John 9:1, 6-9, 13-17, 34-38, Laetare Sunday

Imagine how the blind man must’ve felt when he was able to see for the very first time. You and I, born with normal eyes, we were eased into the sights of the world. The older we grew, themore we saw. But this man who had never seen in his life and then started to see after washingthem at the pool of Siloam, this wasn’t a groggy, gradual fade-in from darkness. This was a flash
flood of light, colors, shapes, sizes, depth, all of which he only imagined before. “So, this is what water looks like,” he must’ve thought, with the sun glistening against it. “So, that’s what a marketplace looks like,” all the noise and movement and chaos of humans and beasts now made visible. With people rushing towards him, he must have heard his name called. “Oh, that’s what my
mother looks like, my father!” Now he could put new faces on old voices he had known all his life. So, imagine the sensory overload of unimaginable intensity, sisters and brothers, the deluge of joy and excitement bursting from the man’s heart. Because to someone who sees for the very first time, lahat maganda!

But in every party, a party pooper: the Pharisees; men who were sure they were the clearest-seeing people in all Israel. They regarded themselves as the eyes of the Law, virtually like God’s eyes. After all, they dedicated their whole lives to precision of vision. And nothing in the world was clearer than the line dividing pure from impure, clean from unclean, righteous
from unrighteous. For Pharisees, sisters and brothers, religion was like a CCTV. Black-and-white. No sound. No explanation. You were either on the line or out of line, God was with you or against you. So, when someone dared violate the Sabbath to miraculously heal a man blind from birth, the white-robed Pharisees only saw black!

Sisters and brothers, when everything we look at is either black or white, we don’t leave room for mystery anymore. When our black-and-white vision overrides God’s mystery, we no longer have room for God’s surprises. The people we truly love, we don’t see them in black or white, do we? We see them “in color,” so to speak. And not just in color, but in gradients, in many shades. Because we love, we accept ambiguities. We understand nuances in behavior. How they cheer us and irritate us, annoy us yet mystify us. At one moment, they disarm us with their kindness, and the next, exhaust us with their stubbornness. But because we love their light, we see and accept their shadows, too. When a husband is being mayabang, we see his fear. When the panganay is being lazy, we suspect a certain despair. When ate explodes in rage, we remember her wounds. When best-friend is being controlling again, we know his good intentions. We love the people we love not for their perfection, but for their striving for wholeness, “warts and all,” as the expression goes. Because we’re that way, too. We’re not black-and-white.

But when love starts to fade, we stop seeing in gradients. This I’ve seen when there’s a falling-out, whether in marriage or friendships. Whom we called “mysterious” before is not just sumpungin. Idiosyncrasies we found cute before? They embarrass us now. We used to admire someone as “responsible and take charge.” Now, she’s just a “control freak.” What before fascinated us as free-spiritedness, is now flirtatiousness. In other words, when love’s light fades, so does our tolerance for complexity. We no longer have room for anything we can’t categorize.

This is more dangerous when it happens in religion, sisters and brothers. When we see only black-or-white in religion, then, the face of God might be fading, too. When all we’re concerned about is what’s official or not official, liturgical or not liturgical, what’s allowed or what’s forbidden, and nothing in between—no nuances, no gradients, no shades—then, maybe we’ve conquered God’s mystery by our standardizations. Unaware, we’ve actually set ourselves as t hestandard of righteousness, the norm of orthodoxy, the canon of liturgy. Worst, we get to judge who deserves grace and who does not. The Pharisees had arrived precisely in this place. “Blind fools,” Jesus called them. ‘Yung mga nagmamalaking malinaw ang paningin sa Diyos ang siyang
bulag. Because when the whole world came praising God for the miracle that day, the Pharisees were out filing a Grievance Report. Never mind that a blind man saw the Light of the world! The Pharisees hunted for the Sabbath violator. ‘Yung bang parang binigyan mo ng isang kahon ngdonut pero nagalit pa sa ‘yo. Bakit daw may mga butas.

Our God will never be black-&-white, thank God. Jesus revealed that our Father is never monochromatic. Our God is “a coat of many colors.” Our God is Mystery and endless surprise. God’s love is “ever ancient yet ever new.” Ang pag-ibig ng Dios makulay at mahiwaga. May luma sa bago. May bago sa luma.

I remember when our first color TV arrived 500 years ago. I was bursting with excitement to watch Sesame Street. For years, I’d only ever seen it in black and white. When Sesame Street came on, oh my God, I couldn’t believe what I’d been missing! Big Bird was yellow. Cookie Monster was blue. Kermit was green! It was the same show, the same characters. But everything suddenly came alive and became real and so much happier! I’d been watching the muppets for a long time. But I had not truly seen them…until I saw all their colors!

On this Laetare Sunday, sisters and brothers, we rejoice because of God’s gift of sight. May we see with increasing gratitude, and marvel at divine surprises, and find God in unexpected places and unexpected people. The Father’s love is a wide spectrum. It is not black-and-white. Only when we see God in many colors may we also say: “One thing I do know is that I was blind. But now, I
see.”

Big Bird is yellow! Cookie Monster is blue! Kermit is green! And God is beautiful!