Open My Eyes!

Make Us See

Pslam 119:17-24

Pastoral Prayer: Holy Father, unless You had opened our eyes, we would not see Jesus. Give us ears to hear the Good News You have for us this day. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our heats be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. And all God’s people say, Amen.

“If all else fails, read the instructions.”

Maybe it is a caricature or a well-deserved stereotype. But few of us men have waited until frustrated before reading the instructions when assembly is required. Until we do there seems a voice on repeat, “Did you read the instructions?” It could be fear motivated. How could we fill out the Mr. Reliable expectations if anyone found out that we relied on instructions? Maybe it is male machismo. “We should be able to do anything, it is in our wiring.”

Imagine living in a day and time where wanting what someone else has so badly that you will do anything to get it. If you grew up and were required to learn the Ten Commandments, then you may readily identify that sin as covetousness.

So this habit is on full display, and it’s like no one bothered to read the instructions. It’s almost unimaginable!

Maybe it is neither a caricature nor a stereotype but a condition, one that affects us all. We could easily illustrate the way each of the Ten Commandments, particularly those statutes that describe the best way for human beings to live together are ignored, even intentionally violated. The results are the clear divisions that are historical and ongoing. We choose which aspect of what commandments to champion and what ones we will ignore.

This leaves us always pointing a finger away from ourselves when the proverbial “you have three pointing back at you” provides us a better way forward. What about us? How do we see? You and me?

We continue our series, The Long Obedience of Light. Our passage today falls under the Hebrew letter G, Gimel. And like Aleph and Beth before Gimel, we find familiar synonyms for Law. A reminder, there is no specific Law pointed to. Instead, the subject and object are always the One who gives and keeps the Law. That is, here in the Psalter we are given to see Jesus.

The Apostle Paul, in his lofty praise of and prayer to Jesus includes this line we read monthly when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, Communion.

He is the image of the invisible God,

the firstborn over all creation.

For everything was created by him,

in heaven and on earth,

the visible and the invisible,

whether thrones or dominions

or rulers or authorities—

all things have been created through him and for him.

The Holy Spirit, through Paul, therefore opens our eyes that Jesus creates by the power of His Word.

And God said, “Let there be.”

And there was.

Creation is the result of a command. And the results of the command to create are the conditions under which God determined not to be God without us. As such, God sets the boundaries of life together in relationship to the God whose love is self-giving and other-directed. Put another way, the Love That Is God determined to share Love with all of creation.

When we read the Story of God we find again and again the ways in which the instructions, statutes, word, commands, decrees, judgments and counselors are circumvented by human beings to our own demise and division. Not much has changed.

Sometimes we think we see, looking but not seeing.

One of the synonyms for Law here in this passage is translated instructions, torah. Torah is the name given to the first five books of the Old Testament. In the Torah, specifically, the Book of Numbers, we find the story of Balaam. Balak, the king of Moab, sought the services of Balaam, the prophet for hire. Rather than consider a military response to the approaching Israelites, Balak offered to pay Balaam to curse Israel. Though a pagan prophet, Balaam’s services were often believed to be worth the money. After Balaam inquired of the LORD, he told Balak’s messengers to go home. The LORD would not let Balaam curse Israel.

Balak applied pressure on Balaam. He sent more representatives and those with higher status. They told Balaam to name his price. Balaam essentially said “You don’t have enough money for me to go against the LORD.” The persistence of Balak’s representatives gave Balaam another opportunity to inquire of the LORD. This time the LORD told Balaam to go but to only do what he told him.

Balaam must have gone with his own intentions for the passage tells us that the LORD became angry with Balaam. The donkey Balaam had ridden, his long term mode of transportation, looked up ahead and saw the Angel of the LORD with sword in hand. The donkey lay on the ground. Balaam beat the donkey. Then in what surely was a startling experience, the donkey talked. He revealed to Balaam that he was saving his life. Then the passage reads,

Then the LORD opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the path with a drawn sword in his hand.

The word open in Psalm 119:18 is the word gal. It means to uncover, reveal. Gal - begins with G, Gimel. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture, the verb for open is the word from which we get our word apocalypse - to unveil, to reveal. Both in Hebrew and in Greek the intensity of the verb is a command. And in this context it is an imperative that indicates the need of the one making the request to be acted upon. “You! Open my eyes.” In other words, I cannot do it!

Open my eyes.

Make me see what I cannot see.

If we no longer see covetousness for what it is. If we no longer see a way to mercy or grace or compassion or empathy, what veil covers our eyes? For, seeing Jesus we would see the God who enables a donkey to see an Angel bearing a sword and then to speak. That is grace, that is mercy. And to a pagan prophet no less!

If we can no longer see the way of life described in the Torah summarized in the Ten Commandments where rest is restorative, honor is highlighted, murder is a violation, faithfulness is the standard, stealing is lawbreaking, truthfulness is stability, and contentment overrules coveting. That these are gifts from the One whose history is one of liberation from slavery and there is no Other. Then we cannot see. And if there are fewer and fewer to whom we may point in this life as living out God’s Way not only are we unable to see for the veil covering our eyes, but were there anything to glimpse it is unavailable to us.

Though the Law cannot rectify our blindness, our inability to see, it reveals our need. We pray, Open our eyes!

Where we cannot and do not, Jesus did and does!

Not only does God hear our plea to open our eyes, but the Psalter makes clear that there is One whose way has been blameless.

The one who prays begins,

Wean me!

Remember, each line in the Hebrew begins with a G-word. Here it is gemol. The One praying commands, Wean me!

When Psalm 119 was used to teach children Hebrew and they arrived at this portion of the prayer, each was struck by the confession of their own need. All of the command language of Gimel is offered from the heart of one who knows what gives life - God’s Way.

Luke reminds us that the very young, human Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. How does a young man keep his way pure asked in verse 9 from last week. Jesus was weaned on the Word of the LORD and it would be the Word of the LORD that sustained him throughout his life.

so that I might live fully keeping your word.

Open our eyes, he learned to pray with the Psalter. Wean me he knew the source of faithfulness, the Word of God.

Make us to see what we cannot on our own. Make us to know what makes for life and living.

Maybe you see on this side of the Resurrection that in each line we find in the life of the One who gave the Law and the One who keeps the Law. And what we know by our own admission, though we may learn the alphabet, how to make words, we have yet to reach the faithfulness required to satisfy the Law that describes life and living with the One who made us and those He has given us as our brothers and sisters.

Consider Jesus when tempted. He looked for what had sustained.

“For it is written.”

When Jesus saw the crowds as sheep without a shepherd, broken by the weight they could not bear, amplified by those who added to their burdens with expectations they themselves were unwilling to maintain, Jesus longed for and gave himself with the unhidden commands he learned as a child - love the LORD Your God and your neighbor as yourself.

When his adversaries lorded their positions of power over him, whose arrogance we read as unbelievable on this side of the Resurrection but from time to time exhibit in our own lives and witness all around, Jesus prayed a rebuke on those cursed, those who wandered from God’s Way.

If you knew.

And when the Psalter commands the One who is able to roll away, the Hebrew word gal, the stones of insult and contempt represented in the sealed tomb where the enemies hoped that had silenced the very One giving Himself for them, Jesus learned to pray ahead of time.

How is it that we do not hear the insults on this side of the Cross and Resurrection? “Tell us who struck you!” “He saved others, let him save himself!” They cast insults and divided his clothes, holding him in contempt for daring to live out God’s Way.

Roll away the insult and contempt from me!

And in his life, death and resurrection to this very day we think about his statutes, his decrees, his counselors.

For you.

To the One able to make us see, Open our eyes!

Give us to see You have given yourself for us in self-giving, other-directed love. You have loved us from beginning and will not let us go. So for the good of our lives and those of our brothers and sisters,

Open our eyes to Your Grace that we may live.