Sight Purified
Third and Fourth Sunday of Lent
Oops!
One of the hardest things in the world is changing the way we see something. Yet in order to see God, it is a must.
Changing your mind is all about perspective — how you see something, how you come to understand a particular set of events or facts.
Take the Israelites, for instance.
They believed themselves to be the chosen people. God had led them out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land. After crossing the Jordan River, God continued to act on their behalf as they built a kingdom.
This was the story they told themselves. This was their origin story: Our God is the God who freed us from slavery. Our God is the God who gave us this land.
But despite this divine origin, disaster soon struck. After only three kings, the kingdom split — Samaria in the north, Judah in the south. They bickered and fought like siblings, called each other names, accused each other of heresy.
Then the Northern Kingdom was destroyed. The Assyrians came and wiped them out. But for the Judeans, that wasn’t a problem. Those northerners were troublemakers anyway.
But then the worst happened. The Babylonians came, destroyed Jerusalem, captured the people, and sent them into exile.
And suddenly their whole story stopped making sense.
Ugh!
The natural perspective for the Judeans was utter despair. Listen to how raw the grief becomes in Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon — there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion …
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! … Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!
We see despair, hopelessness, devastation — and anger so consuming that they rejoice in the death of children.
The perspective of the surrounding nations was, unsurprisingly, quite different. They laughed.
If your God is so powerful, why did he let this happen? Why doesn’t he free you now, like he freed you from Egypt? Surely this is proof that the Babylonian gods are stronger, more deserving of worship.
Two perspectives emerged.
Inside Israel: despair, grief, rage.
Outside Israel: laughter and mockery.
From every angle, the story seemed to say the same thing: Israel’s God had failed.
Aha!
Yet the prophets, called by God, brought a third perspective entirely.
They taught the people how to see clearly.
It wasn’t that Babylon or its gods were more powerful. It wasn’t that God was on vacation or had stopped caring. None of that.
Instead, the prophets taught that it was God himself who had used the Babylonians to discipline his own people.
They had wandered after idols. They had failed to care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan. They had become consumed with power, glory, and material things. So God acted as a parent acts — he used Babylon to bring his people to their senses.
They had mocked him with false worship, and now he humbled them before the nations.
The way out was to hear what the prophets were saying. To see as the prophet saw. To repent, change course, and return to God’s instruction.
To understand and then to act — that is the power of transformed sight.
Whee!
And this is exactly what the Church places before us as the center of our Lenten journey.
At the very center of Lent, she sets the Cross before our eyes.
Most of the world sees the Cross the way Babylon looked at the exiled Judeans: Here is a man who called himself the Messiah — he saved others, but look at him now.
Most of the world sees a criminal at worst or a naïve idealist at best.
Most of the world sees failure.
But we are being led, prophetically, to see differently.
Three Sundays ago, we saw how Nathanael’s encounter with Christ opened his eyes — he went from mockery to worship, seeing in Jesus the Son of God. Two Sundays ago, Gregory Palamas showed us that the light which transformed Nathanael is nothing less than God himself — that to encounter this light is a transfiguring moment.
Now the Church asks us to look again at the Cross — but with new eyes.
And this is why the Church sings: Before Thy Cross we bow down in worship, O Master…
Instead of a dead man, we see Christ enthroned.
This is why, in Orthodox iconography, we do not write the historical inscription above the cross: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Judeans. Instead we write: The King of Glory.
When Jesus stands before his torturers, we do not linger on the suffering. We see him as the Bridegroom awaiting union with his Bride, the Church.
The thorns on his head become a crown. The reed placed in his hand becomes a scepter. The cloak of mockery becomes a royal robe.
His death is not defeat … but, rather, it’s the defeat of Death itself.
The gates of Hades are smashed. The dead are raised to new life.
Yeah!
So what does this mean for us?
Here is where we must be honest.
Seeing the Cross this way is not automatic. It is not something that happens simply because we show up on Sunday.
The world’s vision is loud, relentless, and deeply appealing. It tells us that strength is power, that success is measured in comfort and control, that suffering is always and only a problem to be solved.
That vision seeps into us — into how we judge our own lives, how we treat people who disappoint us, how we respond when things fall apart.
When your marriage is hard — do you see a cross to be carried, or only a failure?
When your health declines — do you see God still at work, or only abandonment?
When you are humbled or overlooked — do you see the Bridegroom’s robe, or only a rag?
We eventually see what we train our eyes to see.
This is why the Church gives us Lent.
Not as a spiritual self-improvement program, but as a school for the eyes.
The fasting, the prostrations, the services — they are not ends in themselves. They are practices of reorientation, ways of slowly, painfully, deliberately turning our gaze away from the world’s vision and toward the King of Glory.
The Cross is not merely as a reminder that Christ died.
It is challenge for us today.
Can you see it?
Not with sentiment or habit, but truly — can you see victory where the world sees defeat? Can you see a throne where the world sees an execution?
And if the answer is not yet — then Lent still has work to do in us.
The Cross is in the center of the gospel so that it may slowly move to the center of our sight.
The question is whether we will let it.
Amen.