20080601 The Man Born Blind

20080601 Homily on the Man Born Blind

Acts of the Apostles 16: 16-34

Gospel of St. John 9: 1-38

There is much in this Gospel lesson:

• Clarification of the relationship between sin and physical infirmity. Often indirect- we suffer from the cumulative results of millenia of sin, not just the consequences of our own sin; God does not cause suffering, but reaches through it to comfort and heal.

• The Proper Understanding of the Sabbath. Sinful to ban healing on the Sabbath, even when it requires actions that were prohibited at the time (such as spitting & making mud)

• The Beautiful Testimony of the Man Born Blind. Confesses Christ and worships Him, and assumes that the other Jews will also confess Christ once they hear his witness.

◦ “I told you [how Jesus healed me] already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become His disciples?” St. John (9:27).

◦ My previous careers in academia and the intelligence community (not to mention as an evangelist of God's Word) underscores the simple truth witnessed by the Man Born Blind's interaction with the reluctant Jews: the expectation that people will behave rationally when confronted with clear evidence is often confounded.

Yes, there are many themes, and over the course of our time together we should be able to explore each of them quite thoroughly, but the theme I want to explore today is the one that God presents most strongly here and throughout St. John's Gospel: this is the theme of spiritual blindness.

Spiritual blindness is much more dangerous than physical blindness for at least one obvious reason: if your vision is seriously impaired, you cannot fool yourself into believing that it is not – at least not for long! On the other hand, people whose spiritual vision is impaired can. In fact they can develop all kinds of delusional visions of what the world looks like, especially when they refuse to notice the damage their delusions are doing to themselves and the world around them. They may even buy into a communal delusion, sharing a common vision of the spiritual world looks like and shaping their behavior accordingly. But this is pure madness.

• It is like blind people driving a bus based on their common opinion about which way the road goes.

• Or for a more direct analogy, many people enjoy playing massively multi-person on-line role playing games that create virtual worlds for people to interact in. This may be fine entertainment, but you would still recognize it as madness when it becomes the spiritual center of people's lives; when the fantasy relations formed there, and the deeds done there become the spiritual reality of those playing. The very same point could be made about the on-line world of pornography, although (unlike the gaming world) there is no case where this form of “entertainment” is anything but tragic.

Let me go back to the analogy of the blind people driving again. I do not know if any of you have seen “If You Could See What I Hear”, the biography about blind musician Tom Sullivan. [Describe the scene where he is pulled over for erratic driving]. This scene is funny because it is so ridiculous: blind people do not drive. They cannot simply imagine what the roads look like. No one could. He was able to stay on the road only because he had someone with sight giving him directions.

• The problem with the people of this world is that it is blind but it does not turn to those with sight for directions. Moreover, it likes to drive at excessive speeds!

• When it does ask for directions, they only listen to those who give them directions they want to hear. Again, we are back to the blind people driving their bus based on their common opinion about which way the road goes.

◦ Name the subject and tell me I am wrong: modesty, charity, extra marital sex (to include pre-marital sex). You name it, and people are just making things up on their own. Thank God that sometimes this keeps them on the road, but you don't have to look too far outside these doors to see that more often than not the result is disastrous.

◦ One of the lies of the world is that there is only one truth and that all beliefs are part of it. This relativism is a dangerous lie. Go back to your Plato and read his analogy of the cave. Christ is the light of the world. People who deny him are just describing the shadows of puppets cast on the wall from the firelight.

• Let me share Christ's teaching on this subject, also from the Gospel of St. John. It begins with a teaching you all should know, but people forget what comes next: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.

Do you confess Christ? Do you prefer your own darkness or the darkness of the world to the light of Christ and His Church? When you find your views in conflict with the Gospel or the Teachings of Christ and His Church, which do you chose? If you chose your own, then I fear that Christ is warning you, as am I that you are driving blind.

Do as the Man born blind did but the reluctant Jews did not: reject the darkness and come to the light. Confess Christ as Savior and follow Him.