2
“surely the Lord’s anointed is now before” him because this is what he has seen and
thinks a leader should be. Once again the Lord calls Samuel to look past what he has
known. He is told to forget his preconceived notions of what or who should be king and
to look upon the situation as the Lord does. He is called upon to look at things in a new
way. He is told to look with new eyes “for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look
on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” So rather that being caught
up in what he thinks he sees, Samuel is challenged to look to a new reality.
There is a moving account of the challenge of facing a new reality in the
autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, who went blind at the age of seven. He records the
discovery he made following the accident that cost him his physical sight:
“At that time I still wanted to use my eyes. I followed their usual path.
I looked in the direction where I was in the habit of seeing . . . finally,
I realized I was looking the wrong way. I was looking too far off, and
too much on the surface of things . . . I began to look more closely, not
at things but the world closer to myself, looking from an inner place,
to one further within, instead of clinging to the movement of sight
toward the world outside. Immediately the substance of the universe
drew together, redefined and peopled itself anew.” ¹
This incident may seem to be in opposition to the drama that unfolds in the gospel
reading this morning, since in John we are dealing with a man who was blind and now
sees, but in their own way each is given a new way of viewing the world around them. A
new reality is opened as their sight changed.
1
Jaques Lusseyran, And There Was Light, trans. Elizabeth Cameron [Little, Brown and Co.] 1963.
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