ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN: SEEING IS BELIEVIN

Another time, Jesus smeared God like mud on the eyes of a man born blind and pushed him toward the pool of Siloam. The blind man splashed his eyes and stared into the rippling reflection of the face he had only felt.  First he did a handstand, then a cartwheel and rounded off his Joy with a series of summersaults.   He ran to his neighbours, singing the News.  They said, " You look like the blind beggar but we cannot be sure." 

The problem was never that he was blind and could not look out, but that they could see and did not look in.

" I am the one, the seeing blind!"  
They seized him in mid cartwheel and dragged him to the authorities.
" What do you think of the man who made the mud?" 
But the man born blind was staring at a green vase, his mouth slightly open as if he was being fed by its colour.
"He is a sinner," said the priest who knew what pleased Gods eyes.
"Can One who lights candles in the eyes of night not have the fire of God in His Hands?"

The priests murmured and sent for his parents who looked their son straight in his new eyes and said, " Looks like our son but he is old enough to speak for himself." Off the hook they hurried home.

" All I know," said the man with the green vase tucked under his robe, " is that I was blind and now I see."

But with his new eyes came a turbulence in his soul, as if the man who calmed one sea turned another to storm,

So, before those who locked knowledge in a small room, and kept the key on a string around their neck, he launched into a theology of sin and salvation.  It was then that the full horror of the miracle visited the priests.  " You, steeped in sin, lecture us!!"

They tore him from the podium and threw him into the street where a man was rubbing mud from His Hands.

" How did it go?" " I talked back."

The man with new eyes took in every laughing line on the face of the Son who was as happy as a free man dancing on the far side of the Red Sea.

(A snapshot from 'The Son Who Must Die' by J Shea)