Wine Before Breakfast

Title: Wine Before Breakfast
Location: Wycliffe College Chapel, 5 Hoskin Ave.

Lewis, Cockburn and a Jesus Way of Seeing

Do you remember Uncle Andrew in C.S. Lewis ‘s The Magician’s Nephew? While Aslan is singing Narnia into being and talking animals are springing to life, the children can see and hear what’s going on and rejoice in it. Uncle Andrew, however, only sees ferocious animals (Aslan being the worst of the lot as far as he is concerned) and hears the most bestial and frightening of sounds.

Lewis explains in his narration that “what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.”

In his song, “Child of the Wind,” Bruce Cockburn gets at the same thing:

Little round planet
In a big universe
Sometimes it looks blessed
Sometimes it looks cursed
Depends on what you look at obviously
But even more it depends on the way that you see

What you see depends on where you are standing and what you look at.  In the Sermon on the Mount we have already seen that, for Jesus, standing with the poor, with those who mourn, with the meek and those who hunger and thirst for justice is the only standpoint from which you will see the Kingdom of God. Standing anywhere else will render you blind.

And now as we continue our meditation on the Beatitudes we learn that what you see depends also on “what sort of person you are,” “on the way that you see.”

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Character and vision. They always go together.

Purity of heart, a singleness of heart,
a heart open to a hurting neighbour,
breaking with the brokenness of the world,
longing for wholeness,
aching for God,
yearning for the healing of all things.

Only such an openness of heart can result in an opening of the eyes.
Only that sort of person, with that kind of heart,
can see God.

That’s what we’re looking for this year at Wine Before Breakfast.
Purity of heart in the midst of all of our duplicity and deceit.
Vision in the midst of all of our blindness and myopia.

This week Andrew Asbil preaches and offers us the bread and the wine,
Deb Whalen’s getting some help with the bandhood of all believers,
Cindy Stover will lead us in prayer,
Bethany Osborne has got the bread,
and I’m brewing the coffee.

Wine Before Breakfast.
For confused hearts and blind folks like us
… longing for the purity of heart,
… longing to see God.

Tuesday @ 7.22am
Wycliffe College Chapel
Breakfast to follow

Date: 2010-09-21