Sight and Speech: Psalm 100; Matthew 9: 27-33
In law school, I learned a new concept, a gunner. This was a person whom we all disliked, avoided, scorned. This was the person who, when a question was asked, would raise their hand and flop around trying to get called on then never stop talking. This was the person who interrupted your answer to correct you. This was the person that when you had four minutes left of class and the professor was about to wrap up just early enough for you to get a sandwich, you hear, “I have a question!” from the front of the room. The gunner was the person who never stopped talking, even though every single person sitting in the room wished they would.
And yet, and yet, I realized something. When the gunner spoke, I took notes. When they asked a question, I jotted the response down in my book. I didn’t want to hear it, and I was certainly not enthusiastic about them taking more time and attention, but there was something valuable in his or her over-zealous reading and questioning. Sight, or vision, and speech are important elements of us as humans. These two abilities deal with learning, communicating, being moved, and our understanding.
Jesus gave the gift of sight to two men who had lived their lives blind. He heals them, as he says in Matthew 9:29 because of their faith. There are many people who are blind in life, and I don’t mean in the physical sense. Many people, even those who sit in the pews at church, are spiritually blind to God’s ways and how Christ works. What does it mean for us to have spiritual sight? I believe the best way to describe it is some form of spiritual wisdom. When you see in faith you can feel the presence of God in your life, you can feel that tug and guiding.
Many people say “God speaks to me.” And I believe it. Some may struggle with this idea, as it’s a bit more mysterious than concrete. But think of the very nature of prayer. Is it not more than just words coming forth, good ideas? Prayer is our very soul reaching out to connect with the Holy One. To be spiritually awake means you pray, you act in faith, you live in God’s presence and will, not by force or daily struggle, but by instinct. It’s like a relationship. Eventually, you don’t have to ask so many questions because you instinctively know those things about your spouse.
I’m reading book called Bygones, about a woman who has left her separatist Mennonite faith behind as she left to marry and raise a child with someone outside the faith. Now that her aunt has died, she must come and live in the town she grew up in with no electricity, modern convenience, or gadgets for three months to collect her inheritance. The book tells of the very moment her own blindness fades and she prays her first prayer in twenty years, of how she finds her way back to the meetinghouse for service, and how she re-discovers the power of faith inside of herself.
The same can happen for us. Jesus heals our blindness; Christ can open our eyes, not just physically, but also to be moved in our spirit and in our soul by the holy things of life. Why does this matter? Well, our joy is found in Christ, our peace is found in Christ, our hope, all good things which are gifts from God come down from our awakened faith. Think of the hymn, “Sunshine in My Soul,” which says, “There is sunshine in my soul today, more glorious and bright than glows in any earthly sky, for Jesus is my light.” That light of Christ when our eyes are opened in faith gives us that kind of sunshine in our souls, though even the heavens may fall.
We are also told that shortly thereafter, Jesus healed a demon-possessed man who could not speak. I think that sometimes we take this ability to speak for granted, especially in what we say and how we say it. Our current society seems to suffer from a bad case of, “If I think it, I should say it…and say it forcefully.” Now I struggle with this. I am gifted from both sides of my family with a talent for snark and sarcasm, occasionally a a quick temper if I’m hit just the right way, and a robust education has allowed me to think very expressively about what I might say in just such a situation.
Here’s the lesson I have learned, before each of us says something, we should ask, first, whether Jesus would say this. Second, we should ask whether Jesus would say it in the manner in which we are about to say it. You can be funny and tease without being hurtful. You can be firm and stand your ground without being hateful. You can set boundaries without being mean. Our words should first and foremost be a praise to God: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord; come before his presence with singing. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise.” An old wise Christian once told me, “You should spend your time blessing instead of bashing.”
If we have been given the gift of speech, then we should spend our time using it to lift up others, to praise God, and to speak of love and goodness. We have more than enough bad things going on and spoken in our world and in our lives. Let’s use our smarts, our words, our voices to speak goodness. It’s a difficult spiritual skill to grow in your life, though. Someone irritates you? Pray for them instead of yelling at them. Someone disagrees with you? Speak your belief then reaffirm your love for them. Someone says bad things about you? Forgive them. See someone being oppressed, abused, or mistreated by others? Speak out! In doing such things, you are living as Jesus, and you are showing his light in the world, and anything apart from that is unacceptable of someone claiming to be a Christian.
Jesus in many places is referred to as “The Word.” And Jesus was in fact the living word of God on earth, the one who came to testify of hope, of unconditional love, and of grace to all. We have the world of Christ written on our minds, on our hearts, and in our souls. We, too, are called to testify to this Word which praises God, lifts up those around them, and can potentially change the entire world around them.
In school, I used to hate the gunner because he or she would run us over time and seem so obnoxious in class every day. But it is important for us to speak God’s word of hope and love to the world even if we are told to be silent, even if people don’t want to hear it. Speak, testify, tell of the Good News even if it may fall on deaf ears, for Christ is still the Word of God. So if we find ourselves lacking, we can lean on Christ to heal us, open our eyes to God’s holiness around us, open our mouths to bless and uplift other, and stir our souls to know of God’s wonderful love for you and me.