1/23/22 “The Eyes of All” by Nancy E. Petty
Luke 4:14-21
When I decided on the title for this sermon, I did not know of Larry Schultz’s latest blog that bears the same title. When Larry saw my title in the worship guide he texted me this message: “On Tuesday I turned in my blog to Kate – the title of the blog is ‘The Eyes of All!’ Don’t know if she’s using it this week or not. Talk about being in sync!”
If you haven’t read Larry’s blog yet, I hope you will. Quoting Psalm 145 which reads, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.” he writes:
These hopeful words first came into my consciousness through the singing of them with my college choir in an unforgettably beautiful setting by Jean Berger, a German-born, American, Jewish composer. The harmonies and rhythms of his choral work magnificently captured the meaning and emotion of the words, solidifying them forever in my mind…These Psalm lines and Berger’s composition recently came to mind as I considered the effect of mask-wearing upon our individual and collective expressiveness…Intricately connected to any sound that singers make is an effective facial expression. But during the pandemic, the wearing of masks has obscured a large part of our faces, especially our mouths that can reveal happiness or sadness, exuberant joy, or speechlessness. Gratefully, the eyes – called the “windows to the soul,” – are unmasked and open for expression. My stream of consciousness in considering the current significance of unmasked eyes caused me to remember the Psalmist’s words…” the eyes of all look to you…”
From the Psalmist to the writer of Luke’s gospel, this phrase “the eyes of all” serves as a thread connecting people of faith throughout the ages – a thread worth us following this morning.
When I read the gospel text for today, it wasn’t this phrase “the eyes of all” that first caught my attention. No, for several days I sat, rather, with verse 16. “When he [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom.” With this verse playing over and over in my mind I kept seeing the images I had seen in the news of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas just days before. I thought of the four people who went to their synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was their custom; and while reciting their sacred prayers they were taken hostage by a man whose anger had reached the point of violence. For the next 11 hours, anger and hate would reign terror in their lives of those four individuals. I thought about how they were doing exactly what their Jewish brother Jesus had done his whole life – made his way to the synagogue on the Sabbath to worship, to recite his prayers, and to read from the scroll. In some strange way, as I sat with this verse, I began feeling a connection to the people of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. Through the linage of my faith by the way of Jesus and his Jewish roots I was linked to those four men. For those few days, I meditated on the mantra, “They are my kindred.”
As the hostage situation was playing out in real time, the eyes of the world were watching. People of faith all around the globe were watching and praying – Jews, Muslims, Christians. Rabbi Dinner and I were texting through most of the evening. At one point our dear friend Imam Antepli joined in the text exchange. We knew what we each feared – for the lives of these men, for the community of that congregation, but also yet another challenge for interfaith relations. I prayed. We all prayed. I kept vigil for my Jewish siblings into the night until I heard that all of the hostages were safe.
Since that time, I have wrestled with the question, “As a Christian, what is my role, what is our role, as these tensions unfold in harmful, often violent ways, between the three Abrahamic religions. How do we make peace with one another and celebrate the sacredness of our faiths: Jews and Muslims, Muslims and Christians, Christians and Jews? With the rise of antisemitism and the insidious presence of Islamophobia in our nation, what are we to do? The eyes of all are watching.
I fantasized about the idea of what kind of world we would live in if all we did as the three Abrahamic religions was focus on the words of the prophet Isaiah that Jesus read from the scroll on that Sabbath day:
To bring good news to the poor.
To proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim the year of God’s favor to all.
But we don’t live in a fantasy world. We live in a world full of hurt and pain, wounded-ness and suffering, injustice and self-righteousness. We live in a world where the worst of our religious ideologies have cast a pall on the good virtues of our faiths: hope, peace, joy and love. We live in a world where religion in all its forms has become more about belief and rigid doctrines (who is right and wrong) than about compassion and grace and justice-love for all God people. We live in a world where lines and boundaries are being drawn every day to keep some people in and others out – lines and boundaries meant to include some while excluding others. We have forgotten how to live that short but poignant poem of Edwin Markham:
He drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him in.
Oh land of America and of the world, what has happened to our love and wit? What has happened? The eyes of all are watching.
Our world is complicated, and sadly, religion only makes it more complicated. And yet, I stand before you today hopeful. With the backdrop I just painted, you may be asking why I remain hopeful? Several reasons. I know the possibilities of how the world can be when I sit down in conversation with Lucy Dinner and Abdullah Antepli. I know the possibilities of how the world can be when a Rabbi and an Imam and a Christian pastor can share their most intimate thoughts and spiritual questions with one another. I know the possibilities of how the world can be when Jewish and Christian and Muslim communities of faith come together to worship and pray and share in conversation and break bread together. I know how the world can be when people of all kinds of faith and of no faith build coalitions to advocate for the rights of the poor and the marginalized and the oppressed. I have seen it happen here and at Temple Beth Or and at the Islamic mosque. I have seen it happen in the streets from Hillsborough St to Creedmoor Rd to Wade Avenue; from Raleigh, North Carolina to Washington DC. I have seen it and experienced it in Cuba and in the Republic of Georgia and in the mountains and valleys in Nicaragua. And I experience it in my daily life with you, the people of Pullen.
I don’t know if these possibilities exit in Israel and Palestine. But I’ve seen them at work here in our community and beyond.
Karen Armstrong, in her book The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness writes: “If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God’s name, it was bad theology.” I have seen and experienced good theology all over the world from people of good will. I know a better world is possible because I have seen glimpses of it – right here at home and beyond. I have seen the synchronicity of not just blog and sermon titles but of concrete acts of loving-kindness. The kind of concrete acts of loving-kindness that seeks to dismantle antisemitism and Islamophobia. The kind of concrete acts of loving-kindness that works at building authentic relationships between people of different faiths. The eyes of all are watching people of faith.
Which brings me back to where I ended up with our gospel text. Our pericope ends with these words:
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The eyes of all were fixed on him. As my week progressed living with this text, I found myself lost in this phrase. I wondered who I have my eyes fixed on. I wondered who, we as a church, have our eyes fixed on. But then I realized that maybe that wasn’t the first or most significant question to ask. The question that finally landed with me was this: “Why were the eyes of all fixed on him?” What was it about Jesus that drew such focused attention? My ah-ha moment to this question came as I shared a muffin and cup of hot chocolate with Rabbi Dinner Friday afternoon as we waited on the snow to fall. I was struggling and fumbling with a question I wanted to ask the Rabbi but was uncertain how to ask it, and afraid that in asking it without clarity of what I wanted to ask, I might say something wrong. Finally, I just blurted it out: Lucy, what is my role as a Christian in the dialogue of interfaith relations between Jews and Muslims? It felt kind of like asking a person of color what I need to do to not be racist. In a way, I was asking the Rabbi to do my work for me. But there it was. I said it out loud and held my breath. The rabbi, my friend Lucy, in rabbinic form, turned the question back to me: What do you think is your role?
I heard myself saying to her: to listen, to build relationships, to not think it is my job to fix anything or have the answers, to have compassion, to recognize the hurt and fear that is real, to name the evils of antisemitism and Islamophobia and Christian nationalism, to speak my truth in love, and mostly to hold the space for love to take root. And it hit me. That is what Jesus did. He showed us the way. He listened. He built relationships. He didn’t make it his job to fix things or have all the answers. He had compassion. He recognized the hurt and fear that was real. He spoke his truth in love. And mostly, he held the space for love – justice-love – to take root. That’s why the eyes of all were fixed on him. He held space for justice-love to take root.
Larry noted in his blog that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Jesus had eyes that saw into the souls of people. And because of that, the eyes of all were often fixed on him. In our human-holy way, may we too, in the tradition of the one we say we follow, have eyes that can look into the eyes of our Jewish and Muslim and fellow Christians and see the beautiful souls that reside in these earthly bodies. And in so doing, may we be a part of stopping the hate and the violence and fear, and instead see the possibilities of a world that brings good news to the poor, proclaims release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, lets the oppressed go free, and proclaims the year of God’s favor to all. May we practice Armstrong’s description of “good” theology: to be kinder, more empathetic, and impelled to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness. May we listen. May we be compassionate. May we be bold and courageous in naming the evils of antisemitism and Islamophobia and any other –ism or phobia that hurts people and causes violence and hate. May we speak truth in love. And most of all, may we hold space for love to take root in the eyes and hearts of all. May we use our eyes as windows to the souls of our fellow beings!
