Sunday of the Blind Man: Sight, Accountability, and the Mystery of the Eucharist

Ուրեմն Ավետարանը կըսե, որ կսկսինք այս օրվա ընթերցումը, որ Հիսուս կըսե․ «Եկավ կուրերուն տեսողություն տալու»։

In the Gospel it says, at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading from the Gospel of John, Christ says, “For judgment I have come into the world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” And that second part of that statement on behalf of Jesus Christ is one that makes us think. What does that mean that He came to take away the sight of those who can see? That’s fascinating.

To provide some context to this passage, up until this moment in time, Christ has been performing many healings throughout Judea, and recently He’s performed the healing of a blind man on the Sabbath. Whenever He did anything on the Sabbath, it really upset the religious leadership at the time, because He was standing as a person who was becoming increasingly an authority on spiritual matters amongst the people, working miracles, and of course proclaiming His role as the Messiah. And so when He does things on the Sabbath, they get upset because they say, “Oh, He says that He’s a man of God, but He’s breaking the commandments.” What they don’t know, of course, is that what Christ is doing is He’s teaching us what the true meaning of Sabbath is. He’s revivifying, resurrecting the meaning of the Sabbath, which we celebrate today here on this Sunday morning in the midst of the Divine Liturgy.

And the Pharisees, they hear this statement on behalf of Jesus, and they think maybe this is like a passive-aggressive jab at them. I think that’s what they hear, because their immediate response is, right after that, “Are we also blind?” They think maybe that Christ is accusing the Pharisees and the scribes and the leaders who have been persecuting Him of being blind themselves. And Christ’s retort to that was so informative, and this is important for us to understand. He says, if you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say we see, and your sin remains.

So the question is, which is the better state to be in? Should we be blind or should we see? He came to give sight to the blind, to take away sight from those who can see already. And He admonishes the Pharisees because He says they can see. If they couldn’t see, if they were blind, then they would be innocent of the sins they’ve committed. But in fact, they can see, which means they’re guilty.

In the Armenian Church and in the early church, we refer to sacraments as khorhurt, right? Coming from the Greek for mysterion or mystery. The khorhurt of the sacrament, like the Divine Liturgy that we just experienced, is, of course, mysterious, essentially, because we’re calling upon God by virtue and by work of the Holy Spirit to do something that we cannot understand or comprehend. It’s inherently mysterious for us. But the use of the word mysterion in the early church had a very specific context. It didn’t speak about mysterious things or things that were difficult to understand alone. It spoke to a phenomenon that existed in society prior to Jesus Christ. In pagan worship, they had mysterion. People had to become initiated into a particular practice of worship. Until they were ready, they could not participate in the worship of this or that god. And that experience that they had that was secret and withheld from those people who were uninitiated was called a mysterion. It wasn’t for everybody. It was for a select group of people who understood, who went through a process of training and understanding what it was that they were going to be experiencing.

And when our church fathers called this a khorhurt or mysterion, it’s not for everybody. It’s for the people who have prepared themselves accordingly and have shown that they’ve got the level of commitment and devotion so that they can be a part of what’s going to happen. In this way, our Badarak is a mysterion. The Soorp Badarak, or the liturgy of the Eucharist, begins with Mi Vok, of course, which is a command that’s given to the people that says those who are uninitiated, unbaptized, unclean, unready, those who are in a state of repentance, etc., they should leave the church now. Because only those folks that are ready are the ones that should stay in the church and they should experience this very special thing that’s called the Eucharist or the Badarak, Soorp Badarak.

Now, what does that have to do with this? Our church fathers took the teachings of the church, the lessons imbued by Jesus Christ, very seriously. In the sense that Jesus Christ is speaking to the Pharisees and to the scribes and to the leaders that are persecuting Him and saying, in fact, it is a shame that you are not ignorant. Because if you were ignorant, then you wouldn’t be held accountable for what it is that you’re doing, that you are rejecting the Messiah. You know the teachings, you know the scripture, you know that everything I’m doing is the fulfillment of prophecy and revelation. And so you know these things and yet still you reject me. It would be better that you did not know them at all.

And our church fathers in the Armenian Church were not different in this regard. If we know, for example, the story about the evangelization of the people in the region of Armenia by St. Mesrop Mashtots. St. Mesrop Mashtots’ true mission was an evangelical mission. His only purpose was not to just translate the Bible by inventing the Armenian alphabet, but having done that, that was a means to another end. And that end was to spread the good news, to spread the gospel to not just the people in Armenia, but to everybody around Armenia at that time. And he went into the regions that we know today as Georgia and Azerbaijan and in all of these areas. And he sought to share with them the good news. They had a very real concern at that time. And the concern was, shall we go and preach the gospel to people that cannot live according to it? They had to ask that question. If I go into this or that village and I tell this person about the gospel, but their community, their support group, their culture, etc., cannot sustain that person’s life living according to the gospel, then have I done something to that person to hold them accountable to what they have learned about the nature of God, the Holy Trinity and Jesus Christ in such a way that they can’t uphold those teachings? Maybe it would be better that they didn’t know it at all. These are the sorts of questions that they had to ask themselves at that time.

Now, for most people in the world today, this is not an issue that we need to be concerned about. We need to ask ourselves, if I learn about the gospel, do I have the freedom? Do I have the opportunity, the resources? Do I have everything in my life that I need so that I could live according to the gospel? And for some people, the answer may be more of a yes, but at a certain minimum threshold, the answer for all of us is going to be yes. And so when we consider what Christ is teaching us about the nature of blindness and sight, then everybody in this room today is somebody who has been blessed with sight, but also is held accountable according to that sight. This blessing is at the same time a yoke that we bear because we have to live according to that. We know this truth, and it’s not easy.

The church exists, the body of Christ exists. This service and everything that’s a part of this experience exists to support and uphold you in having to bear that burden of knowing the truth of Jesus Christ and recognizing that what He says is that He came for judgment into this world. This is not meant to scare anybody, but it’s meant to take very seriously that which He came here to teach us. It means something. It’s important. It has an impact on my eternal life and on yours. And so my prayer today, especially as we’re living in preparation for the Feast of Pentecost, which is coming up, is let us not hide from the truth. Let us not pretend that we’re blind when we aren’t and realize that the truth is made available to us and our eyes have been opened. Let’s celebrate that and ask ourselves, what can we do in our daily lives so that we can live according to that truth that has been revealed to us?

As the passage goes on, He speaks about His flock, His sheep, His people, and that when His people hear His voice, they will recognize Him, speaking of a different sense, the sense of hearing. And so it’s a reminder that every aspect of this experience that we have in life is one that is training us to see, to hear, to taste, as we did today in the Divine Liturgy, to know, to touch God Himself in this brief time that we have in this world so that we will recognize Him when He calls us to Him. Amen.

Today, as I mentioned earlier in our service, is a sacred music day, which means we’re going to learn more about one of our hymns. And this is one of my favorites, and I hope that it is one that you love as well. We’re going to go over some of the information that we prepared for you about the hymn known as Soorp Soorp. This is the third time we’re doing this. We’ve also reviewed the hymns Soorp Asdvadz and Der Voghormya. And what you’re going to find as we go throughout the year is that each and every one of the hymns that we sing throughout the Divine Liturgy is a treasure trove of biblical, theological, historical, and cultural information about the experience of the Armenian Church.

The word soorp in Armenian means holy. No surprise to anybody, and we did cover this when we studied Soorp Asdvadz together. But the word holy and the connotation of the use of the word soorp in the Armenian language implies a cleanliness, having been cleansed, having been wiped. Soorpel means to clean or to wipe. And when we’re baptized, we believe that our sins have been soorpeveld. They’ve been wiped away from our lives. So to be holy, to be soorp, is to be on some sort of spectrum or gradient of cleanliness. Maybe I am not as soorp as you are, and definitely there are many saints that are more soorp than any of us. We can’t know, but this is on a spectrum, as I said.

However, at the beginning of this hymn, we say soorp, soorp, soorp, holy, holy, holy, and we’ll get into where that comes from. But the first thing that I want to impress upon you is that any time you encounter a three in the church, it’s meant to be one of completeness. So whenever we do something three times, that’s numerologically symbolizing the completeness of something. It is totally full. It’s as complete as it can be in its character. And in this case, we’re talking about holiness. And what is so perfectly and completely holy and clean, that is the Lord of Hosts. Hosts refers to angels in this case. A host is a big group of people. Hosts can refer to a host of soldiers and things like this. A Lord of Hosts is a Lord of all of the angels, and so holy is He. Heaven and earth are full of Your glory. Blessing in the highest. Blessed art Thou that didst come and art to come in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Now, one thing that we need to acknowledge right out of the gate is we didn’t write these words. There wasn’t somebody two thousand years ago that sat down and said, “What would be some nice lyrics for a hymn?” These sound good. That never happened because the lyrics for this hymn are biblical quotations. They come from the prophecy of Isaiah, who had revealed to him the way that the angels worship God in heaven. And we read in the prophecy of Isaiah that the angels sing this very same song, “Soorp, Soorp, Soorp. Der Zorutian.” Holy, holy, holy. Lord of hosts, heaven and earth are full of your glory. “Li an yergin kev yergir paro ko.” These words come directly from the Bible, from the prophecy of Isaiah. In other words, from the revelation of God revealing the way that the angels themselves worship. Furthermore, the text of the hymn comes from the Revelation of John, from the Book of Revelation, where it speaks to the way that these angels are gathered around the Lord and worshiping using this revealed hymn that we are a part of.

This hymn is a universal hymn. That is to say that in every traditional church, there is a form of this hymn. Just like we talked about with Soorp Asdvadz, it’s called Trisagion, which is a Greek word which means the thrice holy. That’s the hymn that we sing during the first part of the Divine Liturgy. This is called the Sanctus. In this case, it’s generally referred to by a Latin name. However, again, it is something that in one form or another is sung in every single traditional church, including the Armenian Apostolic Church, which means it all comes from the original liturgical schools. It comes from Antioch and Jerusalem, meaning from the very beginning of Christianity, this hymn was sung during the liturgy that we call the Eucharist.

So in every church, this is a part of something that we call the Anaphora. Anaphora is like a special formula of prayer that helps get us ready to experience the Eucharist. It’s what we have to do before we can say that we have participated in the sacrament of the Eucharist or receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ. If those of you who were here earlier in the liturgy, and I asked you to pay special attention to what’s going on, I said just before we’re going to sing Soorp Soorp, we called upon God, and we thanked Him for giving us the blessing to be able to dance with the angels. That’s literally what the Armenian text says. You have graced us with the opportunity, for us earthly creatures, to dance with the heavenly.

And so what’s happening at this moment in the Divine Liturgy is something so beautiful and so profound. On an emotional and spiritual level, in many ways, when we sing Soorp Soorp, this is a climax of the Divine Liturgy. It’s not the climax in the sense that it happens at the end, but it is a moment in time when the most profound thing begins to take place in the experience that we call Soorp Badarak. Because it’s just after this time that we do the words of institution. We begin to reenact and experience the Last Supper. That’s what happens right after we begin this hymn.

So what’s happening is, if we can think and imagine it about this way, and this also resonates with today’s reading from the Gospel, the beginning of the Badarak is like knocking on a door. We have the liturgy of the word. We’re preparing ourselves. We’re reading from the Bible. We’re proclaiming our creed of faith. We’re doing all of these things. We’re getting ourselves ready. And then the time for the Verehr comes around, and this is when we’re getting ready to knock on the door. We’re knocking on the door. We’re saying, “Okay, can you please let us in now?” Because you said that we could be together when we have this experience. So now we’re knocking on the door. And then the Verehr happens, the chalice is brought around, and it’s presented. And so now we’re waiting for that door to open up. We sing Kristos I Mech at that moment in time. The door is opened. Christ is in our midst, and He’s welcoming us inside.

But when we cross that threshold, when we actually find ourselves, spiritually speaking, in a different state, is at this moment in time in the liturgy. We can imagine that the door is open and the walls have faded, and now there’s nothing separating us from heaven. Because as we sing Soorp, Soorp, Soorp, we are singing along with the angels themselves that are worshiping God with us. This is a transformative experience. This is why it’s a climax. We spend the rest of this service in the presence of heaven, and heaven is in our midst as well. This is the sacrament of the Eucharist as it’s unfolding before us.

What’s interesting about this is that the Armenian Church, as I said, even though this is a universal hymn, has a couple unique characteristics. The first is in the general form of this hymn, Christ is spoken about in the third person. If we look at the English translation on the first page, instead of saying, “Blessed art Thou that didst come and art to come in the name of the Lord,” the general form or the universal form of this hymn is, “Blessed is He who did come and shall come in the name of the Lord.” So instead of speaking with Christ, we’re speaking about Christ. In the Armenian form, we’re speaking to Him. We say, “Blessed are You.”

And then the other difference is the addition of the term “and art to come in the name of the Lord,” and art to come. This particular part of the passage comes from Palm Sunday. This is what we proclaim to each other when Christ comes into the city of Jerusalem. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” The one who’s going to save, the one who saves us is coming. And so this is the other part of the Bible that’s referenced here, quoted from Palm Sunday itself. However, we’ve modified it slightly. Instead of saying, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” we’re saying, “Blessed is he who came in the name of the Lord and will come in the name of the Lord.” And so our church fathers felt like it was exceptionally important for us to talk about the second coming of Jesus Christ in this passage. He will come again. Not only was He incarnated and has come, but He will come again, and this is emphasized in the Armenian version of this passage.

And then, of course, “Hosanna in the highest.” Now, what happens right after this? What happens right after this is we hold up the nshkhar, the Eucharistic wafer, and we begin to experience the Last Supper in the midst of the Divine Liturgy. So not only has Christ come in the past, and not only will He come again, but hosanna in the highest, Christ is here right now. There’s a little tiny Palm Sunday that’s happening the minute that this song is being sung. Christ is here, and we’re welcoming Him in our midst. We’re celebrating Him just as when He entered into the city of Jerusalem, and just as we will when He comes again.