Tuesday • 2/15/2022
Tuesday of 6 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 97; Psalm 99; Genesis 31:1–24; 1 John 2:1–11; John 9:18–41

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 13 (“A Song of Praise,” BCP, p. 90); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

The French artist Georges Rouault, himself a “sighted” person, recalls having escorted a blind mathematics professor on a walk. On the walk, the blind man recited poetry — a world to which Rouault was “blind” — all the while the blind man’s “eyes turned toward the sky.” Hearing the flow of the poetry, Rouault found himself ruminating over which of them was more limited in the perception of reality.

Rouault would later render the scene in a most memorable panel of his Miserere, Plate 55. In that plate one man is guiding another. One is blind, the other is not. Normally, the “sighted” person would lead the blind person, as had been the case when Rouault led his blind friend. But in the scene Rouault creates, the roles are reversed. In the lead is the blind man, his blank eyes lifted to the heavens, while the “sighted” person follows, his world-weary head bent down toward the ground. Rouault titles it, “Sometimes the blind have comforted those who see.”*

John 9: when believing is seeing. John’s narration of the story of Jesus’s healing of the man blind from birth makes the very same point. Over the course of this story, the man who “once was blind but now I see” comes to see more than just the world around him. The eyes of his heart become gradually open to the reality of who Jesus is, and increasingly open to what true life is. At first Jesus is just the guy who heals him. The man barely catches his name: “The man called Jesus made mud, … They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know’” (John 9:11b,12a).

Later, when pressed by the Pharisees to account for why he thinks Jesus could feel the freedom to heal on the sabbath, the man surmises, “He is a prophet” (John 9:17). Pressed further, he says (I phrase), “Look, OK, you all call him a sinner. All I know is that I was blind, now I see. … Could it be that deep down you really want to become his followers? … If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:25,27). He’s getting it, and he’s willing to be rejected by his questioners for telling the truth about what his experience of Jesus has taught him!

Finally, Jesus meets with him one-on-one and poses the question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (John 9:35). That’s a loaded question, calling up the image of the Messiah from heaven that Daniel had predicted (see Daniel 7:13–14). The man expresses his willingness to believe, if only he knew in whom he was to believe. Jesus forthrightly acknowledges his own identity: “You have seen (what a pregnant term!) him, and the one speaking with you is he.” The man’s response shows just how much his eyes have been opened: “‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped him” (John 9:37–38). The one who used to be blind now sees both with his once dead physical eyes and with his once dead spiritual eyes.

Meanwhile, sadly, the Pharisees, stewards of God’s Word and those trained to discern true teaching and identify false, are stuck in the dark. They are blind to the fact that the Light of the World has dawned among them. Claiming to see heavenly things, their heads are bent to the ground and their eyes, though open, are unseeing. “Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains’” (John 9:39–41). If only, like Rouault, they would admit that despite their physical sight there was a whole new world they could not “see” — and to which only the experience of this formerly blind person could open them!

There’s much to ponder here for those of us who sense we’ve been awakened to a world beyond what a radically secularized world has defined as “reality.” God give us grace to offer with humility our arms and with good humor our insights to those whose world-weary heads are bent to the ground with blank eyes.

Genesis 31: the light begins to shine for Jacob. Change has taken hold in Jacob. The light has begun to dawn for him. The lens through which he has begun to see life is no longer secular, but sacred: “But the God of my father has been with me. … but God did not permit Laban to harm me. … Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father, and given them to me … Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘Here I am!’” (Genesis 31:6,7,9,11).

1 John: walking in the light. When the eyes of our hearts have been enlightened, we see ourselves in a different light. We are able to be honest about our sins because we know they have been covered: “But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous…the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 2:1b–2a).

Knowing we have been loved from on high, we find we want to love back. And we find that love obeys the commandments: “…whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection” (1 John 2:5).

Old commandments become new, from not profaning the sabbath to not coveting our neighbors’ possessions. The holiness and rest of one day in seven become a means of lovingly sacralizing every day and of flourishing in the six days of living out our calling. Contented gratitude for God’s kind provision for us frees us to love neighbors whom we no longer envy, but whose well-being we seek. “Beloved,” says John, “I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” (1 John 2:7–8).

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: from Postage Stamp, 1961.

* “L’aveugle parfois a console le voyant.”