John 9:1-38 2024/06/09 Osaka Church
Christ is Risen!
One day, Jesus noticed a man born blind who was sitting on the side of the road begging, and opened his eyes. This is Today’s Gospel.
What does it mean to be born blind? It’s not that he lost his sight due to an accident or illness. From the moment he was born, he grew up without any sense that can only be received by his eyesight. He doesn’t even have a clue what light or color is. He doesn’t even know what it means to “see”. However, he knows the words “light” and “color”. It seems that there is something in this world that other people know, but that he doesn’t… The pain of this man born blind is not due to the inconvenience caused by not being able to see, but the sadness of not knowing what it means to “see”. It was a sadness at knowing that he would never be able to experience the light and color and brightness that everyone else was talking about: the clear sky and colorful flowers.
Christ gave sight to this man, who was born blind. He was suddenly thrust into a new world of experiences that he had never known, but which he sensed existed and hoped to touch if he could.
It’s the same for us believers in Christ. The Lord has opened up a whole new world and new experiences to us, experiences that we hadn’t seen before, but which we had sensed and longed for, and at the same time had been overcome with sadness that they would never come to us. He has opened the way to a life that soars endlessly towards God in the overflowing light, and that rises endlessly. …we are beginning to see that. But there must be something else “I cannot see yet”. The thrilling yearning for the “unseen world” where visions will surely be opened one after another is given wings by the Holy Spirit who overflows in the Church and soars to ever greater heights.
Until Christ gave us new eyesight, we were caught in a vicious cycle of seeing everything smaller, shallower, poorer and worse. We looked at the world, especially the people with whom we had to live, shrinking in fear and armored with hostility. But when Christ opened our eyes, the vicious cycle was reversed. We began to see many signs of God in this world. We began to see many “images of God” in the people with whom we have to live but who we had looked down on as “ordinary people.” Our gaze as we look at the world began to focus on the world as a gift from God, a sign of God’s love. We began to sense the treasure like diamonds that lies in each person we meet, and we began to feel a renewed hope that we can accept the love that is poured out upon us.
Immediately after today’s Gospel, the Lord says to the stubborn Pharisees:
“If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you insist that you can see, and your sin is in that.”
If they did not stubbornly assume that what they can see now is all there is, but instead accepted wholeheartedly that what they see now is only “what they see now,” and that it is not all there is in this world, nor is it all that God has given to people and what he is blessing them with, “you would be reborn truly free.” That is what he says.
It is not humiliating in the slightest to know that you are blind and to acknowledge that there are things you cannot see now. Rather, it is to tremble with joy at the premonition of the resurrected world, the Kingdom of God, which is certainly there, even though we cannot see it yet, and to which the Holy Trinity will lead us.
Christ is risen!