It was only a few years ago now when I realized that I really should go to the optometrist and get my eyes checked. I had never been before. My eyesight had always been pretty good but I had started to notice that maybe it was not quite what it used to be. So I made an appointment.
Now for those who have worn glasses much of their lives all this is pretty second nature to you but for me it was all new. All the tests that one had to go through. I was expecting to simply read an eye chart but it seemed like they had a machine for just about everything. One to adjust external lenses to see what was best, one to measure eye pressure, one to examine the health of the eye itself and there were probably a few others. I was impressed.
It turned out that my eyes were still pretty good but for one eye I needed a lens to help me see distances better, the other was fine. I told my wife this and she said, “Just one eye… why don’t you just get a monocle?” I wondered that too, “But I am getting glasses,” I said, “but maybe I can get a 50% discount.” My wife didn’t think so, and neither did the optometrist.
The whole process was fascinating to me. Maybe it is because I have a background in science but I was amazed at how much detail they could see of the inner working of my eyes. They could see how the eye functioned down to an incredibly small scale. All the parts of the eye. All the integration of the retina, blood flow, nerves, signals to the brain, shape of the lenses and all sorts of other things. All part of allowing us to see. Our eyes are miraculous.
But as I thought about it, what is it that we want to see with these miraculous eyes of ours? Apart from the obvious: tripping hazards, reading material and familiar faces and places, what is it that we actually want to see in this world? What are we searching for not only with our eyes but our hearts and souls? How do we want to search out this world for what is truly important and truly central to the purpose of life? What is it that we seek?
In the gospel reading for today, you will remember that Jesus and his faithful followers were on the road and they encountered a man who had been born blind. They asked Jesus, “Who sinned causing this man to be born blind?” It seems like such a strange question, one that we would never ask now, would we? Jesus felt the same way, for God does not work that way, he more or less said, no sin was involved in this man not having sight. There is lots to think about here, though, often we blame the victim when almost always there is so much more to the story. The man’s sins or his parents’ sins were not what led to the blindness. But we actually do still think that way at times don’t we? It’s their fault that they are… poor or uneducated or downtrodden or pushed to the sidelines or seeking a better life or a refugee or immigrating or blind or lame or… It’s still there. Maybe it is just easier to think this than actually creating the needed solutions. But I digress.
However, Jesus seemed to be on this same page for he healed the blind person… but from there things seemed to go a bit crazy. The neighbours got involved, the religious leaders, the man’s parents, anyone that had an opinion, it seems, suddenly was on the scene. The formerly blind man was delighted and others were concerned about analyzing this too carefully. Jesus then said, and this is the core statement of the entire story: “I came into this world… so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” So that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.
What could some folk simply not see? What is it the formerly blind man could now see? It turns out he could see things that he did not see before but I am not referring to tripping hazards, the faces of loved ones, the beauty of a sunset and the like. No. He was suddenly able to see God in his presence, the light of God in his midst, the love of God surrounding him, the peace of God in his soul. He was seeing things that he never thought he would ever see, and they were things that some others were having trouble seeing at all.
And we can, of course, get caught up in this as well. When we use our eyes what are we looking for? What are we seeking? Seeing is believing, some say, but is it true? What do we see in the world of today? Where do we see the light of Christ? Where in the midst of much confusion and chaos and rumblings and rantings and bombings and fear of the stranger and gun violence and growing needs at food banks and a strengthening of self-centredness… where in all of this are our eyes opened to the love of God? Not just naming the sins but recognizing the love of God.
Where do you see God in the midst of all of that is going on in the world of today, the world of right now? Where do you find hope? How do you adjust your eyes to see in different ways from all that we get bombarded with? How do you become one who sees and not one who remains blind?
I read an article in The New York Times recently with the title, My Year of Living Blurrily. The author, Dani Shapiro, describes how she had a year of living blurrily because of a tumour behind one eye. She simply could not focus her eyes so that things became clear. She could see but everything was essentially out of focus. She describes how difficult it was to visit new places or unfamiliar places and try to orient herself. She described simply trying to navigate, not only what was in front of her but also her entire life. Until she came to study some impressionist art.
She wrote this about a piece of artwork she came across: “But here was ‘Vase of Flowers.’ An extravagant explosion of mallows in a mossy ceramic vessel, it was a painting Claude Monet had begun in the 1880’s, then set aside and finally completed around 1920….” She said, “The label suggested that the viewpoint creates ‘a strange feeling, as if the table and flowers are tilting forward and the forms dissolving’. But for me,” she wrote,” the feeling wasn’t strange at all. I saw the whole world now as an Impressionist painting.” It turns out, she wrote, that “Monet suffered from cataracts, but had resisted surgery for years, and this became the subject of a poem called ‘Monet refuses the Operation’ by Lisel Mueller that had assumed great meaning for me as my own vision deteriorated. In Mueller’s poem, Monet chides his doctor for assuming he’d prefer to see clearly, extolling the virtues and beauty of blurred sight. ‘I tell you it has taken me all my life/ to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,/ to soften and blur and finally banish/ the edges you regret I don’t see.”
I wonder if the same is true for us. Where do we need to soften, blur and banish some of the hard edges of this world that block us from really seeing.
We Christians are invited, called, encouraged to view the world with a different set of eyes. Not necessarily blurry but with eyes that see beyond what gets presented as most important in the world around us. We are invited to see with eyes that have a different vision of what this world can be like. We are invited in this time of Lent to have our blinded eyes opened to the ways of God, the hope of God, the love of God that endures all things.
The blind man discovered one particular day that God showed up. God was there telling him that his sins did not create the blindness but quick judgement from others might have… at least for themselves. He suddenly saw God standing beside him and telling him to wash his eyes anew. He did and immediately saw that indeed God was not distant from him and all his suffering but in fact God was right in the midst of his life.
The same is true for us. God continues to show up and open our eyes to love and grace and renewed hope and reveals to us that indeed what the world promises is not all there is. In all of the violence and war and self-centredness and coldness and lack of compassion and blaming the victim, we can see all around us, we are called to something greater and more, and it is centred around God’s light shining in our hearts drawing us closer and nearer. A light bringing hope in and through us.
Jesus said, “I came into this world… so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” May we see. May we see indeed that in God is life, life abundant.