Where do you see yourself in this story? As one who can see or as one who is blind? The answer may not be so apparent to those of us who presume to see what is going on like the Pharisees did, but really couldn’t see the light.
In my childhood, perhaps the best known blind person in our country was Helen Keller who lost her sight and hearing when she was 19 months old. She grew up to become a highly regarded author. On our failure to see what is around us, she wrote, “One day I asked a friend of mine who had just returned from a long walk in the woods what she had seen. She replied, ‘Nothing in particular.’
“How was this possible? I asked myself, when I, who cannot hear or see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate shape and design of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly over the rough bark of a pine tree. Occasionally, if I’m lucky, I place my hand quietly on a small tree, and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song.
“All this has convinced me of one thing: the greatest calamity that can befall people, is not that they should be born blind, but rather that they should have eyes and yet fail to see.”
A blind man who fell in love with a young woman raises that same observation in the film, Butterflies are Free. To get away from an over protective mother, Don moved into a shabby one-room apartment. He tries to support himself as a singer and a composer. Along comes Jill who was briefly married once. Her love was rejected and the experience wounded her badly. Jill becomes affectionate toward her next door neighbor and falls in love with him. But when Don proposes marriage, she turns him down.
Although she loves him and wants to marry him, Jill is afraid that she will be hurt again just as she was the first time she married. Don tells her that although she has eyes to see, she is the one who is really blind because she is afraid to step out in faith and make another commitment to love someone. His faith and courage eventually convince Jill to open her eyes and see the freedom from fear she could have.
There is a striking parallel between that movie scenario and the blind man and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel. As the blind man slowly progresses from darkness to light, those most critical of what is happening, the Pharisees, seem to be moving in the opposite direction.
The blind man gradually comes to see who Jesus is. At first he refers to Jesus as the man who healed him. Then he describes Jesus as a prophet. Then during an intense interrogation, he insists that Jesus must be a man from God. Finally, he believes in Jesus as the Son of Man.
The Pharisees on the other hand plunge deeper into darkness. They thought of themselves as having the light but they cannot bring themselves to recognize who Jesus is. Their closed-mindedness keeps them from seeing that Jesus was not only a great man and a great prophet but also the Son of God.
This really isn’t a story of a physical healing intended to awe us. Rather, this gospel passage is about us in our spiritual blindness. As the line in the renowned hymn, Amazing Grace, puts it, “Was blind but now I see.”
All of us came into the world blinded by original sin from the fullness of God’s light and love. By virtue of our baptism, we can see Jesus but is our vision still on the fuzzy side? Anyone who has had cataracts knows what I mean by that. Are we still blinded by our personal sinfulness from seeing all that we can be?
Like the Pharisees and Jill, we can blind ourselves in so many ways. We walk in darkness whenever we close our eyes to our fears and selfishness or whenever we refuse to face the truth about our hang-ups, addictions and greed. We walk in darkness whenever we fail to see the sufferings of the poor, the sick, and the abandoned or whenever we ignore the lonely, the oppressed, and the downtrodden.
To walk in the light means not literally to see but to see more than meets the eye, to have a vision of our potential, and to make commitments to live our faith. As Paul tells us in his letter, we are children of the light whenever we produce every kind of goodness and justice and truth. Light shines through us every time we brighten the lives of others.
The good news on this Laetare Sunday is that Jesus wants to do for us what he did for the blind man. Like him, we can be cured of our spiritual blindness, but first we must rid ourselves of those false values that blind us from the truth of who Jesus is. Imagine how deep our faith would be if we could open our eyes and truly see what Jesus has to offer us. John’s intent here is to show us what Jesus can do for us. To come to him in faith is to accept the light; to reject him is to remain in darkness. The choice is up to you.