 |
||
|
The Third Sunday of Easter Of all the marvels of creation, the evolution of the eye is unsurpassed. For 540 million years on this tiny planet, creatures have acquired the ability to see, in ever more complex and staggeringly wondrous ways. It brings to mind something that happened this week. On Tuesday night, our own intrepid Dave Knauer dropped off a half peck of quahogs he had just dug. And shortly thereafter, I set out to make the clam chowder we will be eating at our choir party for Bernie later today. As I steamed the clams in the Sam Adams beer, and as they opened up, I noticed the rudimentary eye by which this mollusk has navigated life for nearly half a billion years. And it made me wonder. The eye of a quahog can discern light from dark, and little more. But compare this to the human eye, which is able to discern 10 million colors. In humans, light, depth perception, color, spectral differentiation, all of these things are available in a kind of immediacy that is nearly beyond comprehension. Think about it. As you look at me, and I look back at you now, each of our eyes contains a pupil that is like an aperture on a camera; each of our eyes holds an iris that is a diaphragm that serves as an aperture stop; our corneas refract light sending billions of photon data through our optic nerves to our brains, all of this occurring long before we can even begin think about it or react. This may seem like an esoteric digression into science, but isn’t it true, if something happens to your eyes, and they no longer work, our whole world disappears, and life with it. Recently, like many of you, my father just had cataracts removed on his eyes. And with this, he reports that the return of his sight is a miracle like no other. Some of you know that little Corah has been with us for a visit this past week. It has been mesmerizing to see what she sees. Even now, her eyes at five months are beholding a dizzying array of color. 10 million colors! Wow! And friends, I wonder what this simple biological reality may have to say to us about the life in the spirit. In our collect today, we pray together that God will open the eyes of our faith so that may behold Jesus in all of his redeeming work. What might it mean for us to open the eyes of our faith? I wonder. Our scripture reports that it took weeks and months and years for those first believers to open their eyes of faith. The trauma of the crucifixion had been blinding. The terror and shock had gouged out whatever faith the disciples had mustered while Jesus was with them. Darkness had come upon them, and they hid like sightless animals in whatever corner they could find. Receiving their sight again took time and it took perseverance. It takes courage to open your eyes again once they have been shut for so long. It takes faith to leave a dark world and return to the light. Most of humanity, sadly, prefers to live like a simple quahog, within the primal discernment of grey upon grey. So much of religion is reduced to black and white moralism, or fundamentalist doctrine. So much of faith never ventures into the multiplicity of color that imbues all of creation. Yet what happens, though, if we do indeed have our sight restored? What happens if all of a sudden, instead of just dark and light, 10 million colors come flooding into view? What if the eyes of our faith are opened and we can see like John saw in his epistle what love the Father gives us? What if we can see that we are truly children of God, endowed with the ability to see as God sees? What if we can see that we are destined to be like Jesus? What if our minds were truly opened to the scriptures, as they were when the risen Jesus came to the disciples? What if truly understood that we are meant to have our eyes open, we are meant to be witnesses of all these things? The great French novelist, Marcel Proust wrote “The voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” This is, I believe, what Jesus is telling his disciples when he appears to them. Over and over again, he says, “Look at my hands and my feet. See that it is I myself.. Touch me and see. Remember, you are witnesses of these things.” This is the miracle of our having our sight restored, friends. If we desire it, God opens our eyes, and we can see God in everything. We can hear God in everything. We can touch God in everything. We can taste God in everything. For the risen Christ appears as we open the eyes of our faith. And the dizzying, dazzling, magnificent beauty of all his redeeming work becomes ours to behold. |
||