Seeing in Ultraviolet

Seeing in Ultraviolet--August 3, 2017

[Jesus said:] "Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me'." [Matthew 25:34-40]

So there are these telescopes--some in observatories, and some up in space--that can detect more than our eyes can see.

It's not simply that they can see further than our eyes can see, although that is true.  But they can see different kinds of waves--different frequencies--than our eyes are capable of seeing.  We sometimes forget that what we call "light" is really just a small slice of a much larger spectrum of what we call electromagnetic radiation, which also includes radio waves, ultraviolet, microwaves, X-rays, and gamma rays, too.  Our eyes are sensitive to light, but we can't see things like X-rays with them.  However, scientists have developed detectors for all of those different kinds of radiation, and when they point them out at the night sky, they see far more than our eyes can. 

Every so often, you'll see a science article in the news that will show an image from some satellite or telescope that will have an object--say, a distant galaxy--shown both in visible light and in some combination of other kinds of light, like infrared and X-rays, too.  And all of a sudden, you get to see that the swirls and spiral arms have even more beauty, even more complexity, even more depth, than just the visible light.  And of course, when you see one of those composite images--one which has made the X-rays and such visible as well as the light our eyes could already see--you realize it's not a question of "which one is the correct image?" but rather that all of them put together make a more complete picture.  Much like a physician can tell you what's going on inside you with a set of MRI images or X-rays that can basically look inside you, where visible light cannot go, the whole universe is full of greater depth and intricacy than our two eyes ever revealed.

That's what it's like for Jesus to give us new eyes, too.  Jesus teaches us to see people around us, not only as visible light shows them to us, but in "wavelengths," you could say, that are beyond the ability of our naked eyes.  To be a follower of Jesus is, in a sense, to allow him to expand the capacity of our spiritual eyes so that we come to see more and more fully as God sees the world. 

In particular, Jesus teaches us to see one another differently.  Following Jesus is rather like learning to see in the infrared and ultraviolet.

Visible light tells my eyes that the person with the shabby clothes and unwashed hair who sleeps in their car at night is homeless.  Jesus tells us to recognize his presence in them, radiating out in a glory the naked eye cannot perceive. 

Visible light tells me the family with skin and hair different from mine, whose clothing isn't available at my local Walmart, and who speak to one another in a language other than mine, that these people who cross my path on any given day may well be travelers from another country--whom the Bible calls "strangers" or "foreigners."  But Jesus dares me to see his face under the head scarf, to hear his voice speaking a language I do not understand. 

Visible light teaches me to look down on the people around me who are hungry for not being as "hard-working" I as imagine myself to be (or else, why are they hungry, I smugly ask myself), or to judge the people who are in prison (they must be worse human beings than me, I conclude--or else why would they be in prison?), or to pity the people who are chronically sick.  Jesus opens my eyes up to see that he is the hungry one, he is the one in the orange jumpsuit marked Department of Corrections, and he is the one who is sick but cannot afford his medicine. 

And in each case, Jesus dares us to see the world like we are looking up at the night sky and taking in the wonder of all the light we cannot usually see.  Jesus dares us to see in the least and the lowliest, the last and the left-out, none other than the Lord himself.  "When you did it to the least of these... you did it to me," Jesus says.  It's like looking at a picture taken in visible light, and then seeing the infrared or the x-ray image layered on top--you can see that at one and the same time, the person in front of me is an ordinary human face... and at the same time, the person in front of me bears the face of Christ.

Jesus teaches us to take pictures in the infrared that way--he teaches us to see in spiritual ultraviolet that way.  Jesus widens the span of our vision, so that I no longer dismiss the person in front of me as someone too... different... or wicked... or lowly for me to associate with, but instead to see the face of Christ everywhere and all around me. 

There is indeed more beauty in the world than we can bear, as the author puts it--because Jesus turns out to be present all around us.  As the line from the Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, "Christ plays in ten thousand places."  The question, then, on this new day, is whether we will settle for seeing only by the light of what our eyes can take in, or whether we will let Jesus teach us to see his presence and his face in wavelengths that are not natural to our vision, but are nevertheless real.  Will we dare to take Jesus at his word and see him in the face of the stranger, the outsider, the hungry, the incarcerated, the forgotten, the left-out, and the sick?

And if we dare to recognize Jesus the foreigner, Jesus the prisoner, Jesus the homeless mother trying to feed her kids, Jesus the refugee escaping with only the tattered clothes on his back from leaving the war zone in Syria, Jesus the emergency room patient who uses the ER for his doctor because he cannot find the money to have a regular physician, or Jesus the heroin addict, then how will we treat these faces where Jesus' light is shining behind and through what our eyes could see?  How will we treat such people, whether we have met them face to face or make decisions about them from a distance? 

How will we respond when Jesus opens our eyes to realize he has been standing right beside us and we couldn't see him before?

Look for Jesus today--at his own word, you don't have to look very far.

Lord Jesus, give us a bigger vision to perceive you in all the places, in all the faces, where you are teaching us to recognize you.