Church and the Human Form
A Sermon by the Rev. Alan M. Cowley
Lessons: Luke 11:33-36; Psalm 139:13-16;
Heaven and Hell 59, 63, 64; Arcana Coelestia 4528
The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body
also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness.
(Luke 11:34)
T
here is a reason we are all here this morning. If everything in our lives made
sense; if the entire world was perfectly clear; if we already understood
everything there is to know; we would not need to be here, would we? We all
come here with circumstances, prejudices, pains, fears, hopes, opinions and
curiosities. None of us has life all figured out; none of us knows exactly how
we should act, or exactly what we should be doing, given all of the events and
sights and sounds which we have preceded this moment in time.
In the children’s talk this morning, and in our lessons, we were looking at
some of the things the Lord tells us about the eye. Jesus tells us in the Gospels
that the eye is the lamp of the body. And that if our eye is good, then our
whole body will be full of light, yet if our eye is bad that our body will be full
of darkness.
When we think about this on the natural level, it can be hard to understand
why Jesus would have made such a basic comment. Of course our eyes need
to be good in order to see the world in front of us with clarity! But there is
a very interesting natural element to our sight which might be able to help
us understand how profound this statement from the Lord really is on the
rational and spiritual levels – the levels on which we might be trying to figure
out our lives, wishes and actions.
When our eyes take in light and through the optic nerve transmit the data
to our brains, an interesting phenomena takes place. When the information
originally transmits, it is upside down. It is not until the brain interprets the
information that it is flipped right side up so that we can understand what we
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