Two blind, two see

 

Sermon for Quinquagesima preached at the Cathedral Church of St Augustine of Canterbury

How's your eyesight?

Some of us are lucky

and have perfect vision.

Some of us

can discern that 

one of the altar candles

is adrift from upright

by one twenty-seventh

of a degree,

or an n dash from an m dash

at 100 paces.

Lots of people wear glasses these days.

Is that because

watching too many screens

is making our eyesight bad

or is it because

opticians are now very good 

at picking up

subtle problems with 

our eyesight?

We can now correct

all manner of problems

with spectacles

or contact lenses

or even low-level surgery.

What do you think

is the most difficult

problem with our sight

for us to correct?

[PAUSE]

Have you gone for 

the most obvious answer?

Not having eyes at all?

Absolutely.

Trying to fit

an earthworm 

with contact lenses

is raising futility to a high art.

Yet we know

that Our Lord heals the blind.

That includes those blinded

by diseases,

and it also includes those

born blind.

In fact, 

if you look at that

instance where Our Lord

heals the man born blind

we can reasonably infer

that the man was born without eyes

or eyes so deformed 

that they actually need

to be re-created 

which our Lord does do

with the dust of the earth,

demonstrating clearly

that He is the Creator.

What is interesting today

in St Luke's record of the Gospel,

we hear of two blindnesses

but only one that is healed

- at least only one 

that is healed straightaway.

[PAUSE]

St Luke tells us of the situation

in which Our Lord lets 

His confused disciples know

that He is going to Jerusalem

for the last time. 

On that last trip to Jerusalem

they encounter a blind man at Jericho

who is calling to the Son of David 

to have mercy upon him.

He shouts out in his blindness,

recognising

that there is one near

who can restore his sight.

He sees wirhout seeing.

His faith saves him,

and by 'save' here, 

we can understand the word 'heals'

for 'salvation' and 'health' 

are two sides of the same coin.

So there's one blindness.

Did you spot the other blindness?

[PAUSE]

There, right at the beginning!

Our Lord tells his disciples

that He is going to Jerusalem

to be crucified.

They do not understand.

They do not see.

And they won't see,

not until the events of Good Friday

are played out

in front of them.

Only when

they see Him appear to them

in the flesh

do they understand Him

- they see what He is on about.

There is a sight of the eye

and the sight of the mind's eye.

The blind man sees 

Christ in his mind's eye

but not with his fleshly eyes.

The disciples see

Christ with their fleshly eyes,

but not in their mind's eye.

The Lord heals both.

As Our Saviour

- our restorer to our full health

in God,

He reveals His love

in revealing to us

the God to Whom 

we have been blind

since our Fall 

in the Garden of Eden.

Yet we still hear

the Atheist say to us

"Show us your God!

Show Him and we will believe.

Seeing is believing!"

What do we do then?

How do we respond?

Especially when

we do not see Our Lord

among us.

[PAUSE]

We might point

to the Eucharist

where we see Our Lord

under the appearance

of bread and wine.

But, as St Thomas Aquinas points out

Our Lord is truly present,

Body, Soul, Humanity

and Divinity,

but that He is seen

with eyes of faith.

He is not seen 

through microscopes,

telescopes,

oscilloscopes

or periscopes,

or even kalaidoscopes.

He is present with us

for us to see

with our eyes of faith,

- the same eyes

with which the Apostles

see Him

until their last earthly breath

and their first heavenly breath.

Those who do not believe

will not see Him

in the Most Holy Sacrament,

because they are blind.

For them to ask us

to show Him to them

is impossible

for their mind's eye is blind.

All we can do

is just bear witness to 

what we see,

what the Apostles see,

what the Church sees

in the hope that the eyes of faith

may be opened 

in the eyes of those 

whose mind is blind.

And what do we see?

[PAUSE]

We see a man,

a healer,

a teacher,

a preacher,

a giver of faith, hope and love.

We see a man,

mocked,

spat on,

flogged,

and crucified

for the love of each one of us.

And we see a tomb,

an empty tomb,

and, with our eyes of faith

we see Him who

once occupied it.

That is what we see

and that is what we show the world

in the hope that

that which is now blind

may soon see.