We’re here today as witnesses to a miracle: the interjection into this otherwise broken, dying world, of light, hope, healing, salvation. Behold: Christ has made all things new! No longer do we live to die; now we die to live. Christ’s power over death is likewise manifested in His power over the otherwise incurable—of body and of soul. “Since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind” (John 9: 32). This and other miracles of Christ before His miraculous resurrection, herald the opening of the Kingdom, of light penetrating into the mundane darkness of man’s broken patterns. Christ gives us hope, He gives us new life, He breaks the bonds of the passions and self-will that would otherwise keep our souls sick and dying. Christ interjects His life into us, into this world. And we are witnesses of these things!
Miracles are the work of God in each of us, making us into the new man, the new woman. The world doesn’t understand these things and rejects them as foolishness, ignorance, or worse. St. John says in his Gospel: “…the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” (John 1:5). St. Paul declares: “…we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, (I Cor. 1:23). The miracle of new life in Christ, of a new identity and relationship with God, the possibility of redemption and reconciliation, defies this world’s way and present a challenge to ‘modern’ people, beholden to the world.
The problem for modern man with miracles, with enlightenment and new life in Christ, is that they demand a spiritual response from us; they don’t leave us sitting comfortable on the side-lines; instead, they challenge our self-reliance, our pridefulness, our egos, the myth that we can do it on our own—without God.
Ultimately, then, to be open to miracles is to be open to faith and the healing and growth in our Lord Jesus Christ that faith brings. But here’s the catch: we have to submit to God—His way—not a self-styled, have-it-your-way sort of god, but the One true God, the God who loves us and cares to intervene for the healing and salvation of fallen man; the God who has revealed Himself to us, the Great I AM, the only God who challenges all that we think He should be; who defies our limited human thinking of Him, of ourselves, the only One we cannot wrap around our minds: that is, the Logos of God, the One who became incarnate for us, the One who has revealed Himself to us—as far as we could bear it, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ.
What is it that keeps us from the fullness of Christ? Is it fear of personal change and growth or prideful skepticism, or both? Fear of personal change and growth and prideful skepticism are not just modern problems, limited to our culture and time. Fear and pride were also plainly at work in those who rejected Christ in His own day. Even after Jesus performed numerous miracles, even after His resurrection and in-person appearances to over 500, many of the Jews did not believe, would not believe. In their pridefulness, they feared and found intrusive the way of God.
What does it take to experience a miracle of spiritual transformation? It demands humility, openness to God’s work of transformation in our lives; learning to let go of the world’s hold on us so that God can change us into His likeness. This means opening our spiritual eyes and recognizing our ongoing need for God and His life by submitting ourselves to His will, in His Church. This is hard, it’s scary; it demands faith, step by struggling step.
The jailer in today’s Epistle, seeing the miracle at the prison, humbled himself and immediately came to the Apostles. He fell down before them, trembling, and begging them, beseeching them, “What must I do to be saved?” Through his humility and his courage, the jailer gained the sight of faith; he found salvation in Christ, and through him, so did all his family. Ironic isn’t it: the jailer was afraid—scared out of his wits—but he had the courage and humility to come to the Apostles seeking salvation, seeking to know their God, the only true God, Jesus Christ.
We can fear like that with regard to our faith, fear rejection, ridicule, judgment of our Orthodox Faith, which is so out of step with our culture. It is timeless as God is timeless because it is the Truth He has revealed to us—the way further up and further in the life He is.
Our pride can get in our way of courageously stepping forward in faith, our struggle to make use of the tools that Christ has entrusted to us through His Church. Ego-focused fear can get in the way of our witness to the world around us too. We may fear being ‘labeled’ one of those ‘Jesus freaks,’ one of those Christians standing in the way of our ever-progressing humanistic culture and what it values, which are often opposite of the virtues that Christ would have us acquire if we are to abide with Him now and for eternity and partake of His holy fellowship.
Today’s Gospel gives us yet another example: Jesus heals a man born blind: literally, “born without eyes.” The Pharisees witness the healing of this man known to all and seen regularly begging. But in their pridefulness and fear, they don’t believe, they won’t believe. They cannot ‘see’ the miracle, blinded as they are by their pride, by their lack of faith in God’s love and mercy to fulfill and transfigure the Law, let alone, to heal as the only Lover of mankind.
The Pharisees question the blind man, searching for a ‘reasonable’ explanation for the miracle, a reason not to believe in his transformation. They don’t want their eyes opened; they want to remain unchanged, closed, dead. In the end, the uneducated blind man must teach the learned Pharisees, what faith really means, saying: “Since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind. ‘If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.’” For speaking the truth, the Pharisees cast him out of the Synagogue.
Similarly, the world often rejects us as we proclaim our Orthodox Faith, as we live out the miracle of a life being transformed, of doing real battle with our passions, of bringing our struggles and sin-sickness before the Lord in confession for healing from them, of professing our belief in miracles and the Doer of those wonders. Jesus says, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18). The Truth convicts us; the truth calls us all to be transformed and to keep growing, that we may be witnesses of the new life in Him.
This is what the blind man finds: he finds the Truth; He sees God. Not only does not only receive his physical sight: Even more importantly, “he recovered the sight of the eyes within,” as St. John Chrysostom puts it. He comes to Christ God, and finding Jesus, He finds healing, not only from his biological blindness, but from the spiritual ‘blindness’ of sin. Sin alone is evil; blindness is no evil. In this case, the man’s infirmity, his ‘sickness’ if you will, his blindness, is the means that brings him to the Master, to Him who is Life itself, and through this encounter, through his courage, his fear of God, his humility before God, he is spiritually illumined.
As important as the healing of the blind man is and the regaining of his physical sight, even more vital than this is his finding Christ, the opening of his heart, his life, to the Giver of Life.
Today, we embrace the faith of the blind man. We ask Christ to continue to open our spiritual eyes, to heal us of our passions, to appropriate the tools of our salvation, graciously made available to us in the Church. We live out our faith, doing battle with our passions and our broken patterns, we make confession, so that, cooperating more and more with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we too may see Christ, the Light of the world, the Savior of our souls. And in thanksgiving of this miracle, we love God and our fellow man enough to bear witness of Him to this world that is likewise in such great need of the miracle of new life in Christ.
Christ is risen!
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
June 9, 2013
Sunday of the Blind Man
