A PRE-MISSION EVENT
WEEKEND MASS – ST. AUGUSTINE – LEBANON
“CHOOSING TO SEE”
Rev. Ronald Knott
March 26-27, 2017
If you were blind, that would not be a sin.
But
since you say you can see, when you are
actually
blind, you remain in your sin.
JOHN 9:41
Tyler Perry is a successful
African-American playwright, actor and screenwriter. Perry attributes his
success to what he calls “spiritual progress,” especially the “spiritual
progress” that resulted in making peace with his own father. One of his profound insights was around
learning that “parents do what they know how.” He finally realized that he
could not change his history with his father, but he could change the way he
wanted to remember it! “My life changed,” he said, “once things changed in me!”
I, too, had to learn how resentment
can keep you stuck and how you can free yourself by choosing to “see in a new
way.” “Choosing to see in a new way” is like letting yourself out of prison,
cutting your own chains, throwing off a heavy load. Like Tyler Perry, it was
only when I chose to “see my past in a new way” that I was no longer a victim
of it.
We cannot do anything about our pasts,
but we can choose whether we want to
be victims of it. Once I began to understand that my Dad “did what he knew
how,” I was able to move from anger to compassion. I thank God that I was able
to bury all that resentment, even before I buried him!
“Seeing in a new way” is exactly the
conclusion Jesus came to in his search for clarity during his forty days in the
desert. Coming out of the desert, he
began to preach “conversion.” “Metanoiete”
means “change the way you see!” Change the way you look at things and heaven
will open up to you! Once things change
in you, things around you will look
very different.” The devil tried to get
Jesus to change external things.
Jesus resisted that temptation. Instead, Jesus called for an internal change within people, believing
that if people would change inside,
things outside them would also change.
Today we have a wonderful story about
a bunch of blind people: one who can’t see and others who won’t
see. All of them need Jesus in order to be able to “see in a new way.” In this wonderful story, Jesus uses the
occasion of healing physical blindness to tell us something about the healing
of spiritual blindness, the inability to “see in a new way.”
The man born blind, not only regains
his physical sight, but step-by-step he begins to see Jesus in a new way. At
first, he says he tells people he doesn’t know who this Jesus is who healed
him. As the story unfolds, he calls Jesus a “prophet” and finally “Lord.”
The Pharisees and his parents can see
physically, but they are spiritually blind and refuse “to see in a new way.”
The Pharisees are blinded by their own rigid religious structures. They can’t
see the beauty of this great healing, a blind man getting his sight. All they
can see is that the healing took place on the Sabbath day and healing was
illegal on the Sabbath day. The parents are blinded by their fear of being
ostracized by neighbors, friends and organized religion if they admitted to
this healing. They conveniently choose
not to know and not to see. “Ask him,” they say, “he is old enough to speak for
himself.” Both Pharisees and parents are afraid of “seeing in a new way”
because it would mean their cozy little routines would be disrupted. It was
convenient for them not to see and so remain stuck in their chosen
blindness.
I am amazed when I talk to stuck
people. I believe that most people who are stuck are basically people who are
blinded by their inability to “see in a new way.” They whine and cry and wait
to be rescued, but they cannot change their minds and look at their situations
from a new angle. They can’t “let go” of their old way of thinking and seeing,
and so remain stuck in their blindness. They are like the monkeys I read about
several years ago. To catch these monkeys for the zoo, people would cut a hole
in a tree, just small enough for a monkey to his hand into. Then they fill it
with peanuts. When the money sticks his hand into the hole and grabs the
peanuts, he can not pull his hand back out. Instead of letting go of the
peanuts, they howl and cry till someone comes and hauls them off to the zoo.
All they had to do was to let go of the peanuts. People are a lot like that:
they cannot let go of the way they see things and so remain trapped, whining
and crying all the while.
Some people simply cannot “let go” of
the way they see things. They clutch at beliefs like: life ought to be fair,
parents ought to be perfect, spouses should not let each other down, the church
ought to be perfect, things ought to make sense and people ought to respect
you, love you and meet your needs. And, of course, when life isn’t fair, when
parents and churches aren’t perfect, when spouses let them down, when things
don’t make sense and when people do not meet their needs, they fall apart and
remain stuck in their belief that if they just don’t like it enough, it will go
away. All they would have to do to free themselves is to “let go” of their old
beliefs and “see things in a new way.”
Jesus was right, “If you were
physically blind, there is no sin in that, but when you choose to be blind,
your sin remains, you keep your own suffering going.” Tyler Perry is right, too, when he says, “My
life changed once things changed in me.”
What about you? What situations do you need to “look at” in a
new way? What people do you need to
“look at” in a new way? Is the way you have been “looking at” these situations
and people still causing you pain? If so, ask God for healing! Ask God for a
new set of eyes! Once things change in
you, life will change for the better for
you!
This week, I will be here Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday night with my gospel music group, REFLECTIONS, to present a Parish Mission called SENT TO
SHINE. I hope to challenge you to look at a few things in a new way, with new
eyes. I know you will love the gospel music because it will be different,
energizing and just plain fun to sing. We did a four-parish, county-wide,
parish mission up at the Meade County Fairgrounds last year. It was a great
success! Come yourself! Invite
Catholics who have drifted away! Bring your Protestant friends! Bring those who
don’t go to any church! I think it will make you proud to be Catholic and I
think your friends will leave looking at Catholics in a new way! In any regard,
we are going to have a great time together!
