is calling us to acknowledge that it is more important to confess Jesus than to be able to understand him or explain him.
Let us pray: Lord God, why is it that we look, but do not see? Bring us again and again into your light until your ways become visible to us. Touch us so that we are utterly changed, a “before” and “after,” a “now” and “then”; that we may also say, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
(sung) 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.
AMEN.