Eyes to See

Written by Jim Holland ( September 2014)It seemed that Jesus always attracted a crowd. It also seemed that the makeup of that crowd was always a messy mixture of people who really believed in Him and also people who you would not expect to find hanging around a religious guru: prostitutes, outcast, and “sinners”. This did not sit well with the other religious people of course and it ended up alienating them to the point of having to do away with him. The religious people had chosen a nice, moralistic, ethical, and predictable system long before Jesus came along. Jesus on the other hand, came with a messy, unpredictable, fierce and loving supernaturalism. What interests me is - why did the crowds follow him? Why did they long to talk to him? Why were they attracted to him? If we can get at this we can get at what is behind some of negative attitudes and begin seeing people the way Jesus did.Why did the crowds follow Jesus? If you look at the gospels you will not have to look for hidden plots or have deep insights to figure it out. It is really very simple--Jesus loves sinners. That alone suggests why Jesus towers above all other religious figures in history—Jesus loves sinners. It is evident all over the New Testament. The thing that attracted people then and now to Jesus is that he loves sinners. I suppose that is why the church always was and always will be a messy place. It is a gathering of sinners. I want to analyze this for a moment, because most of us would agree with this in principle but would go on to ask how that was possible in practice.  The real irony is that the first thing we love about Jesus is how he loves broken and messy people, but then the first thing you resent about Jesus is his love for other broken and messy people! Jesus’ love is so much more embracing than we like. Like Jonah, we expect Jesus to be loving, accepting, forgiving and patient with us, but not to the dirty pagans out there who are committed to wickedness and violence. If you are thinking like this you need to ask why?Why does Jesus love people committed to wickedness and violence? Why does he eat with them, associate with them, go to their parties, touch them, socialize with them and answer their questions? The answer is what is in him, not what is in them. I would guess that most of our harshness and rigidness toward others has to do with our own lack of love and a deep sense of moral superiority. Whether we will admit it or not, this has to be it—a lack of charity in our own soul. We are much too full of ourselves and our own glory to even bother with a real interest in others. At least not in the radical way that Jesus deals with us.Years ago I was stunned by a passage in a book I was reading on beauty. The writer gives us a test that absolutely shows that it is what is in our hearts (a preoccupation with the self) that closes us to the possibility of really seeing glory or beauty in other people. He suggests that the inability for us to perceive the worth and beauty in others is our own selfishness and egocentricity. The writer asks the question, “Who in this world understands you the best?” Most of us would obviously answer, “It is the person who loves us the most.” Authentic love appreciates the object of its affection more than anyone else. Obviously that is true. I have heard people talk of their wife or beloved in such glowing terms that I could not wait to see them. Often I am disappointed. Why? They see through eyes of love. The reason most of us do not see the beauty in others or anything for that matter is that we are too full of ourselves.Charles Williams, a friend of C. S. Lewis, writes often on the power of true charity to transform the soul and give us eyes to see. Thomas Howard describes how he saw things like this:

"The eye with which he looked at ordinary things was like the eye of a lover looking at his lady. The lover sees this plain woman crowned with the light of heaven. She walks in beauty. Her eyes are windows of Paradise to him. Her body, every inch of it, is an incarnation and epiphany of celestial grace. The ecstatic vision of beauty thus vouchsafed to that love is true, not false. The lady is as glorious as he sees her to be. It has been given to him who loves her to see the truth about her. The rest of us bystanders, mercifully, have not had our eyes thus opened, else we would all go mad. It would be an intolerable burden of glory if we all saw unveiled, the splendor of all other creatures, all the time…”(Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty)

 When the writers of the gospels would repeatedly say, “Jesus loves sinners,” this is how:  As pure, holy and undefiled as he was when he looked at sinners, he was moved. He had an atheistic experience. He saw through the sin to what his love would make of them. He actually never thought of himself, his whole life was totally given to saving sinners. Therefore he could look at the worst sampling of humanity and not be morally revolted. He loved.We might say the whole story of the Bible is about the creative power of love, God’s love. Love does things! Love came down. Love became incarnate. Love went to the cross!  This is the creative power of love, which will stop at nothing to reconcile sinners to God. This is the holy touching the profane. This is the love that, if it rests on you, you will never be the same again.