DO YOU NEED NEW GLASSES? (01/19/14) Scripture Lessons: Psalm 146 John 9:1-41. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. (Psalm )

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1 Scripture Lessons: Psalm 146 John 9:1-41 DO YOU NEED NEW GLASSES? (01/19/14) The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. (Psalm ) I don t know if you folks have noticed the cold snap that some New Englanders maintain we have been experiencing this winter. I hadn t really noticed it until I spent a day and a half down in Florida with Kristen and Mike this past week. It was 75 degrees and sunny. The grass was green and the birds were chirping. Kristen and Mike s puppy, Copley, and I went for a nice walk around the University of Florida campus. I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. When Darlene picked me up at the Providence airport Tuesday afternoon, I noticed that it was chilly. But that s probably because I wasn t wearing a coat. John Ruskin once said that there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. This sentiment is echoed in an old Scandinavian saying: there is no such thing as inclement weather only people who are inadequately dressed or prepared for it. I agree. It s not about the weather; it s about you. It s all how you look at it. For example, Eskimos don t complain about the cold. Or maybe they do, but no one listens to them because anyone who is stupid enough to live in a snow house up near the North Pole has automatically forfeited his/her right to complain about the cold. The problem, if there really is a problem, might not be the weather, or the world, or life. It might be how we see it. Do we see the cold as a stress-inducing assault on our physical and emotional wellbeing, or do we experience the cold, crisp air as brisk and invigorating? Actually, I have found that when I describe the weather as brisk and invigorating on a day when the temperature is hovering just above zero, people get annoyed. I guess misery must like company. To be perfectly honest, this past week I could see why so many people move to Florida, and it s not just about our high taxes or the fact that Massachusetts is crawling with misinformed and unenlightened pinko, Communist, un-american, socialistic liberals. But that s not the point. The point is that the way we see the world shapes our experience of it. And our experience of it shapes our response to it. It determines whether we are living in it happily and joyously, or whether our status as victims leads us to become miserable whiners and complainers. 1

2 In Herman Hesse s novel Siddhartha, Vasudeva, Siddhartha s mentor, is an old ferryman who has experienced enlightenment through his relationship with the river and the lessons he has learned from it. Vasudeva tells Siddhartha that most people see his beloved river as an obstacle to be overcome, a hindrance in their path toward some goal. They want to get past it as quickly as possible. However, if a person will take the time to actually see the river, to listen to it, that person can come to love the river and can learn the secret of life from it. It is the same river for all. The difference is in the way we see it. I became aware of this several years ago when Darlene and I visited a church that our son, Corey, was serving. The church, a large, old inner-city church, had a sanctuary with a wraparound balcony that probably sat four hundred. The previous week, in our little church with a sanctuary that seats about a hundred, we had had fifty parishioners present for worship. The church seemed full! Perhaps because everyone in our church joins in the unison readings and sings the old-time hymns, the service was spirited and upbeat. The week we attended Corey s church, fifty parishioners were present for worship. After the service at least five of Corey s parishioners apologized to Darlene and me for the low attendance. They assured us that there had been a time in the past, actually several decades ago, when this church had been full. It was clear to me that they saw their church as a failed big church. With exactly the same number of parishioners, we saw our church as a thriving small church. Same number. Different glasses. Several years ago I ran across an article from the Boston Globe written by Elissa Ely, a Boston-area psychiatrist. Her column was entitled Seeing is Believing. In her column, Dr. Ely reminisces about the eye exams of her youth. Then she reports the following conversation with her present optometrist, who also has a nursing home practice. I ll tell you a little story, said the optometrist. I went to one of my nursing homes recently. There was a patient; she had been there for years. She didn t talk. Not a word. She was on a list, what a list, of medicines. I did the eye exam. Her eyesight was terrible. So I made a pair of glasses, he said. I went back to the nursing home. I put the glasses on her. She opened her eyes. She sat up. She looked around the room. Then she spoke for the first time in who knows when. She said, Thank you, doctor. 2

3 Elissa Ely concludes by reflecting on the irony of how an eye doctor restored the power of speech, how the woman spoke because she saw. This is a beautiful story. Amid all the reports of crime and tragedy that fill today s newspapers, there are also beautiful stories, stories of love and compassion, stories of healing miracles that happen in simple, mundane ways, stories of people who reach out, who make the extra effort, who go the second mile. This doctor went out of his way to give glasses to a nursing home patient whom everyone had written off as a vegetable. The woman may have been diagnosed as depressed, with the staff not realizing that her withdrawal from the world may have been caused by her inability to see what was going on around her. As wonderful as our psychotropic medications are, and they are lifesavers for many who struggle to achieve a quality of life, there are some conditions that cannot be cured by medication. There are some types of darkness that can only be dispelled by love. There are some bonds of isolation that can only be broken by someone taking the time to reach out across the chasm that separates the alienated person from others and from life. Dr. Ely s column reminded me of a comment by Richard Panek, the author of Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened Our Eyes. Panek s reflections appeared in the Buddhist journal Tricycle, one of a series of articles by scientists whose work ranges from mitochondria to slime molds to astrophysics and the relationship between science and spirituality. In the article, Dr. Panek related some of the history of how we came to our present understanding of the universe, how the so-called Great Debate concerning the origin of the universe was resolved with Edwin Hubble s discovery in 1924 that some galaxies are external to our own, and with Hubble s 1929 discovery that all these galaxies are moving away from one another at speeds directly proportionate to their distance--in other words that the universe is constantly expanding. Panek relates how in 1931 a Belgian Jesuit priest named Georges Lemaitre worked backward from Hubble s discovery, mentally running the universe in reverse until he arrived at the probable location of a single, highly compact primeval atom which was the origin of all that is. In 1964 Penzias and Wilson, researchers working in New Jersey, discovered the telltale radio waves from that initial period of creation, thereby providing the crucial scientific validation for what has come to be known as the Big Bang theory of creation. 3

4 In commenting on some of the more recent discoveries concerning the origin and nature of the universe, especially through the contributions of the Hubble Space Telescope, Panek says, On January 15, 1996, the universe grew by forty billion galaxies. He then goes on to explain, What actually grew that morning, of course, wasn t the size of the universe, but our understanding of it. Panek s comment reminded me of one of the great events in the history of science, the moment when Nicholas Copernicus realized that the sun did not revolve around the earth, but the earth and the other planets in our solar system revolved around the sun. New glasses. One day we are not only the center of our little solar system but also the center of the entire universe; the next day we are a relatively insignificant satellite revolving around a medium size sun in an outer arm of a galaxy with over a billion suns. We put on new glasses, glasses which we call a space telescope, to pick up sights and sounds, radio waves from fourteen billion years ago, the moment of creation, and instead of a static universe of fixed size we see a universe with no end, no outer limit, a universe expanding at almost the speed of light. Because of the glasses that have been fashioned by science, we, like Copernicus and Galileo so many centuries ago, can see our universe in a different way. As Galileo told the Inquisition, and as Elissa Ely reminds us, seeing is believing. I happen to be fascinated by the new glasses that are being constantly fashioned by science. But even more important than the way we see our universe is the way we see ourselves. This is why I am interested in psychology. What is important is the way we see the world in which we live. What do our glasses reveal to us, and what do they conceal? What would it mean to put on glasses fashioned by science, by psychology, and also by our faith? We live in a world shaped by what we see--literally by our knowledge and symbolically by our mind-set. The world we see becomes our world, our reality. When it becomes our only reality, we mistakenly believe it is reality. We will live in this world all the days of our life-- unless someone gives us new glasses. The optimist sees the glass as half full; the pessimist sees it as half empty. Same glass-- different glasses. One group takes a positive attitude toward the difficulties that life places in their path, seeing them as challenges; the other sees them as injustices, obstacles that cannot be 4

5 overcome. Some people look at a church and see only the things that are wrong; others see how much the church is doing for its members and the world. Same church--different glasses. Jesus calls us forth into a new world. He seeks to open our eyes to the mystery and wonder of creation, both in the universe and in ourselves. He seeks to open our eyes to the spiritual dimension of life, to the transforming power of love, to the healing power of prayer. He wants us to see that life has meaning and that our life has meaning. Jesus wants us to realize that no matter how humble our life, we are incarnating a spark of God s creative spirit in our little corner of the world in a way that is unique in the fourteen billion years that the universe as we know it has been in existence. He wants to open our eyes to the beauty of nature, the beauty of creation, the beauty in other people, and the beauty in ourselves. In the words of the 146th Psalm, The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. Jesus tells us that he came to open the eyes of the blind. From the testimony of the gospels we know that he restored the sight of two blind beggars; he opened the eyes of Bartimaeus; and, as we heard this morning, he brought sight to a man who had been blind from birth. In this morning s gospel lesson we learn that the Pharisees were also blind. They were suffering from spiritual blindness. They were blind to the possibility of a healing miracle because it came from a humble peasant from Nazareth. They argue with the man whose sight was restored, trying to convince him (or themselves) that he had not experienced a miracle. You see, with their glasses, there are no miracles. All they had to do was put on the glasses that Jesus offered them and they could see and rejoice, they could celebrate with the man whose sight was restored. As we know, however, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Jesus tells us that he came to cure not only literal blindness but also spiritual blindness. He comes to take away the darkness of a life without faith. He comes to restore our belief in miracles. He hands us glasses that, if we put them on, will help us become aware of God s healing, comforting presence in our life. He calls us forth into a new and very different world. All we have to do is put on the glasses. We have our own set of glasses, whatever they are. Like the man blind from birth, some of our glasses were formed or shaped in early childhood, maybe even from birth. Our glasses may be dirty and in need of cleaning. They may be out of focus. They may have served us well 5

6 in the past, but as our eyes change and life changes, they may not enable us to see God, life, other people, and ourselves clearly. Just as Jesus opened the eyes of the man blind from birth, so also he can open our eyes. He can open us up to a new vision of God, of life, of other people, and of ourselves. All we have to do is put on new glasses. A sermon preached by the Reverend Paul D. Sanderson The First Community Church of Southborough January 19,