Looking with the Eyes of Your Heart

In this weekend's Gospel reading John the Baptist has been imprisoned. He then sends a couple of his disciples to Jesus to discover, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answers,

Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

In the sermon Looking with the eyes of your heart which is in our archives, I once preached on this text looking at it alongside that wonderful children's fable The Little Prince saying in part,

John had expected the Messiah to break into human history with stern judgment. The good wheat would be separated from the useless chaff and then the chaff would be burned. John was ready for the end of times to some in a rush. But that was not God’s plan. God’s plan for us humans and all creation was much more loving. God became human and lived among us. Then as a human, God extended that same care through Jesus that God had always had for the creation. Jesus looked with compassion on the people around him. He brought harsh words of condemnation for those who saw themselves as righteous in their own eyes. But for the hurting people he saw, Jesus brought hope and healing.

Jesus would not have bothered to live, suffer and die as one of us, for us, unless he loved us. The care and attention God has wasted for us is what makes each of us special. You are not just like everyone else. To the God who formed you, the God who loves you, the God who listens when you grumble or boast or say nothing at all, you are unique and special. It may sound meaningless to say “You are unique and special, just like everybody else,” but it’s true.

But all of that I have said so far could be just smoke and mirrors. How can we know that God loves us and sees each of us as special? Like John we may look at the world around us and miss the hand of God at work. I say that the Kingdom of God breaks into our lives now. Miracles occur all around us. We see the evidence. All we have to do is look again, switching our focus by about 12 inches or so, from here to here [gesturing to my head and then my heart]. Like the Little Prince, we have to look again, this time using the eyes of our hearts. For what is essential is invisible to the eye.

I went on to give a couple of real world examples of how this has worked. The full text of that sermon is online here: Looking with the eyes of your heart

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor