Faith Eyes*
Isaiah 60:1-6
January 4, 2004
St. John United Methodist Church
David Beckett, D.Min.

        "Arise, shine," says the prophet Isaiah. "Your light has come." Problem is, many of us can't see it.  It's not that we don't take our eyesight seriously.  More than a million Americans every year agree to let an ophthalmologist take a small knife, called a microkeratome, and cut the flap of the cornea, so that a laser can be used to change the shape of the cornea, so that they won't need to wear contacts or eyeglasses anymore, so that their overall vision will be improved. 

It's called LASIK surgery, which is an acronym for Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis. A hinge is left at one end of the flap which is then folded back, revealing the stroma, or the middle section of the cornea.  Pulses from a computer-controlled laser vaporize a portion of the stroma, and the flap is replaced. 

This procedure helps millions of people process physical light without glasses.  But processing the light that Isaiah calls "the glory of the LORD" (60:1) is quite another matter.  We need a different set of eyes.  We need eyes of faith.

The glory of the Lord is "like a devouring fire" according to Exodus 24:17.  It's a powerful radiance that changes the face of anyone who looks upon it.  Remember that the face of Moses began to shine when he talked with God directly, so much so that he had to put on a veil to keep from frightening the people of Israel (Exodus 34:29-35).

This is the powerful light that appeared later when Jesus Christ was born, and the glory of the Lord shone around the shepherds in Bethlehem, terrifying them (Luke 2:9).  Simeon said that the baby Jesus was "a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel" (Luke 2:32).  Glory appeared again in the transfiguration of Jesus, and in the resurrection.

The glory of the Lord.  It's intense, overwhelming, frightening at times ... but most of all it's illuminating.  It helps us to see the full power and personality of the Lord God Almighty.  Grace and truth.  That's what becomes so clear in the light of the glory of God.  So why don't we perceive it?

It's a good question to ask at the beginning of this new year, 2004.  What will we see this year?  What won't we see?  What are we visioning as we step into a new year of opportunities and challenges?

Perhaps we need a whole new way of seeing....an eye transplant.  The eyes of cynicism are not working for us.  We have a hard time believing that people can live authentic lives of compassion and selflessness.  It affects our belief in a loving and caring God. And it leaves us bitter and feeling that life has unfairly passed us by.  We need faith eyes.

The eyes of rationalism aren't much better.  We think that there's nothing real except the visible world.  Unless we can see it, touch it, taste it, hear it, smell it...it's not there.  It's hard for us to believe that there's an unseen God, who cares about us.  We want a God who is manageable, understandable, visible, a God who shows himself once in a while.  What we've got instead, we complain, is a bunch of promises made by a make-believe deity for the popular consumption of the gullible and naïve.  We're the doubting Thomases.  We're the ones who will believe when we understand; believe when we see, but not a second sooner.

Not everyone "sees" it that way. One light in the history of faith, Anselm, [Proslogion 1] put it this way: "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.  Unless I believe, I should not understand." Another, John Chrysostom, said that a comprehensible God is no god at all.  We need faith eyes.

If a transplant isn't needed, perhaps we simply need a new prescription. We need a lens that will enable us to see what we've never seen before.  It may be the lens of Scripture, from which we've been away too long.  It's a new year.  Time to get back to the Word.  We'll see better.  It may be the lens of the church: We need the encouragement and support of a community of faith. It's a new year. Time to get back to the church.  We'll see better.  It may be the lens of worship: We need to feed our souls so that the eyes of faith will remain healthy.  It's a new year.  Time to get back to worship.  We'll see better.

It may be the lens of service: We need to get outside of ourselves to minister to others.  Removing the focus from ourselves to others will make the eyes of faith much stronger.  It's a new year.  It's time to get back to service. We'll see better.  It may be the lens of love: We need to apply compassion to those around us.  Love is the ointment that heals the eyes of faith.  It's a new year. Time to get back to love.  We'll see better.

Faith eyes can pick up divine light in times of deep darkness, and this was as true in the first century as it is today.  There wasn't much brightness in Judea in the time of King Herod, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.  In fact, Herod's reign was an absolute orgy of violence and bloodshed.  Full of insecurity, Herod ordered the killing of his brother-in-law, his uncle and then his wife.  Fearing loss of power, he went on to execute his mother-in-law, a son and then two more sons.  At one point, Caesar Augustus remarked that he would rather be Herod's pig than Herod's son!

And this list of murders doesn't even include the massacre of the infants, which Herod ordered in a desperate attempt to kill the baby Jesus.  He commanded the slaughter of all the children in and around Bethlehem who were 2 years old or under ... but fortunately Mary and Joseph spirited Jesus away to Egypt before the massacre began (Matthew 2:13-18).  Dark days.

But through the blackness, there were some who kept their focus on the light.  Wise men from the East came looking for Jesus, and after working their way around Herod they found the baby in a house with Mary his mother (Matthew 2:1-12).  They offered him wonderful gifts, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah that they "shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD" (Isaiah 60:6).  These men were the kings that the prophet said would come to the brightness of his dawn (v. 3).

The wise men had eyes of faith. They could see a faint flicker of light in the middle of the darkness, a light that signaled the presence of God's Son, Jesus Christ.

Our challenge is to focus on this light as well, and to trust that Christ is always present, even in times of chaos. What chaos are you experiencing right now?  Are you the kind of person who easily sees the darkness instead of the light?  Can you use your faith eyes to see the light even when surrounded by so much dark?

The truth of Epiphany is that there is always some light to be found, if you have the eyes of faith.  In fact, none of the shadows we encounter in day-to-day life are totally dark and depressing.  They all contain some small amount of light.

Shadow expert David Lynch, co-author of a book called Color and Light in Nature, points out that a shadow is filled with light reflected from the sky.  Otherwise it would be completely black. If you want to see a completely black shadow, one that has no brightness at all, you have to go to the moon. Black is the way that shadows on the moon looked to the Apollo astronauts, because the moon has no atmosphere to bounce light into the dark corners of the lunar surface. ^[1]

Even in our shadow times, our times of disappointment, failure, temptation and tension, God is going to bounce some light into our darkness.  The good news for us is that faith eyes are not given to us at birth.  They are developed over a lifetime of looking.  If we are willing to search for the light of God in times of deep darkness, we will find it.  If we look hard for Jesus Christ in situations of chaos and confusion, we will discover him.  If we train our eyes on the small glimmers of light that appear in our shadow times, we will emerge from the blackness that threatens to overwhelm us.

Although darkness shall cover the earth, promises Isaiah, "the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you" (v. 2).   You and I just need the eyes of faith and we will see this wonderful light of God!

*Sermon adapted from Homiletics, vol. 16, #1