IV Lent A
IV Lent A
{in the parable, Jesus heals a blind man. Confusion ensues.}
I recently was at the museum looking at these different visual puzzles. There are some where a single dot in the middle of a series of lines causes other dotes to magically appear in the diagram. The dots aren't there, but the eyes put them inbetween the different line. you have probably seen the picture of the older woman that is also, if examined from a different angle, the neck of a younger woman. Or of a rabbit.
The mind has an amazing ability to see patterns, to solve visual puzzles, to put information where there isn't much. As human beings this is a religious and a scientific enterprise: to see patterns, whether it be the shapes in nature, or the behaviors of our friends, the structure of society. We see patterns, and patterns probably exist, truly.
There are good reasons our minds work the way they do, to see these patterns: seeing patterns allows us to make decisions quickly, to make judgments, to act. But sometimes we don't see what we do see, or we don't recognize what we see.
This is to say, sometimes we see something, and its not what we think it is. This would be a sort of blindness.
Now there are many kinds of blindness. And the metaphor is very powerful: Jesus is restoring a person's ability to see.
But what is the person seeing? We know that the blindman now has faith: but faith in what?
The Web Magazine "Soma Review" begins with the tag, "all faith is autopsy." "Autopsy" in this case means "learning to see oneself." Jesus notes how people see themselves - and others - incorrectly: the blind man is suffering, according to the witnesses, from the sins of the parents. This is what people assumed.
Jesus interrogates this assumption. Instead, Jesus transforms the blindness through touching him, through a sort of love.
Seeing ourselves as God sees us is the challenge. Tt can be painful: we don't have the power we thought; we're a bit more average than we'd like to be; we're not as unique as we suppose. But the gift is that we're still worth being loved, liked and enjoyed, even if we're not on top, the smartest, the wealthiest the most unusual. Jesus even takes it a step further: someone who is understood as a sinner, someone who deserved his blindness, this is the person who will be given sight.
I wonder if he already knew how to see. Our eyes fool us often. The man is now simply given the lens of love.
At first glance, we are invited to a simple, literal interpretation of the passage: Jesus heals a blind man. The people are confused and upset. Jesus seems to be breaking some sort of rule here. The blind man had inherited the sins of the parents. This is the consequence of divine Karma. But Jesus undermines karma, healing where he should not be healing. Healing is always refreshing and inspiring. It demonstrates power over our physical bodies.
But the story is also about the power of love: Jesus delinks suffering from the cause of suffering: instead, it is only this: suffering ends. And it ends when we let love end it. There is nothing more to say. There is no meaning inherent in suffering, and if there is, it is only to show what love can do to heal.
So Jesus touches him; he makes some magic. And now the blind man is able to see. Note that he did not even recognize Jesus to deserve it: I wonder if this is an allusion that non-Christians can know that power of love that transforms the way we see. The hyper religious, the ultra religious, the ones who know all good, they are the ones who make mistakes and don't see the right patterns. They are the ones who "sin."
I think that our culture creates blindness by giving us too many tasks and lots of distractions. I wonder if learning to see is simply learning how to pay attention: and worship is one way we practice paying attention.
The irony, however, is that paying attention cannot be done by multi-tasking. I don't event think it is by simply makings lists of tasks. Paying attention is not done by knowing all the things we have to attend to.
I wonder if we learn to pay attention through dreaming - day dreaming; fantasizing, thinking impossible thoughts. On NPR recently, a reporter demonstrated the link between childhood fantasy play and the ability to pay attention and have self-control. Ironically, the things we do to control kids minds inhibit the development of self-regulation. A lack of fantasy means a lack of attentiveness.
I wonder if our worship is a sort of daydreaming. It is a way of dreaming about the good things God has given you; the amount of gratitude we should have; the sorts of joy we can offer; the promise that our lives are slowly getting better even as the days close before us. We dream the dream of church here: that we are liked and loved and appreciated and called to do even more for the world. The Nicene Creed is the church's dream. The Eucharist is our dream that our families can come together in peace rather than in war. our worship, our daydreaming is good play.
Unless it is during the sermon.
Worship is how we pay attention. And in a time when when attention is scarce, when everyone is distracted, this worship is even more crucial to our own sense of life with and in God. We find God through our imagination. This imagination fosters our attention.
Its Ok, that you're out there, trying to listen to a sermon, while you begin daydreaming about the large stack of dishes you have; the laundry you must do; or what you plan to do in your retirement. it's OK to imagine a world where we have different sorts of political leaders or that you've won the lottery. Daydreaming is a sort of attention.
In this dreaming, we find ourselves a bit more liberated, more able, more focused. Thank God we need not keep our dreams quiet, underneath our pillows, with nowhere to take them. Thank God we can place them here at the altar, and eat from the divine love the God has dreamt into creation.
AMEN