Spiritual Blindness
All
peoples walk each in the name of its own god.
Micah 4:5
One
of the advantages of the service of Morning Prayer is that
it provides for reading extended passages from sacred scripture.
Martin Luther referred scornfully to the use of scripture
in the Roman Mass as "epistelling and gospelling,"
and in our own eucharistic lectionaries there is no place
for reading an entire chapter of the Bible. Where the emphasis
is on the communion rite, scripture inevitably takes second
place.
John's
story of the healing of the man born blind (chapter 9) is
one of the great passages of Biblical narrative. It comes
from a period of heated controversy between Jews who accepted
Jesus as Messiah and Jews who did not. When the parents of
the man born blind tell the authorities that their son should
"speak for himself" (John 9:21), the evangelist
informs us that they said this because "the Jews had
already agreed that if any one should confess [Jesus] to be
Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue" (verse
22).
Modern
scholars see here a reference to an action taken at a council
of rabbis in Jamnia which made it impossible for Christian
Jews to continue to worship in the synagogue.
Today
we conclude the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In our
ecumenical era it is difficult for us to comprehend the passion
which once accompanied religious disputes. Today we take it
for granted that perfectly decent, sincere men and women may
regard religious views which we hold as unconvincing or even
absurd. In the words from Micah with which I began, "All
peoples walk each in the name of its own god."
But
in our age of religious pluralism and indifferentism the story
of the man born blind still retains its power. For it illustrates
our extraordinary ability to deceive ourselves, to deny a
reality which is staring us in the face.
Al
Smith, a former governor of the state of New York and a Roman
Catholic, once said, "It is a venial sin to deceive another,
but it is a mortal sin to deceive yourself." In John's
narrative we see the parents of the man born blind and the
Jewish authorities committing this very sin, and we hear Jesus
pronounce judgment upon them: "For judgment I came into
this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those
who see may become blind" (John 9:30). When the Pharisees
reply indignantly, "Are we also blind" (verse 40),
Jesus delivers the crushing response, "If you were blind,
you would have no guilt, but now that you say, 'We see,' your
guilt remains" (verse 41).
There
is a saying, "There are none so blind as those who will
not see," and there is an expression that something is
"as plain as the nose on your face." Did you ever
reflect on the fact that you cannot actually see the nose
on your own face, except in the mirror? The truths which are
closest to home are the very truths which are hardest for
us to accept. Indeed, this can sometimes only happen through
a special grace from God.
