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St. Andrew's Church
An Anglican Church • Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Preached by
Stuart Pike
Rector
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Lent 4a - From Blindness to Sight
Sunday, March 17 1996
John 9: 1-41
St. Andrew's Church, Grimsby
Plato, in his work, the Republic, uses the allegory of the cave to speak about reality and sight.
In his cave people are chained so that they can only face the wall of the cave. This is the way they are living their lives. Behind them on a high shelf is a fire, which they cannot see and between them and the fire is a walkway upon which figures are moved, like a puppet show. The only reality which these people can see are the flickering shadows which they can see on the wall in front of them. This is the world of our physical senses. It is only a tiny fraction of reality, and yet this seems to be the world in which most of us live.
What would happen if one of the prisoners is freed from his chains and is able to look around? He would see the fire, first of all, and the puppets, and might think that this is reality. But next he would notice that beyond the walkway is a passage which leads to outside. Outside was never a concept that the prisoner ever had before. He would be drawn to the light which was showing in the passage, and he would follow the passage until he left the entrance to the cave and saw the true reality, which is the light of the sun. And he would see, by the light of this sun, the whole new landscape of reality which the sun illumined. His eyes would truly be opened and he would understand the absolute poverty of his previous experience.
In today's Gospel reading we have the story of Jesus healing the man born blind. This was a miracle that had never happen before in the history of the people, and so it caused quite a stir among the people. But the most important point about the story was not this miracle, but a miracle that needs to happen to everybody who would see the kingdom of God. This other miracle of which I speak also happened in the Gospel reading. There is not much that can be more impressive than the physical healing of a man who had been blind from birth. Perhaps the spiritual healing of those who are spiritually blind is the only miracle that can top the physical healing. But this spiritual healing of spiritual blindness was the other miracle that happened in the story.
Of course, the Pharisees, who were spiritually blind could not see the importance of the new spiritual vision because they were certainly spiritually blind. Faced with a miracle as great as the healing of a man born blind, they looked more to a point of law which said that no work could be done on a Sabbath. Since Jesus performed the miracle on a Sabbath, they said that he could not be from God. Talk about spiritual blindness!
These are the ones that Jesus was talking about when he says at the end that he came that "Those that do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind." This does not mean that Jesus came to earth to blind people. Rather he meant that those who think that they have spiritual sight, will be shown to be spiritually blind. Thus the Pharisees, who considered themselves to be the religious and spiritual leaders of the Jews, were shown to have a total absence of spiritual vision. They thought that they could see, but they were the ones who were really blind.
The man born blind gained not only his physical sight, but he also gained spiritual sight as well. After he had been released by the Pharisees, Jesus found him and asked him if he believed in the Son of Man. The man asked Jesus who he was so that he might believe in him. He had the faith and the willingness to believe, and so Jesus said that he himself was the son of Man. The man said, "Lord, I believe" and he worshipped Jesus. In seeing Jesus, with the divine knowledge that was given to him, the man was given a glimpse of the New Kingdom. This is spiritual sight. This is a man who has been unchained from the wall of the cave and has struggled out to see the sunlight.
But the Pharisees, because of their own pride and self-importance would not let themselves see. This is spiritual blindness. It is perhaps the most frustrating thing to deal with because the condition of spiritual blindness makes the ones afflicted with it unable to let themselves be given new sight. Instead they must have a point where they can open their minds to accept the new sight that can be theirs. But they are close-minded. So they are in a stand-off position. Perhaps for this reason, pride and self-importance are the most blinding characteristics that people can have.
The enlightened prisoner tries to go back to free the other prisoners, but they laugh at him, unwilling to give up their poor interpretation of reality. There are none so blind as those who will not see. The Pharisees cannot understand the man with new sight. It is as though they were speaking different languages.
But how to explain spiritual sight to one who is spiritually blind? It would be like trying to describe the different colours to a person born blind. So is the experience of a person who has glimpse the kingdom of God unexplainable to others. I guess the most that we can do is to never give up telling others that the kingdom is there, and that it is as real as the physical world, and that it is there to be seen if one is willing to open ones mind to accept spiritual sight.
In these days, though, there are many to be told of the kingdom. I suppose that the majority of the people today are spiritually blind, often led by people with brilliant minds, but poor science. I am thinking especially of the hysterical pseudo-scientific atheists, which have become so popular, such as Richard Dawkins who wrote, "The God Delusion."They need to be freed from their chains of ignorance. In other words, we need to evangelize - to speak of what the Gospel speaks, and to teach what we have learned from the Gospel. When I speak of evangelism, I don't mean that we have to stand on the street corners handing out pamphlets to passers-by. We need to proclaim the Gospel in the way that we live, and we need to not be afraid of speaking about our faith, and the fact of the Kingdom. In this way, those who are spiritually blind might suddenly realize that they can have spiritual sight as well.
This is the situation with which we are often faced. But it is one that we must continue to work on. Most of the world operates with a different view of the world. Most people are unable to see all that is real - they can only see the physical world, and so they say that is all there is. Could they see the forest? Or would the trees block their view? Could they see the kingdom, or would their close-mindedness block any chance of spiritual sight?
People who have spiritual sight are able to see a fuller reality. We can still see the physical world, but we can see beyond the physical world, to the kingdom that Jesus tells us is among us. Our purpose is to tell the world of this new kingdom: to loose the chains of the spiritually blind and to help them walk out into the light of day and experience a greater reality. And to be freed. Amen.
