(Note: This sermon was introduced with scene # 32 from "Traveling Light")
I’ve always had a secret fear about going blind. Out of all my senses, sight would be the most difficult for me to live without. Maybe it’s because I love to read so much. I always hated those assignments in high school that require you to be blindfolded while someone else led you by the arm. In fact, to be honest, I always cheated on those, so I could see just a little bit. Seeing is important to me, as I’m sure it is to you as well.
The Bible often uses the metaphor of physical sight to describe our spiritual understanding. People who don’t have any spiritual understanding are pictured in the Bible as blind. People who do have spiritual understanding are people who see. As the old John Newton hymn goes, "I once was blind but now I see." When we explain our faith in Jesus to a non-Christian friend and they reject our message, we shrug our shoulders and say, "She’s just blind to the truth." And similarly, when a skeptic tries to persuade us that God doesn’t exist, they shrug and say, "His faith has blinded him." So which is it? Does faith blind us or does it open our eyes?
That’s what I want to talk about today. We’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Mark called Following Jesus in the Real World. We’re going to see two different kinds of spiritual blindness, and then how Jesus can heal our blindness. We’re going to see that believing is seeing.
1. The Blindness of Unbelief (Mark 8:10-13)
We’re going to begin by talking about the blindness of unbelief in vv. 10-13. This group of Pharisees represents the blindness of unbelief. Jesus travels to a region called Dalmanutha. While there he’s interrogated by a group of religious leaders known as Pharisees. Now we’ve met these guys before in Mark. As I’ve mentioned before, the Pharisees were a reform movement within Judaism that wanted to help ordinary Jewish people live holy, righteous lives. They were a movement that focused on personal holiness, especially as it related to Jewish purity laws. In fact, today’s rabbinic Judaism grew out of the Pharisaical movement of Jesus’ generation.
They don’t merely approach Jesus for a little theological chat. The word translated "question" here means "to argue" or "to dispute." Mark’s not describing a calm dialogue where two people try to come to an understanding. He’s picturing an argument where forceful differences of opinions are expressed and there’s no hope of breaching the gap that separates them.
Mark also tells us that their motive is to test Jesus, not in the sense of seeing whether he’s true or not, but in the sense of trying to trip him up. To trip him up, they demand that Jesus provide them with a "sign from heaven" that proves Jesus is who he claims to be, the Messiah. They’re not just asking for a miracle, because Jesus has already performed dozens of miracles, some of which they’ve seen with their own eyes. A sign from heaven is more than a miracle. A sign from heaven is an "visible, compelling proof" of Jesus’ authority. By asking for a sign from heaven, they’re asking for irrefutable, unequivocal, ironclad proof that removes any doubt as to Jesus’ identity (Garland, Mark, p. 314). Essentially, they’re ask Jesus to remove the need for faith in their response to Jesus.
But Jesus refuses to give them what they ask for. He signs deeply, which is a word that describes intense emotional upheaval. He knows that their demand for a sign from heaven after all the miracles he’s already performed is a symptom of their unbelief, their refusal to have faith. They represent a generation of people who refuse to believe, a generation who demands absolute confirmation to avoid the risk of faith. This group has been given everything necessary to take the step of faith, but when push comes to shove, they refuse to act in faith. They’re blind in their unbelief.
So Jesus gets in the boat and leaves. His departure signifies that he’s done with the Pharisees, that he’s terminated his dialogue with this group of religious leaders. This represents a final parting of the ways between Jesus and the Pharisees.
We find in the Pharisees a classic example of the blindness of unbelief. WHEN WE REFUSE TO DEMONSTRATE FAITH, WE REMAIN IN SPIRITUAL DARKNESS.
Believing really is a kind of seeing, and a refusal to believe is a decision to remain in the dark.
I remember back when I was an atheist during my high school years, I’d talk to my Christian friends about faith. I refused to believe; I wanted irrefutable, absolute, complete confirmation before I would become a Christian. I wanted the same thing the Pharisees wanted, a sign from heaven that eliminated the need for faith. In fact, I’d sometimes say, "May God strike me dead right now if he’s real." And of course, he didn’t strike me dead, which I took as proof that God didn’t exist. You see, back then I viewed faith as weakness for weak minded people. I agreed with Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins, who said, "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."
What I didn’t realize at the time was that God requires faith to give us the freedom to believe or disbelieve. If God eliminated all need for faith in our response to him, our response wouldn’t be free, but it would be intellectually coerced by the overwhelming weight of evidence. God provides enough evidence four our faith to be reasonable and not irrational, but he keeps his presence somewhat hidden, so not to coerce us to come to him. God has placed his calling cards throughout life, and if we look for those calling cards we’ll find them and see them. But if we don’t want to see them, we’ll miss them.
Now this episode with the Pharisees brings up the age old dilemma of the relationship between faith and reason. Christians have grappled with this question down through the ages. Must a person commit intellectual suicide to be a person of faith, or is it possible to live a life of faith and also a live of reason?
One option that’s been suggested by some Christians is what’s known as faith AGAINST reason. According to this view, faith is set against reason, because reason and rational thinking are obstacles to true, biblical faith. An ancient example of this approach is a second century Christian thinker from Africa named Tertullian. Tertullian was a trained philosopher who came to faith in Jesus Christ later in life. At first Tertullian used his training in philosophy to defend his faith in Jesus Christ against objections. Tertullian became an apologist, a defender of the Christian faith. Much of his early writings are focused on his attempts to show why believing in Jesus Christ is rational and reasonable. But Tertullian gradually became disillusioned with this approach. Later in his Christian life he rejected all reason and philosophical thought as unspiritual and demonic. He abandoned all attempts to prove the Christian faith, instead stating that the claims of Christianity were absurd. He said, "It is by all means to be believed because it is absurd…the fact is certain because it is impossible" (Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 5). For Tertullian the irrationality of the Christian faith proves its truth because true faith is set against reason. Faith for Tertullian was a leap in the dark, believing something contrary to the evidence.
Many other Christians throughout history have agreed with Tertullian on this. For example. the Danish Christian thinker Soren Kierkegaard embraced faith against reason as well. I know quite a few Christians who adopt this same approach to faith and reason. For them, any attempt to prove or show the rationality of the Christian faith is a sign of doubt or weakness. For these believers, to question something is a sign of unbelief, a symptom of spiritual weakness. Several years ago I had friends who embraced this view, and once I questioned them on a very strange doctrine that they’d accepted as true. For example my friends had been taught that you could tell a person was demon possessed by the shape of the pupil in the person’s eye. I suggested that this doctrine wasn’t biblical and was very irrational. They told me I was using my carnal mind, not my spiritual mind. They told me that if I loved and trusted God as much as they did, then I would see that this doctrine is true. They embraced a faith against reason approach.
This approach is comfortable, because you really don’t have to worry about thinking. But faith against reason isn’t the only position suggested by Christians.
Another option is faith SUBJECT TO reason. The roots of this approach go back to an intellectual movement called the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment took place throughout Europe and North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. During the Enlightenment, it was believed that human reason would answer all of life’s questions, science would solve all our problems, and education would create a kind of utopia on earth. In fact, the Enlightenment is often called "The Age of Reason." During the Enlightenment, some Christians during believed that the Christian faith had to be retooled and altered in light of the supremacy of reason. The movement known as Deism in France, England and here in the United States was an example of one way people tried to subject faith to reason. Most deists believed themselves to be true Christians who were trying to reform the Christian faith by rooting out old superstitions and dogmas. Deists believed that any part of the Bible that seemed unreasonable or couldn’t be explained scientifically needed to be rejected. Miracles were scoffed at. Biblical accounts of demon possession were reinterpreted as mental illness. Doctrines like the virgin birth of Christ, the deity of Jesus Christ and Jesus’ resurrection from the dead were rejected as superstition and unscientific. Thomas Jefferson is perhaps one of the most famous for taking this approach. Other examples are John Locke, an English thinker who greatly influenced the framing of our constitution.
This approach of faith subject to reason is really at the root of many liberal Protestant churches today. In their attempt to be relevant to Enlightenment culture, these churches purged the Christian faith from everything that sounds supernatural or mysterious. But in their attempt to be relevant, they surrendered their faith and became no more than a mirror image of the Enlightenment.
Some Christians who get really into apologetics and defending the Christian faith inadvertently fall into this position as well. In their zeal to prove the reasonableness of the Christian faith against skeptics they give the impression that every part of the Christian faith can be proven beyond a shadow of doubt. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for apologetics. But our faith isn’t subject to reason.
A third option is faith ABOVE reason. The Enlightenment’s trust in reason alone began to crumble in the twentieth century. Some people mark the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as the final collapse of the Enlightenment. Since then more and more academics are realizing that that reason and science also involve faith. They began to see that it wasn’t religious faith against science or against reason, but it was religious faith against scientific faith, or religious faith against faith in logic. People began to see that the scientific method itself couldn’t be proven scientifically, but it had to be assumed by faith.
This realization in academic circles has come to be called postmodernism, which is a reaction against the Enlightenment. Now radical postmoderns say that everything is faith, that there’s no truth to be found. Radical postmoderns say that the best we can do is simply try to be tolerant of each other and get alone. But more moderate postmoderns aren’t nearly so relativistic. More moderate postmoderns say that reason and science still have important roles to play in our lives, but that reason and science aren’t the only players, that human knowledge is far too complex to be reduced to reason or science alone. This more moderate form of postmodernism is good news for Christians, because it fits with the Bible’s assessment of reason.
The ancient Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas held to faith above reason. He said certain things about God and life could be known through reason but other things about God and life could only be known by divine revelation. For instance, Aquinas believed he could demonstrate the existence of God from reason, but that he could only prove the doctrine of the trinity by appealing to the Bible. So reason had a role, but it was a limited role. This is also the view of C. S. Lewis, one of the most famous defenders of the Christian faith in the twentieth century.
According to faith above reason, reason has a role to play in the life of faith, but it’s not the final role. Faith must be reasonable, but not based on reason; it’s to be rational but not enslaved to rationality. It’s not an irrational leap in the dark, it’s a reasonable leap that makes sense. It’s not believing something despite evidence to the contrary, it’s believing in light of the evidence.
I’m sure the Pharisees who demanded a sign believed that their rejection of Jesus was completely reasonable. But the reality was that their rejection of Jesus wasn’t just a matter of the intellect; it never is. Jesus represented a threat to them, a threat to their beliefs, a threat to their way of life, a threat to their influence. To believe in Jesus would’ve been to lose all those things, so they rejected Jesus, just as many people do today. That’s the blindness of unbelief.
It’s easy for most Christians to identify the blindness of unbelief. But it’s harder to see our own blindness sometimes.
2. The Blindness of Faith (Mark 8:14-21)
Look at what happens in the boat as they cross the sea of Galilee in vv. 14-21. Jesus warns his followers about the "yeast" of the Pharisees and of Herod. Now yeast was used a lot in the ancient world as a symbol for something very small that can quickly work its way through a whole lot.
We know who the Pharisees are, but who’s this guy named Herod? Herod Antipas was the current ruler in Judea. He was essentially a puppet king, who tried to keep the Jewish people happy, while also trying to keep the Romans happy at the same time. The only thing that the Pharisees and Herod have in common is that they’re both enemies of Jesus, both refusing to believe, both threatened by Jesus. Jesus warns his followers about their way of thinking, that the blindness of unbelief is like a yeast that starts out small but soon works it way into your life.
Jesus’ followers have no idea what he’s talking about. Since he’s talking about yeast, they figure he’s upset that they didn’t bring more bread with them. Even though they have faith in Jesus, they’re blind to Jesus’ meaning.
So Jesus asks them a series of questions in v. 17 and 18. These six questions show us that the disciples are spiritually blind at the moment, that they don’t understand or get what Jesus is trying to tell them. They have ears but they don’t truly hear, and they have eyes but they don’t truly see. Although they have faith, they’re still blind. They remember that Jesus has just used five loaves of bread to feed 5,000 and seven loaves of bread to feed 4,000 but they don’t understand the significance of it.
Here we find the blindness of faith. EVEN AFTER WE TRUST IN JESUS CHRIST, WE STILL DON’T ALWAYS SEE CLEARLY.
It’s tempting to say that their confusion here was due to the fact that Jesus Christ hadn’t yet risen from the grave. It’s tempting to say, "After the resurrection, it will all make sense to them." And it did make more sense after the resurrection. But even after Jesus’ resurrection they still didn’t see with complete clarity.
So perhaps it was because the Holy Spirit hadn’t yet been given to these disciples. Surely after the Holy Spirit is given they’ll see clearly. And they will see more clearly after Pentecost, but still not with complete clarity. For example, even after the Holy Spirit is given, they still for example struggle with the issue of including non-Jews in the Church.
You see, after we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we do see more clearly. We’re delivered from the blindness of unbelief. But we don’t yet see with total clarity. The apostle Paul puts it this way: "For now we see but a dim reflection through a mirror" (1 Cor 13:12). It’s only after Christ returns at the end of the age that we’ll see face to face, with total clarity.
This is the only way to explain some of the horrible things that have been done by Christians in the name of Jesus throughout church history. This is the only way to explain things like the Salem witch trials or the claim by many southern Christians in the 19th century that the Bible supported the enslavement of African-Americans. Our faith helps us see more clearly, but we don’t yet see with total clarity.
What often bugs non-Christians about us isn’t so much that we think that they’re spiritually blind. After all, everyone has blind spots. What bugs them is that we think we have total clarity about life, that once we come to faith in Jesus Christ we see things with complete objectivity and clarity. If we would just admit that maybe we’re wrong about some things, that maybe we don’t have the whole story, that maybe we still have a few things to learn, we wouldn’t come off as so arrogant. We need humility to admit that even after we trust in Jesus Christ, we still sometimes don’t see clearly.
3. The Healer of Blindness (Mark 8:22-26)
Now after all this talk of blindness it shouldn’t surprise us that Mark tells us a story about a blind person in vv. 22-26. Several features about this story set it apart as unique from other healing stories in Mark. This is the only time in the story that Jesus asks someone if his healing worked. It’s also the only time in Mark’s story where a healing isn’t complete the first time, and takes a second try.
Now it’s important that we don’t read too much into the use of saliva in the story. I think Jesus varied his method for healing just to make sure people didn’t think it was the method that brought healing. Once he just spoke and said, "Be opened," another time he put mud on a man’s eyes, and this time he uses his saliva.
Perhaps you’ve heard the story about the three blind men Jesus healed who got together at Starbucks for a cup of coffee. They talked about how wonderful it was to see now. They marveled about the color of flowers, the beauty of a sunset. They were all laughing and having a great time together, when the guy we read about here in Mark 8 said, "Do you remember when Jesus first spit and put his saliva on your eyes?" One of the other guys said, "No, he just said, ’Receive your sight’ and I could see." The third guy said, "Wait a minute. With me he put mud on my eyes." Suddenly they start looking at each other distrustfully. This guy says, "If Jesus didn’t use his saliva, then he didn’t heal you. You’re still blind!" One of the other guys said, "Mud? Who ever heard of using mud. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re still blind. Right then they formed three different denominations: The muditest, the spitites, and the speakites.
Many people believe Mark put this story here in his narrative to provide us with a illustration of the disciples blindness. The healing of this blind man also symbolizes the healing of the disciples from their spiritual blindness. And the fact that this man doesn’t recover his sight immediately correlates to the fact that the disciples don’t fully understand Jesus yet.
Here we find Jesus as the healer of blindness. WHEN WE FOLLOW JESUS AS CHRISTIANS, JESUS PROGRESSIVELY HEALS OUR BLINDNESS.
When you came to faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus took you by the hand just as he did this blind man. You were spiritually blind, but he took you by the hand and gave you sight. You were healed of the blindness of unbelief. You came out of the crowd, identifying yourself with Jesus, as his follower. In your water baptism you publicly announcing that you’d come out of the crowd.
When Christ came into your life, you began to see spiritually in a way you’d never seen before. Suddenly the Bible made more sense, you knew that God loved you, that he answered your prayers. You knew that he had a plan for you, that you were part of something bigger than yourself. But our knowledge is still partial; it’s true, but not yet complete. It’s like seeing people who look like trees, it’s blurry and out of focus.
This is why even after we become Christians, we sometimes miss God’s leading in our lives. This is why Christians disagree about things at times, why we sometimes do bonehead things in the name of Christ.
Jesus is restoring our spiritual sight so we can see with complete clarity, but it’s a process. So long as we remain by his side, among his people, our sight will get clearer and clearer, until we see face to face one day.
He is the healer of our blindness.
Conclusion
Not everyone sees. But believing is a kind of seeing when it comes to our spiritual life. When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we’re healed of the blindness of unbelief. And as we grow with Jesus, we’re gradually healed of the blindness of faith. Jesus is the one who restores our spiritual sight.
