Seeing Jesus

Presbyterian Bloggers

Powered By Ringsurf

I believe that there is some power behind it all

I hesitate to call that power “God”

For our attempts to anthropomorphize this power never turn out well

 

Our images are always too small

And our small god tends to be way too much like us

 

But I believe

There is a power that helped shape this universe, in its unfathomable glory

This world, with its absurd beauty

We human creatures, who are both terrible and amazing

All at the same time

 

Call this power

Sacred

The Beloved

The One

Love

 

It is (I believe) real

And I believe that this Love

Is woven into the fabric of our being

 

I believe that we come from love

That we carry Love in us, for all of our days

And that when we die we return to Love

 

While alive we have the capacity for communion with Love

And when we die we move into a union

so profound

That all the pain and failure we gathered during our lives

All the illness

Melt away in the heat of divine love

 

So as I walk this earth, I have to recognize that it is populated

by image bearers

 

by people who carry Sacred in them

and who, to various degrees, let that presence leak through the cracks in their souls

into this world

there was one who truly bore the image

that one, Jesus

who was so full, so open, so permeated with the Sacred

that he was God with us

 

and we are told that this One

lives still

and is present still

in us, in we human creatures

in all of us

 

which means

if I were to look carefully into his eyes of that one sleeping it off

in a doorway in Portland,

I would see Jesus

 

if I were to look in the eyes of a beautiful child

an aged saint

 

if I were to look into the eyes of that person

fighting for the environment, or gun control

into the eyes of that dude with the MAGA hat

 

if I were to look closely, I would see Jesus

the burden is for me to see

and for the Jesus in me to find the Jesus

lurking in that person’s soul

however hidden Jesus might be

 

I am not naïve

I know we can deny the presence

I know we can deny the presence even while claiming the presence

 

to carry Jesus but refuse to participate in the work of

gathering, welcoming, reconciling, and healing

is to deny our true self

it to work against the Jesus in us

 

and when we do we become people who scatter rather than unite

and create division and exclusion

and we must at some level guard against things

we are not called to naïve inclusion anymore than we are called to

hostile exclusion (Brian McLaren)

 

but still, each person is a Sacred Child

and each person has the capacity

the potential

 

to be image bearers

 

so all we can do is have eyes that see

and as best we can

create whatever space is there

to make love visible and real

 

and make that space accessible to all

and let Sacred, Jesus, Powerful Presence

move among us

 

doing the work of Love

calling out that love that dwells within

 

who knows what might happen?!