God’s Eyes

When I was in the sixth grade, I won the state science fair. It sounds like a greater accomplishment than it was. If you won 1st, 2nd, or 3rd prize at your local school, you were invited to the state science fair, and so that’s what happened to me. Yet it was a science fair project that had familial roots. You see, just a few years before my aunt gave birth to their 2nd child, my cousin Paul. He was born with Down’s Syndrome. My dad had the idea — I could do a science fair project on the effects of Down’s Syndrome on the family. I read everything the southern small town library had on Down’s Syndrome and I learned a lot. Empathy started to grow a little at a time, as I began to think about disability. 

Y’all, our gospel story today is heartbreaking and still hopeful, especially for the man born blind and his family. 

For that man born blind, life was hard. He had no way of making a living. The seeing world was hidden from him. Life was already hard back in those days. They lived under the yoke of empire. The Romans demanded taxes, obedience, and when disobedience happened, the consequences were severe. There was often not enough food. People lived on the edge, and even more so if you had child born blind of deaf. And imagine, imagine always having to hear the stories, the aggressions, the slants, the criticisms — “that man was born blind because his parents sinned” or “he sinned and that’s why he’s blind.” It breaks my heart. Bad theology has a way of crushing hope, of breaking spirits, of putting out the smoldering wick, of destroying the poor in spirit. 

It wasn’t just then, isn’t it? It’s now too. Bad theology afflicts us today too, when we misunderstand God’s love, thinking that God only loves those who are perfect, those who always do just the right thing, look the right way, have the right car, have the right job, the right friends, color, look, humor, ways all of the rights. And it’s easy to fall into that destructive pit. I do it myself often. If I could only do or be this, then I’d be more easy for God or others to love. If I could just be a little better, not being way too much, I’d be more lovable. If I could only have just this little bit more of money, clothes, charm, a little less fat, then everything would be good. 

But all of that is a lie, one of gargantuan proportions. Because the logic of God is so upside down in our world right now, it’s so much about the reversal where the meek inherit the earth, where the mighty are brought down from their thrones, where those who are powerful in our time and place don’t have that status in the kin-dom of heaven. God’s eyes are not our eyes. 

A few months ago, my aunt told me something about my cousin Paul. He’s now 40 years old, just a little younger than my sister. He told her this. He told her that he thinks he will have Down’s Syndrome in heaven. 

I like to think about heaven as the land of light and life; those are words from our funeral service. I like to think about heaven as that place where everything and everyone are perfected. It helps me to think like this as I remember those who’ve hurt me and continue to hurt me; I imagine them being their best selves, as they see what they’ve done to me and turn from their wickedness and live — to quote our Ash Wednesday liturgy. 

But when we apply this standard of perfection to disability, to Paul, to those born blind, those born deaf, we misunderstand God. God does not see as mortals see, as we see with our misshapen understandings of what perfection is, God sees the heart. Remember, it wasn’t the ruggedly handsome Eliab or Abinidab or even Shammah that God wanted as God’s king. It isn’t the beautiful and famous actresses going to the Oscars tonight that God likes the best. Nope. 

And even as I say this, even as I believe this, even as I know this with my very being, it’s really easy to get this twisted up in my head, in my body, and in my judgements. 

It’s true. God loves the beautiful — the beautiful visions of God kin-dom unfolding in the world, the beautiful hands and feet of those that bring the good news to those in the valley of the shadow of death, the color of the blue sky, the beautiful hearts of God’s people who listen and then do the work of God with their hands and feet, daffodils coming up in the yard. This is what perfection looks like, not a face perfectly made up, not a model body, not a house fit with Pottery Barn furniture, but the faces of those we love, bodies that love with their actions, and houses that are homes, not just to those that have, but to those that struggle. 

It might be easier to understand perfection by looking just for a minute at the opposite, misunderstanding and misshapen loves. Not seeing the image of God in all of our human siblings, especially those who are undocumented. Schoolgirls dying because their school is bombed. Making life and death decisions that benefit billionaires and kill innocent civilians. All of this is sin. 

But a broken and contrite heart? A man and his family who finally can see that the Son of Man in the flesh? A shepherd boy before he gets drunk on power? My cousin Paul with Down’s Syndrome? Those of us who’ve changed our minds as we see God’s work unfolding in other beautiful humans? Knowing that we’re hungry, that we need God more than ever, that God’s goodness is something that we crave and move towards? Being fed by God in the Eucharist week after week? Continuing to reach towards one another as we slouch towards Bethlehem? So unspeakably beautiful and so full of Spirit. 

This past week, I’ve been away with my family at a planned community in South Carolina. But just four miles away, and more than a hour by car is the church of my seminary friend, a beautiful priest called Joseph Smith. In my phone, he’s “the Mormon.” The work that Joseph is doing is unlikely and unspeakably beautiful. The Diocese of South Carolina left the Episcopal Church in the struggles — that diocese had different understanding about human sexuality than the rest of our church did. A few raggedy parishes got left behind, but things were complicated. The churches that left took their properties, even though it’s against the Constitutions and Canons of the Episcopal Church. Litigation took a really long time, and even though it came out in favor of the raggedy Episcopal churches, it’s been difficult and ugly. I tell you all of this to explain why Joseph and his congregation have been renting a church. It’s a Baptist church they’ve been renting, a black baptist church built in 1840 right next to a modern black Missionary Baptist church, a church without running water, that’s right, no bathrooms — they have to go next door and use the bathrooms at their sister black baptist church. But this church where Joseph and his congregation are having the Eucharist has a story. It’s one you can’t make up. 

Back in the day, Hepzibah moved from Charleston to Edisto to marry her husband. She brought $ into the marriage; she was not poor, but Edisto was even less than what it is now. Now there’s no place to have lunch; the only restaurants are open for dinner. Now it’s poor, with 12.5% of its citizens under the poverty level. Then there were vast numbers of enslaved folx, and Hepzibah wanted her husband to build a church, a Baptist church for them. Her husband gave a firm no. Hepzibah was not deterred. She and her enslaved maid built an oven where they baked breads and other goods to sell in Charleston, rowing there by themselves, something no white woman had done before. They made enough $ to build the church. Her husband said ‘no.’ Hepzibah moved out, and her husband changed his mind. The Baptist church was a place for enslaved folx and a few white women. It wasn’t powerful. It wasn’t rich. But it was a place where God’s kin-dom unfolded just a little, and a place where Joseph and his congregation are now worshiping, having their imaginations molded by this story, by that space, by those who were there before them, changed into something utterly different, strange, holy, and unspeakably beautiful. 

God looks at the heart. 

That man born blind saw the Son of Man in the flesh. We can see him too. Just look with the eyes of your heart. You can’t miss it.