One of the gifts that God gives us as God’s beloved children is the ability to see with the eyes of faith.
But like a newborn baby, whose eyes can only focus about eight to ten inches at birth, this gift does not come fully formed.
A baby does the work of going from being able to focus only about eight to ten inches as a newborn, to being able, by his or her first birthday, to see well both close up and at a distance.
Our work as Christians is to develop our vision so that we see both up close and at a distance and use our eyes of faith well.
God holds us close when we are infants in the faith. Paul explains to those new Christians in Corinth, who were having vision problems, that “God shines in their hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Paul tells the Corinthians that to develop their eyes of faith, the place to start is to look into the face of Jesus Christ himself, because it is in his face that they will see the glory of God.
So if we wish to develop our God given gift of seeing with the eyes of faith, we must first start by being willing to let God hold us and to be intentional about “gazing” at God’s face, as a newborn baby gazes into the face of the one who holds the baby close and safe.
People who pray with icons are intentionally developing their eyes of faith through this method of prayer.
In her book, 50 Ways to Pray, Teresa Blythe suggests this exercise as “a way to use your eyes intently in prayer.”
(Since today the gospel is the story of the transfiguration, I’ve chosen this Greek Orthodox icon by Theophanes.)
“Find a comfortable place to sit and gaze at your chosen icon.
Express your intention to encounter God. Ask God for guidance.
In Orthodox spirituality, we are invited to allow our mind to descend deep into the center of our heart, where we will encounter the presence of God. Spend a few moments pondering this and try allowing it to happen.
Gaze at the icon. Let your gaze be long and loving. Think of the icon as a mystical window in which you are on one side and God is on the other. Allow God to communicate with you by way of this image, but do not be anxious about how or when God may communicate. Simply continue to gaze and allow your heart to be still and open. Do this until you reach your time limit.
End the contemplation with a prayer of gratitude.”
Praying with icons is one of many ways to develop your eyes of faith in prayer.
Today’s Old Testament reading provides another thing necessary for developing our eyes of faith, and that is to be persistent and not to give up.
In the reading, Elijah the prophet is about to be taken up into heaven by a whirlwind. His disciple, Elisha, is with Elijah. Elijah gives Elisha three chances to bail out of this final journey which will mark Elijah’s departure.
And three times, Elisha refuses to give up, and says, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”
Elisha persevered and stayed with Elijah.
Once they’ve crossed the Jordan, Elijah says to Elisha, “Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken away from you.” Elisha asks for a double share of Elijah’s spirit. In other words, he asks to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that he can carry on the prophetic work of Elijah.
And Elijah says, “You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.”
And as they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.”
And then this line—“Elisha kept watching.” He watched until he couldn’t see Elijah anymore.
Elisha was persistent. He stuck to Elijah and did not leave him. He kept his eyes open. He kept watching until Elijah had vanished in the whirlwind.
What we don’t get in lectionary is what happened next.
After Elisha had torn his clothes in mourning, he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen, and he went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. And he struck the water with the mantle as Elijah had done, and he called out. “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” And the water parted to one side and the other, and Elisha went over.
Elisha tested what he had seen. He asked God, “Where are you?” And he knew God was with him when he struck the waters of the Jordan with the mantle and the water parted to one side and the other.
Which brings us to back to today’s gospel.
Jesus takes Peter, James and John on a journey that will require the disciples to see with the eyes of faith.
Jesus leads them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.
And Jesus is transfigured, and his clothes become dazzling white. And Elijah and Moses appear and are talking to Jesus.
The three disciples see this transfiguration.
And then without knowing what he is doing, Peter tests what he sees. “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” To build dwellings for Jesus and Elijah and Moses would be something you’d do if this were a physical reality that could be seen and grasped and held onto.
Peter gets a dramatic answer. Mark tells us that “Then a cloud overshadowed them, and there came a voice, “This is my Son, the beloved; listen to him!”
And suddenly they looked around and they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
What they had just seen had to be seen and understood through the eyes of faith.
The disciples had seen on their journey with Jesus up the mountain a vision of awe and wonder like a whirlwind out of heaven. Then the vision ended and they were alone with Jesus.
We, the hearers of this story, know that Jesus would be the one to give the disciples the double share of his Spirit. Jesus would give them the power of the Holy Spirit, and they would be the ones who would be carrying the reign of God out into the world.
Richard Rohr, a Franciscan theologian, says that our spiritual journeys are “a constant interplay between moments of awe followed by a general process of surrender to that moment…to be captured by the goodness, truth or beauty of something beyond and outside ourselves.” In that moment, we can see the goodness, truth and beauty in the rest of reality, including ourselves.
“This is the great inner dialogue we call prayer,” Rohr says.
And awe and surrender lead to joy. Rohr says that “it takes both great love and great suffering to stun us and bring us to our knees. God is there in all of it, using every circumstance of our life, to draw us ever more deeply into the heart of God.”
And then he quotes Barbara Holmes, who says of our perseverance in prayer, “we are on a pilgrimage toward the center of our hearts. And it is in this place of prayerful repose that joy unspeakable erupts.”
In today’s collect, we pray that when we look on the face of God, our vision will grow stronger and clearer, so that we can be gloriously transformed.
“Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear his cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory.”
These scriptures on the last Sunday after the Epiphany offer us a challenge for the Lenten season ahead—to keep strengthening our eyes of faith. Maybe you are new in the faith and need to develop your vision. Or maybe your vision has grown dim with time. Or maybe your vision is pretty good.
But regardless of where each of us is on the journey to God and the regardless of the state of our vision, God calls us all to come ever closer to God as we gaze on God in prayer.
God challenges us all to persevere as Elisha did. We mustn’t give up on the work of strengthening our eyes of faith. We must keep looking—and to be steadfast in beholding the light of God’s countenance in when we pray.
The writer of the Letter to the Ephesians now provides the closing prayer for this last Sunday after the Epiphany.
“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of God’s great power.”
Resources
Blythe, Teresa A. 50 Ways to Pray: Practices from Many Traditions and Times. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006.
Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation for February 12, 2021, Center for Action and Contemplation https://cac.org/awe-and-joy-2021-02-12/