Seeing with Easter Eyes
A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Fifth Sunday of Easter by the Very Rev. Tyler Doherty.
Eastertide--those great fifty days between Easter and Pentecost--are a time built into the liturgical calendar for us as followers of Jesus on the way of love to marinate in and practice the full implications of the resurrection in the midst of ordinary lives. In joy and in sadness. Good times and bad times. Peace and upheaval. Seeing and being with Easter eyes--eyes opened by love for love--is the on-going work of daily conversion. And every year this is the invitation we are offered: Not just to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but to be it, embody it, manifest it. Our lives, our hearts, like bread and wine upon the altar offered up for consecration. “What,” I often ask myself, “do Easter eyes see in this moment that I don’t see?”
The other day I was at the grocery store on a quest for toilet paper, something which between our three little girls and a puppy whose favorite pastime is to throw herself upon an unsuspecting roll and unravel it, is in short supply. Simple enough. I walked through the various aisles and couldn’t find it anywhere. I plucked up my courage, surmounted my Canadian fear of being a bother and asked a clerk where I might find it. “Aisle 4,” he said. “Thank you. And where is that?” I asked. “Between aisle 5 and aisle 3.” “Of course.”
And so I returned to aisle 4, which incidentally was right where it was supposed to be… between aisle 5 and aisle 3. Alas… no toilet paper. My Canadian fear of being an imposition rose within me. I had no choice but to return to my friend the clerk. “I’m sorry, but I still can’t find the toilet paper. Sorry, but would you mind showing me where it is? I’m sorry.” He looked up from his handheld scanner rather quizzically. “No need to apologise… right this way.” Halfway down the aisle, on the top shelf there it was… the toilet paper. Enough even for three little girls and a puppy whose favorite activity after chewing toilet paper, is to gnaw on The Puppy Training Manual (2nd edition).
Right there under my nose the whole time, but I could not see it: “seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear,” Jesus says in the Gospel according to Matthew (13:13). Innocuous enough when it’s toilet paper at the grocery, perhaps even an opportunity to notice the curious Canadian habit of being apologetic for even existing, but something else entirely when it comes to God, God’s good creation, and our brothers and sisters created in God’s image and likeness. “God’s ground is my ground and my ground is God’s ground,” as Eckhart says. Where do we spot God right here, right now? Who don’t we see? Who don’t we hear? Who is not at the table? These are questions that, asked in stillness and silence, pondered in our hearts like Mary, have the potential to open us to a new way of seeing and being--seeing with Easter eyes, hearing with Easter ears, and being Eucharist outside the walls.
One of the things to notice this Eastertide is how the story of Israel usually told in the First Reading has been replaced with the story of the nascent Christian church--the struggles and encounters of ordinary “people of the way” as they start to live out the consequences of the resurrection--that God is love and that love is stronger than death, stronger than empire, stronger than hate and exclusion and casting out. That love is the abiding reality that holds us, keeps us, heals us, and saves us that we might learn to hold others in love too. Time and again in Luke’s Books of Acts, we see the people of the way--those people whose world has been turned upside down by the geyser of belovedness in the person of the Risen Christ--bumping up against someone not like themselves, some other, and asking the question--”Do you love this person too, Lord? Are they included?” “Yes, this person too. This beloved son, this beloved daughter.” Really, Lord? What about…” “This person, too. In them I am well pleased.”
Last week I spoke of the love of God being like olive oil poured in the center of a linen napkin. It spreads out and soon saturates the napkin--every thread lubricated, made limber and translucent by the oil. Every part of ourselves held, kept, loved into loving. Every part of ourselves welcome at the table of divine love (even the parts we’d like to deny, repress, or disown). Nothing touched by love stays that way for long. Soon even the parts we thought we had to prune off, animated by love, are transfigured in gifts for others. So the stain of love encompasses our entire being, but it doesn’t stop there. Love continues spreading. Crossing boundaries. Anointing everyone and everything. If we took this reality seriously, the world would grind to a halt. We’d be too busy taking off our shoes at burning bushes, or cooking meals for strangers who turn out to be angels. Each face an icon of Christ: sometimes risen, sometimes suffering, sometimes dead in the tomb, but always Christ. Who is the Christ in the face of the stranger?
That’s what’s happening with Phillip on this “wilderness road” between Jerusalem and Gaza. The oil of mercy, the stain of belovedness, is spreading over the parched, rocky, desolate countryside. “Even here, Lord?” “Yes, Phil. Even here.” The story of God’s provision for the people of Israel in the wilderness is recapitulated through the person and presence of the Risen Christ. The Israelites have quali, manna from heaven, water from the rock. Philip starts to see that even in that barren place with a pesky fly intent on drinking the sweat of his brow his only company, he has not quail but the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. Not manna, but Jesus the bread of life. Not just water, but living water that never dries up and whose source is his very own heart.
Abundance and provision in the midst of apparent lack. Enter the Ethiopian Eunuch. The very epitome of the social, racial, gendered “other.” Hard to think of someone more different from Philip than this Ethiopian Eunuch! And the Spirit tells Philip to get up and go. The Spirit tells him to join the Eunuch in their chariot. To enter into dialogue. Not to tell them about Jesus, but to be with them. To listen to the Eunuch’s story. And then, only then, to share with them the story of Jesus. To show the Eunuch that they too are a part of the vine. That the sap of belovedness flows through them as well. That nothing can separate any twig or branch or bud or blossom from the love of God in Christ Jesus. “You thought the Candace’s treasury was something. How about the treasury of grace that’s been poured into your own heart, my friend? Do you see? Do you understand?”
And right there, on that nameless wilderness road in the middle of nowhere, the spring of the water rising up to eternal life. “Look, here is water!” the Eunuch exclaims. Indeed. Here, even here, is water. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. It all starts with Philip and the apostles waiting in Jerusalem--to receive to the Holy Spirit. They have to learn to abide. To stay. To just be. To let love love them into loving. To know themselves as branches on the vine whose root is Jesus sunk in the groundless ground of the Father, whose sap is the Holy Spirit. “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Be still and know that love is not something you have to work for, or earn, a reward for good behavior. Love is who God is and who you truly are, all you have to do is let yourself be loved. And then, because love spreads, Phillip finds himself on a wilderness road with an Ethiopuian Eunuch, reminding them that they are a branch of the vine, too. Love bearing the fruit of inclusion, welcoming the stranger, in the middle of nowhere.
Look, here is water! Here is bread! Drink this all of you. Take, eat. Know yourself as a precious, unrepeatable, dignified branch on the vine of belovedness. And then go and bear the fruit of that love on whatever wilderness road you find yourself on to whomever you encounter. Ride in their chariots. Walk in their shoes. Listen to their stories. “Even here, Lord?” “Yes, even here.” “Even them. Lord?” “Yes, even them.” What else, I wonder, do Easter eyes see that I’m not seeing?