Second Sight
Venerable Joan Clark
Luke 24:13-35
This past week alone, I noticed at least 20 things I never noticed before. I saw an elderly lady sitting on her walker in her driveway while watching her small dog on the footpath and talking to people as they passed by. I talked to neighbours I had not talked to before. I took walks and noticed that the leaves have almost all fallen of the trees. I saw the frost white on the lawn. The list could go on.
I also noticed new things about myself, my likes and dislikes, and about others around me. I noticed the way people are creating their own style of masks, some colourful, some plain. I noticed the way people I never met say hello just to connect with another human being. I notice how food tastes especially good when it’s scarcer to get hold of.
We value things more when we pay closer attention to them. Right now, in our world, it’s as though COVID-19 has enabled us to take a closer look at everything and everyone differently. For some, it has meant, finding more to critique. For many however, it has meant, finding more to cherish about our communities and relationships. Paying more attention to the little things, realizing that little things matter.
Often as human beings, we can get streamlined into seeing only one way, seeing only certain people, seeing only from one perspective, as though we all wear a certain prescription of glasses for the way we view the world and each other. We all view the world through our own unique “lens.” Like any lens, it is selective. It helps us to view things in the way we are used to seeing them.
If you wear glasses or contact lenses, think of how the world looks different when you have them off. You feel, you can’t see things clearly. For some, you may notice things look fuzzier, or stranger. Put those glasses back on, and the world comes into focus.
However, one day, you go to the optometrist and discover that you haven’t been seeing as well as you thought you were. The optometrist changes the lens, and suddenly things come into a sharper view. You notice things you were missing. The world as you see it, changes.
Every view of our world from our eyes is prescriptive. Our perspective is prescriptive so to speak. When we “change our prescription,” it changes our entire view. And sometimes, our viewpoint.
That’s in a sense what happens to us psychologically too when we go through a trauma or a significant change. It’s as though our prescription changed, and suddenly we see the world through a new lens. For some, it may bring new things to light. But for others, that trauma may create dark spots, or blind spots in our vision.
It takes a new and significant kind of shift to return our vision to its former perspective, or better yet, to an improved and healthier perspective.
In our scripture for today, two disciples of Jesus are walking along a road that led from Jerusalem area to Emmaus. They had no doubt witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion, had spent time with the inner circle hiding out still in Jerusalem. They had commiserated with them about the loss of their leader and the destruction of their hope. Downtrodden and discouraged, they were returning home to resume what they imagined would be a very different life.
Their grief allowed them in that moment a narrow lens. All they could see was blue and grey. They were sad; they were downhearted; they were convinced that life had lost its colour. Their hope for a more beautiful world was dashed. As they stared at the ground, kicking at the dust as they walked, they barely noticed the stranger coming up beside them.
Consumed in their grief, they hardly gave him a glance. When he asked them what was wrong, they were surprised, he wouldn’t have known about the loss of their assumed Messiah and the devastation of their mission. Even as he talked to them about the scriptures, the foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection, they were so overwhelmed in their grief, all they could see was the road. All they could hear was the drone of his voice.
Only when they reached their home, and he sat with them, and broke bread with them, were their eyes opened. As they looked up, and they saw his face, his hands, his eyes, his broken body sitting before them holding the bread of life that he had promised, did they see him for the very first time. Only then did they recognize who he truly was.
Prayer, scriptures, talking, walking …..all of these helped their minds to cope. But only when their eyes met his did their vision change. The truth of Jesus’ resurrection only truly gets into our hearts and shifts our perspective and our vision when we enter into relationship, personal relationship, with him. We can know Jesus through reading, through thinking, through our minds. We can learn about him and theologize concerning him. These things help us to learn, to prepare us to meet him. But only in a personal encounter with Jesus will we come to a place where our heart shifts and we see him in front of us.
After the two experienced that encounter with the risen Lord, they realized, their hearts had in fact been burning, as he was telling them about the scriptures. Those scriptures were the new lens that Jesus needed to give them in order to prepare them to look at him with eyes that could see, to hear him with ears that could hear.
In the medical field, our vision can actually improve as we age. This is a result of increased refractivity of the nucleus of the lens, which causes myopia. Whereas you may have had rather strong lenses before, as your vision changes, your prescription may improve and you may see better than you did before, requiring new lenses to bring the world in sharper focus again. Doctors call this phenomenon “second sight.” It is essentially a new set of eyes, resulting from the natural course of aging. A new set of eyes requires a new set of lenses.
I think that we can develop a new set of eyes as the years go by in our discipleship too, a “second sight” that enables us to weather the storms of the world and see Jesus appearing to us in ways we may have missed before. But that second sight too desires a new lens. That lens is the scriptures.
Like our physical eyes, our spiritual eyes can become complacent. Our aging eyes can become fuzzy and single focused. We can get used to the way we see the world and not even notice that our vision is failing us. We can get used to the way things look and feel in our world and in our lives and relationships and fail to notice when we are missing things in our line of vision. When we adjust our lens by reading the scriptures, by allowing the scriptures to test our way of seeing, we can bring Jesus into focus again in new ways and in living colour.
Just as we have a responsibility to check our physical eyes, we also have a responsibility to check our spiritual eyes. Through our lives, as we go through adventures, traumas, experiences of life, we constantly need to check our lenses in order to make sure we are seeing everything we could be seeing, as clearly as we can. We need vision checks and hearing checks to make sure we are truly seeing what Jesus needs us to see and hear. Only when we use those scriptural lenses to view the world will Jesus, will the people and things we experience come into new focus, provide us with new meaning.
The scriptures are a kind of eye test, and a set of adjusting lenses for us. When we read the scriptures, we fit ourselves with a new kind of lens in which to view Jesus. No matter how many times we read them or hear them, something new will appear that you never noticed before.
They give us a kind of “second sight.” Equipped with this new “second sight,” we are able to come into relationship with Jesus with eyes to see him. But only if you raise your eyes and look.
I know of a young girl who needed glasses to see the whiteboard in school. But she was so embarrassed about wearing her glasses, she refused to put them on. And so, she continued to see only a fuzzy group of symbols, instead of truly seeing the things she needed to learn that would change her perspective about her world and herself.
Many of us Christians go through life just that way. We continue to see only an outline or a form of Jesus instead of seeing him and encountering him in a way that allows him to change us and move our discipleship forward into a new kind of place.
This week I challenge you to read the scriptures, read them as you never have before. Make reading the scriptures a regular part of your day. I will be willing to bet that it will change your vision about Jesus, about yourself, about your relationships, and about your world.