SEEING PEOPLE
It happened during an evening spent in the home of a family from our church. Craig and Andrea are missionaries serving on the campus of Colorado State University. Their commitment is impressive, their home often crammed full of students. Their daughter Zoe is a little lady with a big smile, and once we’d finished our meal, Zoe announced her plan.
‘Let’s play hide and seek,’ she whispered, and then proceeded to take us on a tour of the room, pointing out the most likely places where she would hide. Perhaps she didn’t feel confident we would be able to locate her without some help. Unsurprisingly, with her hints, it didn’t take long for the game to be over. Time for another suggestion from Zoe.
‘You know, I can jump really high,’ she ventured. I realised this was not a moment to just congratulate her on her vertical take-off skills, or encourage her that should she embrace a challenging regime of exercise and athletic discipline, perchance there might be a gold medal in her future. She didn’t need to hear any of that. She just wanted me to utter three words: ‘Show me, Zoe.’
And show me she did. Bounding up onto the couch, she made me feel a little nervous (we’d had the minister and his wife over for dinner, and the kids ended up in hospital with broken bones...) and then leapt into the air, landing safely – an answer to a hasty prayer. We clapped and cheered. Zoe wanted to be seen, and we’d obliged.
We all have a deep need to be seen. The first time we ride a bike without falling off, or successfully use a potty, (not when riding that bike), when we score a goal or win that race, the need to be noticed is primal in us all, so much so that that hunger can create dysfunction. Jesus rebuked the Pharisaic barons who adopted a ‘pray and display’ spirituality and exposed their desperate appetite to be both seen and celebrated. Jesus warned, ‘And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others’ (Matt. 6:5, NIV). And later, in that withering sermon in Matthew 23: ‘Everything they do is done for people to see’ (Matt. 23:5, NIV).
But we all have a healthy need to be seen, and noticing is one of the wondrous attributes of God, as the Old Testament story of Hagar reveals. A slave who had been hauled out of her Egyptian homeland and taken across borders to Canaan, she was used and abused by Abraham and Sarah. A bewildered fugitive in the Sinai Desert, she bumped into an angel and heard her name spoken. In turn, she gave God a name: ‘You are the God who sees me.’ Hagar discovered this life-altering truth, one that’s affirmed throughout Scripture: when God sees, He cares.
Jesus saw people. A weeping widow from Nain passes by, and we read that Jesus saw her, and his heart went out to her. He saw people when they were at their worst. In the midst of hot denials with curses, Peter suddenly felt eyes upon him. Luke tells us, ‘The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.’ Then there’s Zacchaeus, that diminutive chap who always makes me think of a tree-bound Danny DeVito. A man despised by all, tagged as a shark, a quisling and a traitor, this tax gatherer had felt the icy freeze of many cold hard stares. And then Jesus came by, peered up into the branches, saw him and spoke his name. Being seen birthed a brand new life. No passing glance this, but a look of total knowing and yet total love and commitment.
Some scientists say that we humans start to form impressions of others after seeing their face for less than one-tenth of a second. If they’re right, that means we decide at lightning speed if someone we meet is attractive, authentic, competent, or worthy of our time.
Spotting that aggressive looking soul who has chosen to tattoo his body with profanities, we declare him a thug, and dangerous. And what of that picky, irritating soul who asks endless questions at the church business meeting? He’s surely trouble, a threat to our unity, or so the minister thinks.
But Jesus goes beyond the first glance. Let’s be like Him.
As Annie Dillard put it, ‘We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing, so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other… otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.’ (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
Today, notice. Lives might change as we see. And the show that’s playing is spectacular. Whatever we do, let’s not miss it.