by Kirk Gliebe, Devar Emet Messianic Synagogue, Skokie, IL

Torah: Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17 
HafTorah: Isaiah 54:11-55:5 
Brit Chadasha: John 9:24-41

A recent study involving first-year undergraduate students in the United Kingdom found that 50% of British whites and 53.4% of British Asians were myopic.¹ Myopia, also called short-sightedness, is a common eye condition in which people can see nearby objects clearly, but distant objects appear blurred. Corrective lenses or surgery are needed in order for people to see distant objects clearly. Many of us struggle with the difficulty of physical myopia, but I wonder how many of us honestly admit to our struggle with spiritual myopia, spiritual short-sightedness? From time to time in our Messianic Jewish walk we find ourselves losing our ability to focus on the big picture. The distractions of olam hazeh, this world, leave us spiritually blurry eyed, incapable of picking out the important spiritual details that God desires for us to see so that we might live out our role as his Holy People. What is the solution for this? We must train ourselves to see our world through God's eyes and not our own.

Our Torah portion begins with God's command for the people to "see"-Re'eh. Is this because they had poor eyesight, or was this because the people were in danger of developing spiritual myopia? Certainly it is the latter. Seeing is often a metaphor in the Biblical text related to the spiritual condition of people; the Israelis according to the book of Judges did what was right in their own eyes, doing what seemed right based on their own immediate perspective. What was the result? Defeat, both spiritually and nationally, as they fell victim to the aggression of neighboring nations. Never is our perspective sufficient. God calls us to see things from His point of view.

God gives our people specific instructions in this week's text, first to destroy the pagan temples and shrines and, second, to worship Him alone through their generous donations and sacrifices in a manner specifically according to His rules and not according to how they themselves might want to see things done. We must train ourselves to see our world from God's perspective and to act based on God's perspective alone.

The Haftarah portion reminds us that living our lives based on God's perspective is not always the easiest. God's ways conflict with the way the rest of the world views things, but following   God's ways always brings God's ultimate blessing. In our Torah portion, Israel is challenged to see and then choose between a blessing or a curse. Our Haftarah text lays out the benefit of choosing the blessed life. It requires a long-term perspective at times to see that following God is the way to go. The Hebrew text of Isaiah 54:14 hints at our need to think long-term and stresses our need to live "in righteousness," with the understanding that our security will be assured. God will protect us in the long-term even if things as we see them appear tenuous in the short-term.

The Brit Chadasha portion relates the narrative of Yeshua healing a man on the Shabbat who was blind from birth. After his healing, the man is brought before a group of P'rushim to explain his healing and to assign blame for breaking the Shabbat. Since he doesn't know who had healed him, he stumbles through this interrogation until finally he states in exasperation, "What a strange thing...that you don't know where he's from - considering that he opened my eyes!"  Ultimately this man is rejected from this group. Yeshua finds him, identifies himself, and encourages him. In a final statement on their spiritual myopia, Yeshua says to some P'rushim, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin. But since you still say, ‘We see', your guilt remains."² We must be humbly honest about our propensity as people to become entrenched in opinion and tradition that we elevate to the level of the Scriptures. When we do this we become blind to the clear teaching of God's instruction and lose out on the opportunities that God has for us. We must humbly allow for God to expand our spiritual understanding through spiritual maturity and development.

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