In the readings from this last Sunday of the church year, the writer of Ephesians prays that God will give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know Jesus, so that with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know what is the hope to which Jesus has called us.
“The eyes of our hearts!”
This phrase occurs nowhere else in scripture but here, in Ephesians. In this phrase, I hear echoes of Jesus reminding people to “Keep Awake,” as we wait for Jesus to return.
Jesus wants us to keep awake. Jesus means this not only in a physical sense, as we prepare for Jesus’ return, but also in having our hearts ready, which happens as we come to know Jesus better and better.
This verse reminds us that coming to know Jesus is like traveling in tandem with Jesus, yoked with him.
Jesus opens our eyes, and as our eyes are opened by him, our hearts get enlightened.
At the heart of all of today’s readings is open heartedness—
The open heartedness of God to us,
And in return, our open heartedness to God.
God longs for us to be people with enlightened hearts.
That’s why Jesus comes to be among us, to show us how to live as people of God’s heart so that we can share God’s heart with all around us.
When the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, we can see that only through the power of Jesus can we bring life and light into the world where there is currently darkness and death.
Then we can give glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
But giving glory to God is not the end of the story, but only the beginning, because on this earth, in this lifetime, the best way we could ever give glory to God is to be open hearted toward one another.
The best way we could ever prepare for Jesus’s return is to open our hearts more and more widely as time passes.
When we have the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we come to see with our eyes and know in the very depths of our hearts that other people are members of God’s family, and therefore, members of our family as well. We are part of the family of the whole of creation. St Francis, as you’ve heard me say before, considered the sun, moon, earth, and creatures as family members; mother, father, sisters and brothers.
People with enlightened hearts are people with open hearts, kind hearts, generous hearts, loving hearts.
People with enlightened hearts are people who act wholeheartedly from a place of loving kindness for all around them.
What we do for others and with others matters deeply in God’s heart.
So on this last Sunday of the old church year, the story Jesus tells about the judgement of the nations and the separation of the people causes us to look back and reflect.
Have we lived in this past year as people of enlightened hearts? Have we been open hearted people?
And the gospel passage also causes us to look ahead prayerfully to see how we might become more open hearted in the year to come.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus reminds us that only with the eyes of our hearts enlightened can we see that the creative power of God lives and moves in every part of the universe, in every piece of creation, and in every human being.
So that hungry people, and thirsty people and strangers and naked people and sick people and people in prison all have the creative power of God moving in them, even if that creative power is all but snuffed out, due to the hardships and challenges of this life.
And seeing with the eyes of our hearts, we can look beyond the things about these people that keep us from even wanting to reach out our hands in love to them.
The story of a man named Bill Pelke, who was a devout Christian, summarizes what it means to live with the eyes of our hearts enlightened. The story of his life show us how living as open hearted people can give God the ability to use us to move the world closer to the reign of God here on earth.
Bill died on November 12, and I share these details of his life from the obituary by Emily Langer that appeared in The Washington Post on Thursday, November 19th.
Bill Pelke was a steelworker at Bethlehem Steel. He left the steel mill to go to Vietnam and while he was there he was awarded a Purple Heart. When he got back home, he went back to work at Bethlehem Steel.
He was absolutely devastated when his grandmother, who lived in Gary, Indiana, died. The details of her death are horrific.
She had welcomed in a group of teenage girls playing hooky from school who came to her door asking to attend one of her Bible lessons that she had taught for decades. Once they were in the house, they struck Mrs. Pelke over the head with a vase, and as she lay on the floor, Paula Cooper, who was then only fifteen years old, attacked her with a butcher knife. She bled to death from thirty three stab wounds as the three girls stole $10 and took her car. They were almost instantly arrested because they were openly bragging about what they had done.
The next year, Paula Cooper pleaded guilty to the killing, and received the death penalty, becoming the youngest woman in nearly 100 years to receive a death sentence in the United States. Her three accomplices received prison sentences.
Bill Pelke boiled with anger at God who had allowed him to survive Vietnam, only to come home, struggle through a divorce and now to suffer the awful grief of losing his grandmother in this tragedy.
He was pleased by Paula Cooper’s death penalty, but a year later he went through a transformative experience at work.
One day, as he worked high up in a steel mill crane, tears streamed down his face, and as Bill prayed, he saw a photograph of his grandmother smiling serenely, but as he put it “with tears flowing out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.”
At first, Bill though that these tears were tears of pain, but he almost immediately realized that instead they were tears of love and compassion for Paul Cooper and her family.
He concluded that his grandmother would want Paula Cooper to be forgiven.
“I felt Nana wanted someone in our family to have that same love and compassion, and I felt that responsibility fall on me,” Bill said.
So Bill Pelke forgave and befriended his grandmother’s murderer, and helped to lead a successful effort to have her death sentence reduced to a prison sentence.
Pelke could see in his grandmother’s killer that even this girl was a child of God.
When he met Cooper the first time, he gave her a hug. He looked her in the eyes and he told her that he loved her and had forgiven her. Over the years, he corresponded with Cooper, visited her repeatedly in prison, and sought a relationship with her family as he campaigned—over the objections of some in his family—against her execution.
Mr. Pelke had the eyes of his heart enlightened. Only God could have given Pelke the power to forgive Paula Cooper.
Pelke became a nationally known advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.
He co-founded an organization called Journey to Hope—From Violence to Healing, an advocacy group led by family members of murder victims seeking to end the death penalty.
He said that “the death penalty has absolutely nothing to do with the healing the murder victim’s family members need when a loved one has been killed. It just continues the cycle of violence and creates more murder victim family members.”
Thanks to his work, and the work of other activists, Pelke is credited with helping change public opinion in the United States about the death penalty.
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the execution of a defendant who was younger than 18 at the time of the crime violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
David Kaczynski, the brother of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, is the current chairperson of the board of Journey to Hope. He credits Pelke with helping families of crime victims and families of perpetrators bridge a “psychological divide that we can only cross through forgiveness.”
“This was Bill’s mission, asking us to open our hearts and turn our personal pain into compassion for other people’s suffering.”
Mr. Pelke said, that “forgiving Paula Cooper did more for me than it did for her. It gave me a philosophy of life, to forgive…it really is a wonderful way to live.” God enlightened the eyes of Bill Pelke’s heart.
The Season of Advent begins next Sunday. May we look back on this year, and be grateful for the ways that God’s power has continued to work through us, even in this most challenging of years,
And as we wait in faith for our Lord’s return, may we keep the eyes of our hearts open. Let’s pray that as we come to know Jesus more and more, that the eyes of our hearts will be enlightened,and grow lighter and lighter. May we enter with hope into the future, for we know that our trust in Jesus will lead us not only into eternal life, but ever closer to God here on earth as we love and serve God, and the least of those who are God’s family.
Resource: Langer, Emily. “Anti-death-penalty advocate’s passion led by forgiveness.” Metro, B6. The Washington Post, Thursday, November 19, 2020.