Open My Eyes

There’s a story  of Jesus giving sight to a blind man in the Gospel of John. The moment itself is quite brief, but it’s what happens to the man afterwards that forms the bulk of the story, which is long. An entire chapter long.

And that doesn’t always happen, does it? We often hear a miracle story as just that: the focus is on the miraculous moment of change brought about by Jesus. Then everyone goes on their way wondering at the divine power of Jesus and we’re on to the next encounter.

But in John 9, that healing moment when the man is given physical sight, as interesting as it is (there’s a whole creation element with mud and spit), doesn’t seem to be the most important part of the story. It highlights a couple things, most significantly that the man was born blind, so it’s not really a restoration moment, but a creation moment. And it offers the opportunity to challenge the idea that what we might judge to be a disability is somehow a punishment from God for sin. That was a prevailing understanding in those days and Jesus’ points out that’s not how God works. There may still be some who think that today, so please see this and any of the many other times Jesus demonstrates that it’s not. Look, it’s just not.

But the judgement continues. Jesus leaves and the man finds himself being questioned, his identity questioned, the reality of his experience being questioned. He ends up being interrogated by the pharisees. They question his parents, too, and all he can say is “I don’t know who he is or how he did it, I just know that I was blind and now I see.” But the pharisees don’t. They judge him a sinner, just like Jesus who had done this on the Sabbath. They determine to cast him out from the synagogue. Jesus gives him the thing that he was marginalized without and he's cast out again, for it this time. Hearing what happened, Jesus seeks him out and tells him who he is. The man simply says “I believe.”

It’s a journey, you see, not just a momentary miracle. And it’s just the beginning of a journey because now he sees the world through Jesus. The healing miracle that begins the journey is different than other such stories in the gospels. The man doesn't seek Jesus out and request it, nor does Jesus ask the man's permission, nor is the man's healing a result of his own faith. The man doesn't seem to know Jesus or anything about him. And yet, he sees. Unlike the pharisees, trapped in the stoney strict adherence to the letter of the law, unwilling to see behind their authority, unwilling to open their eyes to this man’s experience, unwilling to see Jesus - and this man - as anything but a threat. 

Transformation is messy, complex and convoluted sometimes. It can feel like it begins in the mud, it can mean gaining friends and losing them, gaining new life and losing it, it can mean understanding and confusion, it can mean questions with answers and questions with just more questions.

But when we truly open our hearts and minds and look beyond what we know, what we think is certain, we grow. Faith, love, empathy - all these things that build relationships, that connect us, they aren’t threatened by doubt or questions, but by the certainty that we already know everything and by the judgement of others based on that certainty. Do you see?