Now I See

I Samuel 16:1-7
Luke 7:36-50

Dr. J. Lawrence Cuthill

June 13, 2010

Winter Park Presbyterian Church

Something is happening to my eyesight. I can tell the glasses I wear are not doing the job they once did for my vision. Since my youth, I’ve been near-sighted, which means, counter-intuitively, that I couldn’t see things in the distance. In recent years, I have discovered that increasingly, I can’t see the print on a page clearly. I recognize this as a condition called ‘Presbyopia’, or more commonly called far-sighted. Now I have two pairs of glasses – and don’t tell me about bifocals or those lenses that gradually change – because I’m too cheap! The upside is that my distance vision has improved to the point that I can legally drive without glasses. But before I could get too excited about that, I was told I have the beginning stages of cataracts.

      Now I’m sure I’ve told you a lot more about my visual challenges than you ever wanted to know – although I’m sure there are those here who have followed a similar progression. The point of connection is somewhat buried in the story we read from the pen of Dr. Luke. Recall. One of the Pharisees had invited the itinerant Rabbi from Nazareth to dinner. Call it slumming, or simple curiosity, to know who this one was, one who was capturing the imagination and who gathered such large crowds. The Rabbi, who we know as Jesus, accepted, appeared, and took his seat at the table. Then an uninvited guest entered the scene – a woman with a reputation, some scandalous baggage. In this case, she came with an expensive gift, an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood weeping at Jesus’ feet, and then began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. It is all a most dramatic scene, terribly embarrassing to some – an indication to others that this Jesus was to be counted unworthy by association. But Jesus was unruffled, and was also aware that his host’s attitude was less than gracious. Addressing the Pharisee, whose name we now know is Simon, he tells a parable that leads to a lesson for all who think they can act in the place of God to judge others, and which paints the man into a corner. Who is most grateful and receptive to the grace of God? One who knows their own neediness and the extent of their own debt? Or one who has little sense of their own culpability?

      Now that “buried” point of connection: when Simon the Pharisee answered the question the parable asked, Jesus said, “Do you see this woman?” The clear and honest answer was “No!”

      Simon saw a prostitute, an emotional mess, a pawn in his preconceived judgment of Jesus as a fake. Did he see the woman? Did he understand her behavior as one who saw Jesus as her hope, the very Son of God? No! And No! His vision was impaired – and he didn’t even know it. Blind to his own hypocrisy; blind to the reality before him – the Messiah; blind to his own need.

      What happens to a man (or woman) that causes us to lose our sight? Part may be the natural deterioration of age, or spiritual Presbyopia, that, if undiagnosed and uncorrected, causes us to diminish in seeing what is there – up close and personal.

      It may be the erosion of appreciation that comes with familiarity. Our perception becomes stale. We think we know it all. We have labeled others and by doing so, filed them away. Familiarity breeds contempt, or equally negative, numbness, insensitivity, a blasé attitude of ... “Been there, done that.”

      Our expectations often limit what we see … or don’t. Prejudice. Our value system can cause us to overlook what is there. The accelerated speed at which we live life can cause us to miss some of its most precious gifts.

      Do you recall the story of the mother and daughter who went to McDonald’s for lunch? The order included a Happy Meal, with the anticipation of the toy outweighing all other considerations. (We had to make a rule in my family – eat your food, then open the prize, otherwise...) But it was busy, and the prize was left out to the great dismay of the child. Mom said, “Go back to the counter and ask for it.” Tentatively, the little girl made her way there and was gone a long time. Mom had almost finished her meal when the child returned with tears rolling down her face. “What’s wrong?” said Mom. The child replied, “Mommy, they don’t see me!”

      A woman relates her experience of taking a new job at an office building downtown. The first several days as she walked from the parking lot to her workplace, she passed a man standing on the street corner in tattered clothes, with his hand out seeking money. Several months later, one of her co-workers said, “You know that old man that stands on the corner every day begging?” She replied, “Oh, he’s not there anymore. He must have moved on.” The co-worker insisted he was still there, so the next morning our lady went to work as usual, and was startled to see the man was indeed there, just as he had always been.

      He hadn’t moved, but her ability to see him had become impaired. “I have become blind to his presence”, she thought, and resolved to do something about it.

      The next morning she left for work a little earlier, and went to the corner to speak with the man. She found out he had once worked near that corner. He had no family and had congestive heart failure, which prevented him from doing the work he’d done and from being hired for something new. At the end of their conversation, she took a $10 bill out of her purse and offered it to him … and the man wouldn’t take it! “You saw me and you talked to me. That’s the best thing you could have given me!” he said. The lady concluded, “I believe God sent that man to restore my sight.”

      Do you recognize the name of Ralph Ellison? He wrote a contemporary classic in 1952 entitled The Invisible Man. “I am an invisible man,” said Ellison, “People choose not to see me.” He goes on to talk about what it was too often like to be a Black man in White America. People often look through you and don’t see you. Your presence is not acknowledged; what you think or say goes unnoted. You are, effectively, invisible.

      The stories are legion. When Allied Troops entered the South German town of Dachau toward the end of WWII, they could smell the stench of death from miles away. What they found on the edge of town was horrifying. You recall the scenes. Thousands of corpses and many ‘walking skeletons’ of emaciated people. Yet, when they asked the townspeople, they professed ignorance. “We didn’t know those things were going on out there,” they said; even though some worked at the camp.

      Trains moved through town day and night, emptying their human cargo, but never taking anyone out. It’s not uncommon. Humans often see what they want to see and are blind to what is too frightening or painful.

      Perhaps that is why, in the New Testament, there are several accounts of Jesus opening the eyes of the physically blind … and many more of him opening the eyes of those who were spiritually blind. And he still does.

      John Calvin called Scripture the “lens” through which Christians view the world. It brings into focus things we hadn’t noticed. And some things we thought we couldn’t live without become inconsequential. That change is called repentence, a response to grace which gives us new eyes, a fresh appreciation of who God is, of our neighbor. And of ourselves.

      The Art Institute of Chicago has Grant Wood’s well-known painting, American Gothic. It’s the one with the farm couple standing in front of their gingerbread Victorian, he holding a pitchfork and she standing beside him, her lips pursed tightly. Wood grew up in Anamosa, Iowa. Yet when this Iowa farm boy decided to become a painter, he imagined there was only one place for him to go – Paris. He joined the expatriate American art community there and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

      But one day in 1926, Wood woke up with a chilling thought. “Everything I’ve done up to now,” he told his friend, historian William Shirer, “is wrong – and, my God, I’m half-way through my life!” “You’re only 35,” Shirer pointed out. “Don’t worry, things will get better.”

      But Wood plunged on: “Listen, I think … at last … I’ve learned something – at least about myself. I think you have to paint what you know. And despite the years in Europe – all I really know is home, Iowa, and the typical small towns. Everything is commonplace … your neighbors, the quite streets, the clapboard houses, the drab clothes, the dried-up lives. But I’m going home for good, and I am going to paint those cows and barns and barnyards and cornfields and little red schoolhouses and all those pinched faces and the women in their aprons and the men in their overalls.”

      And so he did. American Gothic is very possibly the most famous painting of the 20^th century. It’s instantly recognizable the world over. It’s become a beloved icon of our culture. Wood regained his sight, and with it, his creativity, his art.

AMEN