Uncertain sight

I write this with my left eye with a patch due to a cataract procedure.Our daughters have been teasing me about being a pirate, but I seem to lack the panache, as one of my favorite Errol Flynn movies is Captain Blood, I suppose.

I am old enough to remember when people were immobilized for six weeks when a cataract was removed. This strikes me as miraculous. While I am so grateful for the advances in medical technology, we have a long way to go in healing our perceptions, or inner sight of the psychological depths and our sight of the world beyond intersecting our own, spiritual sight.

Jesus was a healer. Giving eyesight to the blind was one of his tasks. At this point, I recall that he met a man who asked for one thing with one word in Greek, anablepo, that I regain my sight.
These healings always point to a spiritual dimension. They are often placed around a story where someone misperceives the message of Jesus. In other words, the physical is a gateway to coming t grips with the spiritual. Perhaps the best example is John 9. Jesus heals a blind man on the sabbath. Instead of rejoicing this causes religious consternation and an investigation into the healing. threatened by a new spiritual power, the establishment reacts with veiled threats and coercion. At the end, the man healed is the one who sees Jesus in a new light, while the others are consigned to spiritual shadow.

Paul speaks of us looking at reality with a sort of perceptual cataract due to our limited abilities. “ “We see as through a glass dimly.” It is part of the limitation of being human that we do not see the spiritual, maybe even reality itself, with 20/20 clarity. So much of what we perceive is fostered by and interpreted through our mental frameworks. Some go around wit their radar constantly on the prowl for someone or something, so they can feel aggrieved. Some of us seem blind to how others treat us. We all become quite skilled at turning a blind eye to suffering that requires compassion and aid, as we blame its victims instead.

John Calvin, the prime mover of the wing of the church that became the Reformed groups, spoke of the “spectacles of Scripture.” He meant that we can see the world differently through the lens of the bible. He may also have meant that we may even begin to glimpse the world through the eyes of God, a god’s eye view of the human struggle. In other words, the Bible may come to heal our spiritual blindness and help us to see in ways previously unimagined.

Liturgy in church is our best attempt to frame our experience in a distinct way in the spiritual life. Its order tries to dispel the chaos. Its measured beats are alternatives to the 24/7 madness of the Internet Period. There we first admit that we are dependent, together, on One who is larger than our imagination. There we admit our faults, alone and together, but there too we hear words of absolution, pardon, and grace, The old words take on new life and new resonance as they are heard by us together. Instead of grasping for more, instead of having our hands out, we make an offering to the needs beyond the self. At Communion, we who work and work do receive a gift, with our hands open and not clenched. We always leave with a blessing. At its best, church architecture leads us into a sense of a liminal experience, where our eyes are drawn upward, where we are surrounded in a new symbolic landscape. Going to church helps us to live out the words of Amazing grace, “twas blind, but now I see.”