Open Our Eyes, Lord
a sermon based on Mark 7:24-37
by Rev. Randy L Quinn

Jesus is tired. He looks for a way to “get away from it all.” So he leaves his home and goes to a foreign country. I suspect it's like going to Hawaii in the dreary months of winter or going to Alaska during the hottest days of August. Jesus goes on a vacation.

But rather than rest and solitude where no one will recognize him, something else happens. A woman meets him there who challenges his perceptions of reality. Somehow he thought he was getting away from work by getting out of town. Instead, she reminds him that there is work to do beyond Judea as well.

He may wish to serve only the Elect of Israel, but God is much larger than any one tribe of people.

She offers him a new way of seeing the world and he is forever changed by it.

He was like the famous preacher who came as a guest speaker to a small town church. The church building could only hold 80 people if every pew was full. There had never been a need for a sound system before.

But word got out, and a crowd began to gather. When the preacher stood in the pulpit, he was overwhelmed. There were easily 100 people there. They filled all of the pews, folding chairs were everywhere, all along the back wall people were standing, and unseen from the pulpit, still more people were outside straining to listen through the open windows and doors.

As the preacher began to speak, one of the Ushers walked forward and urged him to speak up. “Remember the people on the outside,” he said.

The woman could have said the same thing to Jesus. “Remember the people on the outside.” Somehow he hadn't seen them before. It was a lack of perception on his part. He knew she was right and her daughter is healed.

I don't know about you, but I'm glad Jesus let her teach him. Without this new, expanded sense of his mission, neither you nor I would be welcome here today. She opens the doors that will never be shut again.

In her book The Worldwide Church of the Handicapped, Marie Sheppard Williams tells about some of her experiences while working as a social worker in a rehabilitation agency for the blind. One story in particular centers on Rosealice, a woman who worked as a typist in the office. She was not a “client;” rather she was an efficient typist who was hired to help with the administration of their programs.

But Rosealice was also not quite normal, either, though it was hard to describe what it was that wasn't right.

She had a funny way of looking at people.

And she dressed a little odd.

She didn't want to do anything other than type.

She never complained, but neither did she smile.

She didn't join in the office chatter and rarely spoke unless spoken to.

Somehow the combination of factors made her coworkers feel uncomfortable when they were around her. Which, in an agency that deals with people who are blind, many of whom have other disabilities, was hard for them to understand themselves, let alone explain to people outside their agency.

No one else made them feel uncomfortable. Only Rosealice did.

There was nothing wrong with Rosealice. The problem was with the perception of her by people around her. She was perfectly content to work as a typist. She was reliable. And she almost never made a mistake in her typing.

The problem was with her coworkers who saw her differently. Their eyes needed healing. They tried to change her when in truth they were the ones who needed to change.

It was a Tupperware party that brought a transformation. Marie and another social worker at the agency had a giant Tupperware party for the staff and clients who were a part of the agency. It was the great “equalizer.”

I've never been to a Tupperware party. But anyone who has ever been can tell you that what happens at those parties is more than just buying and selling a product. It is a rite of passage for women in our society. When you are invited to your first one, you join the millions of others who have been invited to one before. You “arrive.”

The women who met Rosealice at that party began to treat her differently. She became one of the “in-crowd” and she was immediately accepted as an equal. She didn't change. They did. Or more accurately, their perception of her did.

And whether we want to admit it or not, our perception of things is what makes them real for us.

When I got my first pair of glasses, I was sure that everyone was staring at me. No one could change my mind.

When we perceive that the room is cold, then it doesn't matter what anyone else says, we believe it's cold.

When I begin to think I'm the only person at home who takes out the garbage, I only notice when I take it out. Even if Ronda takes it out twice as much as I do, what I perceive is the only reality I know.

Our perceptions define our realities. And the problem for many of us, I think, is that we don't often question our own perceptions.

We don't perceive God at work in our world, for instance, and we begin to think God is not real. We can read about miracles in the Bible. We may hear people at work talk about how God has answered their prayers. We may even read stories about God working in people's lives in The Upper Room or Guideposts.

But those are other people's perceptions, not ours. We don't perceive it so we don't really believe it. And in a vicious cycle, we don't believe it so we can't perceive it, either.

Like the people who worked near Rosealice, our eyes need to be healed so we can see how God is at work in our midst and in our world.

Sometimes the only way we can see things differently is through the eyes of an outsider. An expert, perhaps, who comes from out of town to help us do what we already know how to do.

Those “on the outside” can see things we can no longer see. Only a visitor to our church, for instance, can tell us how friendly we are to visitors.

Jesus tries to get away by going to a foreign land. An outsider reminds him of the truth he already knows: no one is outside of God's love. And once he is reminded, he never forgets. The very next story, in fact, is of another outsider who Jesus sees and hears and heals.

In the end, the agency moved Rosealice from the office where she typed to the sheltered workshop that was a part of the agency – though for reasons that even baffled Marie as she told the story.

Rosealice began working on an assembly line designed so almost anyone with any disability could find a place to work. And it turned out she was just as content there as she was in the office as a typist. To her it didn't matter if she was working alongside people who considered themselves “normal” or alongside people others had labeled “disabled.”

Her perceptions of people around her had not changed. To her everyone is a child of God. Everyone is welcome at God's table – or no one is welcome.

The woman who met Jesus was satisfied with the crumbs from the table. The older liturgy for communion in our church included a “Prayer of Humble Access.” In that prayer we said in unison,

We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies.

We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table.

But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.

Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to partake of this Sacrament of thy Son Jesus Christ, that we may walk in newness of life, may grow into his likeness, and may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

We are all welcome here. Not necessarily because our eyes have been healed, but because God sees through the eyes of grace.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.