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I Want To See
Contributed by Jeferson Tavares on Nov 8, 2020 (message contributor)
Summary: What does it mean to be blind?
SERMON
I want to see
Introduction
• All of us as a child have already played blind paw
• What does it mean to be blind?
- It's imagining the world
• Bartimaeus, apparently never seen.
• It is Jesus' last miracle in the Gospel of Saint Mark
Part I
JESUS ??STOPPED
• The Lord shows absolute tribute to the person in need
• For the Jews a blind man was paying for some sin committed by him or his parents.
- Leviticus 21: 17-21
- The priesthood was forbidden to the blind, the lame, the disfigured.
• For the Pharisees there was a general opinion that they did not need to have mercy on these people.
• For the Essenes - the blind were excluded from society. No one with physical defects would participate in the Messianic banquet.
• But Christ stopped to attend to a rejected
- We never see Christ flustered, always had time for people, never said: I'll talk to you later.
- It is said that among executives it is increasingly rare to return a call. We talk to whoever we want.
• Jesus spoke to the excluded: he fed them, healed them ...
• Jesus was a master in the art of stopping, assigning value to those who had no value. “What a lesson for us”!
• We lack time for family, friends, mission.
II Part
JESUS ??ASKS THE OBVIOUS
• Is this the question a blind person is asked?
• Is Jesus playing or being sarcastic?
• Imagine this man wandering around Jericho, wondering what his wife, children were like ...
• Do you respond with conviction?
- Were you willing to see, even if the vision bothered you?
Ophthalmology Specialist
How does someone who sees for the first time react:
• It is a disturbing and unpleasant experience
• Severe disorientation
• As severe or more like one who is blind
• dizziness and fall
• malaise, nausea
• Seeing is not what I imagined
Imagine the blind man coming home:
• Doesn't know the way
• The friends who helped him leave him because they assume that he now knows the way.
• The next week he has to work
What's the matter with Bartimaeus? He sees.
• There was security in the darkness
• We go down in history
Part III
• You and I are blind. Dark creatures.
Illustration:
• Sunlight penetrates up to 100m absolute darkness
• In the abysmal regions it is complete darkness
• Animals that live there could even see, but contact with darkness atrophies the optic nerve.
Being blind is not so bad!
• When you are blind, you don't see things as they really are. We are not bothered by the vision.
• Most of the time we don't want to see what we need to face. Therefore, it is convenient not to see.
• When blindness is cured, we start to see things as they are.
• What it is like to live with the vision. It is living with Jesus: with greater dedication, integrity, greater patience, greater tolerance.
• What's wrong? What is the problem?
- There are things that need to be fixed in our life, in our family, in our relationships, in our work.
• We don't want to see these things.
• We don't want to see wrong attitudes.
Jesus does not put the vision on, he asks: What do you want me to do to you?
John 3:19
• What area do you need to see? I won't like to see things about me.
• Jesus wanted to free the blind, not just the blind whose eyes do not see, but whose hearts do not see. The blind who are afraid to face their limitations, who cannot question what their real meaning in life is. Blind people who are experts in judging and condemning others, but who are unable to look at their own weaknesses.