“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
Two weeks ago, Sey and I went to see a movie at the Triplex Cinema. It was a movie that we had wanted to see and now it was being shown in conjunction with an event to raise funds for the restoration of the historic Clinton AME Church here in Great Barrington. It was the movie: I am not your negro. The movie directed by Raoul Peck is based on notes and letters written in the mid-1970’s by the essayist, playwright, novelist and critic James Baldwin. The material comes from an unfinished book Remember this House about the lives and deaths of three men he knew well, Medgar Evers, Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Using Mr. Baldwin’s words Mr. Peck has woven a compelling and deeply challenging documentary of our continuing struggle to live together as human beings in this country. It overlays news reel movies of the 1950’s 60’s and 70’s with today to reinforce the reality that our deep betrayal of our black brothers and sisters extends back to 1619, when the first slaves were forcibly brought to this country, to today when black men and women, boys and girls, are brutally violated simply because of the color of their skin. It is a movie everyone needs to see and talk about with their family and friends. And it left me feeling shaken and numb, because as Sey and I left the movie theatre in silence I had this feeling that I have been walking through life in blindness.
In John’s Gospel reading today we hear about many types of blindness. As Jesus is walking along he sees a man who has been blind since birth. Never has this man seen the shapes and contours of light, or experienced the emotive aspects of color. He knows the world only through his hearing and what he can discern through his body. In the time of Jesus, and indeed into the early 1970’s in this country, a person who was blind had few opportunities in life. Many of them were isolated, removed from society, remaining at home or shuttled into enclaves or institutions for the blind. This man has lived his life as a beggar. It is apparent that while he has been a constant presence in the community, no one has really seen him until Jesus comes along.
Jesus’ disciples’ immediate response to the man blind from birth is to “see” him as a sinner. They immediately try to discern a reason for the man’s physical condition by assigning blame to him or his parents. Jesus spends no time considering this and instead tells them that neither this man nor his parents’ sins caused his blindness, but God’s kingdom will shine through this opportunity. Through healing and reconciliation, the Glory of God, which is love, will be seen in the world. Then Jesus spits into the dirt, bends down making a mud poultice and applies it to the man’s eyes. He tells the man to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. Without hesitation, the man goes and washes and suddenly he can see the world through his own eyes.
But then, once he is healed, he faces alienation from everyone, even those closest to him. Neighbors, religious leaders, his parents–no one seems to rejoice in his new ability to see the faces of those with whom he shares his life. No one can believe their own eyes. No one even seems to recognize him now that he has sight. Perhaps precisely because his transformation has upended all their cherished assumptions, they are unable to believe the truth that stands right before them. In their “blindness” the people begin to quarrel about who he is, And all along he stands before them, telling them “I am the man.”
When he is brought before the temple leaders, the fact that his healing has taken place on the Sabbath, the most holy day for all Jews, the whole event becomes one of controversy. The Pharisee leaders proclaim that whoever caused the eyes of this man to be opened cannot be from God. He must be a sinner. They even question whether the man was blind from birth so they bring in his parents. Even his parents fail to rejoice at his healing. They refuse to see the truth before their eyes. After affirming that he is their son and that he was blind from birth, they turn from him, as we are told in the scripture reading, to protect their place in the synagogue.
Now I want to say that in the Gospel of John, we hear language that can be interpreted in a way that is anti-Semitic. Pharisees are often labeled as if they are all “hypocrites” or “villains.” This is a form of our blindness as Christians. Pharisees were not moral bean counters who didn’t care about justice. Pharisees were the ones primarily responsible for seeing that the prophetic books—like Jeremiah and Isaiah and Micah and Amos—were placed in the scripture that we have today. These prophetic books were central to Jesus’ own sense of mission. But in the time of the writing of John’s Gospel, they were rivals of those who followed the way of Jesus.
The man whose sight has been restored does not back down, however. He is a truth teller. No matter the questions, the confusion, and the hostility, he simply states what has happened to him. “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed and now I see.” He is not a trained theologian or a scholar. All he knows, he tells them in truth. “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”
Blindness can come in many forms. There are those who are physically blind or visually limited who construct a universe from their ability to listen and attend carefully to the world around them. They must learn to receive information through different channels and they have to be resilient and creative to navigate our highly visual world.
There is the kind of blindness where we limit ourselves to only one way of seeing. “I can’t believe my eyes” or “That makes no sense to me” or “We have never done it that way before” where even though there may be compelling evidence in front of us, our mind will not trust the information and so we set out to develop alt-theories that will provide comfort and affirm us in what we currently believe. This kind of blindness can be temporary We may over time be able to adapt to the new information and come to embrace a fresh way of seeing. But there is the danger of becoming trapped in an insular cycle that refuses to accept good news, transformation, or even life-giving change.
And then there is the blindness, that prevents us from seeing others in our world and therefore fail to grow compassion. Because our country is so large and so complex, and our world is so large and complex, unless we intentionally reach out to learn and listen from those we see as being different from ourselves, we can remain blind to the needs and the suffering as well as the hope and the gifts that come from the people we may walk by everyday and yet fail to see. We do this sometimes because we are in a hurry and do not have time to really listen to the answer when we ask, “How are you?” to the bank teller or waitress or receptionist.
We can do this because the lives of others have not rubbed up against our own lives. Because we live compartmentalized lives– we may have no opportunity to get to know people who are differently abled, who live in different neighborhoods, who speak a different language, or worship in a different way, or have a darker skin color, or dress differently. And because we do not have a relationship, we can fail to see people who can open our eyes.
We may be blind to others out of self-protection. We may not want to know how we have benefited, however unwittingly, from systems and structures that have restricted the lives of others. We may not want to know how our life practices, our family and community beliefs have contributed to the marginalization of others. It can cause us pain to know that in some way we have added to someone’s diminishment, and by not seeing, have passively participated.
But God sees our blindness and rather than turning away from our sins or denying our need, God touches and heals us. God does not stand in judgment at the cause of our blindness, God comes near to give us life and hope and redemption. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but “in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) God comes right to where we are.
God will not force us to be healed from our blindness. God is the heart of freedom. God stands waiting to touch us, to offer us mercy and saving grace. But we must choose to receive this healing. And we must choose our next steps once our eyes are opened.
This late in Lent, Scripture is pushing us to an honest self-examination that is painful if we truly attempt to undertake it. No wonder we might rather choose to stay asleep or numb or in the dark.
Near the end of this story in John’s Gospel, the formerly blind man is fully sighted but utterly alone because of what he has seen. Encounters with Jesus can often have life-upending impact. But Jesus seeks him out. Jesus does not settle for curing the man’s blindness. Jesus comes to him and offers him wholeness, giving the man the greatest vision possible: seeing God face to face.
We too are offered this wholeness. When God opens our eyes, we have choices. We can deny our blindness, we can cover our eyes and return to sleep. Or like the man born blind, we can move into the world with newly opened eyes, proclaiming to all, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” There Christ will meet us. Where once we were in darkness, may we now following the good shepherd live as children of the light, living into all that is good and right and true.