April 3, 2011
1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13 + Psalm 23 + Ephesians 5: 8-14 + John 9: 1-41
There are documented cases of people who were born blind, grew up that way, and then as adults were suddenly enabled by surgery to register optical phenomena. Surprisingly they are not able to see right away. Their brains to not have the skills to interpret the visual data transmitted by the retina. They have to learn to see. The brain must learn to interpret what the eye sends to the brain. We know this is true, and we understand that this is what infants gradually learn to do by interpreting visual cues about space, distance, and the objects around us. While this kind of learning comes naturally to a child, it is a shock to adults who have lived blind and then suddenly can see.
This experience contributed to a dramatic story told in a 1999 film called: “At First Sight.” It is a clever story about a man who falls in love with an architect who in her love and desire to “fix” this man she loves convinces him to have an operation that might restore his sight. I am over-simplifying a complicated plot and several layers of relationships by this summary, but the operation is a success, but their relationship gradually falls apart as they drift further and further away from each other. Complicating things between them is the fact that the man is unable to interpret the look on her face from time to time, and so he misunderstands many things. As the story moves along, the surgery does not provide a permanent cure, and gradually he goes blind again and slips back into his old life routine until one day while sitting on a park bench with his guide dog, the woman happens to come along, sit down, and they begin to talk. She apologizes for trying to change him and for trying to make him move too fast which led to their problems together. He gently puts his hands on her face and touches her tenderly. She asks if he wants to take a walk and “see what they see”, and the movie ends with them leaving the park together.
It is a lovely story that touches on much of this lovely Gospel story which could almost stand alone as a short story except that it is Gospel. It is John who is writing at a critical moment in the life of the church, and it is the living Word of God which speaks as powerfully and authentically today as it did when John first set it to writing. This man has no name, so it is not about him or about an historical event. This man without a name is us, God’s chosen ones, God’s church. Note carefully that the blind man never cried out, never made a scene, and never called for the attention of Jesus. It’s the other way around. Jesus went looking for him. In fact in the story Jesus seeks him out twice: at the beginning and at the end.
This is a story about people who have been to the water and have been anointed. It’s about us: a baptized/anointed people who have lived in darkness and come into the light. It is about people who do not at first see or understand what has happened to them, but who gradually come to understand that how it happened is not nearly as important as who did it: who gave us sight, who brought us into the light, who comes seeking us, anoints us, and then asks one question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
This is a story John writes to a church that is being misunderstood, judged harshly and expelled from synagogues because they answered that question like the man in the Gospel and said, “I do believe.” Today John still speaks to a church, to people who do believe and because of it, are misunderstood, judged harshly and unwelcome in certain groups and places. They are a people who refuse to buy into a self-indulgent culture that chooses pleasure over sacrifice. A people who refuse to exploit the poor for the sake of getting richer; who cry out against revenge disguised as “justice” that risks the execution of innocent people while refusing to acknowledge a flawed legal system. These are believers who suffer disrespect and disregard because they chose life for innocent unborn children and for the old when it is inconvenient or expensive. There is a price to be paid for saying: “I DO BELIEVE” says John’s Gospel; but only those who live in the light can see and say: “I do believe.”
Blindness is not a sin. In itself it is neither good nor bad. In fact, it is the darkness from which God can bring forth light. It is what the work of God works on.
On the other hand, sin is a stubborn attachment to a darkened understanding of God, of creation, of Jesus, and then calling this blindness “light”.
Sin is mistaking ignorance for “truth.”
There are no miracles in John’s Gospel. The word never occurs. There are only signs that point to Truth. This story is not a miracle. It is a sign pointing to Truth in the person of Jesus Christ. When the Pharisees do not open to the sign but cling to their falsehoods and suppress the truth, their sin remains. They say they see, but the see not.
Years ago sitting in a College Sociology class, old Father Camillus said to us over and over again something that always comes to mind when I read the 9th chapter of John’s Gospel: “You see what you have been trained to see.” How true that is, and how long it took me to understand it. We look at people who are different from us, and we have been trained to see danger or terrorists. We look at people who are poor and too often we see someone lazy who ought to get a job. Perhaps this Lent we ought to begin to rethink what we have been trained to see and start learning again how to see like people who do believe.