Believing Is Seeing (sermon, May 1, 2011)

John 20:19-32

A couple of weeks ago two veteran photojournalists, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, were killed while trying to document fighting between rebels and government forces in the Libyan city of Misrata. These men had been in war zones and disaster areas around the world, documenting them in pictures for the world to see.

In the most recent issue of Newsweek, former CNN correspondent Michael Ware remembers Hetherington and Hondros. Although Ware is no longer reporting from war zones, he did for many years and he writes that when he was in the field, he gravitated to photographers. They are “the ones who come the closest to revealing the truth, even if we never get the entire truth,” he wrote. “In war, everyone lies; their government, our government, the rebels -- even civilians lie through exaggeration or confusion. But what we can get is the shards of truth,” like those revealed in a picture Hetherington took of an exhausted, filthy soldier in a bunker in Afghanistan or in a picture Hondros captured of a five year-old Iraqi girl, wailing and blood-splattered after her parents were mistakenly shot and killed by American soldiers. (1)

We’ve all seen photographs like these of war or of natural disasters, pictures that completely change our understanding or feelings about these events. I’ll never forget a photograph I saw of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. The picture showed a huge pile of rubble atop which was sprawled the unquestionably lifeless body of an infant. At first glance that little body looked like nothing more than just another piece of rubble. Seeing that picture made the earthquake real to me in a whole new way.

Throughout the gospel of John, seeing and believing have a particular connection. Back in chapter one, John the Baptist sees Jesus and declares, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” (1:29) Jesus calls his disciples by telling them to “Come and see.” (1:39) When Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the well, he sees her completely, saying things to her that no stranger could possibly know, and because of that, she sees him differently, first identifying him as a prophet and then as the Messiah. (4:19 and 4:29)

But if we dig a little deeper into John’s gospel, we discover that it’s not just seeing that is significant when it comes to Jesus, but any kind of incarnational experience of him, and by incarnational, I mean any encounter with him that involves people’s bodies, their senses. Throughout this gospel, we find that when people have a sensory experience of Jesus it deepens their understanding of who he is. Ultimately, these sensory encounters are what makes their relationship with Jesus real.

Scholar Karoline Lewis argues that in John, to believe in Jesus means to be in a relationship with him. (2) And this happens when people hear Jesus preach and teach. It happens when people taste food Jesus provides -- like at the feeding of the five thousand and at the Last Supper. It happens when people smell the stench coming from Lazarus’ tomb, proving just how completely dead Lazarus is before Jesus brings him back to life. It happens when the disciples feel Jesus’ touch as he washes their feet.

For reasons that no one understood, Emilie Gossiaux began to lose her hearing at a young age. In her teenage years her hearing rapidly deteriorated and she had to wear a hearing aid. Either in spite of this or because of it, Emilie was filled with a passion for visual art and after graduating from high school in Florida, moved to New York City to attend art school. Last October, Emilie was twenty-one years old. Just a few months earlier she had fallen in love with one of her classmates, a young man named Alan. One sunny day in October, after their usual morning routine, Emilie climbed on her bike and rode off down a Brooklyn street, headed for work. She never got there. While riding her bike that day, Emilie was struck by an eighteen-wheeler.

She was rushed to the hospital, where trauma doctors did everything they could to save her life. She emerged from surgery in critical condition, having suffered a stroke, brain injury, and multiple fractures in her head, pelvis, and left leg. Her prognosis was grim. Emilie’s parents flew up from Louisiana and, with Alan, kept vigil at her bedside. Against all odds, after six weeks, Emilie was still alive, although she showed few signs of mental functioning. Her mouth had been wired shut so she could not speak. Every time Alan or her parents tried to put in her hearing aids she would kick and hit and flail, so she could not hear. And, worst of all, the doctors suspected that she had lost some if not all of her vision in the accident, so she could not see.

In John’s gospel, after the resurrected Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in the garden, Mary goes to the disciples and says, “I have seen the Lord.” But either they don’t believe her or they don’t understand what that means, because instead of going out to find Jesus, they go into a house together and lock the doors behind them. Of course, it takes more than a locked door to keep Jesus out, and he soon appears to them, shows them his wounds, gives them peace and the Holy Spirit, and their relationship with him deepens yet again.

Then Thomas shows up. Poor Thomas. Was it his fault he wasn’t there when Jesus appeared? Is it fair to cast him as the doubter when all he wants is what the rest of the disciples got -- to see Jesus for himself? He shows up -- late -- and all of the other disciples are shouting all at once: “He came! Jesus was here! We have seen Jesus!” The disciples didn’t believe Mary when she claimed to have seen Jesus and Thomas doesn’t believe the disciples, he just wants -- and needs -- what the rest of them got: a personal, physical, incarnational encounter with the risen Lord.

And lo and behold, he gets it. A few days later, Jesus reveals himself to Thomas. Seeing Jesus standing before him, Thomas actually becomes a model of faith for us. It’s Thomas who finally brings together the beginning of John’s gospel -- “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” -- with the end. Seeing Jesus, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” Not just Lord, but Lord and God. And not the Lord and the God -- my Lord and my God. Believing in Jesus as Lord and God is deeply personal. We can’t just hear about him from others...at some point along the way, we must experience Jesus, we must see him for ourselves.

The poet Christian Wiman was interviewed in a recent issue of Christian Century magazine. When asked whether his attention to detail is simply a talent or a skill he has practiced, he responded, “attention, like spiritual awareness, cannot be completely willed. There's an element of givenness to it—of grace—which means that attentiveness has a passive quality as well as an active one. The world will come to you—and God will come to you—but only if you are open enough to receive it. I have trained myself to wait, which means that it is not at all unusual for me to go months without writing a poem. But I am listening during that time. I have learned how to continue listening.” (3)

Artists -- whether writers or photographers or quilters or cooks -- seem to understand that sometimes you must wait, both passively and actively, you must wait for the perfect word in the poem or the perfect light for the photograph or the right piece of fabric for the quilt or for the sauce to achieve just the right consistency. The moment will finally come -- as Wiman says, the world will come to you and God will come to you -- but you have to be ready to see it and receive it.

Lying in a hospital bed in New York, Emilie Gossiaux had no choice but to wait. She couldn’t see, hear, or communicate with those around her. She was utterly lost. The doctors recommended that Emilie go to a long-term nursing home facility rather than to a rehab center. They believed that nothing else could be done for her. She was, in their minds, a lost cause. But Alan believed that the woman he knew and loved was still there. One night, in a fit of desperation, he tried to communicate with her by finger spelling on her palm. He started by slowly and deliberately tracing each letter into her palm: I. L.O.V.E. Y.O.U. As soon as he finished, she spoke, her voice slurred but perfectly understandable. “You love me? Thank you.”

With growing excitement, he tried something else. “What is your name,” he spelled, and immediately, she responded, “Emilie.” “What year is it?” he asked and she correctly replied, “2010.” It was 4a.m. but Alan called Emilie’s mother and insisted that she come to the hospital immediately. When she got there, Alan showed her how he could communicate with Emilie. But it was clear to both of them that, although this means of communication worked to a point, Emilie didn’t know who Alan was. He kept spelling his name in her hand, but she couldn’t seem to connect that name with the Alan she had known and loved.

She also kept saying something strange, “Pull me out of the wall. Pull me out. Help me. I know you can do it. Pull me out of the wall.”

Finally, Emilie’s mother told Alan to ask her about the hearing aid. Alan finger-spelled “hearing aid” into her palm and Emilie agreed to put it in.

Alan put her hearing aid in and turned it on and said, “Emilie, can you hear me? It’s me, Alan.” And in that instant, everything came back to her. She remembered everything, she knew exactly who Alan was and she knew he loved her and she loved him. Then, hearing her mother’s voice, she said the words her mother had waited so many weeks to hear her say, “Mama. You’re here.” “Of course I’m here,” her mother said, “I’ve been here all the time.” Talking about this time later, Emilie said that during that time before Alan put in her hearing aid, she felt completely lost and helpless, she didn’t know where she was or why. “I was waiting for some communication,” she said. “And I was relieved [when Alan began to communicate with me]. Alan...he’s a miracle to me.” (4)

I know that all this talk about incarnational experiences of Jesus begs the question: how can this possibly apply to us? We can complain like Thomas all we want, we can set conditions for our faith, but we really don’t expect Jesus to show up and show us his wounds. We haven’t seen Jesus in person and we don’t expect to.

Or have we? Is there someone who has loved you like Alan loved Emily -- enough to fight to bring you out of the darkness? Is there someone you have loved like that? Then you have seen Jesus. Have you ever gathered around a table with friends and strangers and left nourished by more than just the food you consumed? Then you have seen Jesus. Have you ever heard music or smelled a flower or seen a sunset or watched a baby sleep and become aware, at some deep level, of the exquisite joy and pain of being human? Then you have seen Jesus.

The disciples, the women at the tomb, even Thomas -- they all got to see the risen Lord. And they believed in him. But it is us -- the ones who believe in him without seeing -- that Jesus blesses here: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We are blessed because, having believed in Jesus, it turns out we can see and experience him in all the everyday moments of our lives. Seeing...hearing...tasting...smelling...touching...Jesus is here, every day, every moment, offering us the gifts of peace and the Spirit, and inviting us to share those gifts with others. Jesus is here, our Lord and our God. All we have to do is pay attention. Amen.

Endnotes
1. Michael Ware, “To Walk with Ghosts,” Newsweek, May 2, 2011, p. 43.
2. Karoline Lewis, in her commentary on the passage at workingpreacher.org.
3. Amy Frykholm, “Pain, Prayer, Poetry: An Interview with Christian Wiman,” The Christian Century, April 18, 2011. Online here.
4. See Emilie's website here and hear her story on Radiolab, “Finding Emilie."