The Blind Pharisee Part 2

You may be wondering about me. Yes, you may be wondering what happened to me. If so, please read on, because I promise you will be surprised to learn the path that my life story has taken. It has been a path with some very unexpected twists that honestly, I could never have imagined.

My first letter to you ended with a quandary. As you remember, blindness was setting in, progressing ever so surely, to a state of total darkness. It was coming, unrelenting, and soon. And with it would come the stigma of failure and sin, a stigma which would cloak my position as a Pharisee in a cloud of shame. You see, due to my blindness, my whole identity as a leader of our faith would be judged as lacking, beyond any possibility of redemption.

My only hope, it seemed, was an itinerant rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth. He was new, different, and in some ways, radical, at least in the eyes of my brother Pharisees. I shared their view of him, considering him to be so unorthodox as to be a threat to the foundations of our faith.

Yet he was a healer, and even though he had a sizable following, he was humble and unassuming. To us Pharisees, and to the other elders of our faith, however, Jesus was a threat, a threat that must be dealt with.

Of course for me, time was running out, desperation setting in. Would I swallow my pride and seek out this man, this so-called rabbi who was disrupting all that I had considered sacred?

He was nearby, in Jerusalem, and it seemed that controversy followed him everywhere as he challenged our power structure, the same one that afforded me so much respect. I would need to act quickly, as the time was winding down, not only for my failing vision, but also, as I was beginning to understand, for Jesus.

So, what did I do? That question is where my first letter to you ended.

I’ll get to the point: I did not, could not, approach Jesus to heal my oncoming blindness. Judge me if you will, and I know that many of you will do so. But I could not do it. Appealing to Jesus went against everything that I stood for, and against the very institutions of our faith that gave me my position and my respect.

I could go on about the agony of my decision, but I will spare you that. Just know that my pride as a Pharisee was so strong that I was willing to literally go blind rather than risk the harsh judgment that would follow from any association with Jesus.

You may already see the double irony in all of this. I could go to Jesus and beg, and even if healed, incur the disapproval of my brother Pharisees. Or I could choose not to go, and continue to lose my vision, thereby becoming a “sinner” in their sight. Either way, it seems, I would lose my status in our culture.

I am ashamed to say that I chose not to go to Jesus. Looking back, I wish I had.

If you are a Jesus-follower, you will no doubt accuse me of lacking the faith that Jesus could restore my sight. And I really have no defense against that accusation. The risk was simply too great.

And what about now? Well, two years have gone by. Two years since that week in Jerusalem, that week when Jesus taught in the temple. Two years since he was arrested and crucified. And two years since his followers say that our God raised Jesus from the dead.

I thought his followers would disappear, would return to Galilee from where they came. I thought they would go back to their old lives and just forget about Jesus.

But that’s not what happened. Actually, they remain in Jerusalem, preaching and healing in the name of Jesus. And claiming that he still lives, as they say, at the right hand of our Father God. They are still here and the small group of Jesus-followers has grown by leaps and bounds. None of us could have foreseen that outcome, and now, our leaders, the same ones who condemned Jesus, are persecuting the Jesus-followers.

And what about me? The blindness that I feared has finally overtaken me, and it’s no longer possible to hide it. My world is dark and small. And, as I expected, my brother Pharisees have turned their backs on me. My shame is complete, and it even casts my family in its shadows. It’s only because I am financially secure that I do not need to beg at the city gate, along with the other blind men. As I said, in my state of blindness, there would be no redemption.

Financial security was my only consolation, at least at first. But now, something has happened that I was totally unprepared for. And that’s the most important thing for you to know.

No, my sight has not been restored. My world is still dark. But strange as it may sound, I am discovering a new kind of light. A light that goes beyond what our eyes can see. It’s the light of Jesus Christ, and I have been introduced to his light, a light that can penetrate any darkness.

How did this happen? I said I was unprepared for it, and I still marvel at how this came about.

You see, not all of my brother Pharisees condemned Jesus as a heretic. A few secretly paid attention to him and became silent followers. You may be able to guess their names if you read your Gospel of John.

They came to me about a year ago, inquiring as to how I was doing. Out of all my brother Pharisees, these two were the only ones who would even speak to me.

In any case, they visited me several times. And slowly, they steered the conversation to Jesus. I told them how tempted I was to seek out Jesus for his healing powers, and how sorry I was for deciding against it. And I asked questions of them, learning more about Jesus, one question at a time, until finally, they invited me to join a fellowship of believers, people who are openly following the words of Jesus.

My experience with these people has been transformative. I mean, I was immediately accepted, not judged as I had been by my Pharisee brothers. While I couldn’t see them with my eyes, I could feel them with my heart. There was love in this fellowship, and forgiveness, not judgement. In so many words, a light was beginning to shine in my heart, a light unlike any other in my life.

And redemption? As I said, redemption was denied to me in my former life. I could never earn it. But now, I have received redemption, given to me in this new life, in the Light of Christ.

Jesus, Light of the World

Orthodox Icon

How can I describe this light? It’s a light, not from the sun, or from a lamp on a table. It comes from outside, and yet it also burns inside my heart. I know my words are inadequate to describe it, but the best I can say is that this light actually gives life. Yes, this light is the source of life, a new life, one that I have never before experienced.

I’m learning to live in this new light. I have heard that Jesus called himself the “Light of the World” and I am coming to believe it. In fact, I am coming to believe in him, in Jesus as the one whose life, death and resurrection offers me a true brotherhood, one that my brother Pharisees would never offer.