The Eyes of the Heart: John 14 1-14
Parish Eucharist: St Michaels Woolmer Green, St Peter’s Tewin
20 April 2008: Usha Hull

For most of my early years and into adulthood I was educated by Loreto nuns. As you may probably know, they are Catholic nuns with their mother house in Ireland, but found all over the world. In fact, in this country I think there is a Loreto college as near as St Albans. Back in India, many years ago, one day I was in conversation with a young nun of great age, I believe she was 92 at the time. She confessed to me something I have never forgotten. She told me that despite her age, at heart she felt like a young girl and it was as though her youth was yesterday. Although at the time I did not quite grasp what she meant, with the passing of time I have come to understand a little bit more.

For instance, as the years go by, increasingly I am sometimes reluctant to look in the mirror. It’s not that the years have exactly been unkind. It’s just that the person who gazes back at me at times seems far removed from the person I think of in my heart as being me. This is a person, I must admit, who is a lot younger than I am, looks a lot different, and is also lot more carefree than I would now admit to being.

And I know many of you must feel this way, too. My husband Colin, my better half, for instance, also admits to feeling far younger at heart than he looks and he too sometimes has a mild shock when he looks in the mirror to be reminded of what he calls the Hull middle-aged spread and the accompanying greying hairs, though I see neither when I look at Colin. And the fact remains that how we see ourselves in our mind’s eye is very often far different to how the world sees us.

The passing of the years, it seems, leaves its mark on all of us and not just in thickening waistlines, aching joints and the growing number of lines on our faces. I believe that inside each of us lives on the person whom we really are, the person the world no longer sees, where dreams have not quite died, where hope lives on side by side with vulnerability, where memories of loved ones long ago seem as though they happened yesterday. And those who are close to us, those who love us, can see beyond the often misleading, often brave, often defensive face we present to the world, to the inner person who lives inside. But only sometimes. Sometimes it is only God who sees the inner person we truly are, the inner person who is manifest to the world through our lives and actions.

In today’s Gospel reading Philip says ‘Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.’ And Jesus replies, ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. I am in the Father and the Father is in me.’ Jesus is explaining to the disciples that he himself is the visible, tangible image of the invisible God in the world.

So when the disciples in today’s Gospel looked at Jesus, what did they see? I’m sure they saw a man who looked very much like themselves. The Gospels present no account of what Jesus looked like, so in all probability Jesus would have had typical Eastern European features, dark hair, an olive skin and been of medium height and weight. Millions believe in the beautiful image presented by the shroud of Turin. Yet others, like medical artist Richard Neave argue on the basis of computer-generated images taken from an Israeli skull of the 1st century that Jesus was short and dark, and had short hair.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps we do not have a physical account of what Jesus looked like because to God it is not what we look like on the outside that is important, but the person we are on the inside. No matter what Jesus looked like, his inner life was that of his Father, glorious, loving and infinite.

In Colossians 1:15 St Paul says, ‘Christ is the exact likeness of the unseen God. He existed before God made anything at all, and in fact, Christ himself is the creator who made heaven and earth, the things we can see and the things we cannot... He was before all else began and it is his power that holds everything together.’ And St Paul concludes, ‘for God wanted all of himself to be in his Son.’

So when Jesus says to Philip that those who have seen him have seen the Father, his words seemingly hold a mild rebuke. Can you not see, the Lord is saying, that if you want to see how God is made known to the world, it happens not through some earth shattering and dramatic revelation but in the love I have shown you personally in your life. The Lord asks us to believe in his miracles yes, but also in the way he went about his life, with love, with integrity and faithfulness to the very end.

With Philip’s request to see the Father, I am reminded of someone I meet in the course of my ministry. Life has not been kind to this person, he is confined to a wheelchair and is in questionable health. His mind, however, remains alert and I know, whenever I visit, that there is one question he will invariably ask of Colin or myself. ‘How do I know God exists?,’ he will ask. ‘What evidence is there?’ And no matter how many times Colin or myself try to answer this question, he will ask it again and again, on every visit.

And I believe this is a question we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives if we are honest. Because as human beings we like to deal in certainties. We like to pin things down, to make things in our image, to experience that which we are familiar and comfortable with. And so, sadly, we make God in our own image, expecting him to conform to our own ideas of power and grandeur and credibility. But God is not like that. Yes, he is unknowable and vastly beyond our human experience. But with the birth of his beloved Son on earth he has a human face and we see this face in the faces of others around us every day of our lives. With the incarnation, the Jesus St Paul spoke of, he who existed before God made anything at all, now walks among us, shares in our suffering, knows fully what it is like to be human.

I believe that as Christians it is imperative that we constantly seek to know and love the face of God in the world. So where do we see him? Jesus said ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ The heart, not the mind, is often the key to seeing God. In Biblical times the heart, not the mind, was considered the seat of all feeling and understanding, and St Paul uses a beautiful phrase, ‘the eyes of the heart’. In Ephesians 1:18 he says, ‘I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which God has called you.’

And I believe we see God through the inner life of our hearts, when these are hearts that follow in the way of our Lord. Then, with the eyes of love we see God in the faces not only of our beloved ones, but wherever there is innocence, suffering, goodness and need in the world. With the eyes of wonder we see God in the beauty and magnificence of creation. With eyes that love beauty we know that the intricate design and loveliness of the created world, both in nature and in humankind, happened not by chance but through the work of a master creator.

In my own life at least, I have found that when I have failed to listen to what my heart is telling me, or see with the eyes of the heart, I have been the sadder for it. The world we live in today tells us constantly to listen to reason, to logical argument, to measured thought. This is good and all very well, but only to a certain point. When we live the inner life of a Christian often our hearts urge us on to things we are afraid of, that demand sacrifice, things we are uncomfortable with, that ask us to go the extra mile, to do just that little bit more, to give and to keep on giving, sometimes against all reason.

I spoke earlier of the inner life we all have, but keep hidden. In this inner life we see ourselves with the eyes of the heart. We love ourselves, and rightly so. We can understand ourselves. Sometimes we learn to be gentle with ourselves, for after all we know our own shortcoming, failings and temptations.

But the Christian life demands that we see not only ourselves but others with this same enlightenment from the heart, the enlightenment of love, of tolerance, of understanding. That we do not judge by appearances, but see beyond outer appearance to the truth within. For only when we do so are we be able to recognise face of God in the world, the loving, suffering, living face of Jesus all around us.

I end with that great prayer of St Paul from Ephesians, from which I quoted earlier. ‘The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know him better. May the eyes of our hearts be enlightened that we may know the hope to which he has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe.’


Amen