Opening Eyes!

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons conducted an experiment at Harvard University more than a decade ago that became infamous in psychology circles. Their book The Invisible Gorilla popularized it. And you may be one of the millions of viewers who made their Selective Attention Test one of Youtubes’s most-watched videos.

The two researchers filmed students passing basketballs while moving in a circular fashion. In the middle of the short film, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit walks into the frame, beats her chest, and walks out of the frame. The sequence takes nine seconds in the minute-long video. Viewers are given specific instructions: “Count the number of passes by players wearing white shirts.” Of course, the researchers were not interested in their pass-counting ability They wanted to see if the viewers would notice something they weren’t looking for, something as obvious as a gorilla. Amazingly, half of the test group did not.

How is this possible?

How do you miss the gorilla in the room?

Today is about ‘Opening Eyes’ and Jesus is doing so by pointing out a Gorilla in the room—spiritual blindness. As humans, we are going through life making assumptions, assigning meaning to happenings, often filling in the blanks with whatever we can come up with. At the beginning of this scripture the disciples are doing exactly that. They are walking with Jesus and see a man who has been blind since birth. The disciples ask Jesus who caused the blindness, ‘Was it the man, or his parents?’ Jesus immediately opens the eyes of these religious elitists by clarifying this has nothing to do with sin in this man’s life or his parents. Nor is God punishing them or angry with them.

But, like the religious elite, we fill in the blanks and trying to assign some sort of meaning to life. Sometimes, maybe we joke and use humor to apply harmless meaning to make sense of things. This past week, on top of dealing with the coronavirus, we had an earthquake here in Utah. Many of you heard the trumpet held by the angel Moroni on an LDS temple fell off the statue. Some suggested maybe this was a sign the world is ending. Now, not to toot my own horn, but I had my own clever idea about what was going on, “Moroni threw his trumpet down, signaling the end is not here, and there is still plenty more work to do!”

Other times in life, like the religious elite often do, we assign meaning that can be dangerous. We assume. We gossip. We change the story up a little bit. And… we sound the trumpet, announcing the sins of others. After all, ‘opening eyes’ to their bad deeds; may mean eyes closed to ours.

One of the most dramatic encounters in the bible comes from Chapter 8 in the gospel of John. The Pharisees drag a woman they deem a prostitute to Jesus, interrupting his teaching session. These holier-than-thou's accuse her of committing adultery, even claiming she was caught in the very act. They ask Jesus whether the punishment for someone like her should be stoning, as prescribed by Mosiac Law. Sadly, this behavior mirrors what many believe today. The ‘eye for an eye’ type mentality. Right? Many believe if we do something bad it should be punished with something equally as bad. Can you say 'Blinded by the light.' Or, what they thought was light. But Jesus sheds real light on this encounter with the Pharisees. Jesus first ignores the interruption and writes on the ground as though he does not hear them. But when the woman's accusers continue their challenge, Jesus finds himself ‘opening eyes’ by announcing, ‘the one who is without sin is the one who should cast the first stone.’ The outed accusers tuck their tails, blinders removed, site restored, clarity restored that not one of them is without sin. (John 8: 1-11)

In today’s reading, Jesus is, yet again, ‘opening eyes’ as he solidly states that the concept of ‘original sin’ is a construct of man, not God. Jesus goes on to clarify why the man is blind, “this happened so that God’s mighty works might be displayed in him.” Jesus speaks to the poison of the assumptions, these false notions, and false narrative, made up by the Pharisees. He confronts these surface-only-viewers and says hold up; your sight is skewed. You are errantly blinded by the truth and assigning false meaning. This man is not blind because of someone’s sin, but that God may open eyes by working through him.

How often do we look at the surface and assign meaning? If you’re like me the answer is a lot! Here-in lies the problem. If we are simply looking at the surface, not willing to dig deeper, no willing to ‘ask, seek, and knock’, we not only misinterpret things, our assumptions close our eyes to the truth. Let’s go back to the blind man. If we only see the blind man and assume the blindness is of consequence, we, ourselves, are blind to our opportunity to witness the grace of God. In today’s scripture Christ is ‘opening eyes’, and we see two types of blindness in the story. We have a man who is born with a defect- physical blindness. The second blindness is a defect of the religious folk who were spiritually blind. The latter, spiritual blindness, being the worst by far. Physical blindness can be healed, but spiritual blindness repels healing.