3. Seeing Gradually

They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Can you see anything?” And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Then he sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”

I want to look closely at two things about this blind man whom Jesus healed. First, we’re told that some people brought him to Jesus and asked that the Lord touch him and heal him, an obvious point that we often overlook. A blind man can’t see. He needs help getting to the Lord. Who helped you get to the Lord? Whom have you helped get to the Lord? We need help and we need to help each other get into the presence of the Lord.

When I was a child, I was taken to church and Sunday school by my mother. I don’t remember not wanting to go or complaining about going. But even if I did complain, I didn’t have any choice about it. When I got into junior high, however, at the point when a lot of kids start dropping out of church-related things, it was no longer my mom’s influence that kept me going. Some older guys made sure I was there, especially after they could drive. They picked me up until I could drive. When I had my own license I would drive around in my dad’s old ‘51 Ford pickup and bring other kids to our before-school prayer meetings and other youth group activities.

Some of you are doing the same kind of thing today and we need to do more of it. We need to help each other get to the Lord. Sometimes that’s as simple as saying not “would you like to come to church?”, but “I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock.” Don’t just invite people to church. Bring them to church, not once but habitually and make sure that people who need help getting here — kids or adults, it doesn’t matter — have the help they need because just like the blind man we all need help getting to the Lord.

Of course, helping people get to the Lord isn’t just a matter of bringing them to church. It also has to do with how we behave toward them. Let’s not be blind to how our living influences others for good or ill.

In her book The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris talks about being in church one day and how a scripture reading really opened her eyes. The lesson was from Mark’s Gospel when Jesus began to preach, cast out demons, and heal the sick. Some people assumed that he had gone mad. They tried to convince his family that he was himself possessed by demons and should be restrained. (See Mark 1.21-3.30, especially 3.19b-30.) In the sermon on that lesson the preacher asked, “How do we respond to the good?”

Norris says she suddenly saw something she had been blind to for a long time. For she remembered a silver bracelet, lost in the shadows of her life, one her husband had given to her, or had tried to give to her, years before. It was beautiful lying in its box, but she was disappointed to find that it was a cuff bracelet, a kind she never liked to wear. She suggested to her husband David that they replace it, or ask the silversmith, the woman who had made his wedding band, if she could modify it. He said that he would look into it, but Kathleen had never heard any more about it and soon forgot.

During that sermon she remembered the event and saw it clearly for the first time. The gift was good, and she had rejected it. She knew her husband well enough to know that he would have taken it as a rejection and also that most likely he still had the bracelet buried among his things. She resolved to ask him, and also to apologize.

David was surprised, but he did remember. After a few days he found the bracelet in its original box. He polished it and Kathleen now wears it, all because she heard the question, “How do you respond to the good?”[1]

In all manner of ways by our example and by what we do, we need to help each other get into the presence of the Lord, where his good can overcome our blindness.

We need to help each other and, a second thought this morning is, Jesus touches us individually. The text says that some people helped the blind man get to the Lord, Jesus took him by the hand and led him out of the village, that is, away from the people, before the healing took place.

We might wonder about the reason for that and it is simply this: the Lord doesn’t deal with us as a part of a group. We belong to the community of faith, the body of Christ. We belong to each other. But Christian discipleship is not discipleship in mass. The Lord touches us, each one, individually. The Lord loves us, each one, individually. The Lord has a plan for us, each one, individually. The Lord relates to us, each one, individually.

Notice something else here as Jesus deals with us individually. The healing doesn’t happen instantaneously. Just because we come to Jesus Christ doesn’t mean we can see perfectly once and for all. Sight is restored by the healing touch of God but we don’t have perfect clarity about things all at once. Yet the Lord doesn’t leave us or condemn us or get impatient with us. Jesus hangs in there with us and touches us again and again. Are we patient and persistent enough to let the Lord keep working on us? We fall back on that tired expression that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks. Well, Jesus wants to teach us old dogs some new tricks. He’s not done with us yet. Jesus hangs in there with us; do we hang in there with him?

Some interpreters conclude that the gradual healing was necessary because the blind man’s faith was insufficient. No, his faith is not mentioned at all. No, the healing took place gradually because Jesus’ grace takes effect in us over time. Even when people have dramatic and sudden conversions, understanding God takes time. Jesus’ healing of the blind man implies that gradually seeing the things of God is the normal way. We are on a journey and there is always a ways to go and more to know and do.

When the blind man’s individual need was met and he could see clearly, Jesus sent him home and said, “Do not even go into the village.” Why say that? Because he had been touched by God and he didn’t need to go back to his old way of life which was probably to beg for food.[2] Now he could see. He no longer needed just to be helped. He could now help others and that’s what the Lord has in mind for his disciples. When we clearly see Jesus and follow him truly, we turn away from ourselves and towards others.

A few years ago People magazine told the story of Mary Jo Copeland who ran a charity in Minneapolis.[3] This female dynamo, who drives a car with license plates that say PRAY NOW, felt that what most homeless shelters didn’t do enough. Most shelters provided the basics: a cot, a blanket, and a plain, hot meal. Mary Jo doesn’t give her clients just a pat on the back or even a gentle caress on the cheek. She gets down on her knees and washes their feet.

In a tough world that simple gesture of compassion was enough to bring tears to the eyes of a man named Wayne, a homeless laborer who arrived in Minneapolis by bus from Chicago. “Nobody ever did this for me,” he said, sitting over a basin of hot, sudsy water as Mary Jo, wearing a pair of thin rubber surgical gloves, rubs his callused feet with antiseptic ointment. “I’ve never met a lady like her in my life.”

That’s because there aren’t many women like her. With little more than a card table and a couple of coffeepots, she founded a storefront charity more than 20 years ago on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. Today she is the guiding light of Sharing and Caring Hands, a nonprofit community center that caters daily to a few thousand of the city’s needy, dispensing everything from hot meals and bus tokens to eyeglasses and deodorant.[4] A local congressman said, “It’s heartwarming to see thousands of people benefit. Nobody does more to help people in need. Mary Jo is a true saint — Minnesota’s Mother Teresa.”

Copeland, who draws no salary, says her work springs from a biblical mandate. She says, “I believe in what Jesus said about helping the less fortunate in memory of him. That’s why I wash their feet. We are commanded to be servants of the poor.”

When Jesus touches us individually and helps us to see clearly, we follow truly by turning from ourselves to others.

There is an old eastern fable about a man who possessed a magic ring set with a wonderful opal. Whoever wore the ring became of such gentle character that everyone loved him. This ring was always passed down from father to son and never failed to work. But, as time went on, it came to a father who had three sons whom he loved equally. What was he to do when the time came to pass on the ring?

The father had another two rings made, precisely the same, so that no one could tell the difference. On his deathbed he called in each of his sons one at a time and spoke words of love to them and to each of them, without telling the others, gave a ring.

However, soon the three sons discovered that each had a ring and a great dispute arose as to which was the true ring which could do so much for its owner. The case was taken to a wise judge who examined the rings. He was silent for a moment but then he spoke: “I cannot tell which is the magic ring,” he said, “but you yourselves can prove it.”

“Yes,” said the judge. “For if it is the case that the true ring gives such gentle character to the wearer that everyone will esteem him, then I and all the others in the city will know the man who possesses the true ring by the goodness of his life. So, go your ways, and be kind, be truthful, be brave, be just in your dealings, and he who does these things will be the owner of the true ring.”[5]

The test of the father’s gift was not in the rings but in the manner of life of those who wore the rings.

So it is with we who follow Jesus. God’s gracious gift to us isn’t magic or a thing to grasp for ourselves. It is the gift to see Jesus clearly and follow him truly on the way of the cross. This is why the truly great and the truly humble St. Francis of Assisi prayed in these now familiar words:

May that be not only our prayer but our manner of seeing and following Jesus on the way.

[1] Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996) 135-136. From The Sayings of the Desert Fathers Norris quotes Abba Elias who said, “What can sin do where there is penitence? And of what use is love where there is pride?” Norris concludes: “A statement of John Climacus, typically self-contained and bristling with certitude, suddenly made sense to her: ‘Men can heal the lustful. Angels can heal the malicious. Only God can heal the proud.’”

[2] Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993) 419-420. “Thus, 8:26 imposes no secrecy concerning the miracle or the means by which Jesus has effected it, much less a messianic secret (for his identity as the Christ has not entered the picture). Rather, this verse carries a demonstration of healing: the man can now see to go home without needing people to take him there as he did need them to bring him to Jesus (v 22). The prohibition of going into the village does not add secrecy, but clinches the demonstration of a miracle by stressing that the ex-blind man has no more need to take up his old occupation of begging in the village.”

[3] Susan Schindehette, “Mother of Mercy,” People, December 13, 1999, 142.

[4] See www.sharingandcaringhands.org.

[5] Ward Williams, “A Model of Greatness,” www.sermons.com, October 2000, Alderson Press Corporation.