Receive your sight; your faith has made you well

 

 Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished.  For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon.  They will scourge Him and kill Him.  And the third day He will rise again."  But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.

Then it happened, as He was coming near Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the road begging.  And hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant.  So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by.  And he cried out, saying, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"  Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"  So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to Him.  And when he had come near, He asked him, saying, "What do you want Me to do for you?"  He said, "Lord, that I may receive my sight."  Then Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has made you well."  And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God.  And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

 

- Luke 18:31–43 

 

Then they also brought infants to Him that He might touch them; but when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them.  But Jesus called them to Him and said, "Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God.  Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it."  

Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, "Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"  So Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good?  No one is good but One, that is, God.  You know the commandments:  'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not bear false witness,' 'Honor your father and your mother.'"  And he said, "All these things I have kept from my youth."  So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, "You still lack one thing.  Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."  But when he heard this, he become very sorrowful, for he was very rich.  And when Jesus saw that he became very sorrowful, He said, "How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!  For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."  And those who heard it said, "Who then can be saved?"  But He said, "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God."  Then Peter said, "See, we have left all and followed You."  So He said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life."

 

 Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished.  For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon.  They will scourge Him and kill Him.  And the third day He will rise again."  But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.  My study Bible says that the saying was hidden not by God, but because the disciples could not comprehend its meaning until the events of the Passion had taken place.  We might pause to consider the unthinkable quality of the events that are to come, from the perspective of Christ's disciples.

 

 Then it happened, as He was coming near Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the road begging.  And hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant.  So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by.  And he cried out, saying, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"  Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"  So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to Him.  And when he had come near, He asked him, saying, "What do you want Me to do for you?"  He said, "Lord, that I may receive my sight."  Then Jesus said to him, "Receive your sight; your faith has made you well."  And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God.  And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.  As Jesus comes to pass through Jericho, He is on the road to Jerusalem in earnest.  This blind man greets Jesus as Son of David, a title which my study Bible says was deeply associated with the Messiah.  It notes that although Jesus knows what we want before we ask, He calls us to ask freely so that we might learn of His mercy.  Note the repeated pleas, or prayers, of the blind man, indicating our own persistence in prayer.  My study Bible says that in patristic literature there is also a spiritual interpretation to the similar miracle reported in Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 20:29-34), only differing in that two blind men are reported in Matthew.  It says that in this interpretation, the blind men symbolize future generations would will come to faith only by hearing, and without the benefit of seeing Christ in person (see John 20:29).  Those who call for silence are persecutors and tyrants who, in every generation, try to silence the Church.  Nonetheless, under persecution, the Church all the more confesses Jesus Christ.

The spiritual interpretation given to this miracle is interesting, because today we might find that there are ways in which faith seems to be suppressed; or rather, we find fairly vocal calls for curbing the influence of faith in public life.  While the relative freedom in the West remains despite the politicizing calls for less influence, we can look to other areas of the world where Christian faith is quite violently suppressed and under threat, even by forcible conversion, and so give thought to this spiritual interpretation reported by my study Bible.  What does it mean for us?  How do we feel this sense of those who call for the faithful to "be quiet" about their faith?  During the previous century, under communist systems, religion also underwent a systematic kind of silence.  In Russia, and other countries of Eastern Europe, many priests were killed or persecuted at different times, put into prisons and what were called gulags, and often under great hardship and even systematic torture in some cases.  A famous Russian writer (and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970), Alexander Solzhenitsyn, wrote novels set within this prison system.  He is famous for an essay titled, "Live Not By Lies."   In it, he argues that violence always dissipates itself.  He writes, "To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies."  He explains, "For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty."  What he advocates is that, in circumstances where we feel we can do no more, we can at least not participate in lies.  We can agree not to advocate things we can't agree with; in this way one begins to break out of the social prison that locks people within ideas that are truly lies and suppress truth.  In our faith in Christ, we put our trust in the One whom we call Truth, who has said of Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).  Christ came into this world as Savior and Liberator, and part of that liberating, freeing action is to free us from oppression of various kinds, especially that which is spiritual and which oppresses the mind and heart, but which often accompanies, as Solzhenitsyn indicates in his essay for his own time and place, violence and coercion of every kind.  So, in the service of Jesus, the Son of David, who is our Savior and Liberator, we also must always consider these words of this essay, and find and live our truth.  There may be things which we are unable to express in certain settings.  There may be ways in which we are somehow shouted and oppressed into silence.  But we can choose that we will not support lies, we won't participate in them, and we will retain the freedom we're given by God because we remain free in our hearts, our prayers, our mind, our soul.  When we live by His teachings, in whatever way we can, we are participating in Christ's truth.  We are declaring it for ourselves and for those around us, and this is most important, for we must understand Christ's teaching that the kingdom of God is within us and among us.  When He sent out the disciples on their first mission, and repeatedly at other times, Christ declares to the people, "The kingdom of God has come near to you" (Luke 10:9).  Over and over again in Luke's Gospel, Jesus preaches the kingdom of God, and how we may participate in that Kingdom.  There are over thirty times this phrase is used in Luke's reporting of Jesus' ministry.  He clearly did not come preaching a political kingdom, one that works only by violence and rebellion, but one that lives and dwells within us and among us, through our faith and participation in it, through living His commandments, and keeping ourselves alert to the life He teaches and offers, growing in that faith and strengthening it among ourselves and for ourselves.  Whatever our circumstances, this is what we are called to do, to endure in our faith.  For the earliest Christian martyrs, it was a question of not participating in the sacrifices to false gods.  For us today, let us not participate in whatever our modern sacrifices might be that we are called to participate in to false gods.   Christ said that we must make a choice and cannot serve two masters, we cannot serve both God and mammon.  In the world of vast material resources, of great coercive power -- be it violent or simply persuasive through lies and half-truths (which are also lies), political slogans, or just the power of the mob in new forms, let us consider how we may not participate in lies, but rejoice in the truth, and enduring in His truth, as He has asked of us.  We must be persistent in our prayers, like the blind man, and not let the coercive power of the crowd silence our faith, or the voice in the heart that stirs and becomes a flame through the love of Christ.  If we rely on God, God will provide ways for us to live that faith and to express it one way or another, even in a simple gesture of care or love that others don't consider (Matthew 25:40).  Sometimes the simplest action may be a bold way to participate in and declare our faith, even in the midst of coercive lies.  We must live our faith.  Let us pray that we, too, may receive our sight to do so, that He illuminates the way for us.