"I was blind and now I see." This is not only a line from the famous hymn, "Amazing Grace"; these words are spoken by the blind man in the passage from John's gospel that we will hear this Sunday. Blindness in the gospels is always a metaphor for coming to faith. The man in John's gospel is healed and becomes able to physically see, but much more important is the fact that he comes to believe in Jesus. Interestingly enough, this man does not come to Jesus and ask to be healed; Jesus takes the initiative in response to the disciples' question about whether the man or his parents had sinned. The man does respond to Jesus by doing what he is told - going to wash in the Pool of Siloam, but as a result, he does not see Jesus face to face. By the time he is healed and able to see, he is no longer in Jesus' presence. Consequently when he is questioned by the authorities about who Jesus is, he cannot tell them. He does maintain his belief that Jesus must be a man of God. Furthermore, when Jesus approaches him at the end of the story to ask him if he believes in the Son of Man, he does not seem to realize that Jesus is the one who healed him until he is told. When he asks who the Son of Man is that he might believe in him, Jesus responds, "You have seen him." In other words, the blind man recognized Jesus, who he was and that the source of his power was God, without ever having physically seen him. He has "seen" him without being able to see him. His response to Jesus' statement is to believe and to worship. The Pharisees are the foil to the blind man. They have no problem with their physical sight, but are unable to see Jesus, unable to recognize who he is and that the source of his power is God. It is precisely in their claim to have clear sight that Jesus faults them for being sinful.

Interestingly enough, I watched the movie Amazing Grace this past weekend, the true story about William Wilberforce, the man who fought tirelessly to end the slave trade in England, to get the people of his time to overcome their blindness to the evil that was being done in their midst and to see the truth. He was greatly influenced by his minister, John Newton, the former slave ship captain turned minister who wrote the hymn, "Amazing Grace," about his conversion experience. At the end of his movie, the minister has gone physically blind, but is finally willing to share his own story of being involved with the slave trade in order to open the eyes of others, to heal their spiritual and moral blindness.

Where are our own spiritual and moral blindspots? Individually and collectively? How are we participating in the healing ministry of Jesus, healing our own and others' blindness? Here at the parish on Tuesday night, we watched Dead Man Walking, and while no one is physically blind in the movie, Sr. Helen Prejean's eyes are certainly opened through her encounter with a man on death row. She in turn has done much to open other people's eyes on the issue of the death penalty in our country. Both movies also brought home the realization that individuals can change the world. We have each been created with great potential, and God's grace, each of us can see the world in a new way and help others to do so as well!