The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2023, Dr. Tamilio

There is a character in ancient Greek mythology named Tiresias.  His big appearance is in the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and in The Odyssey by Homer.  Dante would incorporate him into his Inferno.  He has also appeared in poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.  Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando incorporates many of the major events of his life.  Tiresias has also been the subject of an opera, a play, a ballet, and even songs by the rock bands Genesis and Styx.  He is everywhere.

Why is he so significant?  Tiresias was a prophet.  He was also blind.  He is the personification of irony: he is the one who cannot see, but he can see.  What his eyes do not reveal to him, his mind does.  He is the one who can foresee that Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother, as predicted, even though Oedipus has tried to avoid this at all costs.  He is the one who sees the social decay and lack of values that pollute Eliot’s epic masterpiece The Waste Land.

I could not stop thinking about this character as I read today’s Gospel lesson.  A man who is born blind is healed by the greatest prophet of all: Jesus of Nazareth.  The theme of seeing versus not seeing (in terms of both physical sight as well as perceiving truth) pervades this story.  Think about the complexity and the literary qualities of this story:

• Jesus and his disciples encounter a man who is blind. He’s been blind since birth.
• His disciples wonder, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” This is based on the ancient belief that the sins of the father will be visited upon the son.  (See Numbers 14:18, which states, “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.  Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”)
• Jesus heals him of his blindness, just as he has healed others of their infirmities.
• Again, this man couldn’t see, but now he can.
• A conversation ensues. The man who has been healed is brought to the Pharisees.  They want to know who healed him and take issue that such an act was done on the Sabbath — the day when people are supposed to rest.
• The man who is blind proclaims that Jesus is a prophet.
• The classic line to the hymn “Amazing Grace” comes from this passage, by the way. The man — when questioned by the religious authorities who claim that Jesus is a sinner — the man says, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  One thing I do know is that though I was blind, now I see.”
• Verses 26 and 27 offer an interesting element to the story. The religious authorities again ask the young man how Jesus opened his eyes.  The man says, “I have told you already, and you would not listen.  Why do you want to hear it again?  Do you also want to become his disciples?”  A nice little jab to the Pharisees.
• The Pharisees explain how they are disciples of Moses.
• The four verses that follow are the key to the true understanding of this passage. The man answered [the Pharisees], “Here is an astonishing thing!  You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.  We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will.  Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.  If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

The blind man can see, literally and spiritually.  Like Tiresias, he can see the truth.  Unlike the Pharisees, this man knows that the one who gave him his sight (something he never had) was a man from God.  Jesus finds the man after the Pharisees drive him away.  He asks him if he believes in the Son of Man?  He asks Jesus who that is.  When Jesus says it is himself, the man worships him.  He now knows that Jesus is more than a prophet, more than a healer, more than a man from God.  He knows that he is the Messiah.  He is God!  He can see it with his own eyes as well as with the eyes of his heart.

The man who can now see stands as a counter to the Pharisees.  The passage ends with an interesting exchange between Jesus and these religious authorities.  Towards the end of the passage, Jesus says to them, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”  Again, a reversal: the blind shall see and those who see (or think they can see) shall become blind.

Before we came to Christ, we were also blind.  If you’ve been a Christian all your life, then this might sound strange to you.  This isn’t to say that non-Christians are blind, that they do not have insight or know what they are doing.  It is to say, though, that there is a direction or a purpose that Christians possess that comes from the insight Christ gives.  This is not a matter of intellectual insight.  Rather, it is spiritual insight.

• The first priority is prayer. Craig Etheredge reminds us that “More than seventy times the Gospels record Jesus either speaking about or modeling prayer.”[1]  We are to make prayer the focus of our lives.  It gives us vision.
• The second priority is communal worship. We are to join together to worship God: to pray together (not just alone), to sing together, to share the sacraments together, and to proclaim the Word together.  It gives us vision.
• The third priority is service. Our prayer-life and worship life inform lives dedicated to service.  We spent a lot of time talking about this yesterday at the Spring Program Meeting of the MACCC: the Massachusetts Association of Congregational Christian Churches.  Sarah Terlouw, Pastor of the First Congregational Church in Saugatuck, Michigan, was our program leader.  She spoke about the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel in which Jesus charges the disciples to go forth and be baptized, teach, disciple, and obey.  We are to minister to those who hunger spiritually and physically.  We are to minister to those who lack hope, who live in darkness, who are at their wits’ end, and who cannot see the grace of God because they are spiritually blind.  Our outreach endeavors give us vision.

Steve Garnaas-Holmes reminds us that “The gospel story really isn’t about seeing with our eyes, but seeing with our hearts.  Do we see with the eyes of distrust, or the eyes of faith?  Eyes of cynicism or eyes of wonder?  Eyes of judgment or eyes of love?”[2]

In the end, Christ has given us sight and insight.  He has enabled us to see beyond our physical vision.  His light reaches into the darkest recess and gives us a vision beyond what we can possibly imagine.  Indeed, we were once lost, but now…now we are found.  We were blind, but now we see, for Jesus has given us the ability to truly see.  Thanks be to our living Lord.  Amen.

[1] Craig Etheredge, “Let Jesus Be the Center of Your Priorities,” taken from Discipleship.org.

[2] Steve Garnaas-Holmes, taken from UnfoldingLight.net.