Friday of the Eleventh Week
"The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, then your whole body will be filled with light." (Matthew 6:19-23) What does Jesus mean when he says this?
It is true that you can tell a lot about a person when you look at their eyes. Eyes hold so much emotion - the rest of a person might look normal but the eyes will betray a tear, and sadness or anger. Sometimes you can tell about a person's soul a bit, too: people who are going through extraordinary crises of faith often have eyes that look desolate, displaying the emptiness they feel inside. Or, conversely, I think of some Mennonite friends of mine whose eyes always displayed peace, and consequently anyone who would talk to them would feel at peace too. Of course, eyes are attached to bodies; it is never only the eyes that we see, but a person's whole body that expresses their situation. So Jesus makes a connection between the eye and the body; if the eye is working, the body will reflect that.
Jesus is about more than simply making an observation about our eyes' connections to our bodies, however. Our eyes tell us much about the world around us and what we see influences how we act. If you do not see a car coming, you feel free to cross the road. If you see a baby crying, you run to pick it up.
It is always possible not to see what we need to see. I remember when I was a kid, my dad would drop me off at school in the mornings before heading to work. Sometimes, my backpack would be so full of books that I would put it in the trunk. But I clearly remember the day when my dad dropped me off and forgot to let me get my bag from the trunk. I was chasing after his car, but he didn't see me; he wasn't looking for me at all, because he was now thinking of other things, of the long, full day he had ahead of him at work.
Jesus knows that we do not always see what we need to see. The connection between "storing up treasure in heaven" and letting the eye be the body's lamp is to get us to see new and different things than what we currently see, so that we can act well. Jesus asks us not to "see" amassing wealth as a primary goal; in other passages we know that Jesus wants us to see the poor, the sick, the widows, the orphans, the imprisoned, and the children - for those are the people we often do not see.
Paul's account of his travels (2 Corinthians 11:18, 21-30) - and he has been through so much! - is meant to remind the Corinthians, too, not to see as the world sees. Since Paul visited them last, some people have visited them and tried to proclaim a different Jesus. The others who visited the Corinthians charged money for their rhetorical skill; they can speak prettily, but they are deceitful. By contrast, Paul does not charge money but tries not to be a burden. He lacks rhetorical skill, but the truth of his words can be found in his actions: despite the imprisonment, the beatings, the robberies, the shipwrecks, the hunger and thirst and sleeplessness, he proclaims Christ. His persistence in the face of all these dangers should be proof of Paul's testimony.
So today, let us ask God to show us what we need to see. What visions does the world hold for us that are harmful for our relationship with Christ? What "heavenly treasures" will enable us to be the disciples God calls us to be?
- Jana M. Bennett