A Way Of Seeing
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
Remember your childhood suspicion that both your mother and your teacher had eyes in the back of their heads? As you got older, you realized it wasn't literally true, but it was a way of describing their awareness of what you were doing. Well now, we are coming to a place where it could be a much more literal statement. In fact, they could even have eyes in the back of their mouths.
There have been some interesting developments in the field of perception, spurred in part by research to help the blind, but also by a need to help people who have so much to see that their eyes cannot take it all in -- aircraft pilots, for example. As aviation technology has evolved, cockpits have filled up with many new instruments, to the point that in some flight applications, pilots have so much to keep track of that they are visually overwhelmed. The visual workload has gotten so high that there has been an increase in the number of human factor-related mishaps.
One way to solve that, however, is to feed some of that information to the brain through paths other than the eyes. As far as anatomy is concerned, the eyes are merely input devices that feed data to the brain, but there are other ways that the brain perceives information, as well. You know that cookie you ate the other day tasted good not because your eyes passed that news along, but because your tongue did. In the words of Paul Bach-y-Rita, professor of rehabilitation medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, "A nerve spike is a nerve spike. The brain doesn't give a d___ where the information is coming from."
The latest technology Bach-y-Rita has been working on sends information besides the usual taste and texture stuff through the tongue to the brain. The device consists of a video camera worn on a strap on the forehead. That camera converts images to pixels and sends them to a small box called a "Tactile Display Unit," which also is attached to the forehead strap. That unit converts the pixels to electrical impulses that flow down a wire inserted into the mouth, and tingle the tongue. From there, the tongue's natural sensors carry the image to the brain. This device is still in a primitive stage, but in lab tests, blind people using it have been able to "recognize letters, catch rolling balls, and watch candles flicker for the first time."1
And you see, it doesn't matter where that video camera is placed. You could wear it backward and have eyes in the back of your head, or you could place in on the tail of an aircraft and "see" other planes approaching from behind.
What I want to talk about is a different way of seeing. In some sense, that has been a major theme behind all my sermons. I've no doubt even stated it directly in a sermon or two, but going on the assumption that a crucial point bears repeating, I want to say it again, and illustrate it with some examples.
Now to say that I can even sum up several years of sermons in one makes me sound a lot more organized than I am. I did not arrive here with a 3 x 5 card in my pocket with that theme written on it. I had no notebook or computer flow chart with a plan worked out for how to present it. Nothing nearly that planned took place. But as I look back over some of the things that have reoccurred in my sermons, I see that I have promoted one major theme as a foundation for the other things I've said.
That overall theme is that religious faith is a different but valid way of seeing the world and life. For example, I have preached previously from Hebrews 11. That is a passage commonly referred to as the "faith chapter," but as I read it, it often strikes me that it is really about "seeing" something that not everyone sees. In the first verse of Hebrews 11, the author says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." He then points out Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and others as examples of people of faith. Of them, the Hebrews writer says, "All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them" (Hebrews 11:13).
In faith, we, too, believe that God is real even though we cannot see him. We believe that God "rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6) even when that reward is not apparent at present. In other words, faith is not some mustered up belief or desperately held position. It is a way of seeing. When we apply the Christian faith to the world we live in, we could say that faith does not change the facts about the world, but it does change the conclusions we draw about those facts.
For example, two people can look at the same facts and arrive at opposite conclusions. If two people visit a hospital that treats those with serious crippling injuries, they will both see patients with missing limbs, patients in great pain, and patients suffering other ways. One might look at all of this and conclude that the world is a mess and life is a nasty joke. He might even decide not to allow himself to care too much for anyone because of the possibility of pain when a loved one suffers.
The other person might see in all of this the incredible courage and resilience of the sufferers and decide that the illnesses are an outrage precisely because God's gift of life is so good.
From another church I served, I took a work team to the mountains of eastern Kentucky to help build homes for low-income families. Back in one of the "hollars," I met a woman named Edna. She was a poorly educated backwoods woman who had been impoverished all her life. But she was rich in faith. She told me about another woman, a friend of hers, who recently separated from an abusive husband. The woman was angry and bitter at God. Then Edna told me that she'd had a similarly unhappy marriage and had left her husband. But the effect of that for her was different than from her friend. "It drives me to hold on tighter to God," she said. "I need it to help me get through this."
In our reading from Genesis, Hagar is the wronged woman. She had borne Abraham a son. Hagar was the maid of Sarah, Abraham's wife, but because Sarah was childless, she had encouraged Abraham to produce an heir with Hagar. Yet, once her own son was born, Sarah became jealous of Hagar and demanded that her husband send Hagar and her son, Ishmael, away. Abraham does this, and Hagar and Ishmael were banished into the desert, where, they were soon lost and out of water. Eventually, Ishmael was at the point of dying of thirst. Hagar put him down under a bush, turned away, and began to weep. God heard her, and, "God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled her bottle, and gave the boy to drink."
God did not perform a miracle for Hagar in the usual sense of the word. He did not create new resources that were not already there on the scene. Rather, he opened her eyes so that she saw the well that she had not seen before. When that happened, the same environment that had looked so hopeless and barren to her was now seen as a life-sustaining place. The well had been there all along, and the place had never been as "godforsaken" as she had thought. But until God opened her eyes, Hagar missed all of that.
The last church I served included some farmers in the congregation. In 1988, that part of Ohio suffered a drought, and those farmers watched their fields dry up and their crops die. That was their livelihood, of course, but I was impressed that they did not stop attending church and they continued to put money in the offering plate. A cynic might look at that fact and say, "Well, the farmers don't want to offend God and cause him to withhold more rain." But I looked at the same facts and concluded, "Look at their remarkable faith. They know that whether it rains or not, God is with them."
I was able to say that because faith shapes how I see the world. During that 1988 drought, I preached a sermon where I stated plainly how I see things. The sermon was based on a drought story from the Old Testament, where Elijah the prophet challenged the prophets of the false god Baal to bring rain, something they were unable to do. Then Elijah prayed, and the rains came (1 Kings 18). Here is something from that sermon:
But like Elijah we need to hold on to our belief in God's goodness. God will again send the rain on our land. We will continue to pray for it. Perhaps it is already too late for this year's crop, and we need to be ready to care for the farmers and others who will be most directly hurt by this dry summer. We need to find ways to do that even while we maintain our faith in the goodness and providential care of God.But like Elijah we need to hold on to our belief in God’s goodness. God will again send the rain on our land. We will continue to pray for it. Perhaps it is already too late for this year’s crop, and we need to be ready to care for the farmers and others who will be most directly hurt by this dry summer. We need to find ways to do that even while we maintain our faith in the goodness and providential care of God.
To repeat, religious faith is a way of seeing the world and life. That above all, is why I remain a Christian, for Christianity helps me to interpret life with a sense that it is good and that despite the pain and hurt of our world, it will come out right in the end.
In his classic book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, writes of "once-born" and "twice-born" people. This is not the same as what we mean when we say "born again." The once-born people are those who move through live without ever experiencing anything that seriously challenges their faith, nothing that causes them to say, "What I was taught was true about my religion is a lie." They may have some problems, but nothing that causes them to essentially think of God differently from when they were children.
Twice-born people, on the other hand, are those who have experienced some faith-shattering event or challenge, and have lost their faith. Then, they have eventually found their way to a more mature, tried-by-fire faith. It is a less simplistic God they now envision, but one who helps them through the storms of life. They have, in short, learned to see the world differently.
To the eyes of such faith, another reality can be perceived behind the pain and trouble of the present time. We can see God at work and his grace in effect.
Christian faith is a way of seeing the world through more than just our eyes. Or to say it differently, it is having eyes in the back of our mind, in the front of our heart, in the depths of our spirits, in the palms of our hands, and in the soles of our feet. It is a way of seeing God in the world. Like the grandfather who took his grandson fishing, and while they were sitting together on the bank, the boy asked, "Grandpa, can anyone see God?" The old man answered, "Sometimes I think I never see anything else." Or, in the words of the priest in the novel, The Diary of a Country Priest,2 "Grace is everywhere."
As the author of Hebrews says, "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible." That's clear statement about faith-seeing from someone with twice-born faith. Amen.
____________
1. Michael Abrams, "Eyes in the Back of Your Mouth," Wired, December 2002, p. 46.
2. By George Bernanos, 1937.
There have been some interesting developments in the field of perception, spurred in part by research to help the blind, but also by a need to help people who have so much to see that their eyes cannot take it all in -- aircraft pilots, for example. As aviation technology has evolved, cockpits have filled up with many new instruments, to the point that in some flight applications, pilots have so much to keep track of that they are visually overwhelmed. The visual workload has gotten so high that there has been an increase in the number of human factor-related mishaps.
One way to solve that, however, is to feed some of that information to the brain through paths other than the eyes. As far as anatomy is concerned, the eyes are merely input devices that feed data to the brain, but there are other ways that the brain perceives information, as well. You know that cookie you ate the other day tasted good not because your eyes passed that news along, but because your tongue did. In the words of Paul Bach-y-Rita, professor of rehabilitation medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin, "A nerve spike is a nerve spike. The brain doesn't give a d___ where the information is coming from."
The latest technology Bach-y-Rita has been working on sends information besides the usual taste and texture stuff through the tongue to the brain. The device consists of a video camera worn on a strap on the forehead. That camera converts images to pixels and sends them to a small box called a "Tactile Display Unit," which also is attached to the forehead strap. That unit converts the pixels to electrical impulses that flow down a wire inserted into the mouth, and tingle the tongue. From there, the tongue's natural sensors carry the image to the brain. This device is still in a primitive stage, but in lab tests, blind people using it have been able to "recognize letters, catch rolling balls, and watch candles flicker for the first time."1
And you see, it doesn't matter where that video camera is placed. You could wear it backward and have eyes in the back of your head, or you could place in on the tail of an aircraft and "see" other planes approaching from behind.
What I want to talk about is a different way of seeing. In some sense, that has been a major theme behind all my sermons. I've no doubt even stated it directly in a sermon or two, but going on the assumption that a crucial point bears repeating, I want to say it again, and illustrate it with some examples.
Now to say that I can even sum up several years of sermons in one makes me sound a lot more organized than I am. I did not arrive here with a 3 x 5 card in my pocket with that theme written on it. I had no notebook or computer flow chart with a plan worked out for how to present it. Nothing nearly that planned took place. But as I look back over some of the things that have reoccurred in my sermons, I see that I have promoted one major theme as a foundation for the other things I've said.
That overall theme is that religious faith is a different but valid way of seeing the world and life. For example, I have preached previously from Hebrews 11. That is a passage commonly referred to as the "faith chapter," but as I read it, it often strikes me that it is really about "seeing" something that not everyone sees. In the first verse of Hebrews 11, the author says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." He then points out Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and others as examples of people of faith. Of them, the Hebrews writer says, "All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them" (Hebrews 11:13).
In faith, we, too, believe that God is real even though we cannot see him. We believe that God "rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6) even when that reward is not apparent at present. In other words, faith is not some mustered up belief or desperately held position. It is a way of seeing. When we apply the Christian faith to the world we live in, we could say that faith does not change the facts about the world, but it does change the conclusions we draw about those facts.
For example, two people can look at the same facts and arrive at opposite conclusions. If two people visit a hospital that treats those with serious crippling injuries, they will both see patients with missing limbs, patients in great pain, and patients suffering other ways. One might look at all of this and conclude that the world is a mess and life is a nasty joke. He might even decide not to allow himself to care too much for anyone because of the possibility of pain when a loved one suffers.
The other person might see in all of this the incredible courage and resilience of the sufferers and decide that the illnesses are an outrage precisely because God's gift of life is so good.
From another church I served, I took a work team to the mountains of eastern Kentucky to help build homes for low-income families. Back in one of the "hollars," I met a woman named Edna. She was a poorly educated backwoods woman who had been impoverished all her life. But she was rich in faith. She told me about another woman, a friend of hers, who recently separated from an abusive husband. The woman was angry and bitter at God. Then Edna told me that she'd had a similarly unhappy marriage and had left her husband. But the effect of that for her was different than from her friend. "It drives me to hold on tighter to God," she said. "I need it to help me get through this."
In our reading from Genesis, Hagar is the wronged woman. She had borne Abraham a son. Hagar was the maid of Sarah, Abraham's wife, but because Sarah was childless, she had encouraged Abraham to produce an heir with Hagar. Yet, once her own son was born, Sarah became jealous of Hagar and demanded that her husband send Hagar and her son, Ishmael, away. Abraham does this, and Hagar and Ishmael were banished into the desert, where, they were soon lost and out of water. Eventually, Ishmael was at the point of dying of thirst. Hagar put him down under a bush, turned away, and began to weep. God heard her, and, "God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled her bottle, and gave the boy to drink."
God did not perform a miracle for Hagar in the usual sense of the word. He did not create new resources that were not already there on the scene. Rather, he opened her eyes so that she saw the well that she had not seen before. When that happened, the same environment that had looked so hopeless and barren to her was now seen as a life-sustaining place. The well had been there all along, and the place had never been as "godforsaken" as she had thought. But until God opened her eyes, Hagar missed all of that.
The last church I served included some farmers in the congregation. In 1988, that part of Ohio suffered a drought, and those farmers watched their fields dry up and their crops die. That was their livelihood, of course, but I was impressed that they did not stop attending church and they continued to put money in the offering plate. A cynic might look at that fact and say, "Well, the farmers don't want to offend God and cause him to withhold more rain." But I looked at the same facts and concluded, "Look at their remarkable faith. They know that whether it rains or not, God is with them."
I was able to say that because faith shapes how I see the world. During that 1988 drought, I preached a sermon where I stated plainly how I see things. The sermon was based on a drought story from the Old Testament, where Elijah the prophet challenged the prophets of the false god Baal to bring rain, something they were unable to do. Then Elijah prayed, and the rains came (1 Kings 18). Here is something from that sermon:
But like Elijah we need to hold on to our belief in God's goodness. God will again send the rain on our land. We will continue to pray for it. Perhaps it is already too late for this year's crop, and we need to be ready to care for the farmers and others who will be most directly hurt by this dry summer. We need to find ways to do that even while we maintain our faith in the goodness and providential care of God.But like Elijah we need to hold on to our belief in God’s goodness. God will again send the rain on our land. We will continue to pray for it. Perhaps it is already too late for this year’s crop, and we need to be ready to care for the farmers and others who will be most directly hurt by this dry summer. We need to find ways to do that even while we maintain our faith in the goodness and providential care of God.
To repeat, religious faith is a way of seeing the world and life. That above all, is why I remain a Christian, for Christianity helps me to interpret life with a sense that it is good and that despite the pain and hurt of our world, it will come out right in the end.
In his classic book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, writes of "once-born" and "twice-born" people. This is not the same as what we mean when we say "born again." The once-born people are those who move through live without ever experiencing anything that seriously challenges their faith, nothing that causes them to say, "What I was taught was true about my religion is a lie." They may have some problems, but nothing that causes them to essentially think of God differently from when they were children.
Twice-born people, on the other hand, are those who have experienced some faith-shattering event or challenge, and have lost their faith. Then, they have eventually found their way to a more mature, tried-by-fire faith. It is a less simplistic God they now envision, but one who helps them through the storms of life. They have, in short, learned to see the world differently.
To the eyes of such faith, another reality can be perceived behind the pain and trouble of the present time. We can see God at work and his grace in effect.
Christian faith is a way of seeing the world through more than just our eyes. Or to say it differently, it is having eyes in the back of our mind, in the front of our heart, in the depths of our spirits, in the palms of our hands, and in the soles of our feet. It is a way of seeing God in the world. Like the grandfather who took his grandson fishing, and while they were sitting together on the bank, the boy asked, "Grandpa, can anyone see God?" The old man answered, "Sometimes I think I never see anything else." Or, in the words of the priest in the novel, The Diary of a Country Priest,2 "Grace is everywhere."
As the author of Hebrews says, "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible." That's clear statement about faith-seeing from someone with twice-born faith. Amen.
____________
1. Michael Abrams, "Eyes in the Back of Your Mouth," Wired, December 2002, p. 46.
2. By George Bernanos, 1937.
