FOCUS: we focus on what we look at
FOCUS - theme of the Year- Year is starting to wind down, important to not let go of our theme Focus, coming weeks: Jesus & his focus. What does Jesus focus on, how does he remain focus and what does he teach us about our focus?
1st Rule of focus: we focus on what we Look at.
Our eyes are very important to Jesus - for those who don’t believe or trust him he commonly diagnoses their issue as Blindness Matthew 15:14 Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”
Matthew 23:16 “Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’
Matthew 23:24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
Our eyes are very important to Jesus! They’re so important that look what he says
Matthew 6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
What does it mean? What is Jesus talking about? What do lamps do? Light goes out- like a flashlight - Jesus is getting at something that the original listener could connect with. Their thinking about eyesight shaped by Plato's influential theory of Extramission
Plato's extramission theory: A smooth, gentle "fire" is emitted by the eye and fuses with ambient light to form a sentient "body of vision".
Eyes shoot out beams that travel out from the eye to attach to the thing that is seeing. Jesus isn’t describing how eyesight works from a biological standpoint but he’s describing what it feels like to see, what sight does. It connects us. It's not just passive, you are intimately linked to the thing you are seeing. In the Biblical worldview the physical and spiritual are connected, not separated and independent of each other- porous, certain phenomena can be in both. Example baptism - not juts a hollow symbol but a spiritual reality. The Physical and the Spiritual are combined at times like that - do we see it or are we blind to it, thats the Question of our eyes?
This idea of our eyes being linked to our spiritual lives and to the physical world means we can make sense of:
Matthew 5:28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Disclaimer: Don't cut off your eye/ hand, hyperbolic to get us to wake up to the reality that sight reaches out and touches other people, for Good or Bad ,it can take or it can give. Remember a time when you felt the power of someones eyes. But also remember when you felt seen and loved by eyes. Our senses are entwined with the fleshiness of the world = Phenomenology. Jesus is both Ancient & Modern at the same time!
How does this work for Jesus in his ministry?
John 8:2-11 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Eyes begin focused on the woman and on the certainty of her sin - the only question is Jesus are you soft on sin, will you disobey Moses? How does he answer? Jesus stoops down and writes on the ground. Where do our eyes move to? Tehy are redirected to his writing. We came with a question pick A or B? There’s only 2 options and we know the right one - Jesus' response is to write in a new answer that doesn't fit within our existing framework!
Now our eyes are on him and on his writing, but we don't know what he’s writing? But we want to know.
What he does next is to call our eyes to look internally.
We look away from the woman, from her sin, to His writing, and then inward to our own sin. Jesus reshapes our perspectives. We came with certainty and leave in bewilderment/ We thought we knew, but now we’re confused. We can’t help but stand in Awe, we dont know what he wrote, and thats the point, they didn’t forget to add that - it’s Jesus continuing to redirecting our eyes today we are still focused on what he’s writing and caught by that and left wondering, what does this mean.
The only clue we have is his question to look inward at our sin. That's what he does to our eyesight, to our focus! He continues to force us to question what we think we see - what we think we know. To reconsider our focus and open our imagination to new possibilities. Today there are so many theories, and papers and speculation what did Jesus write Power of his redirecting our gaze still doing it 2000 years. For the woman Jesus redirects her gaze too, Where are they ? Look anyone left? Look around, whose opinion matters?
Jesus makes his clear who she is in God’s eyes. She's not her biggest mistake. When jesus looks at her, what does he see? If you are weight down with shame, his invitation still true and open - I don't condemn you - I came to free you so you can leave your sin! Where are you looking this morning? What are you focused on? How is God wanting to redirect your focus? To shift your gaze to him so that you can know who you really are? Because the truth is we are blind, we need his eyes! Imagine the difference that would make in how we see ourselves and others. Let's pray to be able to see through his eyes.