On Seeing What We Do Not See

(The Need to XYZ)

 

He also told them a parable:

“Can a blind person guide a blind person?

Will not both fall into a pit . . .

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye,

but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

(Luke 6:39, 41)

 

A devotional by Siegfried S. Johnson on Wednesday, April 25, 2007

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

I’m not often called upon to be a “Speck Inspector” for my neighbor’s eye.  I am, however, sometimes called upon just after a meal in a public place to inspect for specks of pepper in my wife’s teeth.  In the For-What-It’s-Worth department, the cartoon I’ve printed for you is in honor of poor Sherry.  We see a unsuspecting fellow about to be hit with a falling pot, and there they are hiding behind the trees -- three pastors waiting to record the event.  The poor fellow wears a T-shirt which says, “I’m the person things happen to and then end up as a sermon illustration!”  I’m sure Sherry can relate.  This fellow was likely part of a pastor’s family.  Pity the pastor’s family for living life constantly scrutinized for next week’s sermon material.

 

I digress.  I was saying that I occasionally find myself staring into my wife’s beautiful smile with a mission, Speck Inspector for Pepper Specks.  Perhaps, when reporting for duty, I should paraphrase Jesus, “How can I see the speck in your teeth, but not notice the log in my own?”  Her teeth are beautiful and white, mine dingy with old dental work.  A speck of pepper in her teeth mars a beautiful smile.  A speck of pepper in my teeth gets lost amid the logs of larger cosmetic offenses.  With such a beautiful smile to maintain, I understand her need for someone else to help her “see what she cannot see.”

 

Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor tells of an occasion when she needed someone to help her see what she could not.  Standing up from lunch her male companion whispered, “XYZ.” 

 

“Huh?” said Barbara.

 

“Examine Your Zipper,” he whispered.

 

Rev. Taylor wrote, “And he was right.  The fly on my Eddie Bauer summer sale jeans was standing wide open.  As embarrassed as I was, I was grateful to him for being direct with me.  He not only saved me from exposing myself all the way back to my car but also from spending the rest of the afternoon wondering if he had noticed.” 

 

Rev. Taylor wrote, in words I’ve borrowed for tonight’s title, “We all need help seeing what we do not see, which is one reason we practice faith in community.” 

 

Reading Paul Greenberg on Wednesday mornings (generally his one weekly column NOT dealing with politics) often sparks the inspiration needed for my devotional.  I’m amazed constantly at how similar are the tasks, the blessings, and the challenges facing the editorialist and the pastor.  We are similar, not only in writing with deadlines to communicate our opinions, but as this morning’s editorial mentions, in an often less delightful aspect of the job -- fielding responses to those opinions.  This morning Mr. Greenberg came through for me again.  Today’s op-ed piece was called “Letters Galore,” and is Greenberg’s take on the comments he receives from readers: 

 

“The letters from readers keep coming.  All kinds from all over . . . my valued correspondents agree with me, they disagree with me, or they may do both in part.  All are welcome; the cheers lift the spirits and the boos can teach. 

We learn most from our critics.  What was it Confucius said of one of his followers?  “My disciple Hui is of no help to me.  In my words there is nothing which he does not admire.” 

The criticisms that hurt aren’t those that don’t make much sense, but those that make all too much.  After the initial defensiveness passes, instruction sets in.

It all comes with the territory.  You sign on for it all when you take the job.  And what a grand job it is.  Imagine getting paid just to express your opinions.  Listening to others is a small price to pay for the privilege.  Who knows, maybe that’s why we’re all here:  to listen to one another.”

 

Point is, sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own agendas that we need someone to point out what we cannot see -- the pepper speck in our teeth, the need to XYZ.  Sometimes others, even those with whom we may have fundamental disagreements, can help us see what we ourselves cannot see.  This is a phenomenon of exchange, and we need it, else, as blind leaders of the blind, we both fall into the ditch.

 

When I began ministry thirty-three years ago, especially in those formative seven years of theological development (1974 - 1981) it didn’t take long for me to imagine that I had arrived.  To be exposed to viewpoints of those disagreeing was unnecessary to say the least, perhaps even dangerous and forbidden, as verboten as Solomon marrying foreign wives.  The very word exposed implies a fear of contamination. 

 

In those early years my agenda was narrow, silencing all other voices.  I had become an historic Landmark, closed-communion, Missionary Baptist, convinced of Calvinism and passionate about my Dispensational Pre-millennialism and my rapture bumper sticker – “Warning driver of this car may disappear at any moment.”  I had effectively shut myself off from all theological discourse other than with those who stood in agreement with me.  To “give the other side a voice” was not an acceptable modus operandi.  That would be too risky, a reckless exposure to potentially viral doctrinal diseases.  I’m not talking Zen Buddism or Hinduism here.  As a strict Missionary Baptist of the 1970's, I’m talking about Presbyterianism and Methodism!  I’ll long remember the uneasiness I felt walking into the sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church in Clarendon.  My first little church, Friendship Baptist (the result of a rather ugly split from Harmony Baptist!) was in Clarendon.  I entered the dark sanctuary timidly, as if I was touching an unholy thing, something dark and mysterious, something, well . . . Catholic.  Here was a church full of specks, and I was an adept at discovering them.   I couldn’t see the log in my own eye for seeing the specks in theirs. 

 

One summer Sunday morning in 1974 I was visiting my parents at my home church of First United Methodist in Pine Bluff.  I was to drive to Newark that afternoon to begin my first youth revival.  I wasn’t feeling well in the service and, for the only time in my life before or since, I passed out – right there on the back pew of balcony.  I was taken out and examined by a doctor.  Later, I became so convinced of closed communion that I would claim in a sermon that God’s providence saved me from being defiled by taking communion with my own home church – those Open Communion Methodists!  Yes, I was quite a remarkable speck inspector.

 

It happened gradually (I’m a slow learner!), but I’ve learned to hear other voices without fear.  Others, even those with whom I shared fundamental disagreements, helped me “see things that I didn’t have eyes to see.”  Believe it or not, in 1981 when I left my pastorate to enroll in a Southern Baptist seminary, it was a rather bold move to the left, toward liberalism.  It was but the first lap of a learning adventure which is yet ongoing.

 

If seminary was a theological and philosophical baby step, my move to Ann Arbor in 1985 to enroll in the Ph.D. program of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan was a giant leap, exposing me to cultural and theological viewpoints of the Ancient Near East.  There I learned to converse face-to-face with those whose ideas were shaped vastly differently than my own.  Moreover, all this was lived out in conjunction with my job at First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor.  Methodism’s eastern flavor of ritual and liturgy and sacrament as the foundation of Christian experience, rather than systematic theology, began to merge with what I was being exposed to in my own graduate studies.  

 

Other eyes were helping me see what I could not see.  Professors.  Colleagues.  Journals.  Joseph Campbell opened a whole new world.  PARABOLA became one of my favorite journals, exposing me to cultural viewpoints of others, many which I don’t myself share nor will I ever, but I am more comfortable now in what I believe and who I am, and so can read other views without animosity or fear, realizing that even they have something to teach me. 

 

Last week I shared with you the Hagion Phos (Holy Light) ceremony from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Christianity’s holiest place.  Every year, on the Saturday before Easter, the Eastern Orthodox Church has claimed a miracle of Holy Fire issuing from the tomb of Christ, a spontaneous fire that spreads to the bundled 33 candles of thousands of pilgrims.  Last Wednesday I lit my own bundle of 33, which I brought back last month from Jerusalem, a bundle which was last lit at that very tomb.  I didn’t share this with you in order to convince you of the miracle which the Orthodox Church claims happens annually, recorded as far back as the fourth century.  Rather, I wanted you to see that the family of your Christian faith is much larger than we might imagine, and that we can learn from the devotion of others.

 

I think this diversity is desirable.  I’ve grown to pity those who have chosen to read only those who have been shaped by the same textual interpretation shaping themselves.  We practice faith in community, and it is a very, very large community. 

 

Can it be that by exploring the ritual of those who view scripture differently than we do, God delivers us from the worship of our own readings and our own interpretation?  By joining us with those who have been broken in different places than we have, God offers us guides who can spot danger where we may not.  By seating us at the table with those who see us differently than we see ourselves, God makes sure we have someone to check our teeth for the specks and to tell us to XYZ.  As Greenberg writes, “maybe that’s why we’re all here:  to listen to one another.”

  

 

Sources and notes:

“Teaching Contempt,” a “Faith Matters” essay by Barbara Brown Taylor in The Christian Century, August 24, 2004.

 

“Letters Galore,” by Paul Greenberg, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 25, 2007.