‘The Lord does not see as man sees’

How the healing of the man born blind becomes a metaphor.

WORD OF FAITH: A breakdown of each week's upcoming Sunday readings to better understand the Word of God at Mass.

“The Lord said to Samuel: ‘Fill your horn with oil and be on your way. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have chosen my king from among his sons’ ” (Samuel 16:1b). The prophet Samuel is being sent to the House of Jesse to anoint David as God’s chosen King of Israel. Samuel would need to learn not to judge a person by their appearance. When God sent Prophet Samuel, he had his own criteria for what the anointed King of Israel should look and act like. The anointed King of Israel in his mind had to be big, strong and able to stand up against the sitting King Saul and foreign kings and queens. But that was Samuel’s criteria, not God’s. After all, Samuel did not even want to go and call another to be the anointed King of Israel. God forced Samuel to go to Bethlehem, “How long will you grieve for Saul whom I have rejected as King of Israel?” (Samuel 16:1). 

When he gets to the House of Jesse and saw Eliab as the first of Jesse’s seven sons, he thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is here before him.” But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. The Lord does not see as man sees because man sees the appearance, but the Lord looks into the heart” (Samuel 16:6-7). This misjudgment on the part of Samuel would have set back God’s plan of salvation if he did not anoint the youngest son of Jesse because he did not fit his criteria. That son’s name was David, “he was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold and making a splendid appearance” (1 Samuel 16:12).

But why are we hearing this reading on the Fourth Sunday of Lent? The Kingship of the Son of David would be of divine origin. For this King and Messiah, would be the Christ, the anointed one of Israel. As Jesus himself was anointed a priest, prophet and king, we share in that three-fold anointing through our baptism. The anointing at baptism illuminates us when we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. That which was lost in the fall — original sin  — is healed. We are recreated through the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the anointed Son of the Father.

When Jesus met up with the blind man, he does not fit the official Israel criteria of the promised Messiah, one who is the anointed one of God. He was not powerful and he had no armies to lead into battle, and when he talked about restoring the glory of Israel, it was spiritual not physical. Jesus will shepherd the people of Israel, as David himself shepherded them, “The Lord is my shepherd there is nothing I shall want. In verdant pastures he gives me repose. Beside restful waters he leads me; he refreshes my soul” (Psalm 23:1).

The healing of the man born blind becomes a metaphor for the blindness of the Pharisees and other authorities of Israel. They could not even see the healing as being good, because it happened on the Sabbath. “This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath” (John 9:16). They could not see clearly who Jesus was, the true anointed one of God. But the man born blind would shed light on the ­situation and identify Jesus. He first identified Jesus simply as “The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and told me to go to Siloam and wash” (John 9:6-7). 

Later, “When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, he found him and said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered and said, ‘Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is he.’ He said, ‘I do believe Lord’ ” (John 9: 37-38).

The man born blind, who proclaimed Jesus as Lord, now could see. We have been illuminated by our own anointing at baptism and through our own being able to see clearly, we are called to proclaim Jesus as Lord!