Matthew 9:27-35 2024/08/11 Osaka Church
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” The Lord touched the eyes of the two blind men who were clinging to Him, crying out, and restored their sight. …What did they see first? …The light that had come in became less dazzling, and they gradually saw Jesus, who was looking at them with warmth, and they saw each other, whose eyes had been opened.
The image of the two blind men wandering about in the darkness, crying out “Have mercy on me,” is also the situation us humans are in . We groan, complaining “I’m in pain,” cry, “I’m sad,” and get angry, saying, “I can’t bear it anymore.” And the eyes of all of us are fixed on our own suffering. We are suffering so much, yet no one understands our suffering, no one helps us, instead everyone bullies us and ignores us… We keep saying this.
People are not lonely because they live alone; people are lonely because they live with others.
People do not suffer because they have to live alone. People suffer because they live with others.
In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus met “two blind men.” What Christ God witnesses is the reality of human beings: despite being together, they are only able to perceive their being together as a conflict or struggle, and as a result of this tension, they are only interested in themselves.
At the beginning of Genesis, God “created humans in God’s image, male and female.” Adam was alone at first, so God created Eve to be with him. At that time, God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” There is nothing more good than people living together and having fellowship with each other. However, this “good thing” has ceased to be a good thing. As a result of Adam and Eve leaving God’s love, they lost the knot that bound them to each other, and fellowship between people became not a place of love but a place of fighting, hatred, or cold indifference to one another. People continue to be hurt in fellowship, and eventually, in their pathological self-centeredness, they lose sight of one another, just like the two blind men.
Light has shone upon us who live in such darkness.
When Christ opened their eyes and the light shone upon them, they first found the Lord, and then they found each other. Together with Christ, the Lord and God, they once again begin to live in “fellowship” as a good thing. The same thing has begun for us, who were baptized and believed in Christ, the same Christ who had mercy on the two blind men and saved them from loneliness. We find each other’s suffering in each other, and finally, we find in each other that there is the only one who can save people from loneliness: Christ, the love of God. This is the Church. It is the Body of Christ.
But even so, we are weak and will make many mistakes. We will be assailed with much suffering. We will cry over much sorrow. But when we gather in the Eucharist, the “Body of Christ,” a worship service that makes visible the “communion” that God has given us for good, and share it in the form of Eucharistic blood, bread and wine, the joy of fellowship that is irreplaceable lifts us up. That joy encourages our faith, gives us hope, and encourages us to love one another. In the real human relationships of the Church, this may be hard to believe…but let’s believe it. After all, we are the ones who sing that we have “already seen the true light” (from a Eucharistic hymn).