As the boy stepped out onto the steps leading from the house, he noticed some markings in the newly fallen snow.1 “What’s that?” he asked his father. The father glanced down at his watch and then looked closely at the tracks.
“Why, those are cat tracks,” he said, pointing to the four-toed prints. Walking a little farther, they noticed that one set of tracks veered away from the other. “Oh, it’s two cats,” said the boy. “See, one went into the bushes and the other near the car.”
As they walked down the driveway, the father stopped at another set of tracks. “A rabbit?” asked the boy, “but where did it go? Did it go back towards the garage to get away from the cats?”
“Perhaps,” said the father. “Look, we’re going to be late.” As they reached the car, the boy saw more prints on the hood. “Another cat,” he exclaimed.
“No,” said the father, they’re too small. I’ll bet a squirrel made those.” See, it came out on that branch, there – “ he pointed to a thick branch hanging over the car – “jumped down on the car, then ran around and jumped off.”
“Cool! Maybe he was avoiding the cats too.”
“Maybe. Now let’s get going, or we’ll be late for church.”
All the way to church, the boy talked about the tracks. When he saw his mother, he ran to her and shouted, “Mom! We had a bunch of animals running around our house this morning!”
“Really? I didn’t see any animals when I left for church.”
“Neither did we,” he said, “but we know they were there – we saw the tracks!”
“Then it’s just like God,” she said.
“What do you mean?” the boy asked.
“I mean we never really see God, but we can see what God has done in the world around us, and we can know that God has been there.
Isn’t this the reality of our faith? We have not seen the risen Jesus in the flesh, but perhaps we can see his tracks. Actually, at best only a handful of people ever saw the risen Jesus. We have a few of their stories in the gospel accounts: Mary Magdalene and the other women at the empty tomb, the eleven in the upper room, or the two men on the road to Emmaus. Paul tells us that no more than five hundred people saw Jesus before his ascension, and that he himself was not one of them.
Among those who most likely did not see Jesus in the flesh were the writers of the gospel according to John and the letter attributed to Peter. Yet both offer assurance that seeing the risen Jesus is not necessary to trusting and believing in his presence with us. John’s gospel was composed at least sixty years after Jesus’ death for a fledging Christian community that was in conflict with the religious establishment. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” Jesus tells them in the evangelist’s account, reassuring them that they have made the right choice in electing to follow him. In what was most likely the original ending of the gospel, the evangelist reminds them that, “Through believing you may have life in his name.”
The letter attributed to the apostle Peter was most likely written early in the second century to a Christian community that was now experiencing discrimination and persecution. Many in this community were gentile women and slaves, who were despised by the rich and powerful people around them. And so the letter as a whole consoles them, and, like the gospel, reassures them that becoming disciples of Jesus was the right choice. “Although you have not seen him,” the writer assures them, “you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy….”
Despite the assurances of the evangelist and the writer of First Peter, we may still wonder whether those who actually saw the risen Jesus in the flesh had an advantage over those who did not see him. Would our trust in the reality of Jesus’ resurrection be stronger if we could have looked into his eyes or put our finger into the nail holes? Many people who met Jesus rejected him, even some who saw him after he had risen. As the gospel of Matthew reminds us, even among the eleven, some initially doubted. Thomas seemed to have needed to actually physically see the risen Jesus. However, like the others, as soon as Thomas was actually in Jesus’ presence and heard Jesus address him, his recognition of Jesus’ true identity was immediate. Without actually even touching Jesus’ hands or side, he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God.”
What do we need to see so that we can trust in the reality of Jesus’ resurrection? We cannot see him in the flesh. And anyway, could it be that physically seeing as a way of truly understanding is over-rated? Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of Jacques Lusseyran, a French resistance fighter during World War II, who had been accidentally blinded as a schoolboy.2 Lusseyran’s family elected to keep him in public school and teach him how to function in a seeing world. He learned to use a Braille typewriter and attend so carefully to his surroundings that his friends marveled at how much of the world around him he could describe. He could tell trees apart by their shadow and sound and the height or width of a wall by its pressure on his body. Able to see into the deeper nature of people and things, Lusseyran realized that sight directs us only to outer appearances, letting us see quickly the surface of things but little else. Slowly gliding our fingers over a person or thing, he taught, or attentively listening, or using our other senses, enables us to know people and the world more deeply and more intimately than we can through sight.
Since we cannot see Jesus physically with our eyes, how might Lusseyran help us to see Jesus in other ways? What are some of the other ways of authentically sensing Jesus’ risen presence? We might begin with the gospels. Reading the gospels attentively, even out loud, listening deeply and carefully to Jesus’ words, and imagining ourselves into the gospel stories are all ways of “seeing” him. Icons are another way to encounter the risen Lord. Icons are like gospel stories in visual form. By praying with them and meditating on what they teach us about Jesus we may more clearly “see” him. Contemplative prayer, in which we intentionally silence our own voice and mind, is another way of coming into his presence and listening to him. Mystical poetry is also an avenue into Jesus’ presence, as we let the ancient seers, the medieval mystics, and modern poets all open God to us through their deft use of language. Many of you sense God’s presence in the natural world. I have long loved Canticle 12 in the service of Morning Prayer. Listen to just one verse from it:
Let the earth glorify the Lord,
praise him and highly exalt him forever.
Glorify the Lord, O mountains and hills,
and all that grows upon the earth,
praise him and highly exalt him forever.
Go outside sometime, let the wind blow over you, hear the birds make melody, and recite the whole canticle. Feel God’s presence and gifts more deeply.
Without a doubt the risen Lord is present to us in the breaking of the bread. As he promised on his last night on earth, and so we experience every time we receive his body and blood, he is present to us. Just like those who were privileged to know Jesus in first-century Palestine, we too meet him in the flesh here at the altar rail. Martin Luther tells us that,
Here in the Lord’s Supper he wants to be neither born nor seen nor heard nor touched by us but only eaten and drunk, both physically and spiritually. Accordingly, by this eating we obtain just as much and arrive at the same point as they with their bearing, seeing, hearing, etc. and he is just as near to us physically as he was to them.3
And finally, and perhaps most important, the risen Lord is present to us in the faces of those whom we serve. Remember as you fill plates or carry-out boxes for Loaves and Fishes, or as you come to the park next week to worship with our street church congregation, the Lord will be among them all. If we look carefully enough, we will surely see him.
We are always in God’s presence. It is in God that we “live and move and have our being.” The risen Lord is always among us. The risen Lord is always leaving his tracks. Open your eyes, your ears, your hands. Experience his presence now. Know that you too are among those who are blessed by their trust in his love, mercy, and grace.
1. Adapted from Keith Hewitt, “Tracks,” Lectionary Tales for Preaching and Teaching (Lima, OH: CSS, 2013), 96ff.
2. In “Light without Sight,” Christian Century, 131, 7, April 2, 2004, 22ff.
3. Quoted in Lisa Dahill, Truly Present (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005), 85.
No comments:
Post a Comment