Sermon: Cameleon Eyes

Text: Psalm 19

Date: October 2, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

Can you look left and right at the same time? Can you look up and down simultaneously? Can you direct one eyeball to port and the other to starboard? Try it.

Can’t be done, can it? Well, it can a little bit when you cross your eyes and try to look at your nose. But you can’t see very well that way, and in a way that is steering your eyes the same direction—to the center.

Did you know a chameleon can look in more than one direction at once? Maybe you thought changing colors was the only unusual thing about a chameleon; but it turns out that just about everything about a chameleon is unusual. Like its tongue being half the length of its body—weird! I wouldn’t want that feature, but I like the idea of being able to look in two directions at once. A chameleon can see almost 360 degrees around. Wouldn’t that be cool!

I can’t do that with my real eyes but I got these glasses that can pretend to look in more than one direction. These are my chameleon-eye glasses. Actually they are my Psalm 19 glasses.

Did you notice that the Psalm looks in two directions at once? Suppose Psalm 19 was the answer to a question. The question could be, “Where can we see God?” The first part of the Psalm answers, “Look at the wonderful things God has made! Especially the awesome sun!” The second part of the Psalm answers, “Look at the Bible! Especially the marvelous laws and commandments God gave us!” If you want to know how to see God in all God’s glory look here and look there, look at both at the same time. Pretend you have chameleon eyes that can look both directions at once.

Theologians who have sorted out lots of big religious ideas over the years have particular names for these two directions you might look to see God. Seeing God through nature is called “general revelation.” Anyone with eyes can look at creation, and millions of people looking at beautiful natural things have started thinking big thoughts about who made all this. Looking at nature doesn’t always make people think of God, but it happens often enough. And once you have God on your mind or God in your heart, it’s hard to look at something beautiful without thinking of the Creator.

Eugene Peterson has a great translation of Psalm 19. Listen to his version of the “general revelation” half of the Psalm:

God’s glory is on tour in the skies,

God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.

Madam Day holds classes every morning,

Professor Night lectures every evening.

Their words aren’t heard,

Their voices aren’t recorded,

But their silence fills the earth;

Unspoken truth is spoken everywhere.

God makes a huge dome

For the sun—a superdome!

The morning sun’s a new husband

Leaping from his honeymoon bed,

The daybreaking sun an athlete

Racing to the tape.

That’s how God’s Word vaults across the skies

From sunrise to sunset,

Melting ice, scorching deserts,

Warming hearts to faith.[1]

The second direction, looking at the Bible to see God or see what God wants of us, is called by the theologians a “special revelation.” It’s called special because it doesn’t broadcast a revelation or a glimpse of God to everyone all the time. It’s got a narrower audience: only the people who read the Bible or have it read to them will get the revelation. It’s also special in that it has a more specific message than the “God is really big” message you might get from watching the sun rise in the morning and set at night or from looking up at a starry sky feeling small. The special revelation gives more details about this God we wonder about when we look at God’s wonders.

Here is some of Eugene Peterson’s version of the second part of Psalm 19, which is like a love song to the Bible:

The revelation of God is whole

And pulls our lives together.

The signposts of God are clear

And point out the right road.

The life-maps of God are right,

Showing the way to joy.

The directions of God are plain

And easy on the eyes.

God’s reputation is twenty-four carat gold,

With a lifetime guarantee.

The decisions of God are accurate

Down to the nth degree.

God’s word is better than a diamond,

Better than a diamond set between emeralds.

You’ll like it better than strawberries in spring,

Better than red, ripe strawberries.

There’s more: God’s Word warns us of danger

And directs us to hidden treasure.

Otherwise how will we find our way?

Or know when we play the fool?[2]

I don’t have a pair of these fun glasses with the eyeballs on springs for each of you, but I’d like to invite you to practice having chameleon eyes and looking in these two directions for God’s glory. You’ll have to use what the Bible calls “the eyes of the heart” instead of your real eyes. I’m going to give you a quiet moment to think about a wonderful place or thing you have seen in nature that you think tells the glory of God. It might be something spectacular that you saw only once or something you see often that for some reason really spoke to you about God one time.

Have you got the place or thing in mind? Would you mind telling one or two people seated near you about it? We’ll pause for a couple of minutes so you can tell your story to your neighbors.

God’s glory is on tour in the world! Karen was telling me as I was discussing this sermon as a work in progress with her that if you walk toward Safeway there is a proverb in the sidewalk along with a picture of a sun. Have you seen it? The saying is “It would be well to stop--look up.” So true! Sometimes we get so absorbed with our little lives and errands that we forget to stop and look for the ways the world is telling the glory of God.

We can surely see God in nature. But we don’t worship nature. It is said of a Mayan king long ago that he used to worship the sun until a cloud came along, blocking out the light of the sun, and he realized that the sun couldn’t be God if it could be overshadowed like that. He had questions nature couldn’t answer. What is the character of the God who made both sun and cloud? What does God want us to be and do as creatures among other creatures?

We turn to the Bible as a special revelation to help us understand how to live God’s way. I wouldn’t say that the Bible is the only special revelation, but there’s a good reason why we continue to pay attention to the Bible. I’m going to give you another assignment now. You’ve looked in your mind’s eye to nature to recall a place or thing that told you of God’s glory. Keep one eye on that. Now use your chameleon eyes to look toward the Bible and think of a story or text or idea you got from the Bible that is special to you for some reason. This might be a little more difficult for some of us. But it’s not a quiz; it’s a chance to remember why “God’s word is better than a diamond.” Take a moment to think of your Bible bit. Then tell one or two of your pew neighbors about it.

“The revelation of God is whole and pulls our lives together.” What is it that makes the Bible so important to the church, so enduring for Christians? Is it just its age? Do we revere the Bible simply because it has been around so long that it has gathered up the honor of humans like a snowball rolling downhill gathers up snow and twigs? Do we honor it just because we think we are supposed to?

Do we honor it because we have been taught it is the inspired Word of God? Do we believe it came straight from God’s mouth to our pages, and that’s what makes it special? Certainly some of our Christian siblings believe exactly that. Most of us in churches like this have amore nuanced view of the inspiration of the Bible. We might believe that it was inspired, but not all of it is God’s word. There are too many terrible things in the Bible for us to think of it as being simply from God’s mouth to our ears. I didn’t have to look very far from Psalm 19 for a fer-instance: Psalm 21 growls “Your hand will find out all your enemies; your right hand will find out those who hate you. You will make them like a fiery furnace when you appear. The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath, and fire will consume them. You will destroy their offspring from the earth, and their children from among humankind. If they plan evil against you, if they devise mischief, they will not succeed. For you will put them to flight; you will aim at their faces with their bows.” Yuck. Nothing inspirational about that, unless you’re giving a pep talk to the Green Berets.

But in spite of what one scholar calls “texts of terror” we wouldn’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There is a reason the Bible endures as a place we see the glory of God. A. W. Tozer put it like this:

I did not go through the Book, The Book went through me.

I agree. The Bible is a crucial special revelation because it reads us more than we read it. It happens to me just about every week when I prepare to preach, often in the Bible study we have in my office Tuesday mornings. I learn something about God, something about myself, something about what God is hoping I will be or become. When we read the Bible we get to know the God who entered into the human life of our spiritual ancestors and who continues to enter into our very human lives. We learn the pattern of God’s relationship with humans in the old stories and start to train our eyes on God’s relationship with us.

Your mother always told you to look both ways when you cross the street. Psalm 19 reminds us to look both ways when you walk on the spiritual journey. Look up, look up, see how the heavens and the earth are telling the glory of God. Look in, look in, see how the Bible tells you of God’s love and God’s purpose and your part in it.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Peterson, Eugene The Message: The New Testament and Psalms in Contemporary Language Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1993, p. 572

[2] Ibid. p. 573