Through Which Lens?

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Readings: Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 32(33):1,12,18-20,22; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

Picture: By Bud Helisson on Unsplash

My dear friends, what do you think? Do we need lenses to see? As you’ve probably guessed, this is actually a trick question. For even if some of us may be blessed with perfect vision — even if we don’t need prescription glasses like mine to see clearly — none of us can see anything at all, if not for the crystalline lenses in our eyes. Typically, we simply take these natural lenses for granted. We don’t think much about them. Not until much later in life, when they may get clouded by cataracts, and we require surgery to replace them. But whether we realise it or not, the fact remains that all of us need lenses to see. Otherwise we remain quite blind. And this is true not just physiologically, but also spiritually. Isn’t this what our scriptures are telling us today?

The first reading invites us to look back into the distant past. Back to a given moment in our history of salvation. To that first Passover night, when God struck down all the first-born of mighty Egypt — including even the animals — but spared poor helpless Israel. Spared all those whose doorways were marked by the blood of a lamb. We know the story well. This was how God forced proud Pharaoh to set an oppressed people free from slavery. The reading teaches us to look back on this momentous evening in a particular way, through a specific lens. So that we may recognise, in its dramatic events, the steadfast and merciful love of God. So that we might be filled with gratitude and awe.

And we Christians believe that this immense love, which God bestowed so graciously upon Israel, has also been bestowed upon us, and the rest of Creation. For we cannot look back on the first Passover without also recalling what we ourselves celebrate at this and at every Eucharist. The great Mystery in which Christ offered himself once and for all, as the final and conclusive Paschal Lamb. Setting us free from the slavery of sin. And if the memory of the first Passover can fill us with gratitude and awe, how much more the Mystery of the Son of God’s loving and merciful sacrifice for us on the Cross?

The second reading takes us even further back into the biblical past. Back to the time of the patriarch Abraham, and his wife Sarah. Reminding us that they too looked at reality through the same lens, which the reading teaches us to call faith. But even though it may speak about these great figures of the past, what the reading highlights for us is how, in faith, they all looked forward to the future. By faith, Abraham set out without knowing where he was going... By faith, already post-menopausal Sarah was made able to conceive... And by faith, Abraham even agreed to offer up Isaac, his long-awaited and much-beloved heir. Why? Isn’t it because, although the future remained unseen and uncertain to their all too human eyes, their faith filled Abraham and Sarah with trust in God. Assuring them that God would somehow fulfil God’s promises. Trust and assurance. These are what the future produces in us when seen through the lens of faith.

Then, in the gospel, Jesus teaches us how to look at the present with courage and alertness. There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom. How can we know this, except by looking at reality through the lens of faith? Faith not in ourselves and our own achievements, but rather in God’s love for us. Enabling us to stop clinging anxiously and greedily to our earthly possessions, material or otherwise. But to learn to see them instead as gifts entrusted to us for the common good. And even to use them as a mode of transport. A way to convey our hearts from the illusory attractions of this passing world, to the enduring joys of our eternal home. Get yourselves… treasure… in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Isn’t this how we make ourselves ready and alert to greet the Master whenever he chooses to come?

To look at the past with gratitude and awe. To look at the future with trust and assurance. And to look at the present with courage and alertness. All this is possible, provided we learn to look in faith. For just as we remain physically blind without the natural lenses in our eyes, so too are we spiritually sightless without faith. And isn’t it timely for us to be reminded of this over the SG60 weekend? When we’re all encouraged to celebrate our national achievements of the past, and to secure an ever more promising future, by rising to the considerable challenges of the present? Isn’t it our responsibility as Christians to help uncover and highlight those realities that can be seen only by faith?

Sisters and brothers, how might we better help one another to keep looking through this precious God-given lens today?