‘Lord, let me see again’
(Luke 18:35-43)
Jesus … asked him [the blind beggar of Jericho], ‘What do you want me to do for you? He said, ‘Lord, let me see again.’ (Luke 18:41)
Shoreham is a tiny coastal hamlet on Western Port Bay about an hour and a half’s drive south of Melbourne. When I was a kid in primary school I had a friend whose family owned a beach house there and every so often I was lucky enough to score an invitation to go with them for a weekend by the sea. On one such occasion my friend decided that we would go gar fishing off the beach near their house. I didn’t know what a gar fish was, so it was all new to me. As the sun began to set my friend and I set off, armed with what I assumed was all the necessary equipment: a kerosene pressure lamp, a canvas bag, a net on a pole, and thongs. ‘Gar fish’, said my friend, the expert, ‘are like moths. They come to the light, and then you snaffle them with the net.’
We waited on the shore for the last glow of the sun to fade and night to fall. Then, lighting the kerosene lamp and pumping it to a brilliant blaze, and shouldering our net and our bag, and with the rubber thongs on our feet, we waded into the sea. At first nothing. All we could see was a circle of brightness thrown by the lamp onto the dark water around our wastes; all we could feel was the cold of the sea and the sharp rocks beneath our thongs. Then strangely the water around us stirred; a long, slender, slivery, sinewy fish with a black spiked nose appeared, seemingly oblivious to our predatory intentions; curious and luminous, it swam languidly around the edges of our bubble of light. Lowering the net gently into the water, my friend maneuvered it under the fish, then in a flash lifted it up. The fish came with it, wriggling and writhing in the gossamer strings. We bagged him and went back for more. And there were more. It was a piece of cake. I never knew fishing was so easy.
We had about six in the bag when suddenly the filament of the kerosene light flickered and went out. It was pitch black. Not a star. The sky was overcast. Not a light on the shore. The beach was deserted. No Moon. The sea was still as a pond, and black as the sky, and cold as ice. We had no sense of which way to the shore and which to the open sea where the edge of the rock shelf where we were standing dropped straight into deep water. Suddenly we felt ourselves shift from hunters in control to possible prey in a hostile environment. Were there sharks or rays or barracuda that would come now they had cover of dark? And what other monsters might be lurking in the deep or on the shore—if we could find our way back there. We clung together in fright. And moved gingerly this way and that. Fearful of going too far and losing our footing. Gradually our eyes became accustomed to the dark. And at last we could just make out the shape of trees against a slightly lighter sky above. A gasp of relief. We could see a way out. And boy did we take it.
Of course we all know the importance of sight. But perhaps we only really appreciate its fundamental value when we lose it. Shoreham beach was a completely different reality with the light than without it. And we were different boys when we could see and when we couldn’t. I’ve never forgotten that lesson. And I was only very briefly sightless.
The fundamental wonder of sight, and the anguish of being deprived of it, are vividly brought out in our gospel reading. Jesus is walking towards the town of Jericho and a blind man sits begging by the roadside. He hears the commotion of the crowd around him and asks what is going on. On learning that Jesus is approaching he sees (metaphorically of course) his chance and begins to call out. ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ The rest try to silence him. But with even a faint chance that his lost sight might be restored he’ll have none of it. He yells louder. ‘Have mercy on me!’ Jesus stops. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ ‘Lord, let me see again.’ ‘Let me see’. And the miracle happens. Suddenly the man’s damaged and darkened and restricted life opens out into light and joy and hope. He sees. He no longer needs to be lead by someone else. He can make his own way in the world. He no longer needs to beg for a crust. He can earn his own living. He no longer is excluded from moving around at will in a wonderful, light-drenched, colourful, crazy world. He sees.
He, and the whole crowd who watched, says the text, glorified God. And why not? Sight and light are exquisite gifts. They come from the creativity of God. And they reflect the glory of God. They draw us in a remarkable and wondrous, almost miraculous way, into communion and connection with the glory of the world. They allow us to see and know the face of beloved friends and family. They mediate to us the blue of the sky, the white of the clouds, the green of the grass, the red of the rose, the black of the panther, the orange of the sinking sun, the yellow of a fresh plucked lemon. Sight and light. Any wonder the crowd at Jericho gate praised God? Any wonder that the great William Wordsworth in his poem composed above Tintern Abbey writes of the presence of God in the glory of light?:
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
The lights of the world speak of, and point to, the origin of all light in the life of God. And we see it with our own eyes.
So fundamental are sight and light that in scripture they are anchored into the most basic actions and nature of God. In the Genesis creation story the first word that God utters in shaping the great universe is to evoke light. ‘Then God said, “let there be light”; and there was light.’ Light, in theology and in science, is at the foundation of being and certainly at the origins of life, our own included. And we find the same thing when God comes to redeem and restore a lost and broken world. That same primordial light that called being into being now comes to recall being to the true and original light. Speaking of the coming of Jesus, John writes: ‘What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’ The light shines. The darkness does not overcome it. Light is at the basis of the world. And light is the life of the world. For this reason scripture can even identify God and light. ‘God is light,’ says John, ‘and in him is no darkness at all.’ To see, that is to be in and with the light, is to be close to God and to feel something fundamental about the nature of God. In scripture, only the word love has an equal weight with light in defining the nature of God.
Just try it. Shut your eyes tightly for a moment. Feel how different your sense of things is. How isolating; how undifferentiated; how disorienting it is. How, well, dark. Now open your eyes and note what strikes you. Illumination. The place is full of light. It shines, bounces, gleams, reflects, embraces, connects, uncovers. It shows us things. It reveals what is around us: people, seats, windows, walls, carpet, furniture, flowers. Eyes shut and none of that is clear. Eyes open and the light orients us. It shows us where we are in relation to other things. I am at the back of the room, or the side, or the middle. I am near to this person, but far from that. I see the door. I can make a quick getaway if need be.
And then light drenches us with colour. Lightlessness is uniform; dark in all directions. But with light we see a world of enormous and diverse and brilliant colour. How many colours can you see just from where you sit? Red, yellow, green, cream, black, gold, brown, blue, violet, orange, and a host of others. The variation is almost endless. Light engages us with beauty and form and connection.
And lastly light brings knowledge of the way things are. In the light we know we are in a church. We know how it is arranged. We know who is with us. We know what is going on. Or to put it negatively, we are not deceived, we are not in the dark.
Seeing means, then, revelation, orientation, colour, and truth. And when we think of it in those terms we see exactly why sight and God are so closely aligned. To see God is to be open to God’s revelation. It is to see the light that God is and that God gives in creation and in Christ and in our own hearts; the light of God that is the light of all people. And to see God is to discover the orientation, the direction, which God gives to us and to the world. ‘Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,’ says the psalmist (119:105). We learn who we are and who we might become in seeing the light of the word. And to see God is to see beauty and the origin of all beauty. ‘One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.’ (Ps 27.4). To know God is to experience beauty: the loveliness of being alive; the glory of creation, and the breathtaking grace of resurrection. And to see God is to see the truth, to see the way things really are, or conversely, it is to become aware of the danger of deception and of the lie in our life and our society. God is light and in God is no darkness (that is, no deception, no lie) at all. Revelation, orientation, beauty and truth are amongst our most significant windows into the nature, purpose and presence of God. ‘What do you want me to do for you? … Lord, let me see again.’
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Well, that brings us to the end of our series on incarnation: living faith in the flesh. In it we have tried to make a start of thinking about, and hopefully appreciating more deeply, the wonder, the miracle, of our embodiment and the senses God has given us in our bodies; the senses of—hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, and seeing. This body and these senses God gave us in creating us. This body and these senses God sanctified by taking them into God’s own life and being in the incarnation in Jesus Christ. This body and these senses—the blind, the deaf, the lame, the lepers, the hungry—were so often the concern of Jesus in his earthly ministry. This body and these senses are God’s gifts by which we are embedded in the world of matter, the whole stardust glory of the universe, and of this earth. This body and these senses are the royal doorways through which we enter the world, explore it, and understand it a little. And through this body and these senses we come to know each other: to speak, to touch, to hear, to taste, to smell our family, our friends, our community. Thanks be to God for life, for embodiment, for senses. Thanks be to God that God meets us here in our embodiment. And we hear, touch, taste, smell, and see God in and through our sensual dealings with the world and with the church, with the word and with the Lord’s Supper, with light and with colour, with music and with song, with fragrance and with feeling, indeed with and through all that God has given us in embodied life.
‘What do you want me to do for you?’ … ‘Lord, let me see again. Let me hear again. Let me touch again. Let me smell again. Let me taste again. And in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting let me meet you, O God, in your splendor and love, in your mercy and grace. Let me meet your world in all its fragility, glory and diversity. Let me meet my fellow humans in their fullness of life, body, mind, and spirit. And to your name be praise and glory forever. Amen.’
Graeme Garrett
Canberra Baptist Church
Fifth Sunday in Lent
10th April 2011