The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for February 11, 2006

Texts: Jeremiah 17:5-10/1 Corinthians 15:12-28

Title: “More than Meets the Eye”

              I would have to say that a lot of the abstract art I have viewed in my life leaves me cold.  I just don’t understand it.  Perhaps it’s an acquired taste, something a person has to live with a while in order to appreciate it. 

              Innovation in art, as with most things, is seldom immediately embraced.  In the latter half of the nineteenth century a group of painters working in France coalesced into what in time would become a movement.  Experimenting with color, technique, and subject matter, their work was panned by the painting establishment.  In fact their work, later to be labeled Impressionism, created such an uproar that what the artists were doing was denounced as an assault on French culture itself. 

              Fast forward to today and one of the lesser known works of Claude Monet was recently sold by the Sotheby’s auction house for tens of millions of dollars.  Over time an audience, and an enthusiastic one at that, have come to appreciate, and pay extraordinary sums of money for works that could be had for the equivalent of a couple hundred dollars when their were first produced.

              Now a work of one these masters may leave us just as cold as the work of today’s abstract artist molding sculpture out of empty paint cans and tire rims, but in the case of the Impressionist masters, at least, I can tell you that there will be any number of people who rise to the defense of those artists and their work.  Tell them that you don’t understand what you are seeing, and that the water color your granddaughter brought home from day care strikes you as being of equal merit to the Manet they rave about, and you are likely to be told, “friend, there is more there than meets the eye.”

              Super Bowl is past, and for a lot of sports fans like me there is a real dry patch to endure until the opening of baseball season.  I know that football leaves a lot of people cold. “What’s to like?” you will hear the critics of the sport say, “just a lot of big bodies running into each other simply in order to move a ball across a line.”  “Hey, wait a minute,” says the football fan, indignant to hear his sport dismissed so casually, “hey wait a minute.  There is more there than meets the eye.”

              A friend invited me to a film directed by an award winning Japanese director.  The actors were all Japanese, subtitles provided to aid the English-speaking audience.  From the opening scene I was lost, and stayed lost for the three hour run of this historical drama set in fifteen century Japan.  Bored?  I’ll tell you I was bored. Over a cup of coffee after the movie my friend went on and on raving about what an extraordinary event in movie making we had just witnessed.  My friend was more than a little offended when I told him I was unimpressed. Seriously annoyed, he responded, “there is more there than meets the eye,” or words to that effect. 

              How to convey the virtues of the art, the recreation, the food, or the games we love?  It can be a difficult sell.  In fact, more often than not we falter. There is that indescribable “something,” about the thing we love that just won’t translate into words.

              We love football.  We love the opera.  We love riding horses, or bowling. The passion we feel about activities may defeat our best attempts to communicate our love for them.  We feel so strongly that we can’t bring ourselves to understand why something we care deeply about doesn’t have the same effect on someone else.  “Surely you see the genius of that piece of music.”  “Surely you see the craftsmanship in that carving.”  “Surely you recognize how impressive that athletic feat was.”  But then, you grasp the more there than meets the eye,” to which your friend is oblivious. 

              What we do here on Sunday morning is for many an acquired taste. The person on the street just doesn’t get up some Sunday and say, “you know what, I think I’ll go to church today.” Worship is not meant to be just another form of entertainment. We don’t promote it as an alternative to a movie, a sporting event, or a concert.  If we did try to make the attempt we would be found out immediately. Thoughtful worship is designed to hold one’s attention, something it does more or less well, it is not designed to entertain.

              Worship is an acquired taste.  The uninitiated person who comes in off the street is unlikely to be impressed with what we do, and can we really expect them to be impressed? In fact, that unimpressed person may take you aside an ask you why you choose to spend a portion of your Sunday, a day you could spend doing many other things, in a place like this.  Ever been asked that question? Your response may well have been something to the effect, “there is more going on here than meets the eye.”   

              Worship is dedicated to the proposition that there is more in what we are doing here than meets the eye.  Not to entertain ourselves, worship is designed to accomplish another goal entirely.  God, the audience for whom worship is prepared is invisible to the eye, aside from God’s own assurance that he is here, there is no way you and I might certify that God is present in this sanctuary.

              You enjoy the music, you enjoy meeting your friends, you enjoy the opportunity to claim some peace and quiet for yourself, you may even appreciate a good sermon, but what moves you and I to keep coming here, is, I think, at the end of the day, the inner conviction that there is something going on here, something the eye can’t see, that we want to be part of.

              Jesus came to earth and he persisted to demonstrate to all who would listen that he knew the meaning of life. In the many varied circumstances in which he found himself he went about proving that God was on the job through him. “Look, there is more here than meets the eye.”

               We know that Jesus met up with some serious dissenters who resented his intrusion into their well ordered world.  If you are right with God, and these dissenters knew they were right with God, you don’t need anyone telling you that you might not be as right with God as you think you are.

              Yet there was a whole other audience who weren’t so convinced of their personal worthiness, people who responded to what Jesus was saying.  This was audience containing people who, in very many cases, came to Jesus in desperate straights.  They were afflicted with disease, they had children who were suffering, they were people who had sacrificed their self-respect and were scorned by the community. These were people ready to hear more about those realities the eye can’t see, for the things the eye could see, the day to day realities in which their lives were immersed, oppressed them and sapped them of hope.

              Jesus’ popularity among those people ultimately created jealousy among the people whose lives accommodated nicely to the world as it was.  This group felt threatened by Jesus, and finding an opportunity to get rid of him, acted.  It’s not a pretty story.  There was a betrayal.  Trumped up charges. A hasty trial.  An execution.

              Jesus’ followers left the execution site at Golgotha forlorn and leaderless.  But as they mourned and tried to make sense of the reality to which they had been exposed there was more going on behind the scene, more than met the eye.

                 No human being actually saw Jesus rise from the tomb, the four gospels variously reporting how the empty tomb was discovered. Soon after the tomb was discovered empty, however, various witnesses encountered Jesus in the flesh.  Word quickly spreading that Jesus was alive, both the friends of Jesus and his enemies, were challenged to define the significance of that event.

                  Jesus’ enemies ultimately ignored the challenge, and could comfortably do so because Jesus was not out and about making his presence known.  They could argue that Jesus’ rising from the dead was a ruse concocted by his followers.  “Let his followers prove that Jesus is alive.” 

                   But even if his followers could somehow prove beyond all doubt that Jesus had risen, what significance might his followers attach to the fact that he was alive?  The significance of what Jesus’ resurrection meant for his followers, and ultimately for the world, did not come all neatly wrapped up in a bow.  No, there was much more represented in his resurrection than met the eye. 

                 By the grace of God one man was equipped with special power to understand what the resurrection meant.  A mortal like us, the Apostle Paul was given the special gift to apprehend the significance of the resurrection And so Paul writes to the church in Corinth, “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.  Then he appeared to James, and then to the apostles.  Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

                “Died for our sins,” Paul declares.  But he rose again.  To that several were witnesses, including Paul himself.  Fact of the matter is, however, that of that entire assembly of witnesses, Paul alone saw what others did not see. Sharing what he saw, however, proved to be a challenge.

                Despite his teaching and preaching some of the good folks in Corinth rejected the resurrection.  Aside from presenting Jesus physically alive in the flesh, Paul had recourse to persuasive argument alone to make his case that Jesus was resurrected. Only Paul’s ambition was greater than to merely prove that Jesus was resurrected, Paul wanted to demonstrate that Jesus’ resurrection bore ultimate significance for anyone who took his [Paul’s] preaching seriously.

                And so, Paul declares, “there is more to life than meets the eye.”  The “more” of life to which Paul makes reference are not opportunities to improve one’s quality of life in the here and now, however desirable that might be. The “more” to which Paul pointed was over the horizon where no mortal had ever been.  No mortal.  Yet what lies beyond the horizon, Paul declared is by no means foreign or alien territory to God. “Jesus is there,” Paul declares. “The resurrected Jesus is there.” 

                There is more to life than meets the eye.  Sad to say, many who come to church every Sunday haven’t grasped that. Paul committed his life that people might understand, writing “If  for this life only we have hoped in Christ we are of all people most to be pitied.”  

                We gather in this place knowing, at least at some level, that there is a reality to which we can turn, unseen though it may be, that makes sense of the reality in which we live better than all that is visible could ever accomplish. That reality is our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ alive with us today.

               The trajectory of the faith to which Jesus points us, and that Paul, and all the great prophets, teachers, and preachers that have followed in their wake have pointed us, carries out of this world.  Not merely for this life, the power that raised Jesus from the dead is active beyond the grave.

                 All that stuff with which we must deal in this life, death and mayhem, injustice and corruption, greed and selfishness, is a state of affairs the resurrection empowers us to leave behind. It may be pervasive and extremely difficult to leave behind.  But it most definitely can be left behind. Jesus died and rose again to prove it. 

               There is a spirit at work in us right now that wants us to understand that there is a lot more to life than meets the eye. The risen Christ is the source of that spirit, but don’t think for a minute that we have to die to enjoy it.  The Spirit wants us to know that there is no barrier to what the resurrected Christ is prepared to give us right here and right now.  How did Paul put it, “I handed on to you [speaking to the Corinthians, but also to us] “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with scripture.”  He died for our sins in order that our communion with God the father might be complete, not tomorrow, but right now. He rose from the grave to seal that victory.

                  We don’t see Christ, but he is here. Sure there’s more than meets the eye. Definitely.  But may each moment we spend in God’s house bring us one moment nearer to the day when we shall see the world as God in Christ created it to be seen.  Our hope in Jesus Christ does not disappoint. AMEN.

PRAYER

              O God, we affirm with the church universal, that we belong to you in life and in death.  Yet, O God, the human mind cannot on its own comprehend what that affirmation actually means. It is faith, and faith only, the faith you yourself supply, that equips our minds to reach beyond that which can be seen, touched, and heard with the senses. By faith we are given to see reality for what it really is.

              Raised to eternal glory in the resurrection, O Christ, you vanquished the sin that clung to us as a result of Adam’s fall.  But sin, O Lord, has been a resilient foe.  Sin continues to claim mastery over us, and we submit, though there is no reason to submit.  We cannot free ourselves without your help, O Lord, but time and time again we reject your help.  We say that we want to purge sin from our lives, but the habits of sin are all too familiar, and inviting.  Better to yield today, for we will do better tomorrow. Yet we have lived a series of tomorrows, O God, and change won’t come.  O Christ, source of hope, empower us to change what needs changing in our lives.  Embolden us to reach beyond the boundaries of our former thinking and doing.

              Holy Spirit, who dwells in this very moment with us, many of us labor under burdens, plagued by fear, uncertainty, even dread.  Illness is preoccupying for many, a difficult relationship for others, while others struggle to see some silver lining in a cloud that has persisted to hang over us day after day. Come as the refreshing winds over the sea, come, O Spirit, to revive our spirits.  Come as the dawn’s light awakening us to the possibilities stored up in a new day. Come to us, O Spirit, come as the guest for whom we have been waiting.

               Living God, the world is held hostage by people holding a vendetta against other religious groups, against people whose values differ from their own, basically against anyone who would contest their right to dictate how the rest of us should live. The world, O God, lives perilously on the brink, waiting for the next mad man to exact his revenge on those who refuse to allow him to dictate how the rest of the world shall live. Our own wisdom, O Lord, has proven insufficient to meet the challenge the enemies of civilization pose.  Intervene, O God to save us, we pray.

              A new Mardi Gras season has begun.  We pray that the festivities be carried out without mishap.  We lift up police and security agencies who patrol our streets, doctors, nurses, and technicians in our hospitals, and others whose responsibility it will be to face the challenges of the next several days.

              We continue to pray, O God, that you will brace our wills to meet the challenges the restoration of our church and community presents. Impatient to finish what we have started, let not our impatience undermine our judgment, but in all things may we act in accord with your holy will.

              Abide with those who cry out for freedom and justice, who scrape by from day to day wondering what the source of their next meal might be, watching their children slowly waste away for lack of food, health care and education. We shield out our eyes from the pain and suffering in the world, only to shield our eyes, O Christ, from that which you insist we see, and act to correct. In your mercy, O Lord, forgive us for not acting more aggressively on behalf of the marginalized.

              O Spirit, love divine, we pray that you would open our hearts to more fully receive the blessings you are so prepared to give.  In Jesus’ name we pray, using the very words he gave us.