Do you truly see?
Video: https://youtu.be/vaLEW7FX3JA
We might all have eyes, ears, and a brain, but Jesus puts this question to us and the disciples: “Do we still fail to see, to hear, to remember, and to understand?” We can see throughout the gospel that Jesus cares deeply for our senses and that they are used to their full potential. Our last week’s reading ended with a deaf and mute man being healed through Jesus’ touch. Jesus has healed people with Lepracy which in modern terms comes with the inability to feel. Now today Jesus will heal a blind man, but this same theme of perceiving correctly runs throughout the stories today.
Our first miracle story starts with Jesus perceiving the people’s needs. Here are 4,000 people that have been following Him for 3 days. You can only imagine how hungry they must be and how much their bodies would already be hurting. Jesus knows that he cannot send them away or else they would faint on the way. He sees their need for Jesus.
The disciples can see this too, but they do not see a solution. They see a deserted place and their limited supply and so they don’t see anything they can do. Yet how quickly they forget. Only a chapter and a half ago they had already seen Jesus feed five thousand with even fewer loves of bread.
At this moment the disciples may not be able to see, but the 4,000 have come to follow Jesus and they trust Him enough to sit and receive whatever they can get, which ends up being more than enough. Once again the numbers speak to us, as seven should remind us of the seven days of creation, or the seven-day week, or the seventy years of jubilee. Seven is practically synonymous both in Jewish terms and gentile terms with completeness, fullness, wholeness, and rest. For a moment they see and are filled by the completeness of being with Christ.
These 4,000 have come to Jesus with faith and trust and we see the results as Jesus is faithful, yet in contrast to that, the Pharisees come to Jesus to question and test Him. They came with no faith and yet they demand a sign. So even though Jesus is literally doing signs and wonders continuously they do not see.
So often we can be like the Pharisees that go to Jesus demanding, questioning, testing and so we see nothing. Or we are even more often like the disciples who have experienced God’s miracles, we have been fed, taught, and lifted up, and yet how easy it is for us to forget and only see the lack, but we are called to be like those 4,000 not demanding anything of Jesus, but following Him with faith and humility knowing He has what we need. If we do that, we are already going with our eyes open, ready to perceive.
The next few passages dig deeper into that idea. Jesus warns His disciples against the yeast of the Pharisees. Again, the disciples don’t see, they think it is their lack of food, but they have already forgotten the two feeding miracles and what they mean. They should know by now that Jesus can do so much with even a little. They still do not see or hear as often happens with us. They have limited their own perception by the idea of scarcity, rather than the bounty that is in Christ.
Christ is trying to warn them about a false bounty. The yeast of the Pharisees. Yeast puffs up bread. It doesn’t give it more substance, but it makes it appear to be more. The Pharisees puff themselves up and their words, but it is not the substance people need. The Pharisees are focused on the law, how people might be faithful (when time has proved again and again that we will never be faithful, we can never live up to the law). Jesus is offering instead the bread of life. He is offering the grace of God, which is based on God’s faithfulness, which is always true and never lacking. This is far superior to what we can do.
How easily we can be lead by the idea of scarcity and fail to see what God has already done with the little we offer or fail to see what God is trying to point us to beyond this stuff. How easily we can be lead astray by the yeast of advertisements, or politicians, or social movements when they have just puffed up promises that will never live up to the faithfulness of God. Like the Pharisees and the law, promises of the world often point to true things, but fail to see what is really needed or really there.
Now we come to this strange story about a two-part healing. We might think that Jesus screwed up the healing and so had to try again. I rather think that Jesus is trying to show us something. Sometimes when we approach Jesus our healing, or our vision comes slowly, or in stops and starts. We might just begin to see, but the truth is still fuzzy. We could very easily be contented with this, as we often are, but God wants to open our eyes and sense fully. He wants to show us the truth. He wants to fully heal us. He wants to have us live in hope and so we need to stick around with Jesus and trust that He will take us further. I imagine that Jesus spitting in this man’s eyes was uncomfortable for him, just as it would be for us. So this lifelong journey following Jesus can be uncomfortable at times, but the life that results is far better than if we went our own way.
Lastly, we get Jesus asking His disciples about who people say he is. There is an interesting parallel here with the two-stage healing. Because first, the people outside of the disciples can see that Jesus is special. They think He might be John the Baptist or Elijah or a prophet. They can see Jesus, but their vision is clouded. The disciples for a moment see Jesus clearly as Peter says Jesus is the Messiah. As the gospel goes on, with the disciples, we will see that Jesus is far more than just a king or hero, He is our savior, our Lord, the one we need beyond everything else.
In these passages, as well as today, people come to Jesus for a whole lot of reasons. Some people come to Jesus to test him, looking for miracles, with scarcity and doubt on their minds, most of the time these people will fail to see what is right in front of them because they fail to really see Jesus. Then there are those that come to Jesus because they know they need Him. They have come to listen, to trust, to hope, to stick around, and keep trying, they come giving the little they have and the result is that they begin to really see. Sometimes in stages, but soon they begin to see that God is with them in Jesus, that God is doing wonderful things around them, that just having God is a greater bounty than having anything else.
So, I will leave you with Jesus’ question: do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? Don’t you remember what God has already done around you? Together let’s watch, listen and remember with faith and trust, knowing that what we need is Jesus. Only then will we see the wonder and bounty that is God with us.
