Scriptures Isaiah 49:8-15
I Corinthians 12:1-11 Mark 8:11-26
I learned that I was nearsighted when I was in maybe the 3rd
or 4th grade. I can’t
remember how my parents found out – maybe it was an eye exam at a doctor’s
office during a routine checkup, when the doctor or nurse asked me to read from
the top of the eye chart, starting with the “E” and I said, “What ‘E’?”. I had no idea that it was possible to see
better than I was seeing, because….well, it was the only way I’d ever seen. I didn’t know anything different. I did know that other people could see things
on the chalkboard in class that I couldn’t see, and on the playground during
recess they could see balls coming at them before I could…..usually for me,
balls appeared, as if out of nowhere, an inch or so from my face, just before bonking
me on the head. I figured somehow I just
didn’t know where to look, and my parents said I wasn’t paying attention. And I was pretty clueless….I remember
one time my parents hiding Easter eggs and inviting me to find them, and I
looked up in the air….probably the one place I wasn’t going to find an Easter
egg. Maybe I thought Easter eggs were
like the balls that hit me in the head during recess. I also remember being at summer camp,
learning to shoot a B-B gun, and my aim was so bad that I ended up putting
holes in the targets of those around me.
Understandably, after a few rounds of that, I heard the words, “Put the
BB gun on the ground and back slowly away”.
When I finally got that first pair of glasses, it was as if a whole new
world opened up for me. For the first
time I could see peoples’ faces clearly – I could see my mom’s and dad’s faces
clearly for the first time maybe at age 8 or 9, their eyes and ears and noses
and mouths, which up to that point just looked like shadows or blurs. I could see the individual leaves on a
tree. But I also remember all the
fittings for glasses over the years, with the doctor trying different lenses
and asking, “do the letters look clearer with this lens, or that one?” And often there isn’t enough difference that
I can tell, and I just shrug my shoulders.
The miracle story in today’s Gospel reading feels a little
like one of those eye exams. It’s an
unusual miracle, one of a kind in the Gospels.
At this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is in conflict with
the religious authorities – again - and
he and his disciples seem to be talking past one another. It’s
also important to know that it came immediately after Jesus had fed the 4,000
with seven loaves and a few fish….the feeding we know best, the feeding of the
5,000, was among a predominantly Jewish crowd, while the feeding of the 4,000
was in a mostly Gentile crowd. It took a
bit more to feed the crowd, and there wasn’t quite as much left over, but
still, it was a great miracle. And
before Jesus fed the 4,000, he had done a number of healings.
The religious authorities came to Jesus and asked for a sign
from heaven authorizing Jesus to do these things. Mark tells us that Jesus sighed deeply and
said that no sign would be given to them.
Jesus sighed, because these religious authorities failed to see that the
very miracles they were questioning were signs from God, similar to miracles
done by Moses and Elijah. The
authorities wanted to see something from heaven that fit their preconceptions
and assumptions, and their preconceptions and assumptions blinded them to the
full meaning of what Jesus was doing right in front of their noses.
So Jesus and the disciples piled into a boat and went away
from that place. Jesus began teaching
the disciples, saying, “Beware the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of
Herod.” Now, the disciples hadn’t
brought much food with them, and they had only one loaf of bread with
them…..and so they took Jesus’ words at a very literal level, thinking he was
criticizing them for not having made better preparations. And Jesus became impatient with them, saying,
“Why are you talking about having no bread.
Don’t you get it?” And truly,
they hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about – their faces must
have looked like a bunch of question marks…just blank incomprehension. And so Jesus asked them, “Don’t you remember? When I distributed the five loaves among 5000
people, how many baskets of leftovers did you pick up?” They said,
“Twelve”. Jesus asked again, “After I
distributed seven loaves to 4000 people” – which had literally just happened
before they got in the boat – “how many baskets of leftovers did you pick up?”
And they said “Seven”. And Jesus asked
them, “Do you still think I was talking about not having enough bread?” Mark’s
gospel says no more about the conversation, but Matthew’s gospel fills in,
“Then they understood that Jesus wasn’t talking about literal yeast used in
bread, but about the teachings of the Pharisees and of Herod and his
supporters.” In that culture, yeast was
a sign of corruption, and so Jesus was saying that the words and actions of the
Pharisees and of Herod were corrupt, and not to be trusted. And indeed they weren’t to be trusted,
because already the Pharisees and the supporters of Herod were looking for
opportunities to have Jesus killed.
Presumably they went to another point along the lake and got
out of the boat – we’re told they went to Bethsaida, which is along the lake,
just east of the Jordan river. We’re
told that some people brought a blind man to Jesus and asked him to heal the
man. Jesus takes the man out of the
village, puts saliva on the man’s eyes and lays his hands on the man – and
here’s the unique part of the miracle.
Jesus asks the man, “Can you see anything?” When Jesus gave sight to other blind people,
he didn’t ask them if they could see, but he did ask this man, “Can you see
anything?” The man responds, “I can see
people, but they look like tree trunks walking around.” (I can really relate to this, because before
I got glasses, that’s about what people looked like to me, like walking tree
trunks, with no facial features I could make out.) So Jesus laid his hands on the man’s eyes a
second time and looked at him intently, and then the man could see
perfectly. But this is the only miracle
of Jesus in the Bible in which a person wasn’t fully healed immediately, and so
Jesus had to lay hands on a second time.
We’re told that Jesus sent the man home, telling him, “Don’t even go
back to the village.” Don’t even go back
to the friends who brought you to me…..just go straight home. Do not pass go; do not collect $200…just go
home.
What’s going on here, that Jesus had to ask if his actions
of healing worked, and had to lay hands on a second time? Was Jesus losing his healing powers? Or was it something about the quality of
faith in the man and in the villagers who brought the man to Jesus? Earlier in the Gospel we’re told that in Jesus’
hometown, because of the peoples’ lack of faith, Jesus could do no great
miracles there, except he healed a handful of sick people. Perhaps it was something about a lack of faith
or the lacking quality of what faith existed that led to the more drawn out
healing process. We do know that later
in Mark’s gospel, Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus, and that healing was fully effective
the first time – and faith again played a role, as Jesus told Bartimaeus, “Your
faith has made you well.”
So it’s possible that the quality of faith among the man and
his friends played a factor – although there are other healings Jesus did,
where there was no discussion of the faith of those healed. It’s
also possible – especially given what came immediately before and after the
healing - that in taking the man from no vision to partial vision to clear
vision, sort of like an optometrist trying out different lenses on a patient, Jesus
was making a commentary – a kind of enacted parable for the benefit of his
disciples– about the the lack of spiritual vision among the religious leaders and
the process by which spiritual vision would develop among this disciples.
Initially the man was blind.
Others had to lead him to Jesus. Remember
that, after the feeding of the 4000 and a number of healings, the Pharisees
asked for a sign from heaven. Essentially,
they were blind to what Jesus was doing, looking to heaven for a sign while
missing the signs right in front of their noses, blind to the connections
between Jesus’ actions and past figures from their tradition such as Moses and
Elijah. And yet these folks weren’t
being led, but instead were themselves attempting to lead other people. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus called the
Pharisees blind guides leading the blind, who will lead their followers into
the ditch. And so the man’s blindness
before he met Jesus was similar to the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees.
The first time Jesus laid hands on the man, the man received
partial vision. He could see some
things, but his view was distorted and out of focus, like my vision before I
got glasses. This was similar to the
spiritual vision of the disciples.
After having spent time with Jesus and being taught by Jesus, they could
see and understand some things; that is to say, they weren’t entirely
spiritually blind. On the other hand,
their spiritual vision was limited and partial, focusing on the wrong things…as
when Jesus had used a figure of speech to warn them about the Pharisees and
Herod, and the disciples thought Jesus was chewing them out for having
forgotten to pack lunch. After this
healing, just as Jesus had asked the man, “Can you see anything?” Jesus would
ask the disciples some questions about their spiritual vision: “Who do the people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s answer that Jesus was the Messiah
showed that, after having hung out with Jesus for a while, he had indeed
developed some spiritual vision. But
Peter’s reaction after Jesus began to tell them he was going to be killed
showed the limits of Peter’s spiritual vision.
It really wouldn’t be until after the resurrection, and more so after
the coming of the Holy Spirit, that the spiritual vision of the disciples was
reliable enough for them to carry on after Jesus’ ascension.
Jesus’ enacted parable for his disciples is a lesson for us
as well. People come to Jesus in many
ways, some by coming forward at a revival, others in a church confirmation
class, or in other ways. But while
justification – being declared righteous by God through the work of Christ –
may be God’s work of a moment if God so wills, sanctification – living into
God’s will for us, living into the call of a disciple, learning to see as Jesus
would see and not as we would see – is a lifelong process. Lifelong.
Slow. Gradual. Lifelong.
And there’s no rushing it – not because God is slow, but because,
spiritually speaking, we have thick heads.
It’s part of the human condition.
That goes for all of us, including pastors. Even though we may feel close to God, our
spiritual vision may still be distorted….just as my vision of my mother’s face
was blurred, even when she was holding me in her arms. The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the
Corinthians said that we – himself included - see as if in a cloudy mirror –
through a glass, darkly, as the King James puts it – but then – after we are
with God – we will see face to face.
Why is it important to understand that developing spiritual
vision is a process? Imagine if the man
Jesus healed had responded to Jesus’ question, “Can you see anything?” by
telling Jesus, “Yes, I can see! Halleljuah! Thank you Jesus!” and running
off. He’d have gone through the rest of
his life seeing people who looked like tree trunks, probably bumping into
people and tripping over small animals and knocking objects off shelves and generally
making a menace of himself. (And it has
to be said, the man must have had eyesight earlier in his life before going
blind, because he knew what people looked like, what tree trunks looked like,
and that they didn’t look the same.) But
had he walked off before Jesus’ second laying on of hands, he’d have missed the
blessing of the full restoration of his vision.
I think there’s a tendency for
new believers, after they’ve had their first taste of the new life in Christ,
to think that what they’ve experienced is all there is to experience, that what
they understand after that moment of conversion is all there is to understand. And there’s a tendency for longtime believers
to reach some partial degree of clarity in spiritual vision, some level of
spiritual maturity, and then get stuck, and stop growing. And often fear is the reason; fear often causes
arrested spiritual development. Many of
the church’s battles over the centuries over issues of inclusion – over race,
gender, sexual orientation – are the result of Christians with partial vision
insisting that their limited view, limited by fear, is the only God-anointed view
allowed. Which is why over and over in Scripture, God’s messengers say, “Fear
not”, and why John wrote that “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts
out fear.”
There are lots of “baby Christians” – and some of them are
longtime church members who long ago stopped maturing in their faith - running
around half blind like bulls in a china shop, spiritual Peter Pans stuck in childish,
self-centered beliefs, wreaking havoc and breaking all kinds of pottery in the
name of Jesus, damaging the lives of people around them in the name of Jesus
without knowing what they’re doing, as I unknowingly caused a bit of havoc myself
during that long-ago summer camp by pointing a BB gun downrange and pulling the
trigger while I was half-blind and didn’t know it. We’ve all heard someone say at one time or
another, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” OK, but did you hear God correctly? And is what you heard God’s final word on the
matter? Maybe what you heard is all that
God could reveal to you at some moment in the past, but now he’s got more to
show you. The phrase sometimes used for willfully
holding onto immature understandings of the faith is “invincible
ignorance.” Put another way, there’s
none so blind as those who will not see.
This tendency to make our partial understanding of the moment into some
absolute conviction for all ages is especially dangerous if we’re in positions
of spiritual authority (like church pastors, like megachurch pastors, for
instance…) ….we may indeed pass along the faith, but also pass along the limits
and distortions of our own vision, insisting that everyone understand God in
the same fuzzy, distorted way we do. As
Pastor John Robinson said in the 1600’s to his flock in Holland before
departing for the New World, “There is yet more light and truth to break forth
from God’s Holy Word.” Or – and here’s a
phrase used sometimes in this denomination – “God is still speaking”.
Each of us view Scripture, understand Scripture, act on
Scripture, based on theologians call a “hermeneutic” – basically, the set of
assumptions, a sort of spiritual lens if you will, through which we view the
written text of the Bible. The
Pharisees, as we read about them in the Gospels – and the portraits of them in
Scripture are not unbiased, but are often purposely written in such a way that
they look bad by comparison to Jesus - viewed Scripture through a spiritual lens that
told them that purity was the most important thing to God. And they tried very, very hard, so hard, to
please God on the basis of making their lives as pure as possible. Jesus, on
the other hand, seemed to view Scripture and to view God through a spiritual
lens that said compassion was the most important thing to God. So when Jesus hung out with, ate with the
“wrong” people, so called, the Pharisees, seeing the situation through their
lens about purity, saw Jesus as misleading the people. Jesus, meanwhile, saw the Pharisees as
majoring in the minors, as being distracted by side issues while missing the
main point of God’s call for them.
The same is a danger for us.
Again, we all view the world from a place of imperfect spiritual
vision. All of us, myself included. If
we come from a place of pride and arrogantly try to make every else conform to
our limited vision, we will end up hurting people – and as much as the church
has been a place of healing for many, it has also been a place of injury and pain
for many others. But if we come from a
place of compassion, meeting people where they are, trying perhaps to point the
way to a better place but not forcing our vision on them, helping them live
into their own best vision, the church can be the healing station it’s meant to
be.
May we be bold in proclaiming Christ in our words and
actions – and yet humble in acknowledging that we do not fully know or
understand the Christ we proclaim or the God we worship. May we be humble in remembering that, like
the Apostle Paul, we see God’s glory as if in a dim mirror. May we minister to others, not from a place
of arrogance, but a place of compassion.
May we be open to new light from Scripture, in our private meditations,
as we fellowship with other believers. May
we live according to the light we have, and may we pray for more light so that
each coming year brings greater faithfulness to the God we love. Amen.
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