"It Depends On How You Look at It"

I performed Mark and Melissa’s wedding on a warm and sunny afternoon in June of 1979.  It was an unconventional wedding, just the two of them and Anni and me sitting on a hillside overlooking a meadow in rural Idaho.  I served as minister, best man and witness. Anni was the flower girl, matron of honor, witness and congregation. Just eight years later, in August of 1987, I did Mark’s memorial service at the Neskowin Valley School on the Oregon coast.  Again, it was unconventional. It was an alternative school that catered to what used to be called a “counter-culture” group of parents, and it had huge open skylights and transoms.  I vividly remember the birds flying in and out and singing from the rafters during the service.  Hundreds of people gathered to honor the memory of this extraordinary young man.  There were tears, but there was also lots of laughter, and long periods of unbroken silence as we meditated together.  Mark was a remarkable person.  He saw things differently than a lot of us do.  Although his time on this earth was all too brief, he made a difference in people’s lives.  There was one phrase he continually repeated that became a personal motto:  “It all depends on how you look at it.”  I have no idea how someone so young had become so enlightened, but everyone agreed that he truly lived what he believed.  In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, Mark never seemed to forget that perspective is everything.  Perspective is so powerful, in fact, that it can actually determine reality.  That’s a statement of faith:  “It all depends on how you look at it.” 

Everyone knows the scripture, John 3:16.  You see it on cardboard placards at football games, on bumper stickers and t-shirts.  “For God so loved the world . . . ”  Martin Luther called it “the Gospel in miniature.”  But it was also Martin Luther who remarked: “If I were as our Lord God, and these vile people were as disobedient as they now be, I would knock the world to pieces.”  It all depends on how you look at it.  God has a different perspective. 

In the Gospel of John we read that the world persecutes Jesus [7:7] and the followers of Jesus [15:8].  The world is unable to receive the spirit of truth [14:7], and the world does not know the father [17:25].  No wonder Luther would have knocked it to pieces.  But God loves the world [3:16], sent Jesus to the world [1:9], to take away the sins of the world [1:29], and be the savior of the world [4:42].  Jesus gives life to [6:33], conquers [16:33], and sends his followers into the world [17:18].   There must be something very beautiful and worthwhile about the world that God sees.  Or, perhaps it’s the way God sees that makes the world a wonderful place, worthy of divine love.  Can we see with God’s eyes?

We all know John 3:16, but how many of us remember what immediately precedes those famous words about God’s love, and how many of us remember what follows them?   There’s an obscure passage from the Hebrew book of Numbers about snakes biting a bunch of grumbling ingrates and blasphemers that provides the lead-in, and then it concludes with some uncomfortable words about condemnation that we conveniently tend to forget. You may think these teachings provide a strange context for some of the most beloved words ever penned about God’s love, but it all depends on how you look at it!

In Numbers 21 we read that the Israelites were sick of eating the miraculous manna that God provided for them in the wilderness: stir-fried and sautéed, broiled, boiled and roasted, manna, manna, manna.  They were sick of manna. Finally, God gets sick of their complaining and sends a bunch of venomous snakes to bite them as punishment.  We don’t like this image of an angry God, of course.  But, remember that we’re speaking in terms of symbols and metaphors here.  It all depends on how you look at it.  The people repent of their ungrateful bellyaching, and God instructs Moses to fashion the image of a bronze snake and to put it up on a pole.  Whenever a snake bit someone, they would look up to the bronze snake on the pole and they would be healed.  In the Gospel of John we read how this metaphor gets expanded, applied to Jesus, to our sickness, and to our healing:  “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” 

That phrase, “lifted up,” is wonderfully ambiguous.  It has multiple layers of meaning.  It refers to Jesus being lifted up on the cross, but it also refers to his glorification through being raised from the dead, as well as being lifted up into heaven at the ascension. 

Likewise the term “believe.”  Within the context of this passage belief refers to the act of seeing with the eyes of faith, looking to Jesus, gazing upon the cross of Christ, which is a time-honored contemplative tradition.  John is drawing a symbolic parallel between Jesus and the bronze snake. Everyone who looks at Jesus “lifted up” shall be healed, and shall live eternally.

And, it helps to remember that “eternal life” is not a quantitative term, like playing harps on a cloud for a really, really long time.  It’s qualitative.  Eternal life begins here and now.  It means to see with the eyes of faith.  Faith changes our perspective.  Or you could just say that it all depends on how you look at things! To see with the eyes of faith means you see a transformed world, a bit of heaven on earth.  Another way of saying it is that faith heals us of the poisonous wounds that afflict us when we’re bitten by those negative, ungrateful, blasphemous ways of the world.

And then, right after those wonderful words about how God loves the world we read:  “Those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed . . .” Ouch!  What’s that about?  Again, it all depends on how you look at it. God is not condemning anyone.  God is love.  God gave us eyes to see and provides light, but we’re free to live with our eyes wide shut.  We’re free to seek darkness rather than light.  God is love.  “Condemnation” isn’t something imposed on us by a distant, vengeful God.  It is simply self-chosen separation. 

I grew up in a church that had a stained glass window of Christ standing at the door, holding a lantern, and knocking.  The door represents the door to the human heart, and if you look closely, you’ll see there’s no doorknob on the outside.  Christ stands there, holding the light, waiting for us to open the door from the inside.  The only separation that exists between God and us is our refusal to open the eyes of our heart, choosing not to see with the eyes of faith.  It all depends on how you look at things. 

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock . . . Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.”  God so loved the world, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The choice is always ours. It just depends on how you look at it.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.