Seeing Wilderness Through Other’s Eyes

Fourth Sunday in Lent ● Lenten Service ● March 10, 2024

Rev. Jeff Wells © 2024

You can view the full worship video recording at:

https://youtu.be/0RFEi8HHjU0?si=2MZKhVmDCJlutfxq

Scripture Readings:

Acts 2:38-39, 41-47 & 1 Corinthians 12:4-7, 12-14, 20-27 (adapted from The Inclusive Bible)

Okay, wait, I thought we were doing a Lenten worship series on wilderness. Neither of the two scripture passages we just heard make any direct reference to either real or metaphorical wilderness. They both seem to be focused on practicing mutual empathy, compassion, caring, and support in community with one another. All good things, right? However, if we look under the surface – if we try to look through the eyes of the original audience – we can see some of the wilderness experienced individually and communally by those who first heard the words of these scriptures and out of whose experience they were composed.

The early Jesus communities arose in the context of being oppressed by Roman imperial rule and a brutal occupying army. Both Jewish and gentile followers mistrusted their own religious, political, and economic elites because they submitted to the Romans and profited from their violent rule. Moreover, Jesus’ early followers were attracted to his teaching which downplayed ritual purity laws and reoriented the practice of faith toward the ancient Jewish instructions to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus added to that his distinctive and challenging call to include your perceived enemies in that love and to pray for those who persecute you.

So, these early followers of Jesus experienced the wilderness of living in countries or territories in which their self-determination and self-rule had been stolen from them. And they, like us, journeyed through a wilderness of trying to create new communities grounded in a liberating and transformative understanding of faith and God. They had Jesus’ teaching and example to guide them, but not an exact blueprint, so they had to find their way, relying on God’s leading and inspiration. And, like us, they did it imperfectly and made many mistakes. 

There is not one of us who has not experienced journeys through our own very personal wildernesses, whether those entail living with an illness, an addiction, anxiety, fear, grief and loss, the effects of oppressive systems, limited resources, and so much more. Often, our wilderness experiences can feel very lonely and isolating – especially, if we are struggling or in pain. It can be difficult to get out of our own heads and hearts. We become so focused on our own challenges that often we have difficulty seeing well the struggles of others.

But we don’t have to go through the wilderness alone. And we ought not let those around us do it alone. So, today, I want to reflect with you on ways we can learn to see life beyond our own internal feelings and processes to try to see through each other’s eyes. Belonging to a community like those described in the two readings – and a community like ours in the Church of the Village – can provide brave and affirming spaces in which to practice this together.

I was struck by something Katie Reimer said in our team meeting to plan for this morning’s worship. She said, “What feels like wilderness for me may feel like home for someone else. A desert may feel barren and harsh to me, but to a cactus, it feels like home. On the other hand, for the cactus, a rainforest would feel like a wilderness.” Yet, we can’t really understand that difference unless we practice empathy, listen deeply and with curiosity, and try to see other’s lives through their eyes. While we cannot experience exactly what someone else is going through, we can open ourselves to a deeper understanding of another’s struggles, challenges, dreams, and joys if we make the effort.

Just this week, I was walking to the grocery store on the Upper West Side and I heard someone loudly call out, “Pastor Jeff!” I turned and saw a member of the Church of the Village, sitting on the sidewalk, his back against a building, with some drawings arrayed around him on the pavement. This man is a bright and gifted human being. He also lives with mental illness. He began talking and trying to convey to me his thoughts about an article he had been reading and the author who wrote. I admit it was hard to follow and I found myself feeling distracted and wanting to get on my way. But, being in the mindset of this morning’s message, I thought, “No. I need to try to imagine what it might be like to experience life, the world, from the perspective of how his mind works and from the life experience he has had and continues to have.” Now, that’s not an easy thing for any of us to do with anyone. But I found that just having that thought, opened me up to being a bit more empathetic and listening a little harder, even if just for a few minutes. It opened my heart wider in love and compassion with this brother, child of God, and fellow follower of Jesus. 

The great writer and scholar, C.S. Lewis, wrote something about reading literature that I find applies just as powerfully to building empathetic relationships. He wrote: 

“My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. I regret that [animals] cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world [the world of smells] charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog….

“In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad [of] eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

We grow into the creatures God desires us to be when we move outside of ourselves to connect, care, and love those with whom we share this amazing planet. 

I have been thinking a lot this week about the times, too numerous to count, when I have provided care for others. It reminded me of the responsibility we all have to look not only at the surface of a person’s being, but to try to put ourselves in their place. And when we strive to practice that in a community like ours, with a whole group of people trying to do that with one another, trying to grow in our love for one another, seeking to understand each other at a deep level, then we are all healed and enriched and our sense of community is enriched, as well.

Moreover, God calls us to move beyond our human-centeredness and to practice compassion and empathy, to feel the suffering, as well as the joys and celebrations, with non-human others, too. More and more, I have been drawn to imagine what it’s like for the other creatures living around me. It has broadened my heart and mind to try to see the wilderness through their eyes – the deer, fox, river otters, bald eagles.

I felt that so strongly with our dog, Sadie, who died in January. I spent so much time with her and was so close to her that I really felt her joy at chasing balls in the park and swimming after floating frisbees in the river. I sensed her energy and her adventurous spirit. I also felt in my own body and spirit the ways she suffered so gravely in the last two months of her life. And all of those feelings made my own experience of life richer, even though some also caused me deep sadness and pain.

So, how do we learn, together, to be a community that sees through each other’s eyes? I am sure you can identify ways in which COTV is already trying to encourage this. If you have ever participated in one of our Roots groups, you probably have some sense of what I’m talking about. If you join regularly in the Wednesday Bible Study, Dance Prayer, the Prayer Call, the monthly Healing Conversations, or the young adult Alliance group, you may have seen this happen in unexpected ways. If you have participated in the table conversations we often have after the message on Sunday – especially if you tend to sit with the same people during worship – you have an inkling of it. We’ve made a good start. And we have plenty of room to grow. 

To go back to our readings, you can see that what we are trying to do really comes down to emulating the spirit of Jesus. He was extraordinarily able to sense God’s call upon his life. Because of that, he was outstanding in his ability to express empathy, caring, and love in relation to both friends and strangers. This is part of why people came to say that he embodied God’s spirit. 

Jesus gained these abilities through his extraordinary openness and deep listening to the one he lovingly called, “Abba.” So even more than just following Jesus, we are looking to our Abba God to lead and inspire us. God sees through all of our eyes and the eyes of every creature. God knows everything we are going through because God accompanies us every moment. And every moment, God tries to guide us toward the best choices and outcomes in the next moment. 

God is the supreme empathizer. God feels all that we feel and experiences everything that every creature experiences. God walks with us every step of the way through our wilderness journeys – individual and communal. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote: “God is the great companion – the fellow-sufferer who understands.” 

And God beckons us to love every neighbor possible, and not just casually or on the surface, but in deep, loving empathy – doing our best to put ourselves in their shoes and see the world through their eyes. In doing so, we enrich one another’s lives and we enrich God’s experience, too.

[1]  C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (1961)

Acts 2:38-39, 41-47 (The Inclusive Bible)

Preaching to a large crowd, the apostle Peter declared,

“You must repent and be baptized, each one of you, 

in the name of Jesus the Messiah, that your sins may be forgiven; 

then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

It was to you and your children that the promise was made, 

and to all those still far off whom our God calls.” 

They accepted what he said and were baptized. 

That very day about three thousand were added to the number of those converted. 

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ instructions and the communal life, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 

A reverence overtook them all, for many wonders and signs were being performed by the apostles. 

Those who believed lived together and shared all things in common. 

They would sell their property and goods, sharing the proceeds with one another as each had need. 

They met in the Temple and they broke bread together in their homes every day. With joyful and sincere hearts they took their meals in common, praising God and winning the approval of all the people. 

Day by day, God added to their number.

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1 Corinthians 12:4-7, 12-14, 20-27 (The Inclusive Bible)

There is a variety of gifts, but always the same Spirit. 

There is a variety of ministries, but we serve the same One. 

There is a variety of outcomes, but the same God is working in all of them. To each person is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

The body is one, even though it has many parts; 

all the parts—many though they are—comprise a single body. 

And so it is with Christ. 

It was by one Spirit that all of us – 

whether we are Jews or Greeks, slaves or citizens, 

women or men – were baptized into one body. 

All of us have been given to drink of the one Spirit. 

And that Body is not one part; it is many.

They are, indeed, many different members but one body. 

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” 

any more than the head can say to the feet, “I do not need you.” 

And even those members of the body which, to some, 

seem less important are in fact indispensable. 

We honor the members some people see as marginal 

by clothing them with great care and love, 

thus bestowing on them a place of honor
usually reserved for the privileged. 

God has so constructed the body as to give great honor to members
the world marginalizes, that there may be no dissension in the body,
but that all the members may be concerned for one another. 

If one member suffers, all the members suffer with them; 

if one member is honored, all the members share their joy. 

You, then, are the body of Christ, and each of you is a member of it.