Following Jesus With Open Eyes – Homily

“So Jesus was about to leave Jericho. Jericho is where the Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea. It’s located at the lowest habitable spot on Earth, and it’s about 900 or so feet below sea level. That’s right, below sea level! There’s no place lower to live on Planet Earth, on dry land.

You can’t get any lower than Jericho. I’ve been to Jericho, and people have been living in Jericho since around 6000 BC. The lowest person in this city is the blind man, because he is looked down upon by its people.

Why? Because the Jewish people believed incorrectly. They believed that the only reason he could be blind is if he was a sinner, or came from a great family of sinners and he’s being punished by God. So they looked down upon him. That’s what they believed. And there’s this poor man sitting down on the ground below.

Everyone else looked down upon him, in the lowest place. And there he is. And there comes Jesus. And he’s heard about Jesus. He’s never seen Him. He’s blind, but he’s heard about Him, and he’s heard that this Man can cure blindness, amongst other things. 

And so he cries out, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!’ What does the crowd do? Well, they look down upon this blind man. They tell him to ‘shut up,’ and the crowd rebuked him. ‘Shut up, you lowlife! You sinner! Just sit there and beg. I might throw you a coin, you know.’

That’s how they were treating him. But he didn’t stop. He kept calling out all the more, ‘Son of David, have pity on me.’ And Jesus heard it. And Jesus said, ‘Call him to Me.’ And then, probably for the first time in his life, some of the people told him to ‘get up.’ They told him to rise up from where he was.

And so he did.

He sprang up and he went to Jesus. And Jesus said, ‘What do I do for you?’ And he says, ‘Mister, I want to see.’

Jesus, impressed with the man’s great faith, says, ‘Your faith has saved you.’ And the man began to see.

As Jesus was leaving the town, (and the only way you can leave the town of Jericho is by traveling up out of that low spot,) the man raises his eyes upward towards Jesus and follows Him. Looking up to the Lord, looking up to salvation, no longer to be cast down by the people of the world, the people who kept him down and told him he was just a blind sinner. Now he’s a child of God, and he can follow the Lord because he has his eyes open and he sees things not only just as people can see things, but also through the eyes of faith.

And so, when we open up our eyes and see others, we can’t just look at others as the world wants us to see other people. We can’t be divided by race, or divided by age or divided by sex and all those other divisions the world throws at us. We have to look at other people as children of God, our fellow brothers and sisters.

That’s what we are called to be. And you can see in every person the spark of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Every one of us is made in God’s image. Every one of us is made with the capacity to love and we are all called to share that love with others. And so today’s Gospel reading reminds us that as we walk through this life, as we see this world around us, we have to look up beyond what the world sees.

We have to look up to the Lord and follow the Lord. We follow the Lord by seeing everybody else as a fellow child of Christ.”

~ Fr. Joseph Gembala