How did we get here? Some version of this question
comes up in nearly every substantive conversation I’m
having these days. How did we get here?
I’d wager my experience is not unique. The contexts
are diverse, but the implication seems the same. For
starters, here is a place we’d rather not be, a place
we don’t want to be. It’s a place of anxious worry over
an uncertain future now under threat. It’s a place
of widening interpersonal chasms and deepening
institutional distrust. It’s a slow boil of frustration that
may erupt at any moment, a place of instability on the
global stage that parallels our personal precarities.
How did we get here? How? How did we get here? The
answers are, of course, complex. There is no single
throughline we can trace from there to here. Ours is
a multicausal dis-ease. But there are symptoms, and
these symptoms often include an ache for the loss of
something sacred, something stable. It is a universal
truth that none of us want to live in fear, or anger, or
contempt, or disgust, or shame.
However we got here, we agree we need a new map,
a way out. We’re at a crossroads. We can wallow in the
wreckage around us, lament where we are, or we can
chart a new course.
Way back in the First Century, writing to a budding
band of believers brought together by faith in Jesus
Christ and very little else, the Apostle Paul urged the
Corinthian Christians to move beyond their passivity
and their cynicism and get busy right now with the
work to which God had called them.
That work, that message, that word: reconciliation.
Now it might surprise you to know this is an odd word
to find in sacred scripture. In Greek, the term katalasso
comes not from the religious or spiritual realm at all, but
from the worlds of politics and the law. In that context,
the term katalasso describes redefined relationships
that result from the resolution of disputes. After conflict
and negotiation, there is reconciliation. Paul borrows
the term to insist that this is what has happened to us
through Jesus Christ. We are reconciled to God. We
are made new. New creation. Good news. But Paul is
equally clear that this redefined relationship is not just a
gift that we receive. What God has given us, according
to Paul, is a ministry, the ministry of reconciliation.
That is, having been reconciled to God, we must now
reconcile with one another so that (Paul’s words) God’s
grace toward us is not in vain.
The assignment is overwhelming. How do we even
begin to practice reconciliation? Paul has an answer to
that question. The first step: we must make a decision
to see differently. Now I will confess that I missed
this detail in every previous reading of the text. It’s
somewhat obscured by the English translation that
renders the word regard. But the word is to see. This
time it hit me with the force of truth that the passage
posits a pledge.
From this time on, from now on, we will see no one
from a human point of view.
We will see each other through the lens of God’s love.
Faith is a new set of glasses. Just imagine how this
could change us. The Apostle Paul believed that we
have eyes other than those in our head. In the Letter
to the Ephesians, he describes “the eyes of the heart.”
Do you know what it is to be seen with the eyes of the
heart, what it feels like to be seen as God see us?
When I was a freshman in high school, I was desperate
to fit in with one particular group of boys at school.
They all lived in the same neighborhood, Forest Oaks.
They all rode the same school bus. They all played
sports together, and they were all invited to each other’s
birthday parties. I so desperately wanted to be in that
circle. Since I didn’t live in the neighborhood or ride
the bus or play the sports or receive invitations to the
birthday parties, I decided I would use the gifts I had—
humor and wit—and that the cafeteria would be my
proving ground.
One Friday lunchtime, I sat down nervously. But I came
prepared, and I started cracking generic jokes. It was
working! There was laughter, muffled at first, but the
group warmed up over time until it became clear that
I would need to be more specific in my use of humor.
You see, there was a boy in our grade who was often
the object of teasing and sometimes far worse. Philip
happened to live across the street from me, in my
neighborhood. He rode my bus. And the truth is we
were friends. We played together after school. But in
that moment, my choice was clear, and it was stark. I
knew what I had to do to fit in, and I did it. Timidly at
first, but my confidence grew along with the laughter
of my new friends. I was so absorbed by the attention
I was receiving that I didn’t notice Philip get up from
his seat and slink out of the cafeteria. I certainly didn’t
notice our history teacher who was standing in the
corner, but when we got up to leave the cafeteria, he
walked over and asked me to sit down. From across
the table, I knew the look in Mr. Causey’s eyes. He had
seen and heard the whole thing. As my cheeks turned
red, I wondered what the consequence would be. But
what Mr. Causey said had far greater impact than any
punishment he could have delivered. Chris, I want you
to know why I am so disappointed with the way you
treated Philip at lunch today. You are a role model for
other students. I have high expectations of you. I think
you have high expectations of yourself as well. I’d like
you to remember that. You can go.
To be seen with the heart’s eyes is a blessing that
bears a burden. Mr. Causey’s words challenged me to
be the person he saw in me. What if we saw ourselves,
and each other, through the lens of God’s love? What if
we looked, really looked, for the image of God in those
we struggle most to love?
Paul says that we are ambassadors for Christ. That
is, we have been sent by God with the message of
reconciliation, that God sees more in us than we see in
ourselves or each other. But we can see with God’s eyes,
and Paul says this is the moment when reconciliation
begins. I’m also convinced that it is an urgent task for
the faithful in our time.
Early in the American experiment, the French diplomat
Alexis de Tocqueville observed a presidential election
in the United States. Writing about it, he described the
time as a kind of sickness in which the body politic
became dangerously feverish. For a time, emotions ran
too hot. The fragile forms of consensus essential for
democracy—what de Tocqueville called our “habits of
the heart”—evaporated.
I’ve been thinking about this observation all week long.
I’ve been wondering what might break the fever within
us, what might renew the habits of our hearts. Finally,
it hit me that we are the keeper of those habits, those
values, those virtues. We who follow Jesus. God expects
more from us. We who ground ourselves in God’s grace,
who seek the Spirit’s guidance in our words and actions.
We who have been given this charge to repair, to heal
and reconcile. We who believe that every human face
reflects the image of God, that every human soul is
precious in God’s sight. We are the ones who are most
needed right now because crossroads moments are not
rare. We make decisions every single day that determine
our character and shape our future. God sees more in
us than we could see on our own. Paul speaks to us,
“See, now is the acceptable time, now is the day of
salvation.” Because if not right now, then when? If not
us, then who? God expects more from us because God
sees in us the promise of new creation, of redefined
relationship, of bridges across the breaches between
us. It begins when we open the eyes of our hearts to see
neighbors instead of enemies, possibilities in the place
of pessimistic prognostication. We make a pledge:
From this time on, we will see no one from a human
point of view.
We will pray to see what God sees, to see through the
lens of love to see Christ in the guise of the stranger.
When did we see you? Every time you encounter
another child of God. Every time.
Marilynne Robinson always has the right words.
Listen to these. “Who might he not be? He told us
who he was—the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned,
the stranger. For Christians the incarnation of Jesus
changed the world in one great particular. We now
know whom we slight, insult, ignore, forget. The
parable that is our faith would tell us that he is…
always present, always waiting to be seen.”
And so, my friends, if there is to be a movement toward
reconciliation, let it begin here and now. If there is to be
a revival of compassion, let it begin. If there is to be a
renewal of civility, let it begin. If there is to be a repairing
of what is broken, let it begin with us. If there is to be
restoration of our streets, our relationships, our hearts,
our land, let it begin with us. Let it begin here. Let it
begin now. But, oh God, let it begin. Amen.