From the very beginning of today’s Gospel, this story of healing strikes us as being different than other such stories in the Gospels. Usually, we have someone rush up to Jesus with great faith and enthusiasm, pleading to be healed themselves or trying to convince Jesus to help a family member or a friend. However, in today’s Gospel, as Jesus and his disciples pass a blind man on their journey, the disciples ask a question, reflecting a widely held belief in the Ancient World: Was this man is blind on account of his own sin or the sins of his parents? Without the blind man even says a word to Jesus, before he knows what is happening, Jesus is spitting on some clay, spreading that mixture on the man’s eyes, and telling him to go wash in a pool in order to be healed. We don’t know how much the blind man knew about Jesus before this encounter, but I ‘m sure this encounter fueled his curiosity. Jesus uses this healing as an opportunity for God to manifest his saving power to challenge the faith not only of the blind man, but also the faith everyone who witnessed this healing.
The blind man was restored to sight both spiritually and physically; he is able to finally say: “I do believe, Lord.” Yet the Pharisees, with their many questions and their continued spiritual blindness, cannot make such a statement of belief. They cannot even come close to the faith of the blind man. The Pharisees can see a lot of things, they have a lot of knowledge and are very intelligent in a lot of ways, but they certainly cannot see through the lens of faith. Have you ever had trouble seeing something that was there all the time? Sometimes we are so distracted or overwhelmed by other things on our journey. Sometimes, we start off on our driveway and we start driving on autopilot toward our place of work, only to realize, no, it is not even a work day, and we should be driving in another direction. It might be that way on our journey of faith – we could be on autopilot cruising in one certain direction without questioning it or realizing we should be going somewhere else. Or, we are looking for something specific, for something to point us in the right direction, and we just can’t see it.
Healed by Jesus, the blind man was able to overcome what was making him both physically and spiritually blind. The waters of baptism cleansed the blind man. We ourselves are cleansed by the waters of our baptism. There might be something keeping us from seeing the signpost God has put out for us on our Lenten journey. The Pharisees tried to pull the blind man back into the darkness, but he resisted. By our Lenten disciplines and the promises we made to God, we are renewed and refreshed in our faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment