Believing is Seeing

It had been a tough week. A real emotional roller-coaster. It began with the exciting parade on Palm Sunday; the disciples strutting into Jerusalem behind Jesus, as if there were taking the town by storm. Then there was the adrenalin rush when Jesus cleared the thieves from the Temple courtyard. We can imagine the disciples cheering Jesus on as if they were at a sports event:

“Go, Jesus, go.”

“You the man, Jesus”.

“Woopee (woopee), J.C. (J.C.), let’s play Messiah!”

Then there was the joy of gathering together for the Passover meal in that tight-knit circle of Jesus’ followers who were like family to each other. At least, it was joyful until the disciples woke-up from their drunken stupor to see Jesus being taken away by Roman soldiers. Then the horror of seeing their beloved Master nailed to a cross and crucified.

It had been a tough week in Jerusalem. And it’s been a tough week in Scarborough. Death has played its cruel tricks and has snatched loved ones from our midst. Illness has reached into our families and turned our lives upside down. The news has reminded us that death walks the streets of this town that we once called “Toronto the Good.” This past week has felt anything but holy.

So if you haven’t quite turned the corner into the joy of Easter; if you still feel like Mary weeping in the garden, you are not alone.

But then, Mary was not alone. There was someone in the garden with her. She thought it was the gardener. And because she thought that it was the gardener, that was whom she saw. What she believed to be the case was what she perceived to be the case. Her mind and her heart were so filled with grief that her eyes could not see new life.

But in fact, new life was right before her eyes. New life was staring her in the face. Jesus was staring her in the face. She thought he was dead, so she couldn’t see him. It was only when he called her by name that the dark glass of despair fell from her eyes, and she could see clearly the wondrous reality that had been there all the time.

Jesus was alive! Death had been defeated!! The door to the future had been thrown wide open and all things were possible!!! That was the reality which embraced Mary that morning. But she couldn’t see it until she believed it.

Believing is seeing. That’s the way the Bible understands reality. Believing is seeing. We usually think of it the other way around. We usually say, “Seeing is believing.” And of course there’s much truth in that. We learn a lot by seeing. We learn a lot by looking around and observing. 300 years of advancements in science and health and industry have come about because people have observed the world around them and have noted carefully the measurable results of experiments. Real knowledge and real progress are made possible by the conclusions that we draw from our empirical analysis of what we call the “real world.” Seeing is believing.

But we have been so steeped in the pragmatic empiricism of Enlightenment thinking that we have been blinded to the opposite reality: believing is seeing. What we expect to see influences what we do see. What our minds tells us to see influences the image that the optic nerve plants in our brain. If you don’t expect Jesus to be there, you aren’t going to see him. If your mind is telling you – as Mary’s mind was telling her – that there’s no way that Jesus can be alive, then there’s no way that you are going to see or sense the presence of the Risen Christ within you and all around you.

Believing is seeing. What you expect to see is what we do see.

Perhaps a few examples will help. First example: Above the Midland Ave. door of this church, there is a beautiful, eight-point, blue and red flower in stained glass. For five years I stared straight at that flower without seeing it. When there was a Country Style next to the KFC across Midland, I frequently made coffee runs in the morning. And I’d come bounding up those stairs leading to the front door, coffees and donuts in hand for Pastor Paul and me and members of the Property Committee and whoever else was in the building. Never once saw that flower. When you believe that the most important thing in the world is getting your caffeine fix, you don’t see some of the interesting things around you. Then one morning – I don’t know, maybe I was walking more slowly, maybe I was in a more contemplative mood – anyway, one morning I came up those steps and I saw this flower, right in front of me. And it was pretty. And I said, “How long has that been there?” Oh, maybe since 1939! The state of your mind and your heart influences what you see; or don’t see. Believing is seeing.

Second example: My wife and I were hiking one day, and up ahead we saw a creek. The trail went over the creek on a bridge, and just to the left of the bridge, on the creek bank, we saw a large bird. Looked like a crane. And then, as we got closer, we could see that she was sitting on a nest, and we began to speculate on the number of eggs in the nest, or maybe they’d hatched and we wondered how many little cranes she had. We could both see this as clear as day. And then, as we got closer still, we realized that what we’d been looking at all along was a plastic garbage bag, draped on some branches on the creek bank. We see what our minds tell us to see. As long as we were convinced that it was a bird, then it was a bird. Believing is seeing.

Third example: How often have you bumped into someone out of context, and you didn’t recognize them? Maybe it was a co-worker whom you saw at the mall; or a fellow church member whom you met at Casino Rama. You see someone in a place where you don’t expect to see them, and sometimes you don’t recognize them. Or maybe the face is familiar but you can’t come up with the name. We have trouble recognizing someone if our mind is telling us that he or she shouldn’t be there. We see what we expect to see. It’s just like Jesus and Mary in the garden. Believing is seeing. And not believing is not seeing.

Of course, in the case of Casino Rama, maybe you both shouldn’t be there. But if you hit it big, just remember: 10% goes to the church!

It’s amazing what you don’t see when you’re not looking for it. It might have been there all along, right in front of you, but one day you see it for the first time. My world was once little more than the empirical reality we see around us. No sense of the presence of God, no sense of the Risen Christ. I mean, in my whole life I think there’s maybe been just one Easter Sunday when I wasn’t in church. But that doesn’t mean that I had any sense that the Risen Christ was a real presence – a powerful presence – in the church or the world or anywhere else. It wasn’t until I took the time to read the Bible and study theology and, especially, to just stop all of my business and pray that I began to sense that Holy Presence that had been there all along. It was something like Jesus calling me by name. But Jesus often speaks in a whisper. You have to be still in order to hear him. And, having heard him with the inner ear of your heart, then maybe you can begin to see him with the eyes of faith.

What are you seeing as you weep in the garden at the end of this rough week? Perhaps the more important question is: what are you believing as you weep in the garden with Mary? Are you believing that your life is over? Are you believing that your church is dying? Are you believing that life is just one painful event after another? Are you believing that you are somehow weak and ineffective and that life has passed you by? If you are, I understand that. Been there, done that, got the tear-stained t-shirt. But having been there, I can tell you this: if you believe these things, then all that you’re going to see in that garden is death. You might be surrounded by the most beautiful flowers in the world, and the birds might be filling the air with a marvellous melody, but you won’t see or hear any of that. The most that you’ll see is the gardener. And you won’t even realize what a nice guy he is.

If you’re trapped in death, then I invite you to hear the word of life. Indeed, I invite you to hear the Word of life; the Word who is made flesh in Jesus Christ; the One who calls you by name. Because, you see, it’s not just Jesus calling Mary’s name 2000 years ago, it’s Jesus whispering to you in your own heart today. If the story of the Resurrection is simply a story about a resuscitated body walking around in the garden back then, then it has no more relevance to us today then the story of the British snatching victory from the jaws of defeat at Dunkirk; an inspiring story to be sure, but in the final analysis it’s no more than an historical account of something that happened long ago. But the story of the Resurrection is a different kind of story. It’s a story not bound by the limits of time and space. It happens everywhere, and everywhen. The Risen Christ is alive everywhere. God is present everywhere. All Creation is filled with holiness. Including you. But you have to believe it to see it. You have to die to the notion that death somehow has the final word, and breathe in the life that is all around you: new life, eternal life, resurrection life; the power of life which makes all things possible.

The comedian Woody Allen has this to say on immortality: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying.” Yet we have to die. We have to die to ourselves and our dour assumptions in order to have the first taste of immortality. We have to die to our assumption that “I know what’s really going on” before we can rise to a new awareness of what really is going on. You have to die to death in order to see life. You have to wake up to the glory that is within you and all around you in order to realize that even in the midst of life’s most difficult and painful challenges, new life is just waiting to break forth. The Holy Spirit stole into that tomb on Easter morn and snatched life out of the jaws of death. If you believe that to be so, if you believe even in the possibility that it might be so, then perhaps you can make out, through tear-filled eyes, a gentle man, reaching out to you with scarred and wounded hands, saying, “Mary, I am the doorway, enter into the fullness of life.” Amen.

Text: John 20:14-16
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
Easter Sunday
12 April 2009