“Lighting the Light” Vance L. Toivonen
Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O LORD. How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!
READING Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing
We do a lot of looking; we look through lenses, telescopes, television tubes…Our looking is perfected every day – but we see less and less. Never has it been more urgent to speak of seeing…we are on-lookers, spectators…”subjects” we are, that look at “objects.” Quickly we stick labels on all that is, labels that stick once – and for all. By these labels we recognize everything but no longer see anything.
SERMON
I’m getting older, approaching the big 5-0, and my need for reading glasses is becoming more prevalent. What I can read without my glasses requires more light. Without the proper light, and without my reading glasses, I will dial a phone number I thought I had read correctly only to find out when someone answers that I have called the wrong number. Notice, I did not say I dialed the wrong number. I dialed precisely that number that I intended to dial. It is just that the number I intended to dial was based upon my inability to see correctly the number I was supposed to dial.
One Sunday afternoon my spouse was gracious enough to accompany me to the new James Bond film at the movie theater – well, I say “one Sunday afternoon” because we had every intention of going to the late afternoon matinee. We live close to the movie theater so I drove down to get a definite read from the marquees that line the front of the theater. 4:30 PM. That’s what I saw. So I went back home until about 4:15 when we got into the car and headed out to the movie theater. We parked the car and walked into the theater, stepped up to the ticket counter and were about to purchase tickets for the 4:30 showing of Casino Royale. But when I glanced up at the mini-marquee behind the counter I saw that the show began at 4:00 PM. We were 15 minutes late. So we decided to leave and to come back for the early evening show.
It was a dark, gray, cloudy day. I could come up with many excuses to be sure. But I did not see what was really there on the marquee. Perhaps I saw what I wanted to see, although I cannot for the life of me believe that I wanted the movie to run later in the afternoon. I was excited to see it. The earlier the better. Was it haste? Was my drive-by glance inadequate to provide the scrutiny required in order to discern the actual time of the movie’s showing? Why didn’t I see what was really there?
In his book Coming to Our Senses, Jon Kabat-Zinn writes,
We see what we want to see, not what is actually before our eyes. We look but we may not apprehend or comprehend. We may have to tune our seeing just as we tune an instrument, to increase its sensitivity, its range, its clarity, its empathy. We can say the goal would be to see things as they actually are, not how we would like them to be or fear them to be, or only what we are socially conditioned to see or feel.
He also quotes Jung who observed, “We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much through feeling.” But then Kabat-Zinn further cautions,
If Jung is right, we apprehend with our feelings, yes, but then we had best be intimate with them or they will provide only distorted lenses for any real seeing, or real knowing.
Epiphany is a season that celebrates the incarnation of Light in the world. In a post-Christian, and post-Christmas world Jesus is purported to be that Light. Epiphany is the celebration of Jesus as the Light of the world. The Psalmist in today’s first reading says of God, “in your light we see light.” This points to a greater Light, a clarifying Light, an unmistakable Light that cannot help but to make apparent all that is murky and imperceptible.
What is often missed in a post-Christian, post-modern world is that Jesus is not intended to be the object of our seeing. There is a lot of Jesus worship that goes on in Christian communities. But this worship may be misguided; well-intended to be sure, but misguided nonetheless. For Jesus is, to use a Buddhist metaphor, the finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself.
It is true, as some of us read in the paper last Saturday, that Jesus is quoted in John’s gospel as having said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” But the goal here is still to come to the Father, to God. Jesus is the path, the Light, but not the object of our seeing. He points the way. By following, by listening, by seeing that to which he points, we may very well discover the murky, often imperceptible presence of God, who will always help us to see more clearly that which is real, and actual, and rich, and wonderful, and truthful, and honest.
Jesus told stories and parables with the addendum, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. Those who have eyes to see, let them see.” Of course, this implies some effort on our part, not least of all the willingness to want to see and hear the truth that is revealed in the Light of Christ’s presence. If we do not wish to see or hear; if we prefer the murkiness of our existence; if we would rather that God stay in the shadows, then we will continue to confuse the trees with the forest, the finger with the moon, and our own wills and desires with the will of God.
In Mirror, Mask, and Shadow, in a chapter titled Hide and Seek, Sheldon Kopp writes,
Every self is divided. Each includes contradictions that can never be settled once and for all…the opposing aspects of our personalities remain in an uneasy state of irrevocable tension...Each of us must somehow manage to come to terms with the paradox of simultaneously possessing both “higher spiritual consciousness” and base biological instincts.
St. Augustine’s famous quote puts this another way, “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee,” We know that we are of God, and from God, and yet we struggle with God. This too is part and parcel of the paradox Kopp refers too. The Psalmist focuses on God’s steadfast love. This love is the filter, the lens through which we are invited to see ourselves in the world. This love is a centering point for us to rest in.
If we see what we want to see, and if what we focus on is a choice, then focusing on this steadfast love of God is also a choice. The alternative is to engage in what Kopp refers to as a
self-deception…to bolster failing self-esteem…a kind of selective inattention that distorts our vision both of ourselves and of the world. While trying to retain a subjectively positive self-image
he continues
we may at the same time be trying to hide our “bad side” from other’s view. Explaining away our irresponsible actions, we may project blame and ignore any evidence that belies our professedly good intentions.
When we doubt the steadfast love of God, are we not just projecting on God the same lack of esteem that we feel within ourselves? When the lights go on, and when we are in the presence of the Light of the World, isn’t it better for us to just see ourselves full of paradox and contradiction, and know that God’s love pierces to the heart of it all? Seeing ourselves as we really are is much less of a threat when we rest in God. For if God sees us as we really are, and loves us completely, then what do we have to worry about?
So let’s light the Light! Let it be our prayer that the Light we celebrate at Epiphany would shine bright in our hearts and minds, revealing to us truth yet unfathomed, awareness yet hidden, and all with a calm sense that we are loved beyond reason by the God who lies both beyond and within every paradox, every conundrum, every doubt, every fear, and inside of every breath we take.