That means that, for now, our vision is skewed, the light we do receive fractured somewhat.  Dimming vision just seems to be a part of the human journey.  Just over ten years ago, I didn’t even wear glasses.  Over time I began to notice that it was getting harder to read.  The optometrist prescribed my first set of glasses and for several years that first set was good enough.  Then, I noticed my vision was blurring again and I graduated to bifocals, two lenses in one.  In even shorter time, I needed trifocals, three lenses in one.  What’s next, quadfocals?  All I know is that my capacity to see what is out there is not always in clear focus.  We all have that problem, no matter who we are.

A very prominent Southern Baptist pastor was quoted on CNN recently as saying that he was all for our president chasing down terrorists “all over the world.  If it takes him 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord” (Jerry Falwell, “Call to kill terrorists ‘in the name of the Lord’ sparks outcry,” Baptist Standard, November 8, 2004, p. 25).  It is certainly one thing to protect the innocent and powerless from those who have no regard for human life.  It is another thing altogether to imply that, just because someone doesn’t believe in God exactly as we do, they deserve to die.  I’d call that seeing truth through a glass darkly, for sure!  Wouldn’t you?  I hope so!

We all need help seeing more clearly, until the Lord completely clears our vision.  My hope and prayer is that this past six weeks during our 40 Days of Purpose Campaign, we’ve gotten some help seeing ourselves more clearly.  Or, put another way, seeing ourselves more through the eyes of God and less through our now distorted view of things.

This past week I had a wonderful conversation with a former college professor of mine.  Dr. Clint Dunagan was a philosophy and Bible professor at Hardin-Simmons University.  He was one of my favorite teachers.  He is a brilliant man I’ve always highly respected.  Over the years, I’d lost touch with him until recently when I found his address and wrote him a letter.  This week, he called and we caught up.  During the conversation, he told me, “You were one of my brightest students at Hardin-Simmons.”  That was news to me!  I told Clint that I didn’t look back with a great deal of pride on my academic underachievement at HSU.  Then, he said, “Well, A’s and B’s aren’t the only way to measure a person’s intelligence, are they?” 

I wish he’d told me that thirty years ago!  Back then, I saw myself through darkened glass that caused me to believe that, because I didn’t make straight A’s, I had less to offer and wasn’t as important as those who did.  This past week, Dr. Dunagan rubbed a little of the darkness off of the glass and reminded me of what I am still trying to learn.  That my value in this world is determined by nothing less than what God has done for me in Christ.  We don’t always know or believe or act like we believe that, do we?

Like the little girl I heard about this week, too.  A Christian woman had decided to mentor this little girl who attended an inner city elementary school.  The mentor asked the little girl, “What should I call you?”  The little girl said, “Just call me ‘idiot.’”  Hard to believe, isn’t it?  But, apparently, the only other adults in this little girl’s life, maybe her parents, had never called her anything but “idiot.”  That’s what she came to believe everyone should call her.  It took this mentor several months to gain enough trust from the little girl to learn that her real name was Roxanne. 

Until Jesus clears our vision, what would you have me call you?  I heard David Eisenhower speak once.  David is the grandson of the 34^th President of the United States.  He is also the person after whom Dwight Eisenhower renamed the presidential retreat, Camp David.  When I heard him speak, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to have his name, Eisenhower.  Everywhere he went it would give him a unique identity.  But, what was I thinking?  Do I, do you, have anything less than a unique identity?  “To all who received (Christ), who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God . . .” (John 1:12).  I never have to introduce myself to anyone as anything less than a child of the living God!  That’s who I am and that’s what you may call me.  How about you? 

The apostle Paul also once wrote that, because of what God has done in Christ to make us new people, “from now on . . . we regard no one from a human point of view, even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way” (2 Corinthians 5:16).  The closer we grow to Christ and grow in relationship with him, the clearer our vision of ourselves and others comes to being like what God sees. 

This past six weeks, we’ve also gotten a little better vision of the church.  Hopefully, just as we’re coming to see ourselves more like God sees us, we are also coming to see the church in the same way.  Are we?  If someone were to ask you to tell them about Cliff Temple, would you drive them through this neighborhood and point to this building and say, “That’s Cliff Temple”?  Would that be an adequate way of asking people to see us?

My father and I were in High Island at a funeral some years ago.  High Island is the little community on the southeast Texas coast where he and my mother were raised.  As we drove away from the cemetery, my dad pointed to a small frame house and said, “That’s where I was when I heard about Pearl Harbor.”  December 7, 1941 my dad was fifteen years old.  The news he heard that day would change the trajectory of his life and also play a formative role in defining his generation as what some have called “the greatest generation” of Americans to ever live.  Yet, when I think of my father, I don’t think of the place where he heard some of the most important news of his life.  I think of the way he lived because of what he heard that day, how he sacrificed and served and made my life possible.  Trust me, whether or not people are attracted to what we call the church doesn’t have near as much to do with the place we hear the gospel as it does to do with how we do or don’t live out what that good news, especially with respect to how we relate to others in our world.

Yet, if a total stranger who didn’t even know what a church was were to look at our church’s budget, what would they come to believe is the most important thing to us?  Would they conclude that the most important thing to us was nothing more than a building?  They might, unless we were able to show them what we do with this building seven days a week to care for the people of this community.  It is true that our church buildings have no purpose for existence unless we are using them to help make disciples of Jesus in this world and care for the people he loved enough to die for. 

In my earlier years of ministry, I didn’t exactly see things that way.  Through a darker glass, I saw my role as a pastor more in terms of whether or not I was making straight A’s as compared to others in the competition to build more and bigger buildings.  Only in my most recent years of ministry have I come to personally appreciate the fact that, no matter what a church’s size, our mission is to make disciples and help every disciple discover her or his unique mission in helping to bring the kingdom of God to be on earth as it is in heaven. 

Which is something of what this text we have read this morning is trying to help us see.  Some folks brought their crippled friend to Jesus and Jesus healed him.  This is a wonderful story.  I remember it well from my childhood; Sunday School teachers always brought it to life with pictures in Bible storybooks.  I’ve always had a vivid image of what this might have looked like.  But, because this passage was often used more to tell about Jesus’ miracle working power, I’ve not always appreciated its description of one way in which we can do what we call evangelism. 

Evangelism.  There’s a word we see through a glass darkly!  Frankly, it’s a word that more often evokes guilt or anxiety than what you might expect of a word so closely connected to our responsibility to share the good news of Jesus with this world.  But, what if we could see more clearly what the scripture would have us to see about what that word should mean?  Let’s look again at this story. 

However many friends this man had, they were enough to lower him through the roof.  They were willing to cut in line and cut a hole in a neighbor’s roof, whatever it took, to get their friend to Jesus.  It’s a story of compassion and faith and of true friendship.  Those are words not often enough associated with evangelism in our day, a word more we see more often through glass darkened by models of door-to-door cold-cocking sales pitches and screaming preachers in special services.  Those words paint for me a picture of a world in which I cannot live.  Even when it has been presented more positively, especially modeled for me by others, I walk away feeling defeated.  I cannot be a Billy Graham, for example, though that kind of model is often held out for us as the epitome of evangelism.  I cannot knock on doors on Tuesday nights asking total strangers to give intellectual ascent to four memorized propositions I rip off for them rapid-fire like.  But, what if evangelism is something else, something more?

What if evangelism begins and ends with simple compassion for those I love, and pointing them to the place in my life where I have met Jesus?  If that’s what it means to at least start sharing the good news, well then, that’s not that much of a stretch. 

Years ago, I was taught to give my testimony as a starting point for sharing the gospel.  And, that’s not altogether a bad idea necessarily.  But, what testimony should I give?  If I’m asked to reach back from age fifty to my eighth year and tell about my conversion experience, I’m not sure I can recall enough details to matter.  I don’t remember my eighth year that well.  Even if I did, what happened forty-two years ago isn’t as relevant as many other experiences I’ve had more recently, experiences in which I encountered the presence of the living God. 

When Nancy and I were in Alaska several weeks ago, at every turn I saw new country I’d never seen before and was almost always awestruck.  Nearly every time, I’d turn to whoever was standing closest and say, “Look what God has done!”  Do you have any Alaska-like moments in your life?  Places where God moved mountains or built them up, whatever was necessary to make your life possible?  What if you started there, in those places, in sharing your faith with others?  What if you pointed to the moments of greatest joy or amazement about what faith has meant to you and simply said to others, “Look what God has done!”?

Don’t you think that’s what the paralytic did?  I’m betting it is.  I think he ran home that day and bought some new sneakers and went running.  And, everywhere he went, he shouted at the top of his voice, or whispered in moments of quiet reflection, “Look what God has done!  Once I couldn’t even walk.  Then, I met Jesus.  Now, watch me run!”  I bet that’s what he said.

And, if that’s what it means to share my faith with others, then, that’s not that much of a stretch.  Not that much at all. 

How about you?