All Seeing, Selectively Blind

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve entered deeply into the Book of Signs section of the Gospel of John—the first half of the Gospel that sheds light on who Jesus is and what difference being his disciple makes.

You may remember that John’s Gospel begins with the hymn proclaiming that “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of ALL people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

This New Testament conception of creation through Christ is so fundamental to our faith, and was to our forebears here at St. Paul’s, that it is yoked to the beginning words of the Book of Genesis about God creating the heavens and the earth in our mosaics.

The Bible begins with God announcing “Let there be light” and then the vast expanse of the universe comes into being.

So, it is no accident that John presents his proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah in terms of a new dawning of light accompanied by new ways of human knowing and relating to one another.

Remember that two weeks ago, Nicodemus came to Jesus by cover of night and left enlightened about what it meant to be born from above.

Last week the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s well, encountered Jesus and his invitation to drink from the living water that both exposes the truth behind all things hidden and empowers us to evangelize about the freedom we know in Christ.

All these moments in the Book of Signs are communicating to us that Jesus is the light of the world, the Word of God— the creative force and principle that drives out the shadows in our souls and in our systems so completely that the aftermath is like walking in a dew-covered garden at dawn.

This story about the man born blind is an intensified treatment of this entire theme, and the new sight the man receives is intimately linked with new understanding and knowing.

There is so much about this scene that amazes me.

First you have the miracle itself coming about through Jesus’ words combined with earth/mud and water/saliva.

The life and light that Jesus offers arises through the fundamental building blocks of this creation—earth and water—and the miracle is about the new sight this man receives, and simultaneously about helping all the world to see that our preoccupations with blame and sin keep us blind to the greater existence we share in God.

Jesus does not run from the earthy reality of this creation, but instead shows us how God has already embedded within it the tools we need to build the next.

Most people imagine miracles as happenings that are “out of this world,” but time and again Jesus draws us back to the creation God has already given us, and asks us to see it freshly as a place of infinite possibility.

Then there is the part of the scene where the religious authorities try to get the bottom of the mystery about how this man now sees— whether his healing is a sign of the divine or the demonic— and about the exchange the formerly blind man has with them about what a proper response to such a miracle might be.

There is so much fearful motivation behind the Pharisees questions, and fear in the formerly blind man’s family about being exiled from their community, when instead they ought to be celebrating this amazing thing that has happened to their son.

But the man who now sees is by contrast fearless.

Not only does he have his physical sight restored, but Jesus has simultaneously activated within the man a kind of internal knowing and wisdom that brings about a deep calm and fortitude in the midst of difficulty.

His experience foreshadows that of generations of disciples throughout the ages who experience Christ’s freeing gift of grace, only to the encounter opposition and challenge from a world that cannot let go of less graceful ways of being.

The Pharisees in the scene are a stand in for all of us humans who spend more time concerned with seeing and judging the sin in others in order to distinguish and separate people, instead of moving toward the new shared reality to which God is calling us.

The man tells them, “I do not know whether Jesus is a sinner.  All I know is that I was blind but now I see.”

Their response is, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?”

Jesus concludes the scene by telling us all that he has come into the world, “so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

When Christ opens the new creation to us, opens our eyes to the deeper reality of this world and the next, then we begin to see one another and our place in this world differently.

When we walk together and work together to see the reign of God made real in the stuff of this lifetime and this creation, then over time we become blind to the old ways of relating to one another that are well adapted for enabling narrow self-interest but are unable to lead us to the place where Christ is.

We are called to become selectively blind to what our world labels as sinful, and concern ourselves more with seeing the connections we share in our creator.

We are called to see and bear witness to the ways we dehumanize and hurt one another, and be willing to be led by our Lord, like those who are unable to see the path clearly, toward the place that leads to our reconciliation and healing.

Jesus calls us all—Jesus calls you today—to see this wonderful, created world through his eyes and to allow all lesser forms of vision to recede into the shadows from whence they came. I can think of no better Gospel for us to consider as we move into our annual meeting after this service, and seek to remain true to the common calling we share in Christ—the light of the World, the Word of God, the author of our salvation, and first citizen of the life and realm that has no end.