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Eye Jesus
Colossians 1:3-14

Whenever we have a baptism in our church, as you lean forward to glimpse the infant, I say:

God has rescued us from the power of darkness
and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. [1]

These words express one of the most fundamental movements within the Christian faith. When we are baptized, we are transferred from one realm —"the power of darkness" into another realm —"the power of Jesus Christ."

Bracketing these words are two other crucial phrases: "God's glorious power" and "forgiveness of sins." The whole passage from Colossians thus reads:

May you be made strong with all the strength
that comes from God's glorious power… [2]
God has rescued us from the power of darkness
and transferred us to the kingdom of his
beloved Son, [3]
In whom we have redemption,
The forgiveness of sins. [4]

The order is:

• God's power
• Our transfer
• Forgiveness of sins.

This all sounds well and good. It is what you would expect your minister to say. But I want to share with you today writings of one person for whom this transfer from God's power to forgiveness was anything but typical. I hope that by hearing him describe the progression in his life, we can all appreciate more deeply what it means to move from darkness to light, what it means to move from anger and vengeance to forgiveness, and how it is that faith in Jesus Christ can be the source — the initiator — of that transfer.

Let us pray: Lord, as we hear words from one man's painful memory, lead us through his words, through words of scripture, and through words of preaching, to a measure of grace under the eternal gaze of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Carlos Eire is a professor of history and religious studies at Yale University. He is in his early fifties. He has lived in the United States since 1962, when he and his brother were two of 14,000 children airlifted from Cuba to the United States after Fidel Castro's ascent to power.

Eire has no trouble remembering and describing life under "the power of darkness." During the Elian Gonzalez affair in 2000, memories of his Cuban childhood flooded his mind. For four months he wrote until 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. the story of his Cuban childhood. The result: a best seller entitled Waiting for Snow in Havana. [5]

The book is filled with pleasant memories — eccentric aunts, gazing at Cuban clouds, playing daredevil games with playmates on the then safe streets of Havana. But it is also filled with dark images — gunfire, classmates disappearing from school, hiding under his bed from armed revolutionaries. In the midst of this darkness, one chapter emerges that is darker than others. I read portions of this chapter:

**

Some chapters just can't be numbered
[Eire begins].
Not at all.
I'm sure you have chapters like that in your life.
They're not safely tucked away
in some vault of oblivion…

No.
Just the opposite.
The memories are there.
And you wish you could make them go away.
You wish they didn't exist at all.
Ugly as hell.
Hell itself.
The very essence of pain.

You can't assign numbers to these chapters…
If you were to write them, you could only begin to do it at 2:30 a.m., after a horrible day.
Only when your every nerve
is on the point of exploding…
Only on a day in which you spoke out loud
to the Prince of Darkness in your basement,
and told him to stay in hell and leave you alone…
Only after a day in which your powers of denial
were at their weakest.

This is one of those chapters.

It's about Ernesto.
It is about the boy I can hardly mention.
The boy I can only hint at.
The boy my father brought into our house.
The boy no one liked but my father.
The boy whose soul was twisted beyond belief.
The boy whose own childhood must have been hell.
The boy who came from a very poor family.
The boy who sold lottery tickets all day long instead of going to school…
The [boy in whose blue eyes]…danced the flames of hell.

He continually betrayed my father's trust of him, unseen.
He was sly and deceitful,
and full of rage against all of us.
But I saw, I knew.
Pervert.
He tried.
Repeatedly, for a while.
He tried to hug me the wrong way.
Even when I was so young
I didn't understand what he was up to.

I fought him off, many times.
And he wouldn't stop trying.
Until I got big enough to punch him hard enough.
I remember the day he stopped.
I remember punching and kicking
so hard that it hurt me, too.
But just the fact that I had to do that
brought me down to hell with him.

He was evil through and through.
Evil, say the Platonists,
is simply the absence of good.
Wrong.
Evil is a presence, real and cunning.
Evil is a spiteful wretch in our own house.
…

Pervert.
Canalla.
Sinverguenza.
Lizard.
I expect you to call me a liar and to twist everything until the day you die.
Chances are when this is all in print,
you will lie and lie and lie.
But I know the truth, and so does God.

**

The story line so far is simple.

• A boy is sexually molested.
  
  
• He carries this secret in his soul for decades — like a massive, malignant tumor that has not yet been detected.
  
  
• Then a public event — the Elian Gonzalez affair — brings memories of his pain rushing back.
  
  
• In a burst of energy, he writes these painful memories of living in the power of darkness.
  
  
• He writes of desire for justice and vengeance those memories bring to the surface.

He begins to consider what fate — what punishment — he would like Ernesto to receive. The logical fate he obviously considers is hell — wishing/hoping/praying that Ernesto will spend all his days in hell.

But then Eire backs away from that desire.

I won't send you to hell [he writes],
though [that is] where you sent me.

Hell is too good for you.
I was just there today, checking it out.
Nope.
Won't do.
…

Instead, I'll send you to another spot in heaven.
The very best spot.
I think you should go straight before
the throne of Jesus and spend eternity under his gaze.
I think you should see him staring at you forever.
Staring with rainbow eyes into your blue eyes.
Forgiving you over and over and over.
Embracing you.
Eternally. [6]

On this note, the chapter ends. While Eire experiences anger and vengeance and hatred toward the intruder who has driven a wedge in his home even more powerful than that driven by Fidel Castro, Eire ironically decides that "hell is too good" for his abuser.

He begins to envision an even higher justice than that of hell, the justice of his abuser going "straight to the throne of Jesus and spend[ing] eternity under his gaze."

**

Statistics lead me to say that not everyone in this room has been sexually abused. Thank God. But theology, experience as a pastor, experience as a human being lead me also to say that at some time nearly every person in this room has been the victim

• An injustice beyond our control
• An injustice to which we made no contribution
• An injustice for which we are in no way responsible, despite the guilt and confusion we carry in our souls.

We initially react to such injustice, like Eire, by envisioning our perpetrator literally rotting in hell. That vision is often where our reaction stays, and in some cases, we are even led to act on that vision by taking matters into our own hands, by verbally or physically attacking people who have harmed us, even by ending their lives.

Yet somehow Carlos Eire — in the middle of the night — decided "hell is too good" for his perpetrator. He began to envision his victimizer

• Facing the gaze of Jesus
• Receiving the embrace of Jesus
• Being forgiven by Jesus over and over and over.

Can you imagine getting to that point?

Can you imaging holding high above your head those who have committed great crimes, holding them up to the eternal gaze of Jesus?

• Adolph Hitler — here let Jesus stare at you.
• Joseph Stalin — here let Jesus stare at you.
• Slobodan Milosovec
• Saddam Hussein
• Beheaders of hostages in front of video cameras — take your place — here — in "[t]he very best spot…in heaven."

Can you imagine?

**

Like nearly all Cubans, Eire was raised Roman Catholic.

In my father's study [he writes], we had…an Italian porcelain plate with the face of Jesus embossed in such a way that wherever you went, the eyes followed you. Blue eyes…[You could never] get away from his gaze. [7]

Eire refers to the image of Christ on the porcelain plate as "Eye Jesus." E-Y-E Jesus. His description reminds me of what Flannery O'Connor's description of her native South as not so much "Christ-centered" as "Christ haunted." [8] Carlos Eire's childhood Cuba was haunted Eye Jesus.

My friends, I believe it was Eye Jesus — staring at him from a porcelain plate that gave Eire as an adult "all the strength that comes from [God's] glorious power."

I believe it was Eye Jesus that "rescued [Eire] from the power of darkness and transferred [him] to the kingdom of God's beloved Son."

I believe it was Eye Jesus through whom Eire received redemption and was able in turn to grant to his abuser "forgiveness of sins."

As Eire says in his own words:

Thank you, Eye Jesus, for keeping an eye on me.
You did not allow the worst to happen.

**

I do not advocate that we all stop by Wal-Mart on the way home from church, buy a porcelain plate so that the eyes of Jesus eternally stare at us from our dining room tables.

But I do advocate this:

• Believing in Jesus Christ,
• Praying for faith in Christ,
• Cultivating faith through prayer, study, worship and service.

I believe these are the ways that we experience forgiveness ourselves and acquire the power to forgive others.

• Through faith in Jesus Christ,
  we can be made strong with all the strength that comes from God's glorious power.
  
  
• Through faith in Jesus Christ,
  we can be rescued from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God's beloved Son,
  
  
• Through faith in Jesus Christ,
  we do experience and receive redemption,
  the forgiveness of our sins.
  
  
• Through faith in Jesus Christ,
  we can hold up to the eternal gaze of Eye Jesus
  those who have seriously harmed us.

Christ-centered.
Christ-haunted.
It doesn't really matter.
The key is Christ.

Amen.

First Presbyterian Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org

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