TO SEE BETTER John M. Buchanan
Mark 10: 46-52 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
September 19, 1982 Columbus, OH

He came from a world beyond our own on a dark night, and made his first
home a shed behind the house. He was a stranger to the world, unattractive,
different. And yet he was accepting and kind and almost naive in his innocent
simplicity. When his friend was injured, he healed the hurt. His spirit of
love united a group of uncaring cynics in a great adventure of following him
near the end of his life. In a mysterious way he began to live within his
friend and promised that he would always be with him in his heart. For some
reason the authorities were threatened by him, frightened, and hounded him to
his death. But even death could not contain him. After appearing to his small
band of friends, insignificant people, and confirming their faith in him, he
disappeared, ascending to the other world from which he had come.

The story of Jesus as presented by the first century Gospels? No:
actually it is the plot of this summer's smash box office hit, "E.T. - The
Extra-Terrestrial", a delightful movie featuring a being from another world
who spends some time on earth, mostly in the California home of a recently
divorced woman and her three children, Michael, Gertie, and Elliot. I claim
no extra sensitivity in noticing the religious symbolism and the parallels
between the life of Jesus and E.T.'s brief sojourn on earth. I had read de-
tailed reviews underscoring the clear theological possibilities in Dick Camp-
bell's Citizen-Journal Editorial, in the New Yorker, and the New York Times
before seeing the movie. Even the newspaper ad is a pop rendition of Michael-
angelo's “God and Adam" from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

It was possible, of course, to enjoy the movie apart from any religious
meaning and most people, I hope, did. In fact, one of the most important ideas
conveyed throughout the movie is not specifically religious at all - at least
it doesn't seem to be at first. It is that two people can see the same object,
yet perceive two different things, come to two different conclusions. What thé
movie is really all about, I think, is adult inability to see what is perfectly
clear to a child.

The significant incident happened early in the story. Having hidden the
strange creature, E. T., in his room, Elliot introduces him to his older brother
Michael after a vow of secrecy. His little sister Gertie happens on them by
accident. In a very funny sequence both are startled and scream, the mother
inquirles about the noise. After a very close call and the near disaster, the
children talk among themselves.

The older brother says, “Elliot, we've got to tell Mom."

“We can't, Michael. She'll want to do the right thing. You know what that
means don't you?" Elliot pointed at E.T. “He'll wind up as dog food.”

"You're not going to tell, are you, Gertie? Not even Mom?”

"Why not?" Gertie asks.

"Because ~ grownups can't see him. Only kids see him."

Elliot is correct of course, and that's the point of the movie: an idea
which at least suggests Jesus' statement that people who wish to see the king-
dom of God have to become like children, or at least correct their sight so
that they can see like children see.

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“ Two people often see the same object quite differently. An adult often sees
a person, an event, an object, significantly differently from a child. When
adults risk watching for a moment what transpires at a rock concert, we are in-
clined to see an all-out assault on the value structure of Western civilization.
Obviously, it is nothing of the kind, and in this instance, at least, our young-
sters see this a lot more clearly than we do. EN eee

It was truly a revelation to me to discover that two scholars can tell the
story of the same event quite differently. I had assumed that facts are facts
and so was surprised to discover that distinguished historians differ sometimes
radically, when discovering events in the past. It is called the "Historian's
Historicity", and all it means is that even historians have a point of view, a
perspective. For instance, the history of the North American continent is a _ oe Cus
very different matter when it is told from the perspective of the native peoples ~
who lived on the land for thousands of years. The high school textbooks I read
described a rather heroic sequence of discovery, exploration, conquering, civi-
lizing, settling. It was a lot of reading and maturity later that I realized
the same events can be and are perhaps even more accurately described as invasion,
attack, robbery, extortion, exploitation, and genocide. After all, whether it is
a reservation or a concentration camp depends on who is telling the story.

So it is when one encounters the South's version of the American Civil War, ~ Ciclew?
or any major event in history. I am reminded of a vignette attributed to Winston VYWwsew
Churchill during one of his visits to this country. He was holding a press con-
ference. A reporter referred to his prodigious thirst, pointing out someone's
estimate that the brandy Sir Winston had drunk in his lifetime would fill two
thirds of the space of the small room in which the conference was being held.

“What do you think about that?" he asked. “What I think about, young man," Sir
Winston replied, "is how much more work I have to do till I have completed this
job." What you see depends on your point of view.

The text is the account of Jesus curing a man of blindness: helping him to
see clearly, Modern men and women are not sure what to make of miracle stories
such as this one and are inclined to be distracted from the meaning of the inci-
dent in the discussion of whether or not it actually happened. The earliest
oral tradition of the Christian church included this event obviously. But there
is no way either to prove that it did or did not happen. Certainly there is a
sense in which it is a miracle everytime sight is restored: instantaneously as
in this story, or as a result of intricate, careful surgery performed at University
Hospital. In face there is a sense in which the miraculous is heightened for me
at least, when sight is restored in the surgical arena. In addition, there are
just enough unpredictable cures throughout the field of medicine to make even
the most dogged empiricist nervous on occasion.

The point, here and elsewhere, is that Jesus helps people to see: He gives a
sight to the blind, clarity to the confused, light to those who live in darkness. one i
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The man in question was named Bartimaeus, He was an outcast, poor, a beggar,
with no one to care for him. When he called out to Jesus, the crowd told him to ~
be quiet. But he persisted. Jesus heard him, called to him and asked him what =, aac
he wanted. "My sight," the man replied. "

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By noticing the blind man in the crowd, Jesus himself demonstrated part of
the miracle of restored sight. He also demonstrated that having one's sight
means using it to see everything. The blind man couldn't see, but, in fact, his
culture had made him invisible. He didn't count. He was a beggar. The first
miracle here is that Jesus saw him! That kind of sight is not always a pleasant
gift, by the way. How easy it is not to notice - particularly the outcast. How
easy it has become simply not to see those who make us uncomfortable, those who
we know are somehow the losers, the victims in the system in which we are the
winners. Nobody wants to see the State Penitentiary next door. Nobody in st
Columbus wants to have to look at the people who stay in the Open Shelter and oe
so, for the moment, there is no Open Shelter. Do we suppose that those people cl
are simply going to disappear because we don't want to look at them? What are
we to do with these people who knock on the door of this church, saying nothing
more articulate than the blind man's "Have mercy on me, Lord." - sometimes ask-
ing for $100 or $200 or $300 = because poor people can't afford to be warm and
it will take that much just to get the gas turned on which was cut off last
spring; or $20 for food; or a pair of shoes; or a couple of dollars to drowu
despair in a bottle of whiskey. "Am I my brother's keeper?" William Sloan
Coffin asks, and answers, “No I am not. In Christ I am my brother's brother." it
In a time when politicians talk about balancing budgets by reducing aid to a
people who are unemployed, and old, and handicapped, and hungry, and without he
hope, someone, somewhere in the system must insist that we are dealing with
human beings and not sociological data. Someone has to be able to see that
clearly. It is not a cheerful responsibility. It does not feel good. It is,
I submit, the responsibility of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Two people can look at a single object and see it altogether differently.
There is a sense in which there are at least two ways to see everything; super-
ficial observation and a deeper, more profound perception - really seeing a ; { 7
thing for what it is. That's what good art does, by the way; helps to see the (e: &
truth, the reality hidden in ordinary objects. The late Howard Lowry, Presi~
dent of the College of Wooster, one time defined a liberal education as ",..the
ability to see things as they are, not as they half are." (College Talk, p. 124) Ausel
That is always a miracle, a special gift. Suddenly an ordinary afternoon sky --P
becomes an irredescent, heavenly blue. Suddenly, the grace and joyful goodness
of your spouse is clear and unmistakable. Suddenly the miracle of your children,
flesh of your flesh, their brains, bodies, emotions, their hopes and dreams,
stand forth in sharp color and you see clearly, and it is a God-given miracle.
Lowry cited Tolstoy's complaint that we had lost the capacity to notice - to
attend to the important things in life until the near thought of death brings
us to the sense of them. "A pity’ wrote Lowry. "It means missing so much now -
this side of the hospital corridor. So much of ardor, so much of joy, so much
of beholding.” (p. 128)

“Behold! Look!'' - the word is in the Bible more than three hundred times.
The Bible wants us to see everything: the magnificent entirety of creation,
from crawling insects to shattering thunderstorm; the righteous rage of the
prophet and the tender love of the virgin. The Bible wants us to see the whole
wonderful handiwork of the creator, from the passion of human love to the utter
tragedy of human conflict. W, H. Auden wrote a peculiar hymn once with a line
that goes: "Follow him through the land of unlikeness; you will see rare
beasts and have unique adventures."

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The bible suggests that profound religious experience is not so much seeing
the extraordinary as it is seeing clearly with the simplicity of a child; not so
much being transported out of this world - as being given sharpened sight to see
the essence, the reality of the things and people of this world.

How good it would be, I often think, for people who are tired of one another;
husbands and wives whose ardor has waned, and for whom the years together have
depleted any sense of joyful surprise - to be able simply to see one another with
new, innocent, honesty. How good it would be to clear the slate and see one
another, not as a product of our accumulated expectations - but simply as we are.
How good to be able to stand back and see our friends as they are: individuals
who are charmingly and irritatingly different from us but who offer to us kind-
ness, companionship, love, hope.

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“AY

And how good, on oceasion, to see this Jesus simply, openly; to set aside A ge"
for the moment our struggles with doubt, our fervent wrestling with probability as x
and possibility and to see, for one beautiful moment, this man so full of love v a
that he noticed the blind beggar along side the road. The blind beggar got oir
himself noticed because his blindness was not an embarrassment to him. His >

sight was restored because he simply cried out, “Lord, have mercy...my sight,
my sight." We are free in Christ - you and I - to be at home with our humanity;
to acknowledge our limitations, our myopia, our astignatism. Because we are
accepted, forgiven, and loved - we are wonderfully free to be unembarrassed by
our blindness - to confess it and to ask our Lord to heal it.

Malcolm Muggeridge, former editor of Punch, was a skeptic about Christianity
for most of his life. You recall, perhaps, that while he was working on a tele-
vision special on Mother Teresa for the BBC, he began to feel the pull of
Christianity. The result was a conversion and a very lively, almost simple Chris-
tian with compelling power, literacy, and wit. He refers to his becoming a
believer throughout his book, Jesus, the Man Who Lives. I think his description
is remarkable.

“Suddenly, almost with a click, like a film coming into sync, everything
has meaning, everything is real: and the meaning, the reality, shine

out in every shape and sound and movement, in each and every manifesta-
tion of life, so that I want to cry out with the blind man to whom Jesus
restored his sight: One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I ft
see.....How, I ask, could I have missed it before? How not have under- \
stood that the silence, grey light across the water, the cry of the sea-
gull and the sweep of their wings, everything on which my eyes rest is 2
telling me of God?" (Jesus, the Man Who Lives, p. 25) Ayrazrq (gt eon

zane ft 1

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Jesus restored sight to a blind man one time. That miracle has been
repeated time and time again in the lives of ordinary people. The ability to
see clearly, honestly, without empediment has been given as a gift of grace.
May it be so for us.. AMEN.

Mec ite ‘. } 2 Ji «

God of grace, help us to see - ourselves - with courageous honesty ~ others, Wwe
with your accepting love - and your son Jesus Christ, with the open trust of yt a
a child. AMEN. cai