By the time I was in the tenth grade, my vision had deteriorated significantly enough that I failed the mandatory school vision test. It was an odd experience, to tell you the truth. I showed up to the exam with no clue that I wasn’t seeing properly. My eyesight had declined so steadily and slowly that I didn’t know what I was missing.
I thought everyone was seeing the world as I was. The edges of objects in my view had gradually become fuzzy. Colors were less vibrant. It took more effort to make out letters on the chalkboard in class. And it was a humiliating blow to realize that I could no longer avoid wearing glasses. Only when I donned my new pair of glasses did I realize how constricted and impaired my vision had become.
In fact, the new vision with glasses was almost painful in its clarity and strength. I recall getting a headache for the first day or so of wearing glasses for the first time. It was as if my old weak-eyed self was being assaulted by the advent of 20/20 vision. But it didn’t take long for me to enjoy the novelty of the sharp edges of letters on the printed page, of the greater ease of seeing things from afar, and of a world that was far more vibrant and colorful than I had remembered.
Vision is such a wonderful metaphor for spiritual awareness. It fills the pages of Holy Scripture. Not only does Jesus physically cure the blind in his ministry, but physical blindness is sometimes a metaphor for spiritual blindness. Jesus does things, but people simply don’t see the full import of what he's doing.
Have you done a spiritual vision test recently? What are you seeing? What is the Church seeing? Do we see what we want to see? Have we put on glasses with colored filters from the world around us rather than with the filters of Christian discipleship? What indeed are we missing? And is 20/20 spiritual vision too painful for us to take?
Reading and rereading the end of Luke’s account of Jesus’s passion today is like being put through a spiritual vision test. When we pick up with the passion narrative today, something is wrong with our vision, at least if we read it from the perspective of those in the story who don’t fully understand what is happening. We are being presented with an array of letters from a vision test projected onto a screen, and at first, the letters are hazy. If you will, put aside for a moment the fact that you know how this story ends, and imagine yourself there at the cross, either at the foot of the cross or, shockingly enough, nailed to one of the crosses to Jesus’s right or left. Let’s check our vision. What does it look like based only on the perspective presented by Luke’s text?
For starters, Jesus clearly names the impaired spiritual vision of those around him. “They know not what they do,” he says. Those who are nailing him to the cross, and perhaps more chillingly those who stand idly by, watching, have distorted spiritual vision. For Jesus’s closest followers, he is only a disappointment. He was the hoped-for Messiah who has ended his career ignominiously as the victim of capital punishment. For those pounding the nails into his wrists and ankles, they are simply doing the work of the state in executing one who has been condemned. They know not what they do. Some who are watching from afar have come for a guilty pleasure, watching the dirty and morbidly pleasing spectacle of public execution. For some present at the cross, this dastardly deed is a relief. Jesus will no longer be a threat to their power.
The first sets of scoffing words hurled at Jesus’s dying face are voiced out of a skewed spiritual vision. All the scoffers can see is a row of blurry letters on a vision test. On a spiritual level, the mocking words of the scoffers make no theological sense. In hindsight, we know that, of course. We know that this Messiah is not here to save himself. But try to pretend as if you don’t know this. Imagine that you’ve waited your entire life for the Messiah, and the one you thought was the Messiah is dying on the cross before you. He has disappointed you and failed you. He’s a troublemaker. And so, you remark with sarcastic distaste that he should save himself. This man, if he is truly who he says he is, should be able to rescue himself, just as he cured the lame, made the blind to see, and caused the deaf to hear. He should be able to prove his kingly authority. But spiritually speaking, this really makes no sense. As I said, the letters on the spiritual vision test are too blurry to recognize.
Surprisingly, the row of letters on the spiritual vision test starts to gain clarity with the mocking and yet somewhat incisive remarks of a criminal who speaks from one of the crosses at Jesus’s side. Now, Jesus is being asked to save not only himself but others. We are getting closer to 20/20 vision, but we are not quite there yet. Isn’t the criminal’s plea voiced merely out of desperation? Does he have any concern for all those other souls who need saving, too? Isn’t his understanding of salvation rather perfunctory? And, for him, is salvation anything more than a desperate rescue mission?
It’s only with the insightful and repentant words of the second criminal that the row of letters on the spiritual vision test comes into focus. Suddenly, after struggling to see the letters through our spiritual blindness, it becomes crystal clear. It’s coming from the least likely of persons, a convicted criminal who yet understands all too clearly his own faults.
What is it that this criminal sees that the others don’t? What does this criminal see that even we may not see? He sees just what kind of king Jesus is. He sees just what kind of kingdom Jesus reigns over. This criminal, despite his troubled past, doesn’t ask to be rescued from his plight. He doesn’t ask for a quick fix or a last-minute ticket into heaven. He only asks to be remembered, because he must know that of all the things that Jesus will do, he will remember. And if Jesus remembers him, perhaps he will remember others, too.
I wonder if we, if even the Church as a whole, have lost this vision? We who know how this story ends and who still worship the living God who made himself known in this crucified Savior must have some innate sense that Jesus’s kingship is not of this world. That must be obvious to us. We know that his death on the cross is not the end of the story. We know that resurrection, not death, has the final word.
But do we fully see what the end of this story really looks like with 20/20 vision? Has our spiritual vision deteriorated over the years without our awareness? Are we willing to accept the naked vulnerability of Jesus’s humiliating death without defensively trying to make him into the king we want him to be? Sometimes, I fear that Jesus must be for us the triumphant, muscular victor who pounds death and sin into the ground. Jesus must be the one who uses as much force as is necessary to rescue each of us from sin and death rather than subverting the powers of darkness through forgiveness, mercy, and healing. Have we become too comfortable with a savior who will forgive each of us but not forgive others, especially our enemies? Is 20/20 spiritual vision still too painful for our eyes?
Do we really see the ones crucified next to Jesus on either side? They are our enemies who have offended us, who hate us still, whom it is popular to loathe. They are the repeat offenders in our society who can never fully enter again into community life because they are forever stigmatized by their past. They are the death row inmates whose deaths are really about retribution than about public safety. They are all those we simply cannot imagine that God would want to save and whom we wish to ignore.
But Jesus remembers them as well as us. With 20/20 vision, we see that Jesus, our true King, unlike the kings and rulers of this world, always remembers. Unlike earthly kings, he doesn’t scatter and divide; he unites. He never forgets who we are destined to be despite all that we have done to impair our destiny. When Jesus remembers us, he doesn’t simply call us to mind; he literally puts us back together, re-membering a world that has been torn apart. He saves us by remembering each of us because the picture of salvation is never complete when someone is left out. Jesus doesn’t just rescue individuals. Jesus saves the entire world by binding up and healing its wounds.
How is that for a spiritual vision check? What ever happened to forgiveness as part of salvation? Can we really know salvation until we forgive? And can we really know salvation unless we rejoice that others are forgiven, too? Now, with this new vision, we see more clearly than ever that death has no power, because even when the world forgets those it puts to death, Jesus never forgets them. To see salvation is to see more than one’s own future. To be saved is to long for the whole world to be put back together again, because Christ never forgets.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King
November 20, 2022