I probably shouldn't tell you this, but it happens often that late at night when the television gets boring; I begin to feel remorse about my behavior at the grocery store earlier in the day. I had resisted buying ice cream, and now I need it. So I throw on an ancient pair of sweats, a t-shirt that seemed cool back in 1985, and run to the grocery store to get something that has chocolate in it. I head with determination to the dairy aisle only to swing around the corner and see at the end of the aisle that one person that's always ready to tell me everything that's happened in his life that day. He's bending over staring into the freezer section, obviously making a late-night visit for the same reason. I stop dead in my tracks, pull my baseball cap down a little further, and make a slow turn so that I can work the grocery store in the opposite direction, able to see around the corner to see if he's still there. My goal: Get what I need and get out without being seen. But if I do get seen, I've got a ready strategy. I look up and say, "Oh, I didn't see you standing there."

Have you noticed how good most of us are at looking away? We can even catch each other's eye across a room or in a public place and look away so quickly that we pretend it never happened. We do it in the grocery store, we do it when we pass the homeless on the street, we do it with the visitor sitting next to us in church. We even do it in our own homes and with the people that we know the best and love the most. A lot of us have gotten so good at this that we really can genuinely say, "Oh, I didn't see you standing there." And a lot of us know the flip side of it too. We want to disappear, not be seen, because we're ashamed of what we think they will see if they look in our eyes.

So looking at the ground becomes a way of life. I think at some level we know that if we return a glance or a gaze, something that requires our presence is going to happen. When our eyes lock, we'll be asked to bring ourselves outward. The gaze is, I think, the beginning of community. We have to bring ourselves out, and we have to let the other in. And sometimes life is a lot easier without being in community.

We don't know much about the woman in the story from Luke's Gospel except that she was present when Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. She'd been bent over by a spirit for 18 years, forced to look at the ground as she went through life. She would have been one of those people who would be easy to pass by, maybe even easy to stare at. We could look at the curvature of her spine without the risk of catching her eye, even feeling good about ourselves because we feel sorry for her-that poor old woman. You know, even worse than being unseen is being observed or watched or analyzed. It's probably not a stretch to imagine that the crowd that day who was there watched this woman make her way through the crowd.

Jesus saw her too. But he didn't just watch. He didn't continue with his teaching. He really saw her. In the gaze of Jesus, which must have been the kind of gaze that goes directly to the heart, Jesus raised her up by laying his hands on her. She straightens up, and you can almost imagine their eyes meeting, their gaze locked. How she must have gloried in being seen, apart from her evil spirit, no longer that old, bent-over woman but now the friend of Jesus. Eye to eye, person to person, partners in the life of God. And she sees too. She sees God right in front of her.

My guess is that this moment of healing for the woman was a moment of healing for Jesus, too, when his teaching was raised up and made visible so that those gathered to hear him could now see the power of God's loving gaze. She was the means through which God's power was made evident on that day. When Jesus looked into her eyes, he must have praised God too. In the meeting of these two, the reign of God surged into the world for all to see. This was Sabbath, resting in God's good creation, God's good gaze, resting in the gaze of one another, delighting in the life that surges through us when we become friends of God.

The woman would walk away upright, and Jesus would now go on to Jerusalem, no doubt with a little more courage that God would see him in his suffering as well. God would bring life to a bent-over creation. God would not avert the divine eyes from a suffering child. God would indeed raise up the dead to a new life and the world to a new future. In the gaze of God, we can see exactly where we are going.

We're nearing the end of the summer. Some of us have already returned from vacations, have gone back to school. We begin the routine of the fall. I hope that we have been able to experience the loving gaze of Jesus, who yearns to meet our eyes and to raise us up, who promises that there is no spirit that has more power than his healing and his loving spirit.

It's really only as we live in his gaze that we find the power and the courage to really see those around us. And there is no doubt that the world these days cries out to be raised up. As I prepared this sermon, I had CNN on, and I saw the pictures of refugees in western regions of Sudan. Sudanese government-backed groups are killing, raping, and displacing black Sudanese, and we're being warned that a humanitarian crisis is looming that could reach the levels of the Rwandan genocide if the world won't look. It struck me that there I was preparing to preach the Word, to follow my call to preach and teach, and right before me, the world walked across the room. The same woman with the spirit that curved her back was now standing in front of me, this time wearing the clothes of a Sudanese woman bent over carrying her starving child.

Would I stop and see her? Would I allow her gaze to catch mine in such a way that we would both be changed and raised up?

I suppose that's the question that gets posed in our Gospel text for today: Having been seen by God, will we now see? Whether it be the world's most profound humanitarian needs or the sister whose coming down the aisle of the grocery story, will we see?

And I know it's hard. It's really hard. There are so many spirits that curve us away from God and one another.

Yet, it is in these faces that come before us that we will find the face of Jesus. In the risks of human relatedness, the reign of God is set to surge forward into the world. This is the mystery of the Word made flesh, that Jesus, now present in the bent-over woman, is for us. By looking, we become the ones that are raised from the dead. In that movement to look and to see, we find ourselves seeing and freed.

Healing is unleashed in the world when we dare to look into one another's eyes and be remade in the image of Christ. And may we, too, be the ones that give thanks, that praise God on that last day, as we make that long journey through death's night, hoping that we will find that one thing that can meet our deepest needs and yearnings. We will already be seen and known by a God who will never say, "Oh, I didn't see you standing there," but, "You're free. Stand up and come in."

Let us pray.

O God, who always sees more than we are able or willing to reveal. In your loving gaze, heal us and free us from all that forces us downward. May we experience the touch of your presence and be raised up to find the delight you share with all humankind. Teach us to see that by entering into the risks of human life, we find your presence in those who yearn to be made well. Make us into a community that unleashes your healing power to the whole world. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.