May 6, 2007
PROSOPAGNOSIA
Prosopagnosia (the title of my sermon today) is a medical term. It is the fusing of two Greek terms, prosopon meaning face and agnosia meaning non-knowledge. The easiest definition is face blindness. People who have Prosopagnosia cannot remember faces or even tell them apart for that matter. Now I am not talking names, I am talking faces.
About three million people worldwide are affected with this disease. At its worst they can’t tell Elvis Presley from George Bush. Prosopagnosiacs can see eyes, noses and mouths but do not see patterns. They cannot connect the individual features.
Face blindness is not due to injury but is genetic (a defective gene) and there is no known cure but most prosopagniacs learn certain coping mechanisms. Many can distinguish people they know by looking at things like hairstyles, body shapes or the way they walk or by listening to their voice. To avoid snubbing people they know some sufferers try to look as though they are lost in thought while walking. Others act friendly either toward everyone or toward no one.
If you spend even a few minutes thinking about how different your life would be if you could not remember faces, you’ll understand that prosopagnosiacs deal with significant problems every day.
Certainly face blindness was unknown as a diagnosis in the first century but the New Testament has an actual example of it. On the first Easter two followers of Jesus were walking on the road to Emmaeus when Jesus joined them, but according to Luke their eyes were kept from recognizing him. Only later when he broke bread with them did they realize that it was Jesus who was with them.
Of course they were seeing the resurrected Jesus for the first time, so maybe that accounts for their temporary Prosopagnosia. But even before the resurrection, when Jesus was among his followers, he alluded to a kind of recognition problem that the world could have for which Christians are responsible. In his conversation with his disciples at the Last Supper Jesus told them that he loved them and that they should love one another. In fact he called that a new commandment. Of course in one way it wasn’t new at all, the concept was articulated in Leviticus 19:18. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Yet there was newness about what Jesus said for he intended that his followers’ love for each other should be a plain feature of their identity. Then Jesus said, “by this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another”.
Although in other places, Jesus talked about loving neighbors and even loving enemies here he is saying that acting compassionately toward fellow believers is the way that people outside the church will know that we are his disciples. That’s a positive way to state it, but consider the flip side. Jesus implies that it’s possible for Christians to live in the world without being recognized as Christians. To bring it right to our day, Jesus’ new command means that if the world can know we are Christians by our love for one another, the world can also fail to recognize us as Christians if we don’t love one another. The world can have face blindness when it comes to distinguishing disciples from everyone else. It is difficult to present yourself as a Christian if you are not exhibiting love of neighbor.
Love and the unity it attests to is the mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians. So let’s look at this type of face blindness and some of the things that contribute to it.
First, many non-Christians do love others; the practice of loving others is just not limited to we who call ourselves Christians. We Christians look like non-Christians in many ways and it is difficult to tell us apart.
We Christians, however, don’t always grasp the depth of love Jesus is calling for among his followers. Loving enemies is desperately difficult and loving neighbors is often hard work, so it would seem that by comparison merely loving our church members should be a snap.
In some ways, however, that is harder. Doing something compassionate for someone on the other side of the planet or reaching out to a person we see only occasionally doesn’t require great emotional investment. But when it comes to members of our spiritual community, people whom we see up close and interact with frequently it can be a different story. Just think how hard it can be simply to give the benefit of the doubt to certain members of our families. Sometimes it’s hard to love those close at hand.
Another difficulty in recognizing Christians by their love for one another is that Jesus sets the bar very high for relationships within the church. He said, “just as I loved you, you also should love one another.” Earlier that evening Jesus had given one demonstration about what he meant by loving one another when he humbly washes the feet of each of his disciples. That alone should give us pause when claiming to love one another.
Now chances are you will not be asked to wash someone’s feet, so what does loving within the church look like? How should loving each other play out in the church? First, we need to apologize to each other especially when we have been mistaken or have failed. Likewise we need to have a forgiving spirit and be willing to make peace with those who have hurt us in some way. When we disagree with someone we should contemplate and spend time in prayer concerning the issue. We should approach people in a spirit of non-belligerence. What we are talking about here is a spirit of observable oneness within the Christian community and that is something the world beyond the church can see.
One other way we can get a handle on what it means to love one another within the church fellowship is to consider to what lengths we are willing to go for each other. Jesus’ remark suggests that it is a hallmark of Christians that we go out of our way for others, that we go the second mile for people to whom we have no other connection than a common belief in Jesus Christ.
We cannot really explain ahead of time what it will mean to be Christ-like in every relationship with other believers, relationships and human nature are complex things and situations we could have never anticipate arise. But Jesus’ new command gives us not only a place to start but also a spirit in which to act and a goal toward which to move.
As we internalize this command and put it into practice we go a long way toward dispelling the face blindness of those on the outside and we enable them to see the features of Christ in the church he has called us to be. Then they will know we are Christians because of our love for one another.
Amen.
Let us pray.