Lessons:
Psalm 23
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41
Have
you had the experience of losing something, looking high and low for it, and
then finding it in the very first place you looked, right where you left it?
This happens so much at my house that my husband calls it "front of the
shelf syndrome." We think it’s
interesting that I can find his lost items much more easily than I can find my
own--and vice versa. I believe
this says a lot about selective seeing.
I don't think "selective seeing" is the kind of seeing Jesus
wants from us. In fact, selective
seeing is a kind of half-blindness. There is enough light to see by, but our eyes are doing their
own thing.
Please
imagine for a moment what true darkness was like in the Palestine that Jesus
knew. We live surrounded by so much
artificial light that it can be difficult to ponder how very dark it must have
been in the evenings of Jesus's childhood, especially in the winter when days
were short. Darkness must have
felt almost palpable to people who lived in ancient times. How splendid that the birth of the
infant Jesus was heralded by a brilliant star! It should not surprise us that this infant would grow up to
be called "the light of the world." In the world we've come to know as Jesus's world,
circumscribed by a very few miles and revealed to us by the stories of his
travels and his works, who are the ones that see by his light?
Images
of light and seeing and their opposites, those of darkness and blindness,
pervade not only today's lessons, but many other verses in scripture as
well. Sometimes the words of
Jesus, couched in metaphor or parable, can seem inscrutable, but one thing is
clear: the kind of seeing presented in scripture isn't just about the use of
one's eyes, and those who are blind are not necessarily suffering from loss of
physical vision.
In
today's gospel lesson from John, the man born blind becomes a seer, while the
Pharisees, caught up in their rigid rules and outward righteousness, are
unwilling to see the great healing miracle before their eyes. The Pharisees
choose to be blind to the truth when it is not the truth they prefer. Selective seeing…
We
can certainly find other gospel stories to illustrate the way the Lord chooses
to see and would have us see. Here
are opposite examples of selective seeing in one famous parable. A
priest and a Levite hurry past a gravely wounded man, robbed, beaten, and left
for dead by the side of the road.
Their self-importance blinds them to his great need, and they choose to
ignore him, but a Samaritan sees the wounded man with the eyes of his heart,
and that Samaritan does all he can to help him. We could also say that the Lord
sees with the eyes of the heart. Jesus wants us to see with compassion, to put
our own hearts in contact with the hearts of others, the ones we encounter who
need our care.
When
I pass by a homeless person standing by a stop sign and asking for a handout, I
sometimes catch myself thinking unkind thoughts about him—a way of making
excuses for why I don’t stop my car and offer real help, a way of choosing not
to see him. Since we humans more often behave like the Pharisees and the priest
and Levite than like the Samaritan, Jesus actually says very clearly in one
passage what kind of seeing he expects from us: "How can you say to your neighbor, 'Friend, let me take
the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log
in your own eye?" Isn't this
an interesting way to say that we are much more likely to find fault with
others than with ourselves? By using the eyes as the central image,
Jesus asks us to consider observing ourselves more closely than we observe
others. He asks us to turn a light
on the glaring faults within ourselves rather than so willingly seeing the
minor faults of others and criticizing them. Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Jesus says much the same when he asks
us to recognize our blind and unloving spots.
In
his letter to the community at Ephesus, Paul writes that Jesus is the light of
the world and that he has come to free us from all darkness--from the darkness
of despair, the darkness of poverty and hunger, the darkness of danger and
oppression, the darkness of injury and illness. When we ourselves choose, as
the priest and the Levite did, to be blind to the needs of those around us, we
are shutting out the light. The light of Jesus is the light of love, and it
dispels the darkness. As Paul so beautifully puts it, "Once you were
darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light, for the
fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true."
"All
that is good and right and true...” Aren’t those words simply beautiful? There
is nothing inconsequential in God’s creation, nothing outside the attention of
a loving God. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 10, “Are not two sparrows sold for a
penny? Yet not one of them will
fall to the ground apart from the Father.” We humans may devalue many of God’s
creatures, not seeing their worth, but we are told the hairs on our head are
numbered and God’s eye is on the sparrow.
This kind of love, which expresses itself as protective tenderness, is
also described in Jesus’s parable about the lost sheep: “If a shepherd has a
hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the
ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And
if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the
ninety-nine that never went astray.”
(Matthew 18:12-13)
For Jesus, seeing is not just passive; it involves active looking and
finding. If we are the lost sheep,
then we certainly have done nothing to earn that persistent seeking of the
Lord. We are just muddling through life as best we can, wandering wide of the
mark on most days, and yet the Lord seeks us out and returns us to His gracious
protection. His is “selective seeing” of an entirely different order of
magnitude!
Sometimes
for us, the issue is more about blindness than seeing, about what we can’t
see rather than what we don’t see.
Thankfully, we have the apostle Thomas to be our test case. He, of course,
hears from his fellow apostles about the appearance of the Risen Lord, and
since Thomas hasn’t been present when the Lord has appeared, he says he won’t
believe the Lord is risen until he sees the nail-scarred hands. I’ve never been sure it is fair to call
Thomas “doubting.” His question is
one any reasonable person might ask, and because he asks the question, he gets
a direct response from Jesus:
“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who
believe without seeing me.” (John 20:29)
That
blessing brings two things to mind. One is that faith itself is a blessing, and
the interaction between Thomas and Jesus underscores the way we receive the
gift of faith. We may not see the
pierced, resurrected body of Christ in the same way Thomas saw him, but we do
see Jesus every day of our lives, if we look for him. We see him in the faces of those who need us, in the eyes of
those who seek us, in the hearts of those we love. As Psalm 23 so beautifully reminds us, the Lord is our
shepherd, and he is always near.
Psalm 23 Page 612, BCP
Dominus regit me
1
The LORD is my shepherd; *
I shall not be in want.
2
He makes me lie down in green pastures *
and leads me beside still waters.
3
He revives my soul *
and guides me along right pathways for his Name's
sake.
4
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death,
I shall fear no evil; *
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
5
You spread a table before me in the presence of those
who trouble me; *
you have anointed my head with oil,
and my cup is running over.
6
Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days
of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
AMEN.
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