New Eyes
Last week, Pastor Johnson suggested that Jesus hands out “invisibility glasses” … if you’re willing to take them and put them on; Glasses that allow us to see “the marginal ones” who really need our help. This week, the message seemed to continue; That when we don the glasses, it is Jesus who is revealed to us through service to those less fortunate than ourselves. Last week I mentioned a quote from Mother Theresa that really probably is better said here:
“The dying, the crippled, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved, they are Jesus in disguise.”
Pastor Johnson reminds us that Christ is CONSTANTLY being revealed to us, like layers upon layers of paint upon a canvas. There’s always something to be found “just underneath the surface”. And, at moments when He is revealed, you FEEL the ENERGY!
He seemed to build on a theme from his sermon last year on The Transfiguration; That it is two-fold in nature: there is the mountaintop experience and then that which happens when we “come down from the mountaintop”. The former is a good thought-provoking phenomenon. When is God revealed to you? Where have you experienced “mountaintop experiences”? Pastor Johnson shared that confirmation students confided these often occurred “away from home and the Monday-to-Friday routines”. We are imminently capable of sweeping many a magical moment under the rug of a scheduled life. Often it is our children who save us from this by “peeling us away”. Pastor Johnson once shared a story with us about going out onto 68th Street in Wauwatosa just after a snowstorm to just “revel in the view” with Hannah and Caleb. I gave my wife, Laurna, a Valentine card this week that simply said:
“The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow; but the rainbow will not wait while you do the work”
The rabbi Harold Kushner wrote about the Jewish celebration of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles:
“We celebrate Sukkot by building a small annex onto our houses, just a few boards and branches, inviting friends in, and drinking wine and eating fruit in it for a week. Sukkot is a celebration of the beauty of things that will not last, the little hut which is so vulnerable to wind and rain (and will regularly collapse a day or two after we put it up); the ripe fruits that will spoil if not picked and eaten right away; the friends who may not be with us as long as we would wish …. Sukkot comes in the fall, the evenings already chilly with the first whispers of winter. It comes to tell us that the world is full of good and beautiful things, food and wine, flowers and sunsets, and good company to share them with, but we have to enjoy them right away because they will not last …… not despite the fact that life does not go on forever, but precisely because of that fact.”
Mountaintop experiences can often occur in reveling in the simple and the ordinary or in escaping our day planner long enough to smell the roses of “being with Dad away from his work”, reading a book with no phone or email beeping in the background, escaping “the noise” of the modern world that bombards us with stimuli at every turn. The message IS about the mountain top, for sure, an idyllic moment, a place where all is somehow revealed in the eye or the simple request of a child, the roar of a waterfall, the impenetrable moment of an iridescent sunset.
But it’s also about “coming down from the mountaintop”. It’s about returning to the grind of the Monday-to-Friday. And the challenge Pastor Johnson reminds us is to “look for Christ revealed in the ordinary everyday”. He’s there also. He reminded us that everyone of us will meet Christ “on the street” this week. It’s too easy, as Pastor Johnson points out, in THAT world to get so tired and bogged down. Even the disciples, in their fatigue, could “not see”. We’ve all been there; many of us are there right now. And when disciples are tired, the invisibility glasses might not work so well. Even amidst the clouds and lightning of a transfiguring event! Actually, there’s nothing wrong with the glasses. We need to guard our energy so the glasses will continue to work.
Robert Fulghum tells a great story about a couple about to get married. He says that months before the wedding, they sit around a kitchen sink doing dishes, talking about the enormous responsibility it means to have children, about caring for each other into their elderly years, about where their boundaries will be as partners in a lifelong relationship. Years later comes a ceremony with a lot of ritual and fanfare, but, he cautions young couples:
“ …. .pay attention as you wash those dishes and talk with each other. You wouldn’t want to miss your own wedding.”
He craftily points out that, perhaps in God’s eyes, that wedding, in fact, takes place at that kitchen sink …. long before the ceremony in a Church or elsewhere. God is revealed “in the ordinary” if you have the eyes to see. Proust said:
“The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
New eyes for the happenings of Monday-to-Friday. Christ will continually be revealed to you this week. But the questions beckons: “Will you have the eyes to see Him?” We all have transfiguration through the Holy Spirit. It is in handing a roll to someone at the Rescue Mission, a hand that is warm for the first time that day. It is in the common moment, when we feel we have already come down the mountain to the valley, …. It’s then that we may be most at the mountaintop!
Pay attention, put on your glasses, listen. Often the REAL wedding occurs at the kitchen sink and the kitchen counter at the Rescue Mission is where Jesus is waiting for us to meet Him. Talk about Topsy Turvy!?
Last week, Pastor Johnson suggested that Jesus hands out “invisibility glasses” … if you’re willing to take them and put them on; Glasses that allow us to see “the marginal ones” who really need our help. This week, the message seemed to continue; That when we don the glasses, it is Jesus who is revealed to us through service to those less fortunate than ourselves. Last week I mentioned a quote from Mother Theresa that really probably is better said here:
“The dying, the crippled, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved, they are Jesus in disguise.”
Pastor Johnson reminds us that Christ is CONSTANTLY being revealed to us, like layers upon layers of paint upon a canvas. There’s always something to be found “just underneath the surface”. And, at moments when He is revealed, you FEEL the ENERGY!
He seemed to build on a theme from his sermon last year on The Transfiguration; That it is two-fold in nature: there is the mountaintop experience and then that which happens when we “come down from the mountaintop”. The former is a good thought-provoking phenomenon. When is God revealed to you? Where have you experienced “mountaintop experiences”? Pastor Johnson shared that confirmation students confided these often occurred “away from home and the Monday-to-Friday routines”. We are imminently capable of sweeping many a magical moment under the rug of a scheduled life. Often it is our children who save us from this by “peeling us away”. Pastor Johnson once shared a story with us about going out onto 68th Street in Wauwatosa just after a snowstorm to just “revel in the view” with Hannah and Caleb. I gave my wife, Laurna, a Valentine card this week that simply said:
“The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow; but the rainbow will not wait while you do the work”
The rabbi Harold Kushner wrote about the Jewish celebration of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles:
“We celebrate Sukkot by building a small annex onto our houses, just a few boards and branches, inviting friends in, and drinking wine and eating fruit in it for a week. Sukkot is a celebration of the beauty of things that will not last, the little hut which is so vulnerable to wind and rain (and will regularly collapse a day or two after we put it up); the ripe fruits that will spoil if not picked and eaten right away; the friends who may not be with us as long as we would wish …. Sukkot comes in the fall, the evenings already chilly with the first whispers of winter. It comes to tell us that the world is full of good and beautiful things, food and wine, flowers and sunsets, and good company to share them with, but we have to enjoy them right away because they will not last …… not despite the fact that life does not go on forever, but precisely because of that fact.”
Mountaintop experiences can often occur in reveling in the simple and the ordinary or in escaping our day planner long enough to smell the roses of “being with Dad away from his work”, reading a book with no phone or email beeping in the background, escaping “the noise” of the modern world that bombards us with stimuli at every turn. The message IS about the mountain top, for sure, an idyllic moment, a place where all is somehow revealed in the eye or the simple request of a child, the roar of a waterfall, the impenetrable moment of an iridescent sunset.
But it’s also about “coming down from the mountaintop”. It’s about returning to the grind of the Monday-to-Friday. And the challenge Pastor Johnson reminds us is to “look for Christ revealed in the ordinary everyday”. He’s there also. He reminded us that everyone of us will meet Christ “on the street” this week. It’s too easy, as Pastor Johnson points out, in THAT world to get so tired and bogged down. Even the disciples, in their fatigue, could “not see”. We’ve all been there; many of us are there right now. And when disciples are tired, the invisibility glasses might not work so well. Even amidst the clouds and lightning of a transfiguring event! Actually, there’s nothing wrong with the glasses. We need to guard our energy so the glasses will continue to work.
Robert Fulghum tells a great story about a couple about to get married. He says that months before the wedding, they sit around a kitchen sink doing dishes, talking about the enormous responsibility it means to have children, about caring for each other into their elderly years, about where their boundaries will be as partners in a lifelong relationship. Years later comes a ceremony with a lot of ritual and fanfare, but, he cautions young couples:
“ …. .pay attention as you wash those dishes and talk with each other. You wouldn’t want to miss your own wedding.”
He craftily points out that, perhaps in God’s eyes, that wedding, in fact, takes place at that kitchen sink …. long before the ceremony in a Church or elsewhere. God is revealed “in the ordinary” if you have the eyes to see. Proust said:
“The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
New eyes for the happenings of Monday-to-Friday. Christ will continually be revealed to you this week. But the questions beckons: “Will you have the eyes to see Him?” We all have transfiguration through the Holy Spirit. It is in handing a roll to someone at the Rescue Mission, a hand that is warm for the first time that day. It is in the common moment, when we feel we have already come down the mountain to the valley, …. It’s then that we may be most at the mountaintop!
Pay attention, put on your glasses, listen. Often the REAL wedding occurs at the kitchen sink and the kitchen counter at the Rescue Mission is where Jesus is waiting for us to meet Him. Talk about Topsy Turvy!?
3 comments:
Thanks, Vince. What a great recap. I love the part about the wedding happening at the kitchen sink... Here's a thought/memory I had during the sermon, hearing Pastor repeat the refrain, "will we have eyes to see?": I remembered being at the baptism of one of my godchildren a number of years ago. The priest presiding was talking about how babies get that crusty stuff in their eyes, you know, we call it having "sleep" in your eyes... (a tangent - not only babies, right? :) ). He described how parents then have to take warm, wet washcloths and gently wipe the sleep away so the little ones can see. Then he went on to say that that's what the water of baptism was - the water that washed away the sleep from our eyes so that we would be able to more clearly see the love of God, the power of God, the presence of God all around us. I thought yesterday, after communion, as I walked away from the baptismal font, having dipped my fingers in the water, that I kind of wanted to rub my eyes with that water...
About another point in the text - and I'm wondering how/if you see this related to the whole mountain top/coming down from the mountain dynamic - when they come down from the mountain they encounter the guy whose child seizes with an unclean spirit but says the disciples "could not" cast it out...some verses earlier, at the beginning of chapter 9, Jesus had given them "power and authority" over demons and diseases. So, why couldn't the disciples cast it out?The last verse, after Jesus casts out the spirit, says "And all were astonished at the majesty of God" - the casting out of the demon, the return of a healthy child to an agonizing parent - here perhaps is where we are to see the majesty...
Hi, all. I've often wondered about the disciples not being able to cast out the demon. Is it the fatigue that plagues them on top of the mountain? Or a particularly strong demon that requires the heavy hitter? Maybe something about the Transfiguration itself is important, something the disciples learned or disovered on the top of the mountain that they needed.
I, too, love the image of the kitchen sink, especially for its connotations of baptism and renewal. Every day we die and rise again in our baptism, and most of the time we never even think about it. But, there it is, a revelation, an epiphany, a moment of transfiguration
Vince, I love to read your comments, they are such a nice combination of Pastor Johnson's words and your own insights. Thanks.
Pam, I loved the analogy with the "crusty eyes". The Tyrolean Itlains in the Alps call them "Il Piccola". I also enjoyed you wanting to wash these Baptismal waters over your eyes. You reminded me of a favorite quote of mine from The Little Prince: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eyes." As an engineer, I have come to a profound respect for the marvelous machine the human body is. NO man made device can remotely rival its intricacy, redundancy, and design for functionality. Yet, all the parts need constant maintenance. The "crusty eyes", in my quote, are the daily poor musings of my own heart. I now want to wash that Baptismal water over my heart, to cleanse it of it's "crusty view of the world". It needs cleaning and maintenance more than daily.
I also love the Fulghum story of the kitchen sink. This is perhaps because I do not relish rituals and oublic celebrations, but much prefer the conversation at the sink. It's where one reveals the heart enough for someone else to realize they could marry you!
On the "coming up short on descending hte mountain", I really don't know. I like Pastor Mohn's musing that it "might take the heavy hitter", but I'd also like to think Jesus is tasking us to take on the demons. Why can't we? Here's where I remember Jesus as my ULTIMATE model for a teacher. He is The Teacher of all. As a teacher, I often "give my students all they need to get the job done" only to then walk around the room and "watch them, one after another, mess it up". As a teacher, I know the students BEST learning, the kind most critical and long lasting, often comes from having experienced their own mistakes. They need to "grow into their learning" to make it personal. Perhaps, we, as disciples, have to mess up and keep trying before we are able to "do as the Teacher does". in this way, we grow into our faith and our God-given abilities. Just a thought ......
Post a Comment