A sermon preached at St Patrick’s Mt Lawley and St Luke’s Maylands 25th October 2020
We have come to our last study in the series, With Jesus on the Journey to Life. We are working through the first part of Luke’s great “Central Section”, where he gathers Jesus’ teaching on many subjects. We have looked at the historical background to the mission of the seventy-two and the primacy of salvation. When push comes to shove, what matters is that your name is written in heaven, that you belong to the coming kingdom. Next was the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of Mary and Martha: the law matters, love is the way to eternal life, but none of us measures up to what the law demands; nevertheless, Jesus has made a way for those who accept him as King. The next section was teaching on prayer: pray for the coming of the kingdom; your prayer will be answered. Next, we learned how Jesus saw his kingdom: he has come as a stronger man and is liberating men and women from Satan’s power. We interrupted the series for St Luke’s Day and paid attention to Luke himself. This morning, finally, though we are still near the beginning of this collection of teaching — we come to a curious saying about “the evil eye.” If you read the King James Bible, you will be familiar with “the evil eye”: in Mark 7Jesus spells out a list of evils that will defile you; one of them is the evil eye. This may have been added to the list at an early time; it’s not in the oldest manuscripts. Still, Jesus does teach about it — in Matthew and in our passage this morning.
In some Mediterranean cultures a rich body of superstition grew up around the evil eye. Certain people are believed to have a magical power of casting a curse with their eye. It’s very ancient. In Roman times pre-adolescent boys wore charms in the shape of a phallus to distract the attention of someone with the evil eye. I guess it had something to do with child abuse. Today in North Africa children are left unwashed so they will not attract attention from someone with the evil eye.
Jesus doesn’t have this magical notion. His teaching in Matthew is about greed. Has someone ever befriended you, and it turned out that what they actually wanted was your money? If you have a lot of money, you will know this problem. A chap in the church had money and was very generous. This was causing some people in the congregation to look at him for his money, and not as an ordinary Christian brother. He asked whether he could channel his charity giving through the church, so he would not have to deal with these people directly. Their problem was the evil eye. Another example: a teenage boy is befriended by an older man: the friendship delights him, but it turns out the older man wants sex, and it ends in humiliation and shame. Or, you are flattered by someone’s attention, but it is your wife that really interests them – or your sister. These are examples of what Jews of Jesus’ time called “the evil eye”. Most of us have been guilty of being nice to people, hoping they will give you something! It is like you are looking in two direction at the same time, like something is wrong with your eye.
However, here in Luke, Jesus does not have greed in mind.
Luke 11.34: “The lamp of your body is your eye. When your eye is single, your whole body is illuminated, but when it is bad, your body too will be dark. Look out then, lest the light in you be darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is light, not having any part dark, you will be fully illuminated, as when the lamp shines its beams upon you.”
The NIV Bible says “If your eye is good …” The translator didn’t quite know what to do here with the Greek word haplous. Its normal meaning is “single”; it can also mean “simple” as in “straightforward”, “uncomplicated”, or “stupid”, “foolish”. For Jesus the opposite of the evil eye is the single eye. The person with the single eye is not confusing their actions by double motives — by looking two ways at once — by clouding their perception with self-interest. We all know it when it comes to money, but it presents a much bigger problem.
Jesus says the single eye makes the difference between a person who is full of light and a person who is full of darkness. In Matthew 6:23 he says, “If the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness”. I think none of us would wish to be that full of darkness; we need to be on our guard.
For us, the eye is a lens or window: the soul looks onto the world through the window of the eye: “the eye is the window of the soul” we would say, or perhaps, “The eye is the soul’s window onto the world.”
The problem is that sometimes we do not see things as they really are. Your daughter wants to go to a nightclub. You say no. She goes off angrily saying, “You hate me!” Or a husband is anxious to save up so he and his wife can have a house, but he neglects the little things, the flowers, the gifts, the treats she enjoys. And she becomes unhappy. She thinks he does not care. Or a man says to God, “Father I would like to marry that girl.” But she doesn’t see it that way, and he thinks God doesn’t care.
How we see things is not necessarily how they are. But — and this is important — if this is the way we are seeing it, we think this is the truth — we think we are seeing light. But if it isn’t—then the light in us—what we think is light—is actually darkness.
And this is a problem not just for the soul. Jesus says, “Your eye is the lamp of your body.” In the Bible your body means your whole self, your mind, your personality, and your body. And this means your thoughts and feelings and actions. The daughter may plot how she can get back at Mum and Dad. The wife may become sexually unresponsive. The disappointed pray-er may stop going to church.
What Jesus is talking about here is what we would call “perception”: He identifies it as key to a happy life, and he is also addressing the greatest crisis of our century — and I am not talking about child abuse.
The soul sits in a dark room. There is only one source of light, your eye, which in our way of thinking is a window, but for Jesus is also a lamp. But it may not be a clear window where we see things as they are. The light from the lamp may not be the light at all. My two-year old son stood on a chair watching me water the lawn. I squirted the hose at the window. He screamed as the water ran down the glass. It was my distorted image which frightened him.
This problem of perception is well understood in our post-modern age. In the scientific era it was assumed that what we see is what is there. But the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, drew attention to the fact that what we see is not the thing out there, but the sensations in our brain caused by the effect of the thing out there on the nerves in our eyes; we have no way of knowing what the thing out there is exactly. How do we know that what we see is reality? In fact, philosophers have been struggling with this problem since Plato 2400 years ago. And now they have added a new problem. We think with words, but words are clumsy representations of things, or thoughts about things. So, our words and our senses both come between us and reality; how can we know anything for sure? And since nothing can be known with certainty, it is impossible for anyone to say “My truth is better than your truth.” We must all be content with our own truth and let everyone else have his. This means the absolute claims of Christianity can no longer be allowed. The joke here is that the postmodernist’s truth must prevail, and if argument doesn’t work, because there is no truth, I must use force to make my views prevail. I may use the law. I may shame you with humiliating rhetoric. I may crush your business. Or it may be the power of the mob. Truth is the main casualty in the postmodern revolution. Happily, this postmodern understanding is full of contradiction. As I say, the postmodernists think they see clearly. And their ideas conflict with the thinking of ordinary people: we think what we see is approximately what is there. Also, their outlook conflicts with science, so in that department “Modernism”—that is the scientific outlook— is fighting back. The enquiry into what went wrong at Curtin University with the glass roof that collapsed won’t conclude that the engineers had different viewpoints; it will find the mistake and someone will be guilty. But in the religious department postmodernism rules. You can believe anything you like about God, which means you can treat the whole thing as irrelevant. I said Jesus addressed the greatest problem of our age. This is what I was referring to. If postmodernist thought continues to gain traction, it will destroy what is left of our Christian heritage, with unimaginable consequences for human life. If it’s just my opinion against yours, and we differ over the value of human life, anything could happen. And there will be many other consequences. A UK judge said to me, “If one person’s truth is as good as another’s, what right do I have to send someone to jail?” And what if public opinion thinks you should lock up even those who you think might commit a crime?
But what has Jesus seen to turn his thoughts in this direction? He has just cast out the evil spirit from a man who couldn’t speak, and now he could. There was a three-fold reaction: some were amazed, some said he did it by the power of Satan, and some asked for another sign to prove he came from God.
Do you see what is going on here? There is a problem of perception. All the people saw the same thing: a dumb man healed, but they are seeing it in different ways. Why? Because their eye is bad, says Jesus; something is wrong with their perception.
“It is a wicked generation that seeks a sign,” he says. But, if you’re not sure, what could be wrong with seeking a sign? Some say Jesus heals because he comes from God; others say it is because he is working with the Devil. Surely it fair to ask for a sign to resolve the argument.
But Jesus refuses: no sign will be given – except the sign of Jonah. Some people think Jonah came out of the fish’s stomach bleached white; the Ninevites could see a miracle had happened, and so they believed. But Ninevah was 700km from the sea. You would think Jonah might have got his suntan back by the time he had walked that far. No, the only sign Jonah gave to the Ninevites was his preaching. Jonah preached, and people shouldn’t expect more from Jesus. People realised what Jonah was saying was true, and repented.
There is something very curious about the story of Jonah. The response of the Ninevites seems so naive. If someone like Jonah came to Perth, how would they be perceived? “He’s in it for the money?” “He just wants to be famous.” “He’s got a psychological problem.” “What a clown!” But the Ninevites had a single eye. They saw they were sinning, they saw God had every right to be angry with them, they saw Jonah was right, and they repented.
Jesus said the Queen of Sheba would arise at the judgement and condemn the people of his generation. Why? Because she came from far away to hear the wisdom of Solomon. But how did she know it was wisdom? I mean wisdom is wise, wisdom is worth hearing, true wisdom is self-evident. You don’t say, how do I know if this is wisdom is wise; is there anyone wise enough to tell me if this is wise wisdom?
And don’t miss what else Jesus is saying: something greater than Solomon is here, something greater that Jonah. Jesus claims a wiser wisdom than Solomon’s and a greater word of God than the prophets. It is surely true that he was either mad, bad or God. Either he is a megalomaniac, so out of touch with reality that he must be mad, or he is the con-artist to end all swindlers – or he is telling the truth.
But how can you know? Well, madness betrays itself in unwisdom; badness by “ungood”. It is the wiseness of Jesus’ wisdom, and the goodness of his life and words which should have told them—unless there was something distorting the way they perceived things—unless their eye was faulty.
Jesus tells another parable: “No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, but on a lampstand, so that everyone who comes in can see the light.” (11:33)
My father built a cabin in the bush. At night the only light we had was the tilley lamp. My mother hated it. One night we were alone; Dad was at work. Mother tried bravely to light the lamp: she soaked the starter in metho, lit it to heat the central stem and the mantle, but when she started to pump, instead of the mantle lighting up, half-vapourized kerosine filled the glass with yellow flames. It was scary, but eventually went out. She wouldn’t touch it again, and for the rest of the night we used candles. Just before I went to bed I walked past this lightless light and it was still hot. We investigated and found the light was perfect inside; there was just a layer of soot on the glass and absolutely no light was getting into the room.
People were cross with Jesus because he wasn’t making things clear; he wouldn’t come right out and tell them if he was the Messiah, he refused to do the sign they asked for, he spoke in parables. He was hiding his lamp – if indeed he was a lamp.
No, says Jesus, the lamp is fine, sitting on the stand shining its light. The problem is with the eyes of the people who are looking. For between the light, and you and me, is the eye—the eye which is the lamp of your body.
Why couldn’t they see him for who he was? Jesus says it was because their eye was not single. They could not look at him without considering other things as well – especially their own self-interest. If Jesus is true and what he is saying is right, what will that mean for my position as a teacher and an influential person? What will it mean for the way I am doing business? What will it mean for the way I am treating the people who work for me? What will it mean for the way I treat the company I work for? What will it do to my sexual freedom – and many matters of self-interest crowd in and twist my perception, and I am unable to respond truly to the truth that stands before me.
It’s not an intellectual problem that stops people from believing in Jesus. We pretend it is, but that is all part of the distortion of truth brought about by the evil eye. It’s not even that Jesus wouldn’t do signs. He did. He just healed a dumb man. Why didn’t they believe? Vested interests! So, they took refuge in their demand for another sign. But if one sign was not enough, why would another make any difference? In fact, Jesus did hundreds of signs. In the end he rose from the dead. But people do not believe, because they don’t want to believe. But they cannot admit to themselves that is their motive So they twist everything they see until it honestly looks to them like Jesus is demon-possessed, or a sanghoma, or just a good teacher, or a legend, or a social reformer, or a freedom fighter. And I don’t need to take him seriously.
Jesus goes on: “See to it that the light within you is not darkness”. Don’t think that any of us is without a problem at this point. Jesus is addressing a universal human evil. But it is not hopeless, as the post-modernists would have us think. Their perceptions are also distorted by self-interest: their scepticism is part and parcel of the human flight from God.
Jesus says, “See to it …”: focus your attention on the problem. Look at your motives. Look at the way you are perceiving things, especially how you are viewing him. Get your thinking straight.
Luke gives us a clue how we may do this. A woman calls out from the crowd: “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that fed you!” Jesus is not impressed with that sort of praise. “No,” he says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” (11.27-28) Perceptions can be healed.
We all have a world view which influences how we see things. If our world view is wrong at any point it will distort the way we see things. Our body will be full of darkness. But we can let the word of God correct our worldview. This is why the Bible is such an important book; it gives us an outsider’s view of things, God’s view of things. If you allow your eye to be healed, you will see Jesus for who he is. Once he is at the right place in your life you will start to see other things clearly. It will be like the lamp on the lampstand is now in the centre of your life, giving light to the whole room – your mind and thoughts and body and actions. Your body will be full of light. I think we all want to be that sort of person.