The importance of eyes (Proverbs, 1-22; Luke 14,1-24) /Wednesday, Twenty-first Week after Trinity Sunday, Matins BCP /

The Book of Proverbs makes the observation: 'A king that sitteth in the throne of judgement scattereth away all evil with his eyes.'

We have the (moral and spiritual) task of evaluating our age. Life, history itself, cannot pass by unexamined. Otherwise our eyes will be distorted by evil.

In Luke's Gospel we can see how the Pharisees 'watched Jesus', what he is doing on a Sabbath day. He heals a certain main who had the dropsy. The Pharisees condemn him for doing this on the Sabbath. The situation shows when Jesus, the heart of history, is misjudged. They remain blind  because their eyes were already dead. 'And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to  heal on the sabbath day?...Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightaway pull him out on the sabbath day? And they could not answer him again to these things.'

What follows is the parable of taking first the less honourable places, and then being elevated to the first places. 'When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not donwn in the highest room...Go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.'

The parable can, symbolically, be applied to the dignity (value) of a purified heart-sight. Which is well maintained, and kept fine-tuned to truth by not letting the world go by unevalauted. If our world is reflected upon and corrected by Love, it will not go astray.

08.11.2017