With New Eyes

With New Eyes
Luke 24:13-35

April 6, 2008: Third Sunday of Easter

Rev. Kathleen Crockford
United Congregational Church of Westerly
United Church of Christ

It’s the third Sunday after Easter, so it may not be a surprise to you that our gospel reading for today features another story about the risen Christ appearing again to his disciples. I like how the joy of Easter lives on. On Easter Sunday we heard how Christ appeared to Mary in the garden. Last week we heard about Christ appearing to the disciples behind locked doors and then to the doubting Thomas who sees him and believes. And now in today’s gospel story from Luke, the risen Christ walks along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus with two of his followers, engaged in deep conversation with them. But in this story the two didn’t realize that it was Jesus until he sat down with them at the table and broke bread with them. Up to that moment their eyes were seeing this fellow traveler, but not really seeing who he truly was. And then, the moment Jesus breaks the bread—an action that he had done countless times with his disciples as they shared meals around the table—they realized who is was. Then he vanishes from their sight.

It’s a wonderful story. But I can’t help but wonder—why didn’t they recognize Jesus from the very beginning?

There could be any number of reasons. Maybe they were so upset by what had happened—Jesus being put to death—that they weren’t open to any thing new. Maybe they were so overwhelmed by their loss that grief had a grip on them. Or maybe, just maybe they didn’t recognize him because they weren’t expecting to meet him like that.

This reminds me of a wonderful story that Barbara Kelliher told me about her husband, Jim. One time, years ago, Jim had made a trip with some buddies to a Dude Ranch out west to fulfill a lifelong dream of living the life of a cowboy. When it was time for him to return home, Barbara went to the airport to meet him. She looked and looked, but couldn’t find him among the passengers getting off the plane. Finally a tall, handsome man in a big, black cowboy hat came up to her and gave her a hug. Then she recognized him! It was Jim—the same, and yet different, having had a wonderful, refreshing, life-changing time away to experience new things. Plus that big black cowboy hat! But up close and personal, Barbara knew it was Jim and could see him with new eyes.

Seeing with new eyes—isn’t that what happened to those two disciples of Jesus who recognized him when he broke the bread? But the story goes on the say that at that moment he vanished from their sight. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? Like a deep and satisfying dream that you are enjoying as you sleep that vanishes from consciousness when you wake up—Jesus, the risen Jesus, vanishes from their sight. But the change in them was real. Even though it was dark by then, they got up, turned around, and headed back to Jerusalem to tell the others what had happened.

And what had happened? An ordinary moment—that of sitting at a table, about to eat a bit of bread together—had become a holy moment when the truth broke through and Jesus’ presence was real to them. They were in that holy moment and saw with new eyes, with the eyes of faith.

But what does in take to have the eyes of faith? I believe that it takes practice—practice and God’s grace to open ourselves to the possibility that within our everyday lives there are holy moments that break through. One of my favorite inspirational writers, Frederick Buechner, expresses it this way in his classic best-seller The Magnificent Defeat when he writes:

Sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only . . . a garden, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with our being and imagination…what we may see is Jesus himself. (pp. 87-88)

But it can get pretty difficult to practice this kind of seeing with new eyes. Our lives are complicated. We are busy dealing with our problems. We have baggage that we carry around with us that we wish we could put down. We have concerns. We have worries. Sometimes it feels like too much to deal with. In her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings, Dr. Rachel Remen, one of the earliest pioneers in the field of mind/body healing, tells the story of a very successful cancer surgeon who was going through this kind of turmoil. He was in a deep depression and wanted to give up his practice. All he could see was what was going wrong. Even though he had given life to so many others, he had become cynical and disillusioned.

Dr. Remen listened to him express what was going on in his life. Then she suggested that every night before he went to bed that he review the events of the day and ask himself three questions: What surprised me today? What moved or touched me today? And what inspired me today?

He was skeptical that this would do any good to which she replied, “It’s cheaper than Prozac.” He laughed and agreed to try it. He called a few days later, irritated. “I’ve been asking those questions for three days now—what surprised me, what touched me, and what inspired me—and the answers are always the same: nothing, nothing, nothing. I don’t like to fail. Is there a trick to this?” Dr. Remen laughed and answered, “Perhaps you are looking at your life in old ways. Try looking at life as if you were a novelist or a journalist, or even a poet. Look for the stories.” There was a silence. Then he said, “Right” and hung up.

Dr. Remen didn’t hear back for over a month and wondered what was going on. Finally the surgeon stopped in and showed her a little journal that he had been keeping to write down the answers to those three questions every night. At first the surprises were that a patient’s cancer had shrunk, or an experimental drug was working well. But gradually he began to see more deeply. He saw people who had faced great pain and darkness by following a thread of love; people who had sacrificed parts of their bodies to affirm the value of being alive; people who had found ways to triumph over pain, suffering, even death.

As he began to look at life with new eyes, he found himself able to connect more deeply with others. He began asking questions that he had not been taught to ask in medical school, like “What has sustained you as you deal with this illness?” or “Where do you find your strength?” And he really wanted to know. On one of his last visits to Dr. Remen he said, “I knew cancer very well, but I did not know people before. All I could see was the cancer. I never saw the person.” Then he reached in his pocket and brought out a beautiful stethoscope engraved with his name. “A patient gave me this,” he said. And his voice was filled with emotion. Dr. Remen smiled and asked, “And what do you do with that?” At first he looked at her, puzzled by the question. Then he laugh out loud. “Hmm, I listen to hearts. I listen to hearts.”

Dr. Remen concludes:

Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways. When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in things we have done for many, many years many take us completely by surprise. We can see life in many ways: with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition. But perhaps it is only by those who speak the language of meaning, who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served. (from My Grandfather’s Blessings, pp. 116-119)

This is a time for seeing with new eyes what is all around us. The holy is ready to break in to the ordinary moments of our lives. When we practice the art of seeing with our hearts, the risen Christ is with us, too. Amen.