There was a troubling reminder of the sheer power of the air this week.
A Boeing 777 from London and Singapore was somewhere over the Bay of Bengal when it hit a patch of extreme turbulence – apparently, a kind of turbulence that doesn’t show up on doppler radar and, therefore, cannot be predicted.
You only know it when you’re in it, and you know that you are when the plane just drops 1000 feet in midair for no reason.
This one dropped 6000 feet in three minutes, which I’m told is not long at all.
However, it was long enough for one passenger to buy in-flight internet so he could then message his mother that he loved her, which he did.
That’s very tender. It’s kind of odd, too, if you think about the scene for a moment, but I don’t mean to take anything away from it—it’s tender.
The turbulence lasted about five minutes…and 45 minutes later, the plane was able to make an emergency landing in Bangkok.
20 passengers were taken to intensive care, and there was one fatality…which is terribly tragic, but also remarkably less of a tally than there might have been, had the pilots not been able to regain control of the plane.[1]
Of course, stories like this one just remind us just how tentative, and how unrelentingly partial our control truly is.
If you think about it, so much of daily living requires more faith than we may want to admit. Faith in nature. Faith in our fellow human beings. Faith in our systems.
Is it faith, though, or something more like autopilot?
The 18th century English poet Thomas Gray is the one who penned the famous lines, “If ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.”
Sometimes, that seems true enough.
But Thomas Jefferson also had a point when he responded to Gray, noting, “If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t more people happy?”
Our Scripture this morning seems to wonder that, too.
Admittedly, it’s not a tale of disaster narrowly averted—a Biblical version of The Poseidon Adventure or one of those Airport movies from the 70’s.
But it is a story about people who are seemingly willing to look away and then other people who refuse to look away: who refuse to remain blissfully ignorant.
Luke’s Gospel has more than one story about a person begging in a somewhat strategic location.
Another one was the blind man begging outside the gates of Jericho, situated just at the point where pilgrims would have arrived safely.
This one, we’re told, gets taken by someone each day to his spot just outside the Temple, surely in order to make the most of an excited visitor’s generosity at a moment of heightened religious emotion.
For a man in his situation, it was as close to a sure thing as you could hope for.
Yet like so many people Luke tells us about, the lame man was such a fixture there that he was almost invisible.
In their own way, everyone who passed by was on autopilot.
Who paused long enough to wonder how he got there each morning, or how he got back home?
If he disappeared completely, who would have wondered where he’d gone?
In that world, just likes ours, everyone had their problems, and he was someone else’s.
And yet, according to Luke, when Peter and John approach the man, something different is at work.
I want to be careful with my wind metaphors today, but a new breeze is blowing.
At first, the man himself is scarcely paying attention.
It seems that he’s also on autopilot.
Another day, another dollar.
He spots the two apostles and rattles his cup, hoping for a shekel or two.
Really, though, he’s not even paying attention, not looking at them.
The man doesn’t notice that the two apostles have stopped.
And this is where it all turns.
Luke reports that they “look straight at him,” (v.3) but that phrasing doesn’t capture it.
The word in Greek is “atenizo” (pronounced: “atenidzo”).
It’s a word that gets translated elsewhere as “earnestly beholding,” which sounds genuinely grand. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really get at the meaning here, either.
For Luke it’s more like having your eyes glued on someone.
Because it’s the word Luke uses when Jesus says goodbye to the disciples and rises before their very eyes up to heaven, and they squint and stare up at the sky to try to see him until the last possible second. (22:56)
It’s the word that Luke would use a bit later to describe the death of Stephen, the first martyr, when he looks up “steadfastly into heaven” and sees the glory of God and the presence of Jesus at God’s right hand, which gives him the strength to die with dignity. (7:55)
It’s the word Luke uses when the apostles preach and everyone who hears them becomes entirely focused, intensely present, knowing something is happening…knowing that what the apostles are saying can’t be explained as just “words” (even good words) because truth is always bigger than that.
It’s a word Luke uses when someone is having an intense encounter with the living God.
And this is the point Luke wants to make.
Peter and John look on the man outside the Temple gates, this semi-invisible man who seems as if he’s all but given up on any actual connection with someone, and who they see is Jesus.
Just like they had when they were standing there squinting as Jesus went up into the sky, only now they’re standing there in front of the temple gates, squinting, and seeing Jesus in this man.
Their eyes are glued on him.
It seems hard to believe that they could have been on autopilot before, but in any case, they are absolutely paying attention now.
And on the very spot where everybody else was walking by, blissfully ignorant, they stand convicted.
No more autopilot for any of them.
It’s a hard lesson for us because it is so easy for us to try flying along on autopilot, too.
Do you ever feel like you’re too busy, too preoccupied, too upset by all life’s turbulence to do much more than you’re doing, that you’re too focused on putting out fires to be more present…or have the bandwidth and the heart to look around…to make a point of noticing?
It doesn’t take much for our eyes to be glued on all the things.
So often, we’re afraid to look away.
If we’re not careful, we can get so focused on the various ways in which we need saving that there isn’t room for anyone else aboard our raft.
It’s really not that hard to fly.
Unfortunately, a lot of people would rather just sit tight and curse the turbulence.
This brings us back to Jefferson’s question: “If ignorance is bliss, then why aren’t more people happy?”
We’re unhappy because we know. We know this is not who or how we’re called to be.
But as we see in so many ways right now, fear can have a powerful grip on us.
It can teach us where to look and where not to, what to notice and what not to, when to stand up and when to walk by.
If we’re not careful, even faith can become a form of bargaining.
We’ll do anything to stay on autopilot.
And yet we know it isn’t really living.
That’s why this morning’s Scripture is so important.
Because into a world so easily terrified by the prospect of what seems like fate, God speaks words of possibility and life.
The turbulence of the world is nothing compared to the peace and presence of God.
We can learn to look for Jesus and to find joy in the turbulence of love taking over the world, even though we know that love never leaves anyone or anything the way it was before.
It teaches the blind to see, and the lame to dance.
Look closely. You can’t miss it.
God’s fondest hope is that we won’t.
Amen.
[1] Napat Kongsawad, “Sheer Terror” AP News, May 22, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/singapore-airlines-turbulence-bangkok-hospitalized-c3750c6b6f611acd771766b999d7468d
Faith Meets Week 