Looking Deeper

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 26, 2009

Looking Deeper
Luke 7:1-10

Push off from the shore and glide across the surface of the lake.
Dip the blade of your paddle into the clear, cool water and pull.
You can feel the canoe accelerate beneath you
as it cuts across the water.
You settle into a rhythm of paddling,
reaching, pulling,
your eyes drawn to the little whirlpools you create
with every stroke.

The shoreline quickly recedes
as you head for the clearing in the woods
directly opposite.
It isn’t far; most of the lakes in this part of the world are small.
You reach the bank and see the path
that connects the lake you are on
with the next lake, the lake you are headed to.
You remember not to refer to it as a path,
or a carryover –
you want to sound like you belong here,
not a tourist,
so you prepare to carry the canoe and your gear
over the portage.

This is Algonquin Provincial Park,
in the Canadian province of Ontario,
about 150 miles north of Toronto.
This is also a little bit of heaven.

I spent many summers in the Park,
camping and canoeing with family and friends.
Especially memorable were the summers of
1965, ‘66, and ‘67
I spent at Camp Pathfinder for boys.

The lakes in the Park back in the 1960s were so clean,
so clear you could dip a cup over the side of the canoe
and take a drink straight from the lake.
On my last trip there in the late 1970s,
the lakes were still lovely,
but they were beginning to show the stress and strain
of too many thoughtless humans.
Water had to be boiled first before you could drink it.

For as clear as the lakes were, though,
it was difficult to see more than a foot or so beneath the surface.
The lake bottoms were pitch black
a tangle of trees, limbs and branches,
remnants of another era
when many of the lakes were part of the forests
that covered Northern Ontario.

Camp Pathfinder taught the boys the history of the area,
that the lakes we paddled across in our cedar canoes
were once home to Abaniki and Objiwa Indians,
who trailed deer, wolves and moose,
animals that had once been abundant
but were increasingly scarce
as they competed with humanity
for space and food.

Camp Pathfinder taught boys to look past the surface,
to look deeper,
not just as we looked at the lakes,
but as we looked at the forests around us,
the skies above us,
the wildlife everywhere.

They taught us to look deeper
as we canoed across lakes
and hiked over portages,
to see more than just a group of boys and men
pitching tents,
building campfires,
catching fish,
and telling the kinds of stories
that only pre-adolescent boys find funny.

We were taught to look past the surface
of everything we looked at,
to look deeper,
as we drank richly from the beauty of God’s creation.

Sit on the side of a dive boat
as it bobs in gentle waves on turquoise waters
far from Algonquin Provincial Park.
Adjust your mask and your mouthpiece, and then,
at the word from the instructor,
fall backwards into the water,
and float gently down beneath the waves,
the bubbles from your tank rising to the surface.

You’re only a foot or two beneath the waves,
but you sense extraordinary calm in the waters.
Here you feel no waves, no wind.
The dive instructor beckons you to follow
and down you go, not far,
it isn’t very deep here in these reefs.

The sunlight penetrates brilliantly,
giving the waters a cathedral-like glow,
as though the rays pass through stained-glass.
The sun illuminates the wildly-colored fish that swim all around.
What fun God must have had
when he took his brush and his paints
to the fish that swim in tropical waters!
Sitting on the surface of the water
who could have imagined such an vibrant display,
just below the surface,
almost within reach,
a riot of life and color.

Life beckons us to look deeper,
to go beyond the surface, the gloss,
to look deep,
deeper,
as deeply as we can.

Life beckons, but we resist.
Looking deeper takes effort,
it can be too much like work.
It is so much easier to keep things on the surface,
to keep things superficial… not to go deeper.
And so we live our lives on the surface.
And as a result we are quick to judge people
on their looks, their skin color,
the clothes they wear, the cars they drive.
Around here, of course,
we want to know:
Democrat or Republican?

We do this even though we all know by heart
Jesus’ words to us:
“Don’t judge,
Don’t condemn,
Forgive.”
(Luke 6:37)

Ah, but there’s the rub:
we may remember those words,
we may able to quote them readily,
but we don’t know them by heart.
If we knew them by heart,
we’d live them, wouldn’t we?

Imagine if Jesus had skimmed through his ministry,
stayed on the surface,
never looking deeper.
How much easier his life would have been!

The story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well
would have been short and to the point,
Jesus dismissing her, first because she was
a Samaritan and second, because she was a woman.

We never would have had the wonderful story
of Zacchaeus, the corrupt chief tax collector.
You remember that story:
Zacchaeus was so short
that when Jesus came into town
and people gathered along the side of the road
to greet him,
Zacchaeus could not see over the people,
so he climbed a tree to get a better view.
And Jesus saw Zacchaeus in the tree and
told him to climb down so that Jesus could
have dinner at Zacchaeus’ home.
And there, the spirit filled Zacchaeus
and Zacchaeus was able to look deeper,
to see people as more than just pots of money
for him and his gang to shake down.
That day, salvation came to Zacchaeus’ home.

And of course, we would not have
the text we heard in our lesson
if Jesus had not looked deeper.
Jesus would have had nothing to do
with the Centurion’s servant,
because he would have had nothing to do with the Centurion:
an officer in the Roman army,
the enemy of the children of Israel,
the occupying force.
Why would Jesus have paid any attention to him?

Besides, Jesus had his hands full with the
group he called his disciples,
Look at them: why would Jesus have called
Peter, Andrew,
James, John, Matthew, and the others?
On the surface, none of them showed much aptitude
for the work Jesus had in mind for them;
they often seemed like such dim bulbs.

But Jesus looked deeper:
he saw something in each of the disciples.
Jesus looked deeper at Zacchaeus and
the Samaritan woman.
The impressive display of military hardware
the Centurion wore did not keep Jesus
from looking deeper.

Everything about our lives as followers of Jesus Christ
calls us to dig deeper, look deeper,
never to stop at the surface, at the superficial.
Here in this church,
in our homes, our work places, our schools,
in the world around us,
we are called to look deeper.

Looking deeper is the very essence of what we do
in Bible Study classes each week:
the Wednesday morning group,
the Thursday evening group,
the Year of the Bible group.

We learn that we have to go beyond the words
that appear on the page.
We learn to go beyond the words,
to work to discern what it is that God wants us to learn.
It is easy to read a few words in the text
and say, “This is it, I’ve got it.”
But we have to ask,
Do we really understand,
or are we looking just on the surface?
Do we need to look deeper?

Paul’s letter to the Romans,
which we are reading now,
is a powerful example of why we are called to look deeper.
In the neverending ordination wars
we’ve suffered through over the past decade,
one side is quick to quote from the first chapter
to say that Paul clearly condemns certain behavior.
A surface reading of the text easily leads us to say
yes, that’s just what Paul is doing.

But read deeper, look deeper;
there is more there,
much more there.
Multiple levels if we dig down.

Even if we just go one level down
and stop there, look what Paul does:
He warns us,
warns us that while we might be tempted to join
what looks like a call to a choir of condemnation,
“…[Y]ou have no excuse, whoever you are,
when you judge others;
for in passing judgment on another
you condemn yourself,
because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.”
(Romans 2:1)

Skim along the surface, and look at what we miss:
we miss grace,
we miss grace and we miss love.
Look deeper and that’s where we find grace
that’s where we feel the Spirit,
where we feel the true presence of God.

Look deeper into Romans
and we learn that while God accepts us as we are
God expects us not to stay as we are,
but to dig deeper into faith,
dig deeper in our lives,
to grow and be transformed by grace,
to go beyond being a religious person,
to go deeper and become a spiritual person.

The religious person looks at the world
around himself or herself
and takes it in as information and facts.
The spiritual person looks with different eyes,
eyes that look deeper.
The spiritual person looks with “Jesus eyes”,
eyes that see as Jesus saw, as Jesus sees even now:
eyes, mind, heart, spirit
all together to help to see deeply,
to see past the surface.

Look with "Jesus eyes"
and we see the image of God in every person –
Samaritan, Roman, leper.

Look with "Jesus eyes"
and we see the balance and order
of this world around us,
this creation in which God delights.

Look with "Jesus eyes"
and you look with grace and love.

Do you have “Jesus eyes”?
Yes: we all have “Jesus eyes”,
given us by the grace of God,
given us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here’s the more difficult question:
how well do you use them, your “Jesus eyes”?
Do you use them only for special occasions,
for an hour or so on Sunday
and then only sporadically the rest of the week,
otherwise keeping them in a compartment
separate and apart from other parts of your life?

Take them out of the special box,
the special compartment,
and use them, all the time,
use your "Jesus eyes"
to look at the world,
to look at all humanity,
to look widely,
and look deeply.

Use your “Jesus eyes”
and you are sure to see the world in a whole new way.
Not because the world has changed,
but because you have:
Look with “Jesus eyes”
and you’ve taken a big step toward a deeper spirituality,
a big step in response to God’s call
to a transforming life.

So look with “Jesus eyes”, here and now,
and then keep looking with your "Jesus eyes"
as you leave here and go back out into the world.
See with “Jesus eyes”,
use your “Jesus eyes”
and look deep, deeper,
Use them today,
but use them as well tomorrow,
and the day after,
and always.
The world will never look the same.
AMEN