5th August Trinity 2011, Healing Blindness

5th Trinity August

Luke 18, 35-43

It happened as he approached Jericho: a certain blind man was sitting by the road begging. Hearing the crowd going by, he wanted to know what was happening, and they told him Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. He cried out in a loud voice: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Those leading the way threatened him and wanted him to be quiet. But he cried all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus stopped and had him led to him. And Jesus said to him, “What do you want that I should do for you?”

He said to him, “Lord, that I may look up and see again.”

And Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight. Through your faith and your trust, the power for healing has been awakened in you.” ( your faith has healed you)

In that moment his eyes were opened. He followed Him and thus revealed the working of the divine within the human being--and all who saw it praised God.

5^th August Trinity

Healing the Blind Man, Duccio

August 21, 2011

Luke 18:35-43

Our souls are formed by our early experiences on earth. The things we saw, the things we heard, and the feelings of pleasure or pain they aroused, became our deepest formative memories. In a certain sense, they set the direction for the course of our lives. For when we encounter situations that arouse the same feelings, we remember and react the way we did then.

Surely the blind man had been taught to obey his elders. As a child he would have been punished for not obeying. His natural reaction to those in authority who try to quiet him would have been fear of punishment.

But the presence of Christ allows him to overcome his instinctive, habitual fear, and to beg Christ for healing. He calls out not once but twice. When Christ asks him what he wants, he says, ‘that I may look up and see again’.

At one level what he is asking for is that he may continue, as he does in that moment, to rise above his engrained level of fear, to assess the world in a different way. He is asking to see the world with open loving trust, like a child, the way he did before fear entered his way of seeing. ‘May I look up and see again’ –may I see a world of goodness, a world full of harmony and meaning. May I look up and see God’s working in the world.

And Christ answers: Through your faith and trust, the power for healing has been awakened in you. The trust that already lives in your soul is the seed of a new way of seeing, a new revelation. Your trust is the basis for healing, for changing your old blind way of seeing the world.’

The blind man’s eyes are opened. And what does he see? He sees Christ Jesus, God’s Son, in the world. And those looking on see it too—the revelation of the working of the divine within the human being.