Blind Spots
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
October 28, 2012
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
Romans 12:17
Luke 6: 37-42
Let
us pray,
Help us to see
despite our eyes
Help us to think
outside our minds
Help us to be
more than our lives
For your eyes show us the way
Your mind knows the truth
Your being is the life.
Amen.
When
I was getting ready to write this sermon I took a look back to see exactly when
we started this series. We have been looking at the "Marks of a True
Christian" since June 10, and here it is the last week of October, and we
are getting closer and closer to the end. It is pretty amazing because I didn't
measure it out ahead of time, I just delved right in, and it looks as if it
will take us exactly up until the beginning of Advent. There are only a few
verses left, and most of them have to do with the same basic idea, and that is,
how we are supposed to deal with the "evil" that surrounds us in this
world. My second sermon on the series introduced that we are to "hate what
is evil, and hold fast to what is good," and now Paul goes into some more
detail about just what that means. This week we have, "Do not repay anyone evil for
evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all," and looking
back we see,
9 Let love
be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; 10 love
one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do
not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice
in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute
to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
14 Bless
those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice
with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony
with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not
claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for
evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.[1]
That
is this week, and looking forward this theme of dealing with evil is continued.
. .
18 If it is
possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved,
never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God;g
for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 No,
“if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them
something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their
heads.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Since in the weeks to come we will be looking at not
avenging against evil, and how we are even to feed and clothe our enemies, and
overcome evil with good, I wanted to look today at why many times we actually
miss the mark and repay evil with evil because we have trouble recognizing the
evil that we ourselves do and are capable of. Often we inadvertently miss this
mark because we mistake our own role in the breaking of our relationships. For
this reason I picked the following passage, about our own vision of ourselves,
and others. Luke 6: 37-42:
37 “Do not
judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be
condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will
be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over,
will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get
back.”
39 He also
told them a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both
fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above the teacher, but
everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. 41 Why do
you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your
own eye? 42 Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me
take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the plank in your
own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you
will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.
My
class this week began reading Sophocles' tragedy, Oedipus Rex, and I was continually struck by connections with the
passages I was studying this week for this sermon. Oedipus, the famous man,
fated to marry his mother and kill his father, does so and doesn't know about
it, but that all happens before Sophocles play begins. The play instead centers
around the character Oedipus, the king of Thebes, as the truth about himself is
slowly revealed to him, and how through most of the play he is blind to the
truth, even hostile to it, despite the fact he is in every way earnestly seeking
truth. I thought so much of it that I pulled a passage out and put it in the
bulletin for you all to consider this morning. In this passage, the famous
blind prophet Tieresias is pushed to his limit and so tells Oedipus the truth
about himself, and Oedipus responds with defensive denial, accusing the prophet
back, he just cannot accept the truth in the moment, self preservation takes
over as the overpowering instinct, emotion rules over reason, and his blind
spots are revealed. He is too wrapped up in saving his city, and so resolved in
his own self importance, to even imagine for a second that he is the problem,
and he is and these figurative blind spots result in actual self inflicted
blindness in the poetic justice of the plays conclusion.
And
so let us look at our gospel passage. the famous speck and plank. Blind to our
own plank we cannot help but see the speck within our neighbor's eye. This is
one of Jesus' more straight forward metaphors. He uses it to explain the Judge
not lest ye be judged mandate. It is paired with this idea in both Luke and
Matthew, but I chose the Luke version because it goes into more detail,
especially going beyond just not judging, but to not condemning and to the forgiving. It is interesting to me that
Jesus says do not judge, and then says not to condemn, and then says to forgive,
but if you haven't judged, what do you have to forgive. It is almost as if he
knows that Judging and condemning are within our nature. It is funny how we
don't even notice the inconsistency of it all. To forgive seems to require some
judgment was made. Think about what that means for us as we go around self
righteously forgiving, sure of how right you are that you are big enough to
forgive. If you think about it, you really cannot be a forgiving person without
being a judging person and a condemning person first. Have you ever thought of
it that way, or is that one of our blind spots, one of those little unthought
of inconsistencies that we hold to?
A
student of mine, whom I taught last year had me look over one of his college
application essays, in which he was supposed to write and introductory letter
to his future prospective roommate. It seemed the essay was trying to get at who
they are on a personal level without the pretensions of a formal essay. The
student did a pretty good job, but one piece of it struck me as inconsistent.
He wrote how, growing up in Nigeria he loves diversity, loves being surrounded
by different people of different races, but then in the next sentence he talked
about how he sees every one as the same and is color blind. I asked him, hey which is it? Do you enjoy
diversity or are you color blind? He was amazed, he had never thought of it
like that before. I understood what he meant, but the words made him think
beyond the slogans, and for a minute he could see his own blind spots.
What
are our blind spots within ourselves? What are those little inconsistencies
that we do not see? We all have them. I think this is what Jesus means when he
says the plank in our own eyes. These are the things about ourselves that we
miss completely. For Oedipus it was the fact that he was trying to do the best
good for his kingdom, that there was no way he could comprehend the notion that
he himself was the evil he sought to eradicate. For my student it was that within
his loving notions of equality, he was in some ways carrying his own subtle
unconscious hypocrisy about the self righteous way he sees himself and other people.
What are our blind spots? The biggest problem in identifying them ourselves obviously
is that we are blind to them. And you may be asking yourself at this point, hey
Pete, what does this have to do with repaying evil for evil?
Let
me get to that. I think that most of agree with this statement, that it is bad
to repay evil for evil. It is bad because it never ends the cycle. Evil begets
evil begets evil begets evil, one bad turn results in another and another and
another, that human beings have a tendency to seek revenge rather than
reconciliation, and that something at some point must be done to stop the
downward spiral, and the only hope there is, is to insert good, to insert
forgiveness, that doing more evil just never helps. It is why we hold up as
heroes people like Ghandi, and Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
because they were able to overcome the violence and evil, not with more evil,
but were able to stop the cycle of hatred by inserting love, reflecting
goodness, and prohibiting the violence of evil to tear their message and
movement apart, and so India became independent, Apartheid was overcome, and
segregation was challenged.
So
maybe, to reflect the example of these great men, as people inspired by Jesus, and
his not repaying evil for evil message, I should have chosen the more
consistent, "turn the other cheek" statement of Jesus to pair with
it. That seems to capture the notion of not "repaying evil with evil"
much better. Yes in many ways that is true. Turning the other cheek allows for
the evil not to be repaid with evil, but how often when we are the ones who
apologize or forgive, do we expect something out of the other person? We expect
them to do the same or more with us, to act differently. Are we forgiving or
trying again to control? Why are our supposedly selfless acts of forgiveness or
our apologies just one new way of gaining control of a situation and others,
and again right there in our blind spot evil is lurking. Like I said back in
June when we were looking at the "hate what is evil" passage, evil is
difficult to nail down in our world.
I
was watching "Sleeping Beauty" last night with Coralee before she
went to bed, and in comes Malificent. Coralee at two years old could recognize
her as evil. Coralee asked me, when she poofed into the scene in a flash of
green glowing fire, dressed in black, with black horns, black lips, and pale
green skin, and an evil laugh, "Daddy is that the bad witch?"
"Yes, honey," I said. Of course, evil is easily identified in the
cartoons, and the good little fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, in
bright shades of pink, green, and blue, sweet grandmotherly types with little
wands and wings. But in our world it's not that easy, not only in recognizing
evil in others, but because of our blind spots, we often even miss our own
propensity for evil.
It
is easy to mask evil. It is easy to talk it away, to reason it away, to say
that the ends justify the means. It is amazing how fast, when thinking about
the ends rather than the means, the evil that we do finds its way hidden
completely within our blind spots. How many times when one of our relationships
gets broken do we see everything the other person did to cause the split, but
none of our own? I can think of many times where I was so convinced that a
person I had a disagreement with was so wrong, completely wrong, and needed to
apologize, at least in the moment, but then after time passed I could see how I
could have handled the situation better as well, that my own weaknesses were
more to blame than the other person's, but I just could not see them. I took
the time passing to be able to notice the wrongness of my own role in the problem.
It seems that another thing, other than trying to control the ends of a
situation, that creates these blind spots is being "in the moment."
In the moment emotions cloud reason and our blind spots seem to grow.
Our
nation as we do every four years finds ourselves in the middle of an intense
election. As the election heats up, just over a week from the voting day, how
deep have our blind spots grown, and look at how divided we have all become.
Both sides are convinced that the other side is evil, or lying, or cheating, or
misguided, or whatever euphemism you'd like to use instead of evil, but the
truth is there. Demonization is ramped. It encapsulates a little of both our
identified reasons for the growth of blind spots, concern for the ends, trying
to make our guy win, and the emotional high tide of the closeness of the
reckoning day. It will even get worse, but the truth is it's not just the two
sides, the two parties, and the two candidates. Even those in the middle who
complain about seem to disdain the others who are so wrapped up. It really does
reflect us all. It reflects a truth about our fallen human nature, but again
the Marks of what a True Christian is supposed to be holds up a mirror in front
of our face, and challenges us to look truly at ourselves, to uncover the blind
spots, and become better, but not so we can judge, and condemn others, but so
that we can get beyond it all and truly love each other, to allow love to end
the cycle of evil, as only love can do.
So
how do we do it? How do we shed light on our blind spots so that we can love
truly to end the cycle rather than buying our ticket and jumping on the
spinning carousel of evil ourselves. Last week I talked about having a welcome
mind, and I think that is part of it, the second piece of the passage, taking
thought for what is noble in the sight of all requires that, listening to the
other side, what they have to say, but we've shown today that something in us
makes that almost impossible especially real time, so let's look also at the
causes we have noted so far about the catalysts for the growing of our blind spots:
anxiety about the ends, the results, the future, and the other the heat of the
moment emotional response. We need to let go of our anxiety and somehow seek to
gain perspective, in order to take a clear look at our blind spots, but how? I
wish there were simple answers, that it were easy, but if it were easy, our
world would be a very different place, but I think a starting place is prayer,
prayer as communication with God, open communion, honest, soul bearing prayer,
because through prayer we find that God is there, that God has the ends in the
palm of his hands, and that he knows us and loves us blind spots and all, and
not just us but the other as well.
I used three different bulletin covers this
morning, and to be honest I did it because, Gerri was gone and I needed
something, but I'm glad that I did because prayer often is in my blind spot,
and I don't know if I would have concluded this sermon suggesting prayerful
openness if I hadn't looked at the combination of the three. Some of you have
the Lord's prayer, Deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, forgive us
our debts as we forgive our debtors. Some of you have "Footprints"
showing that how even in our darkest depths, our most difficult times God is
there and carrying us through, and some of you have Thanksgiving, the glorious
response that we give to God for all of the wonders he has done. That's it
isn't it, against that glowing light, that shining love, that cycle beginning
with God's love, comprehended through prayer, felt in hard times, ending with
Thanksgiving just in time for the cycle to start again, and we realize that our
blind spots really are irrelevant, the plank and the speck too become
irrelevant, and all that is left is love, God's love for us, making possible
our love for God and our love for each other.
Amazing grace how true the sound
Which taught my eyes to see
That evil just is not the way,
Your love it set me free.
And I no longer blind to truth,
My neighbor I can love,
For standing in your gracious hand,
I see from high above.
Yes
high above, far above with just enough perspective for it all to fall away. May
it be so! Amen.
[1]The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989
(Ro 12:17). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
No comments:
Post a Comment