"Believing IS Seeing"
First Congregational Church -- Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
21st Sunday after Pentecost (Reformation Sunday) -- October 25, 2009
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Hebrews 7:23-28/Mark 10:46-52]

“Seeing is believing.” Some would call it a proverb; others would call it an idiomatic expression. Regardless, it carries the meaning that if we experience something personally it is real and if we don’t, it isn’t. There’s a wonderful folksiness to this, but also carries with it a deep difficulty. When is the last time you saw an atom? Or, the constituent parts of an atom: a proton, an electron or a neutron? Have you been intimately acquainted with a neutrino lately? Yet, we believe that our world is made up of atoms, including ourselves. I don’t think that very many scientists, despite their reliance upon the scientific method, which relies upon observation, would deny that some of the greatest scientific discoveries have come about because a scientist believed something based on something that couldn’t be seen, but where observation had pushed them to think along lines that led them to follow it.

Let me explain. Think of the cosmologist/physicist Stephen Hawking. A great deal of his work began as speculation; questions that he began to ask himself about the origins of the universe. I had occasion to watch several portions of a video called “Stephen Hawking’s Universe” which were entitled, “Seeing is Believing.” After watching them, I think they should have had the same title as this sermon: Believing is Seeing. Hawking’s hypothesis, his initial questions, sound a great deal like points of belief. Remember that the definition of belief, from our friend Webster (a Congregationalist) is, “a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.” Listen to what he said at the beginning of the program: “The ideas which had grown over two thousand years of observation have had to be radically revised. In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just on of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. And our galaxy itself is just one of billions of galaxies, in a universe that is infinite and expanding. But this far from the end of a long history of inquiry. Huge questions remain to be answered, before we can hope to have a complete picture of the universe we live in.”

Millions of stars? Billions of galaxies? Has he seen them all, or is he simply extrapolating from the data he does have? Much of his work is constructed out of his confidence in observations and theories that can rarely be seen, but yet are believed and acted upon by scientists. Hawking, in so many ways, sees what he sees because he believes in his work and its foundations. I remember reading his A Brief History of Time when it came out and chuckling as Hawking took Isaac Newton to task for theologizing and then did the same thing himself. My point is this; there is truth in both expressions. We can say that “seeing is believing,” but we can also say that “believing is seeing.”

Bartimaeus may have started out believing, but he ended up seeing. Bartimaeus may have been physically blind, but his heart could see. He knew that he was in the presence of the One who could heal not only his blindness, but his heart as well, making him a whole person. So he was, as we like to say now, proactive. He called out to Jesus as he passed by, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." He was not content to remain in his blindness. He was not content to stay as he was by the roadside. Bartimaeus' heart cried out to the living God for wholeness, and when the heart speaks can the mouth do otherwise?

Heart speaks to heart, so many great spiritual writers have told us this, and the Lord hears and responds in ways that we don't always understand. I believe that Jesus, in his heart of hearts, knew Bartimaeus' deepest desire. When he asked him, "What do you want me to do for you?" he did it as much for those standing around, and for us, as he did it for Bartimaeus.

Jesus' question serves as a constant reminder to us that we need to be intentional in our prayer. God wants to know what we want God to do for us. Christ's heart still speaks to ours and we are asked the question, "What do you want me to do for you?" We need to think long and hard before we answer. Blindness does have certain advantages. People are nice to you because of your condition. People expect less of you because you're blind, or because you've failed at something. Having sight, being competent, brings demands and responsibilities. What’s the reward for good work, after all? MORE work! If we ask for competence, if we ask to see, then we’ll be responsible for more. No doubt Bartimaeus had these thoughts run through his head. Still, as heart speaks to heart, he answers that he wishes to see, and his sight is restored.

Bartimaeus is a type, an example, of the church and of every Christian believer. All of us, at one time or the other, sat by the roadside, blind, unable to do anything for ourselves, ignorant of our real condition. Then, our hearts were quickened at the sound of Christ's voice, as heart spoke to heart. Deep within us there stirred the truth, the real essence of who we are, of what we are to become as the child of God, and we called out, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!"

God speaks to our deepest affection through the heart of Christ. This is what the author of the Hebrews is trying to tell us as he discourses on the nature of Christ's priesthood. When Christ identifies with us, he does so once and for all. Not with repeated sacrifice, but in the example of self-giving love that awakens the deepest affection of the human heart, that can transform us, and move us toward all that is true and good. The physiological heart, what the anatomist studies, is symbolic of a deeper reality. The heart is the source and the unity of our human experience and it is with this reality that God identifies in Christ, the Logos, the Word made flesh.

The twentieth century Austrian theologian, Karl Rahner, put this beautifully when he wrote: " . . .the eternal logos of God has a human heart, he risked the adventure of a human heart, until pierced by the sin of the world, it had flowed out, until it had suffered to the end on the cross the uselessness and powerlessness of his love and become thereby the eternal heart of the world." And the seventeenth century Puritan preacher, Richard Baxter, put it no less beautifully when he said:

If thou know him not by the face, the voice, the hands, if thou know him not by the tears and bloody sweat, thou mayest know him by the heart; that broken healed heart is his; that soul pitying, melting heart is his, doubtless it can be none's but his, love and compassion are its certain signatures.

In Christ we recognize God's affection for humanity and heart speaks to heart.

It was this understanding of God's great identification with us, his affection for us, that stirred the Reformers of the Church into action. Like Bartimaeus, Luther, Calvin, Barrow, Greenwood, Penry, Ames, and Robinson, to name only a few, heard Christ speaking to them as heart cried out to heart. Each, in a unique and wonderful way, had his sight restored, rose up and followed after Christ on the way.

For English Congregational reformers Henry Barrow, John Greenwood and John Penry (who actually was from Wales) the way would lead to years of imprisonment and a cruel death for their faith. John Robinson, pastor to the gathered saints of Scrooby, was forced to leave the country of his birth and died before he could join his pilgrim flock in the new world. Their example of heart speaking to heart reminds us of the dedication and the courage we must have as God's gathered people. Jesus continues to ask us, "what do you want me to do for you?" The answer, again and again, must be that we wish to see.

Heart speaks to heart and calls us to follow along the way. The way leads us into the community of the heart we call the church. Gathered into relationship by a living covenant we experience the wonder of God's presence through our sisters and brothers who walk the way with us. It is here that the effect of our healing, our ability to see begins to show itself. No longer can we simply sit by the roadside, content in our blindness to let life and all of its parts remain as it was. We are called to a new and better hope and new and better way of living and, as a consequence, we are called to action. The church, as Cyprian of Carthage said almost two thousand years ago, is always reforming itself. If we are true to what we say we are, we are constantly responding to Christ's question and the request we make isn't a selfish one.

The church is always reforming so that we can identify more and more with the heart of Christ and more and more with the heart of the world. Our faith does not call us to a narrow or selfish understanding of who God is or what God wants. Our freedom urges us to believe in a deeper, more urgent fashion so that the same love that burned in the heart of Christ may burn in ours so that we may love as he loved. Bartimaeus did not remain seated by the roadside, didn't stay as he was once he'd received his sight, but rose up and followed after Christ. His heart was spoken to by that of the eternal high priest and through him he was restored to wholeness.

Clement of Alexandria's words still have power fifteen centuries after they were written:

The commandment of the Lord shines clearly, enlightening the eyes. Receive Christ, receive power to see, receive your light, that you may plainly recognize both God and man. More delightful than gold and precious stones, more desirable than honey and the honeycomb is the Word that has enlightened us. how could he not be desirable, who illumined minds buried in darkness, and endowed with clear vision the light-bearing eyes of the soul? . . . Sing his praises, then, Lord, and make known to me your Father, who is God. Your Word will save me, your song instruct me. I have gone astray in my search for God; but now that you light my path, Lord, I find God through you, and receive the Father from you. I become co-heir with you, since you were not ashamed to own me as your brother. Let us, then, shake off forgetfulness of truth, shake off the mist of ignorance and darkness that dims our eyes, and contemplate the true God, after first raising the song of praise to him: "All hail, O light!" For upon us buried in darkness, imprisoned in the shadow of death, a heavenly light has shone, a light of clearly surpassing the sun's, and of a sweetness exceeding any this earthly life can offer.

Today we celebrate those who heard the calling of heart to heart and who answered the question, regained their sight and sought to bring reform to the life of the church. You and I are able to worship in freedom of conscience because these good people were unselfish and unrelenting in responding to the heart of Christ with their own hearts and lives. As scientists, like Stephen Hawking, believe to see and answer the “huge questions” of the universe, its expanse and its origin, so do believers believe to see God’s way and then walk in it.

Can we sit by the roadside and remain as we are once we have heard the voice and had our sight restored? Can we remain content to live life as we have been accustomed to when the Lord passes by and invites us to follow him on the way? It is a question only your heart can answer. Christ, and his church, wait for the response, for the way is far from traveled and, as Pastor Robinson told the Pilgrims," the Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth out of his holy word." Believing is seeing a new way and then walking in it for the service of God and God’s people.