Respected

Mark Twain put it this way, "Clothes make the man; naked people have little or no influence on society."

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, Is this not the man who used to sit and beg? Some were saying, It is he. Others were saying, No, but it is someone like him. He kept saying, I am the man. But they kept asking him, Then how were your eyes opened? - John 9:8-10

In today's Gospel reading, the blind man was given his sight and was no longer a beggar.  He was changed and people no longer recognized him.

In his case, it wasn't clothing that made him special.  It was how he carried himself.  When he gained his sight, he gained dignity and with it, respect.

Others were suddenly able to see him as he really was, and so they didn't realize they knew him.  He had been a stereotype, a fixture on the road, someone easy to ignore.

But now, he was alive and real, and equal, someone hard to ignore.

This, I think, is the theme throughout the ministry of Jesus.  He takes the invisible and makes it relevant, showing us we are all of value, regardless of the situation we find ourselves in.

If we look at these Gospel stories as miracles performed by a superhuman being, we may just miss the point altogether.  We will fail to see that we have the power to transform ourselves and others, simply by showing respect.

It's not that hard to do.  We just need to look beyond the obvious, beyond the clothes to see the person in them.

Throughout the Gospel account, we never learn the person's name.  Interesting, isn't it?

We know him as a blind man, and then as a man who used to be a blind beggar, but we never get a name to make him real.

If we want to get beyond the obvious, we need to see the man as a man, the woman as a woman.  We can start by getting to know the person's name. 

More to come...