I’ve been blessed with 20/20 vision.  I know that to be a fact.  And I’m sure that in the years ahead my vision will dwindle and not be so perfect.  You never know what’s going to happen.  But when I say I have 20/20 vision, I’m really not boasting.  See, here’s how I know that I have 20/20 vision.  When I was in high school I was on our lacrosse team, and I was gung ho about it.  I had the shoulder pads, the helmet, the gloves and, of course, the lacrosse stick.  I attended every practice, did every drill and learned as much as I could about the game, but I was still terrible.  I was on the third string and I rarely got any playing time.

One time I was thrown to the wolves when our coach had our lineup go out for a face-off in a big game: that’s when two players from either team literally face off at the center of the field, hunched over and ready to lunge.  And then the referee drops the ball in between these two players, and they try to get possession of it by any means necessary.

On this particular face-off, the guy facing off against me was about twice my size.  So, when the ref dropped the ball between us, my opponent, instead of going after the ball, simply took me out of the equation first.  The ball was dropped, the whistle was blown, and my opponent lunged at me, knocking me flat on my rear end; and then he added insult to injury by picking up the ball with ease, cradling it in his lacrosse stick and marching down the field with it, leaving me behind in a cloud of dust.

It was soon after that when my coach said, “Hey, De Leon.  Get your eyes checked.”  So I did.  20/20.  I may have perfect vision, but I have the hand-eye coordination of a 2-year-old.  Frankly, it’s a miracle that I haven’t dropped the offering plate during a worship service yet (knock on wood).

To my knowledge I have perfect vision.  But can I see?  That’s the question that God asks of me.  “Can you see?” is the question God is asking us every day.  I can see trees, skies, a sunrise, a sunset and a rainbow, but does that mean that I can see?

One of the first things Jesus declared about his ministry was this; he said, “I have come so that the blind will receive their sight.”  Two things about that: Jesus says that the blind will receive their sight, so everyone who is blind has a God-given ownership to sight and Jesus’ ministry is about assuring that everyone receives that sight.

Secondly, not everyone in the world is blind by our understanding.  I mean if Jesus was being literal about bringing sight to the blind, then he wasn’t speaking to anyone in this room.  And there is our message about inclusion, about equality, about the first being last and the last being first: everyone is blind, even folks with 20/20 vision who love to take in a good sunset.  Jesus’ ministry is about giving everyone their God-given gifts, and empowering them to use those gifts.

This story we hear tonight out of Mark’s gospel, it sounds like another healing story; one of Jesus’ many healing miracles.  Jesus heals a blind man.  Hooray!  But there’s more to it than that.  Jesus and his crowd of followers are leaving Jericho and a blind man shouts out to him, “Son of David!  Have mercy on me!”  And what does the crowd around Jesus do?  They sternly insist that the blind man be quiet.  Of course, Jesus hears this blind man’s cries, and he instructs everyone to bring the blind man over to him so he can heal him.  He says, “Your faith has healed you.”  And there we have our story.

But here’s more.  Why does the crowd around Jesus want the blind man to be quiet?  Could be because he’s being a disruption; he’s disturbing the peace.  It’s more likely that they want him to quit calling out to Jesus because he’s an outsider.  As far as society was concerned, this blind man was an outcast, and he shouldn’t have any dealings with a guy as awesome as Jesus.

That could be it.  But what he says to Jesus is the kicker: “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  In the gospels we hear people calling Jesus ‘teacher,’ ‘Rabbi,’ ‘master,’…but what does ‘Son of David’ mean?  What that blind man was doing was a political and societal breach, because by calling Jesus ‘Son of David,’ he was saying publicly that Jesus was the king of the Jews; that he was the Messiah.  It might be like an anti-war protestor speaking out at an event where the president is giving a speech; or an angry teenager shouting out for better educational curriculum at a PTA meeting; or a child blurting a question out loud in the middle of a sermon in church.

The crowds wanted to silence this blind man because of what he was saying on top of everything else.  He was blind, he was an outsider, he was an outcast, but the words that came from that perspective—well, no one wanted to hear that.  And it’s in that blindness—the blindness of the crowd—that Jesus works his miracle.

This isn’t just a healing miracle story, this is a salvation story.  By healing one blind man who cries out to Jesus, the Son of David, Jesus bring sight to an entire crowd of followers who thought they knew it all; who thought they were the ones who could see everything.

How is this a salvation story?  Isn’t following Jesus enough for us to achieve what we understand as “salvation”?  Maybe.  But as we follow Jesus, along the way he stops and says to us, “Do you see that blind man over there?  Do you see that lonely child over there?  Do you see that misunderstood teenage girl over there?  Do you see that unhappy little boy over there?  Do you see that unappreciated school teacher over there?  Do you see that forgotten old man over there?  Do you see that disabled woman over there?  Do you see that exhausted single parent over there?  Do you see that manipulated immigrant worker over there?  Do you see that ostracized gay man over there?  Do you see that dismissed gay woman over there?  Do you see that angry widower over there?  Do you see my children there, there and there?  Oh, my blind friend, let me help you see!”

The message of salvation in Jesus healing one blind man is that we might all receive salvation by receiving God’s sight, not our own.  And when we see through those eyes, we are called to bring all of God’s children into the crowd, into the circle so that they can be heard; because it’s in hearing all of the voices of God’s children that the whole of creation is reconciled and saved.  That’s the ongoing story of the Church.  That’s what it means to follow Christ.

A few Sundays ago I was doing last-minute prep for the worship service, putting on my robe, pacing around anxiously, and going over a ministerial check-list in my mind just to make myself feel more secure.  The worship service was planned and my sermon was ready to go.  I knew exactly what I was going to say.  And as I was walking up this hallway over here, determined to get to the pulpit to start the service, one of our kids stopped me.

Now, if you’ve ever given a children’s sermon or even participated in one, you know that there are some kids who ask a lot of questions, even if you don’t say anything at all.  And those questions can be a distraction from the message, so you learn how often you should call on particular kids so that all the kids who want to ask a question or contribute in some way will have a voice; and so that your message won’t be completely derailed into having to answer questions about why the sky is blue.  Well, the child who stopped me cold in my tracks that Sunday morning was one of the more inquisitive kids in our flock; so I automatically had my guard up.

This child stopped me, and my reaction was, “Oh, here we go.  Maybe if I act like I’m in a rush, this kid will get the hint and let me by.”  I was like that crowd around Jesus that just wanted to move on and not deal with any disruptions.  But the child persisted, “Pastor Dan, can I ask you something?”  So, I knelt down and said, “Sure.”  And the child said, “When God made everything and all those plants and things, how come He made one tree with fruit that we couldn’t touch?”

Good question.  Disarming question.  Revelatory question.  That child and I had a good discussion right then and there.  The service started a little late, but it was OK, because a mini-sermon had already been given, and my message had been changed for the better.