Let Me See Again
By Rev. Daniel Smith
October 25, 2009
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Lessons: Mark 10: 46-52
Those of you who wear glasses may be able to appreciate this story. The first time I put mine on, about 6 years ago, I immediately looked down at the ground and blurted out “I feel like I’m three feet tall”. The ground on which I was standing looked that much clearer to me, and therefore closer. I could see color and cracks and pebbles that were never there before, or so I thought. I can even remember putting out my hand to try to touch it. It was a strange, and decidedly new sensation. I had to stop several times on my way to my apartment that day, just to look at the ground.
Our story from Mark today is about several things. It is about Jesus’ power to heal, and more specifically about his power to give sight to those who cannot see. It is about the faith of one who knows what he needs and who is unafraid to ask for it! It is about a fundamental call of Jesus to draw near to him. More than anything, I think this passage is about Jesus giving new sight not only to Bartimaeus, but new sight and new perception of depth to his disciples as well. In Jesus’ presence, all are empowered to see things that they could not see before. The story puts Jesus question to Bartimaeus before all of us. He asks us, even this very day….What do you want me to do for you? We would be wise to take Bartimaeus’ lead and to make his answer our own. “Rabbi, let me see again.” “Let me see again, as if for the very first time!”
In her Pulitzer-winning masterpiece of nature writing, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard recalls a book she chanced upon by Marius von Senden called Space and Sight. Apparently, when Western surgeons began to perform successful cataract operations, people of all ages who were blind from birth were suddenly given an entirely new avenue for sensory perception. Indeed their sight was restored, but it did not come easily. The histories of the patients, recorded in von Senden’s book both pre-and post operatively, are amazing. While I’m not sure the same could be said of all blind people, these patients at least were said to have no idea of space, size, form, or distance. “Before the operation,” Dillard writes, “a doctor would give a blind patient a cube and a sphere; the patient would tongue it or feel it with his hands, and name it correctly. After the operation, the doctor would show the same objects to the same patient without letting him touch them; now he no clue whatsoever what he was seeing. [Check this out!] One patient called lemonade “square” because it pricked on his tongue as a square shape pricked on the touch of his hand.” Of another postoperative, the doctor writes, “I have found in her no notion of size …Thus when I asked her to show me how big her mother was, she did not stretch out her hands, but set her two index fingers a few inches part”. While having a smaller impression of some people, especially one’s parents, may sound like a good and fun thing at times -- “Mom, you’re like this big to me right now, ok?” -- for some of the newly-sighted, the experience was overwhelming. “In general, the newly-sighted see the world as a dazzle of color patches,” and often flat. They commonly mistake common, everywhere things like shadows as misplaced dark marks. Without a developed sense of space or depth, they can find themselves colliding with color patches until they realize that it is an object that will resist them just like tactual objects. Some of the newly-sighted in this book could not handle the sometimes tormenting psychological trauma of the adjustment; they refused to use their new vision. Still others, of course, delighted in the brightness and beauty of the colors. A twenty two year old post-op, who had kept her eyes closed for two weeks eventually began to express her gratification. Astonishment overspread her features and she repeatedly exclaimed “Oh God! How beautiful!”
I imagine that this experience is common to us all at birth but unfortunately we have forgotten it. And somewhere between being a child and young adult, says the Canadian singer and writer Leonard Cohen, “as one eyes grow accustomed to sight, we armor ourselves against wonder.” Imagine the wonder of seeing the world as flat and dazzling color patches, if only for a time. Imagine the wonder of needing to learn what things are and who people are for the very first time. One of the newly-sighted turned to another who was still blind, and said “men don’t look like trees after all.”
The writer of John’s gospel puts it this way: “I come into this world so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.” Indeed, when we move in for a closer look at our story, we can see that it’s not only Bartimaeus’ vision and perspective that has changed; the same has happened for the disciples and the crowd gathered around Jesus. Notice that Bartimaeus chimes in from the roadside, from the margins. He’s an outsider in an otherwise sighted world. After he calls upon the attention of Jesus, persistent as he was to have his voice heard above the din, Jesus hears the cry, and unlike the disciples, he sees Bartimaeus. By virtue of his inclusive vision, he casts his tractor beam sight over to the margins and draws Bartimaeus near. In so doing. Jesus models and restores a more complete perspective and a new sense of vision to the entire crowd of disciples and followers. What was once far away now seems near. What was once just another color patch now is a person, and a face and a name. He is Bartimeuas. This is as much a regaining of spiritual vision and a restoration to wholeness to an entire community as it is a story about physical healing and about the restoration of sight to the blind.
Sadly, most of can’t remember the experience of the first time we gained sight. If only baby Imogene had words for what she sees and what she doesn’t. Celebrating her baptism today though can give us a moment to remember our own, and to remember the new life, and with it the new vision that Christ offers to us all. Ultimately, this passage invites us to see the world and our role in it not merely with improved eyes, with better vision, but with brand new eyes – the eyes of those who are newly born, or born again, the eyes of those who can see the world as outsiders see it, the eyes of those who see the world as children see it and as those who are for whatever reasons on the margins.
And just what is it that we do see when we have new eyes – when we come out of the water as members of the body of Christ, as nothing less than the hands and feet and the ears and eyes of Christ? For one thing, we see, as we will soon sing, how clear is our vocation, how clear is our vocation as disciples, as ones who are charged to go and baptize, to bring new life and news vision and new depth to our world, and especially to its margins! It means having eyes to see and ears to hear those people who are not gathered here with us today – those who might for whatever reason feel excluded by our ways of worship, our ways of dressing up, our ways of talking – those from different cultures, those who speak different languages even, those who are deaf, those who are truly blind, those who are differently-abled. It means a whole new perception of the forms and shapes and heights of depths of this world! It may even mean seeing the world as flat at times, or at least a world wherein hierarchies are overturned, wherein we find ourselves standing 3 feet tall, and so 3 feet shorter than we thought we were. Who knows? Imagine that what was once square to us, could be lemonade! What was once power and prestige to us, could be nothing but a mirage, a vain distraction! What was once our hard earned security, whether financial, national or otherwise, could end up as nothing more than the cloaks on our backs. What was once last and least of all, could be first and greatest of all! Imagine that.
My prayer today is that God may grant to each of us an awareness of our spiritual blindness, and the vision with which to see the world anew, as if for the very first time. Can you feel those scales falling off? By the grace of God, may we see ever more clearly and fulfill ever more fully our vocations as followers of Jesus. And when we hear the words that Bartimaeus heard “Go now, your faith has made you well”, may we step out into the world in awe, and in wonder, and look anew at the very ground of our faith upon which we here stand. It just might be closer than you think. Amen.