The Rev. Austin K. Rios
11 December 2022: The Third Sunday of Advent
One of the first books I remember reading in college was John Berger’s, Ways of Seeing.
The book, and the television series from which it was adapted, offered a counter narrative about how art and art history could be approached beyond the traditional categories of seeing, which were prescribed and enforced by predominantly male elites.
While Berger’s critique of the male gaze was groundbreaking for the early 70’s, the aspect of his work that has stayed with me is his exploration of just how contextual art and seeing are.
As someone who has lived in different states and regions in the United States, who has lived in four different countries, and who has been blessed to walk with a community of believers from cultures around the world for the last decade here in Rome, I have only become more convinced that our ways of seeing are tied to a complex set of factors that arise from the language we speak, the culture in which we were raised, and the company we keep.
When these perspectives are shared across flexible cultural borders and when we enter into constructive dialogue with one another, these different ways of seeing can be extremely positive.
And yet, we are all too aware of how our ways of seeing can become so entrenched and rigid, usually because enforcement of group perspective benefits those in power, that we become blinded to any other ways of seeing.
Such rigid ways of seeing serve empires well, and they tend to oversimplify complexity in hopes of mass alignment.
Into such environments come prophets—to help those locked into one way of seeing awake to another.
Today we have this amazing vision of the prophet Isaiah, part of which is reflected in the Annunciation arch mosaic that greets everyone who walks through our doors here at St. Paul’s.
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water (Isaiah 35:5-7a).”
For a people who had been exiled from Jerusalem, and who longed for return and restoration, I can imagine how powerful this vision must have been for them.
Isaiah’s different way of seeing would have been in stark contrast to their reality in the Babylonian exile, and the promises of abundance of life beyond the desert of exile must have also served as a motivational compass for many.
It certainly was connected with John the Baptist’s way of seeing, and his practice of baptizing in the wilderness 600 years after the events that led to exile links Isaiah’s vision of water in the desert with the events of his own day.
When John goes to prison for the challenges his way of seeing pose for the soft-robed rulers and the reedy, fair-wind political players, Jesus draws upon Isaiah’s vision to assure him that God’s plans and promises are still unfolding.
And then Jesus directly addresses the crowd about their own ways of seeing—their own ability to recognize the inbreaking of God’s reign.
What then did you go out to see?
With the arrest of John the Baptist, the crowds might have seen the end of the promises of a different way of being.
They might have shifted their gaze to the King Herods and the vacillating politicians who were currently in power and who sought to protect an imperial system that had made them rich and influential.
But Jesus instead invites them to look elsewhere for the fulfilling life they seek.
What then did you go out to see?
So much of our Advent preparation, and our entire life in the church and world is predicated on what we see and what we value.
To put it starkly, Herod saw John as a threat to be neutralized, while Jesus and the crowds saw a prophet preparing the way for the Messiah.
For the majority of the world, the child born among the sheep and oxen to soon-to-be refugee parents, was just one more child.
But to the shepherds, magi, and countless generations who look back to that birth through the lens of the ages, that child was the incarnation of God’s promises and the fragility of humanity all rolled into one.
As followers of that child, who grew up, was baptized in those wilderness waters by John, and who eventually opened the eyes of blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, and helped the lame leap for joy, we are called to align our way of seeing with his.
Jesus’ way of seeing has a bias for noticing that which empires dismiss as unimportant.
We are called to see the poor, the infirm, and the displaced not as problems to be lamented or solved, but as children of God worthy of the same dignity and destiny as any of us.
We are called to read the signs of nature like the farmer in the reading from James and collaborate with God in the care of creation rather than simply extracting and stripping the earth of its resources.
We are called to look for the inbreaking of God’s reign, to celebrate it, announce it, and allow our lives to be shaped according to it, instead of the host of other competing perspectives that vie for our attention.
We at St. Paul’s seek to be the kind of community where the blessed and beautiful gifts of our different ways of seeing based on our countries of origin, native languages, and home cultures are honored and appreciated as equal contributions to the great mosaic of God’s reign.
At the same time, we seek to be the kind of church that helps its members and the larger world awake to the way of seeing that Jesus calls us to, and to provide a safe space for practicing that kind of seeing in community.
One of the main reasons I want everyone to participate in our Live and Give campaign is because I see so many of the transformative signs God is doing among us.
I see the eyes of the blind opening when we gather for meals together, I witness the ears of the deaf being unstopped to the cries of refugees and the groaning of our planet, and I see the lame leaping for joy after successful surgery.
I see the ways in which each one of us are so necessary in God’s kingdom while often judged as unnecessary in the reigns of our world.
I see each one of you as beloved children of God empowered to reconnect and re-member a factious and fractured world.
What do you see?
As we continue our Advent journey, in a darkening world while focusing on the coming of the light, let us keep searching for signs of God’s presence and faithfulness among us.
Be they small or large, let us rejoice and give thanks for them, and let us continue to be shaped into a community who notices and uplifts them for those whose ways of seeing have grown rigid and tired.
May Jesus’ way of seeing shape our own, and may our shared witness as a church draw forth the best of our blessed cultural differences while shedding ways of seeing that dehumanize and separate us.
What then did we come out to see?
Pools in the desert.
The dead raised to new life.
A church community that is connected and resourced to fully live and proclaim the gospel in our age.