Opening the Eyes of Our Faith

For if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. --Romans 8:25

At the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, The Rev. Miguelina Espinal preached a powerful sermon using the following story: Diego had never been to the sea. His father, Santiago, took him on a journey to discover the sea. They traveled south. The sea was beyond the tall sand dunes, waiting for them. When the boy and his father finally stood at the peak of the tallest sand dune, the sea exploded before his eyes. The sea's vastness, beauty, and brilliance were so great, that the boy became silent. When he finally spoke he was so overwhelmed that he said to his dad, "Help me see!"

Like Diego, we seek to see beyond our scope or frame of reference. But we have learned not to outdo ourselves as in the case of saint Peter. We must learn to see and perceive. When transcendence impresses upon our ordinary experience, how do we see it? This is the problem we encounter in Lent. In many ways the problem is first posed by Jesus, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven," Jesus says in Matthew 18. Jesus makes earth contingent with heaven. Such a perspective is problematic, to say the least. Let me try to explain again with the Rev. Miguelina Espinal's sermon. It was fascinating listening to this fine sermon next to a man at our 75th General Convention. He was white, elderly, and frustrated with the General Convention's liturgy. The problem was this: he did not know Spanish and thought there was no English translation. The solution was already made available to him, as provisions for English translations of her sermon and the liturgy were resting on the table right in front of him (like Diego's ocean ebbing and flowing right before his very eyes and yet he could not see and perceive it). I tried to explain the situation to my new friend, this man sitting at my table trying to worship in Spanish, but he had given up on understanding the sermon and the liturgy and his seemingly strange environment overwhelmed him. He felt threatened and said to me, "I should have just stayed home rather than sit here and not understand."

Let us pray,
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.