A memorable line from Robert Burns offers a good beginning in hearing the word of Christ to us today:

"O what power the Giftie gie’ us that we see ourselves as others see us ..."

The ninth chapter of John’s Gospel is about seeing, not only as others see us but seeing as God sees us. It is one of the most dramatic chapters in the New Testament, as the Savior calls out to us not to be blind, but seeing.

Trying To See What Can’t Be Seen

It all begins with a question to Jesus from the disciples as they saw a man who had been born blind.

"Who sinned," they asked, "this man or his parents?" It’s the kind of question we can understand. One predictable emotion in parents who are told that their newborn has a calamitous affliction such as blindness is the haunting sense of guilt. We humans instinctively search for the reasons why things happen - particularly tragic things. In the Old Testament we do learn that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those that hate him (Deuteronomy 5:9), but that is not God’s vindictiveness. If a mother abuses her body during pregnancy with drug dependency, the newborn child may indeed be afflicted. But that is not to be laid at the door of the Creator. Part of our human blindness, which is a phrase meaning our sinful condition, is that we try to see cause and effect in ways we cannot see. This question on the part of the disciples is an example.

Jesus is absolutely clear in his reply. It is not that this man or his parents sinned, he says. This tragedy of blindness is to become an occasion for the manifesting of the work of God. Thus Jesus turns away the question and puts everything on a new basis entirely. We who can see only through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12) cannot fathom mysteries which God alone can probe. God acts in the face of mystery and tragedy. That is the point. Each of us needs that assurance from the Lord. We have it here on Jesus’ own authority. It is futile and misleading to try to make God out as a God of retaliation. He is the God of judgment, yes. But that judgment leads to redeeming love and merciful entering into our insoluble problems of life. The rest of John 9 is all about that!

Seeing In a World Still Blind

The blind man is healed. Jesus makes clay spittle, puts it on the blind man’s eyes, sends him to the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem and tells him to wash. As he does so, "he came back seeing." (v. 7) The one who was blind from birth, who never saw color, form, motion, sky, earth, faces, who never saw the sun rise or set over his native Jerusalem, who never looked out over the walls to the loveliness of the Mount of Olives, or to the east to see the deep reddish hue of the hills of Moab in the late afternoon sun - this man was given sight by the Son of God who is the light of the world.

What should now follow? Surely this. Let the people around him rejoice with him as he sings and dances with ecstatic joy. Let his family join him and his neighbors, too, in the unending praise of Jesus who brings sight. Let the people who had the care of souls open the temple doors and shout thanksgiving and praise of God for the wondrous sign and miracle that had taken place. Let the whole town rejoice!

None of that follows.

First the neighbors begin to doubt whether this man now able to see is really the same one who was blind all those years. To them the man says, "I am the man!"

Then he is brought to the Pharisees, who denounce it all because Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath. A division occurs among them, some advocating affirmation, but others claiming the healer is not from God because he healed on the day of rest.

Then the man’s parents are brought onto the scene; they are asked questions which can put them at odds with the Pharisees. The blindness is caused by fear. He is our son, they say. Yes, he was blind. But now - ask him for all the rest - we’re not talking about it anymore. How often that has been repeated! Fear works like cataracts; it blurs and blinds and silences us when it comes to the moment for testimony.

Then it is back to the Pharisees for a second round. They are now telling the blind man what to see, and whom to see. In full hostility against Jesus, they tell the formerly blind man to praise God but to denounce this so-called prophet. By their words, Jesus is an impostor and a sinner. But now the blind man who can now truly see begins to reveal what it means to see. He taunts them with his witness that Jesus has opened his eyes to see, yet the Pharisees are refusing to honor the deed that has been done in the open sight of all! Or, he goes on, do you perhaps secretly want to become Jesus’ disciple, too! At that the lid goes off. The Pharisees explode in full denunciation, not only of Jesus but of this man who had received the gift of sight. "You are born in utter sin, and would you now teach us?" They then put him out of the temple.

Finally the man is found by Jesus, who had heard of his being thrown out. Jesus asks him concerning his faith. The man is frank to say he doesn’t really know who the Son of man is. "I am he," Jesus says. The man’s answer is, "Lord, I believe," and he is on his knees in worship.

The man released from blindness into the world learns about a blindness that still afflicts those who can see. That is the point of the narrative the Gospel writer gives us in detail. Who is blind? Who can see? Blindness is not only a matter of sightless eyes. It is the problem of a heart and soul darkened by sin. God would not leave us in that blindness of soul that leaves us unable to see him or follow his life. Christ Jesus is God’s gift of light to our world, and to all within us that obscures the brightness of the Father’s image and the fullness of his life. In this light of grace, Jesus went to the Cross. His gift of himself is the great work of God that means "the eyes of our heart are opened to the hope to which God has called us." (Ephesians 1:18) God be thanked for our eyes which see. God be eternally thanked for the vision which is ours by faith that puts us alongside this bewildered man so long ago who said, "Lord, I believe."

Not Blind but Seeing: The Full Stature of Christ

As we live under Christ and his Gospel, surely we can be aware of our vision of him and the fullness of his grace as a growing vision. See Christ and the sufficiency of his Cross as his work which is established at the center of life, not on the sidelines. Religion can be a peripheral matter, having to do with ceremonial occasions such as marriage, funerals, Christmas and Easter. To see Christ as the one who gives us life and grace is never to live as though our Lord Jesus was a marginal figure in our life. Let no blindness obscure him from the center of our decisions and priorities day by day. See him at work in the heart of the world’s events. Trace his Spirit’s presence in the things which are foremost in your energies and activities.

Our blindness to the fullness of this stature can sometimes take the form of wrapping him in our nation’s flag, as if his chief function was to sanction our enterprises as a people. Jesus can be made into an endorsement of our denomination over some other one; but that is the blindness of turning him into a cheerleader instead of Savior and Judge. It is common to want his gifts but not his people, to profess a private kind of line to him but never to see our place in the church to which he always calls us. Jesus does not go out of style. His word of truth holds for this time and every time. The blind spots in our faith life need clearing up; for that purpose he gives us a text like this one today. As long as we live, and worship, and participate in his mission, and take our place among his people, our spiritual vision will keep growing. When we come to behold him in heaven, face to face, he will be no stranger to us, nor us to him. It is his face we have been seeing all along, even among the least of his brothers and sisters. Then we shall see, no longer through a glass darkly, the gracious Lord who has been at work in our lives from the beginning.

Not Blind but Seeing: The View of Other People

To see with the new eyes of faith means to see other people with the eyes of Christ himself. People are not seen as a threat with whom we must compete and over whom we must gain control. People are not seen as problems from whom we prefer escape. People, viewed in the light of Christ, are to be seen as fellow humans whom God loves no less than ourselves. People are to be listened to, spoken to, cared about, learned from, and appreciated as channels through whom God addresses us.

When it comes to old tensions and long standing biases which divide us humans, we Christians have a calling to see people not just as stereotypes of the old problems. Being forgiven, we are called to locate those new points of beginnning in relationships that looked hopelessly mired in prejudice, jealousy, and vengeance. Conciliatory healing gets started as people see, with humility and penitence, what each has done to break it all off. Such seeing leads to healing, and all over our world today that kind of seeing and healing is essential!

Seeing others in faith means admonition, too. When faithless, destructive behavior takes place, we are not called to blindness which takes the form of a shrug of the shoulders and the thought that everybody does that now-a-days. Seeing sin means calling it for what it is, and seeing clearly the consequences before those consequences are not so far gone that everything is ruined.

Not Blind but Seeing: Ourselves

To see as Christ the Lord enables us to see, is to see yourself aright. Your worth in his sight is what the cross is about. To that extent he loved you! See yourself, then, as one whose worth is not established by the opinions of others, the job or money you have, your skin color or gender, or anything else. To see yourself as a redeemed and beloved child and servant of God is to find the right base for your dignity, your confidence, and your security as a person. Being blind to this is what sets us up for all the wrong kind of self-affirmation, or the denial of the fact which is plain to everyone else - we need help!

Surely each of us knows what it means to say, "If I had only seen then what I can see now!" That can be a sentence of despair but it can also be a word of hope that we can, indeed, see now. In spite of all our natural vanity, we still become our own worst critics, and when our spiritual vision grows dim we can put ourselves so far down that we see no point in even trying at life anymore. From that blindness we are released by the Gospel of Christ. See yourself as one who has a place among his people, who rejoices in his promise, who has purpose according to his will. See the spiritual center of your life as the true center of your being, and let the priorities which you establish reflect that priority which seeks first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, convinced that all the other things fall into their rightful place.

See clearly the difference between living under Christ’s reign and living a life that is fully secular.

See that no grief can come to you or those who matter in your life that our Lord has not already carried, no sorrow is ours that he had not first borne. See the strength of that towering love made manifest in the darkness of Good Friday, the love in which we can bear all things, believe all things hope all things, endure all things.

Seeing in Spite of Poor Sight

Several of our members are people with sight problems. I think of Ellen Foschinbauer in her 80s, a widow now, and no longer able to read. Though her eyesight is bad, her spiritual vision is not. She is one of those splendid witnesses to the faithful Lord, whose patience under trials and whose beautiful spirit of courage and hope is an inspiration to all who are around her.

I think now of another person of our parish family. She is not yet in her teens and yet must come to terms with a strange eye disease that has made her sight problematic. Yet in her soul the vision of faith is given in her baptism; Christ is at work in her life and I see ahead for her a lifetime of great meaning and purposefulness under God. The details are not clear just now, but she is a young Christian who believes that in her handicap "the work of God will be manifest."

... Was Blind but Now Can See ...

All our seeing comes by grace, amazing grace! In that gospel song there is this line, "... I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see ..." For that, may God be praised now and always.