A sermon preached by the Reverend Sarah Grondin at St. Jude’s Anglican Church Oakville, on Wednesday, February 19, 2025, Feria in Epiphanytide.
I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
There’s something about three in row that fascinates us, and we have a plethora of words to describe various groups of things that come in threes.
Hat-trick. Trifecta. Threepeat. Strike-out. Triad. Triology. Turkey. Trinity. Third time’s a charm!
Our Gospel writer Mark likes to do things in groups of threes as well. He often repeats the same teaching or message three successive times.
Our reading today is the culmination of sorts of one of those threepeats. In the passages that preceed our “miracle-parable” the Pharisees demand a physical sign to prove Jesus’ power, the disciples panic in the boat because they didn’t bring enough bread for their journey, and Jesus rebukes them for still not having faith even after they witnessed the feeding of the 5000, and then the 4000. Mark is repeating the teaching about the importance of having faith and trusting in Jesus.
In last week’s passage Jesus said to the disciples, “Do you still not perceive or understand?” and “Do you have eyes, and fail to see?” Todays’ passage brings all those issues of understanding and spiritual sight together. It’s a healing story, but it’s also a parable with a lesson.
If we turn to our passage today, we’re told that Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida in two phases. First, Jesus puts saliva on the man’s eyes, and lays hands on him. Jesus then does a curious thing… and he asks the man if he can see anything. Nowhere else does Jesus ask the person whether the healing has worked, and nowhere else does a healing take place in phases, he just heals them instantly and they all go on their merry way, so this is definitely not accidental and it should call our attention.
The man responds to Jesus’ question that he can see people, but they look like walking trees. As a full-time glasses wearer since I was in grade 4, I’m very familiar with the image of people looking like trees walking. When I don’t have my glasses on everything is blurry and wavy, and trying to focus too intently on something makes me kind of dizzy. I need the help of my glasses to see clearly.
At this point the blind man was also in this fuzzy in-between stage of sight. He wasn’t blind any longer, but he also couldn’t see clearly. He could see a little bit, but the things he could see were distorted.
Mark tell us that Jesus then lays his hands on the man’s eyes a second time, and once he looks intently, his sight is restored. Jesus doesn’t ask this time if he can see, because Jesus has completed the healing and the lesson. He simply sends the man home and tells him to avoid the village.
PAUSE
If I want to stop the image of walking trees, I simply have to put my glasses on, and my vision is corrected. I could try to get by without them, but I’d spend a lot of time bumping into things and knocking things over. I’d make a lot of mistakes that wearing my glasses helps me to avoid.
When I wear my glasses everything looks different! Things are clearer, they have texture and detail, there’s no blurry edges. I don’t have to squint and try to compensate anymore. And even though all those things are true, I still hated wearing them at first because it meant I could no longer hide behind my poor vision as an excuse. I had been called out by my French teacher, and I didn’t like it.
Being able to see clearly when you’re used to seeing people walking like trees is a big change. And as Jesus teaches in this miracle-parable, our spiritual sight works in much the same way as our physical sight without the correction of glasses.
The physical healing in our passage today, the miracle of restored sight, is pretty clear—no pun intended! But it might not be as obvious why this miracle is also a lesson on spiritual sight for the disciples, as well as for us. Parables after all require unpacking.
It’s possible to have eyes, and still fail to see, both literally, as in the case of the blind man, and figuratively as in the case of the disciples. The disciples have been travelling with Jesus for a while now, and they’ve witnessed him do many miraculous things: they’ve watched him cast out demons, heal a leper, feed 5,000 people, calm a raging sea, heal the Syrophoenician Woman’s daughter from afar, walk on water, feed 4,000 people, restore someone’s hearing… and on and on.
They’ve watched Jesus perform many acts of power over both people and nature… but they haven’t really seen Jesus. They still don’t understand who Jesus is and what his Kingdom is all about. They still have doubts every time they’re faced with a challenge. They haven’t learned yet that through Christ all things are possible.
The disciples have eyes, and they’ve watched Jesus do many things, but they’ve failed to really see. Their spiritual vision is still blurry, they need help to make things come into clearer focus. Once they decide to follow Jesus, they don’t suddenly see everything clearly all at once, because when it comes to spiritual sight there’s no magic fix to suddenly make it 20/20.
Cloudy or blurry spiritual vision affects all of us to some degree. None of us are able to see as clearly as we might like. As St. Paul says, “for now we see through a glass darkly.” Or we see as if we’re looking at a cloudy mirror. Eugene Peterson paraphrases it like this in the Message: “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.”
That applies to all of us who choose to follow Jesus. No one ever sees all of God’s truth all at once. We’re all squinting through a fog. Peering through a mist.
That’s what this blind man experienced in this two-phase healing. When he was partially healed, he saw men as trees walking. No one sees life with perfect clarity. All of us have spiritual nearsightedness to one degree or another.
He had been healed, but his healing wasn’t complete yet. He was “on the way” but he wasn’t finished yet. That’s something we can all learn from. We all have blind spots, places of weakness, areas of life where we see with blurry vision, parts of our life where sin weighs us down. None of us can say that we’ve arrived and are truly like Jesus in every part of our life.
It was true then for the disciples and other followers of Jesus, and it’s true for us now, that spiritual growth is growth. It’s not instant development….and that’s bad news for our culture of impatience and instant gratification, 30 second sound bites, and quick fixes.
We’re like the person who prayed, “Lord, give me patience and give it to me right now!” We want the short-cut that will lead to us to the “victorious Christian life.” We want the magic fix of being able to pop on a pair of glasses that suddenly gives us 20/20 spiritual vision, which we can conveniently take off when it’s not in our best interest to really see the chaos and brokenness around us.
But God doesn’t work like that. We’re all born as babies who must go through all the stages of life, learning and growing as we go along. For example, how do we learn to walk? By trying and falling, trying and falling, and then trying and falling some more. It takes time and determination. I’m not sure there is anyone more determined than a baby learning to walk…especially when the family pet or TV remote is just a few steps away.
There’s a danger in many Christian circles that teaches once we’ve made the decision to follow Jesus, we’re suddenly a fully-grown Christian, and we’ve reached the end of the road. Our spiritual growth is complete and we can fully see.
But our miracle-parable this morning reminds us that once we place our trust in Jesus and commit to following him, it’s in fact the beginning of the road. Once we decide to follow Christ we’re moved from being completely blind to seeing people walking around like trees.
It’s impossible for us to exhaust the infinite wonder and beauty of Jesus, and even if we had 1,000 years on earth, we would still be learning and growing in grace. Spiritual Sight isn’t 20/20.
Jesus came that we might see more clearly and we’re constantly being called to sharpen our vision, to look intently like the once blind man did, and to recognize that what we see isn’t what God sees in perfection. We only see in part, but we’ve been given eyes to see. If we put our trust in Jesus and follow in his ways, slowly but surely we’ll be able to see more, to understand more.
But unlike wearing physical glasses that we can just take off whenever we want, once our eyes have been opened by Jesus there’s no going back. The more clearly we’re able to see, the more it demands of us. The more we’re able to understand, the more it requires of us.
Our life-long mission of growing into the full stature of Christ is a painful one because the destination is cross shaped, and the road is rough and long. And just like that infant learning how to walk for the first time, we’re going to stumble and fall over and over again, and just like walking around without glasses on, we’re going to bump into things and sometimes we might go the wrong direction.
But Jesus walks that road with us… Jesus places his hands on our eyes and encourages us to look intently, and calls us to see with our spiritual sight the things that remain blurry and distorted without it.
Spiritual sight isn’t 20/20, but everyday Jesus calls us to look a little harder, to see a little further… and when we’ve examined inside ourselves and recognized those blind spots, those places of weakness, and areas of life where we see with blurry vision, the fog and the mist begin to thin out bit by bit.
I pray that each of us might commit to constantly improving our spiritual sight, to grow and flourish in grace, and to know that once we open our eyes to the pain of the world around us, there’s no going back, because Christ is always calling us forward, however clumsy we might be. Amen.
