New Year Beholding | The Art of Other Seeing: God & Humans

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898 A.D.

Beholding others is about approaching people as we do God, as a mystery to discover and enjoy rather than to sense-make and control. + Strahan Coleman

Beholding by Strahan Coleman continues to be a wonder-filled book I have been overjoyed to return to at the beginning of 2025 and 2026.

"Beholding" has recently been a theme in my life that I think Jesus continues to invite me back to. Why? 

There is humility in beholding. 

There is curiosity in beholding. 

There is wonder in beholding. 

This posture as a way of life not only invites me to welcome and witness what God and others are doing in my life, but in response, beholding helps me to worship God as the Creator and Sustainer who I get to thank for all that is in my life.

For more on what beholding is like, here are a few excerpts from Coleman's Beholding.

The Art of Others Seeing

"When I first saw God, 

I went a kind of blind. 

Now all I see is Heaven

in the eyes of 

enemy and friend alike."

Prayer Vol. 01

When we look at humanity 

through the artist eyes of God, 

we see little miracles in everyone we meet 

— even our enemies. 

The Church becomes a kind of artistic, 

anthropological priesthood, 

documenting and celebrating 

every little detail of our differences.

As an opportunity to find God, 

being hospitable to another person,

to any other person at all,

becomes an act of Christ-embrace.

Seeing Those We Don't Understand

Knowing the fundamental goodness about God means we can be with Him whilst we grow in our understanding. God's goodness is what our relationship is based on. Beholding others is simply our treating others with that same dignity.

If our gospel is sin obsessed, it reduces our story with God to that of forgiveness only, and we're likely to take the sin-central view of life to those around us. Sin will be the first thing we see, and we're confronted with people who touch the nerve of our particular sin horror, we will struggle to see their image. We'll only see their brokenness as the main event of their existence. If our gospel is one of reconciliation, if it begins before the fall in Genesis with God's face-to-faceness with us, then we're more likely to see that essential good in someone first and prioritize their rediscovering friendship with their Father over moral correction. We'll see their image, their imago Dei.

Christ w/ the Canaanite Woman & Her Daughter by H.O. Tanner, 1909 A.D.

The women at the well in Samaria in John 4 is a beautiful example of this. Jesus was confronted with a woman who had had many husbands and was not married to the man she was presently with. One divorce alone would have had a powerful negative connotation for this woman, and being in her current relationship would have socially marked her further. It would have been all that many would have seen first when they spoke to her. But not Jesus.

Jesus beheld her.

He asked for her water, drawing her into a deeply spiritual conversation, one that He didn't dive into with the all-together religious leaders back in Jerusalem.

Jesus saw something else.

He saw deeper than this woman's mistakes. He saw someone longing for God with the capacity to be a great evangelist. When he relationships did come up, Jesus didn't lecture her on sexual ethics.

 

He continued to invite her 

into the story of God.

And she did become an evangelist. So much so that Jesus stayed for days in the town where she lived as she drew many others out to hear Him. 

Jesus did this kind of thing all the time.

He saw the beauty in others

louder than their shortfalls.

To transcend others' shortfalls

and love like Jesus,

we need to become beholders.

It's not an either-or, of course, because one can't be fully reconciled without a transformation of the behaviors that bring relational brokenness. 

But repentance was often a response 

to Jesus' profound love and grace 

toward someone.

It matters that we choose to see someone's God-image before their sin. People are more than their brokenness. When we see others through their God-image first, over and above what we can make sense of in the interim, we can love and behold them, because no matter how they act — engaging us, confusing us, or challenging us — we know that as surely as God is good, His good image is placed within that person and we can find common ground. 

Practically, this means when we're talking with those we disagree with, no matter how our arguments end, we never denigrate the dignity or fundamental goodness of one another. Even our enemies. Even our political opponents. It means that when we see another at our borders, challenging our cultural norms, holding vastly different political views, asking more of our financial social situations than we think we can give, we're seeing God and the opportunity to meet and care for Him (see Matthew 25:34-40).

Beholding others 

doesn't mean resigning 

to their shortcomings 

or becoming indifferent, 

but it does mean that 

on the long journey 

toward healing and reconciliation, 

we can sit with each other and 

see each other with beauty and love.

Love will always long for healing wherever it sees brokenness, and full reconciliation isn't possible without the healing of the brokenness within us. 

Becoming Godly Listeners

If we walk with God for long enough, we'll experience seasons of dryness and quiet. Times when all our prayer, tears, longing, and searching will feel like they're turning up nothing. These seasons deeply challenge our assumptions that we can always feel, sense, or hear God when He's there, and we're forced to walk the faith journey in what feels like complete blindness.

It's often in these seasons that beholding prayer becomes a lifeline for our spiritual walk. Here, we're coerced to either behold God for who He says He is or deny Him altogether as we find we don't have the energy, faith, or mind space to wrestle with the questions anymore. Beholding prayer becomes a way of acknowledging that somehow God is sitting with us in the dust of it, strangely available, closer than our skin.

The Psalms come alive 

like living companions

because like the psalmist's,

our prayer finally becomes honest and raw.

These hard times are a gift 

to us in this way,

though they rarely feel like it

in the moment.

Through them we learn 

the silent companionship of God

in our suffering.

The quiet persistence of His love 

in the wilderness.

Over time we learn to look back and see that He was with us in awareness and acceptance even when we couldn't feel or see it in the moment. He wasn't withholding His love or presence from us by not giving us the answers or healing we wanted; He was demonstrating the audacity of His love to sit with us in our pain without giving them. He was just there with us in our grief much like He was whilst walking with Mary on the way to Lazarus' tomb. In our darkest moments, we were being beheld by God.

The Resurrection of Lazarus by H.O. Tanner, 1897 A.D.

For the one who has beheld and been beheld by God through their own dark nights, allowing people to vent their honest anger and rail away at others and God is an act of genuine strength and compassion. They're able to let others fully be, as God once let them be.

I like to imagine a world

in which the Church can become

God's ears to the world.

Listening with this kind of grace,

sitting with others in their darkness,

teaching them how to be

in the tension of pain and

the wonder of life.

Today, as a whole world of people feel despair and depression at historic levels, maybe God longs to fashion a priesthood of believers who know how to sit in the darkness alongside them with enduring love, even when it feels helpless. We've been really good at talking, sometimes talking at people, for a long time. What if it's time to learn to listen as a form of witness? 

What if deep listening 

is a way of healing the world, 

revealing God to it?

In this way,

we can be present

as a form of mission

for our times,

helping others to make sense

of their pain, suffering,

loneliness, confusion,

success, and blessings

in the context of 

God's withness.

Christ at the Home of Mary by H.O. Tanner, 1905 A.D.

As we behold and love 

in these ways, 

that love engulfs people into

the kind of relationship with us 

that God longs to have 

with the world.

It shows them a little more

of what God is like.

We're the closest thing to God

for many on this earth;

we're Christ's body.

So when we love 

the image of God in others

and sit with them

in a beholding manner,

we give them a sample

of the magnificent

and all-engulfing 

love of God, too.

Not all of us are called to the vocation of the evangelist, but the universal calling of every follower of Jesus is that of being witnesses to what we have seen and touched and of those who have been seen and heard by God. Beholding invites us to be witnesses through our attentive and compassionate listening, as well as through our storytelling and sharing.

It's important to note that this doesn't mean we should keep our mouths closed about important issues in the fear that we may offend people or that it may cause them to feel less seen. That's another extreme, and it's not even the best way to love someone. But love changes our volume, our temperament, the words we use, and the place we challenge from. Reconciling love changes our tone. It makes us, hopefully, slower to speak ... speak from beside rather than across from others.

+ Strahan Coleman 

in Beholding,

"The Art of Other Seeing,"

pgs. 98-109

The Annunciation by H.O. Tanner, 1898 A.D.

Bonus: The Artist Behind the Artwork

Henry Ossawa Tanner was the first African American artist to gain international acclaim. He was a realist painter and he also stands as one of the leading painters of sacred art during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tanner was not only African-American, he might well be the premier painter of African descent in all art history. 

You can read more about Tanner at:

ATJR: Making the Modern Divine

In relation to beholding, 

"The Annunciation"

by Henry Ossawa Tanner

captivates me.

Here, Mary listens.

Here, Mary questions.

Here, Mary beholds.

Here, Mary responds

as she begins to see

what God is doing

and what she will get to do

for the life of the world.

And she says,

"Let it be done to me

according to Your Word."

More New Year posts:

+ Hope | Planting Seeds in the Dark 

+ Laughter | His Joy in Us Fully

+ Subversive | Peace & Punk Rock  

+ Childlike Faith | Marveling

 

May God's Kingdom come, His will be done.
Que le Royaume de Dieu vienne,
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇

With anticipation and joy,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Bonus Deep Down Faith | Receiving Mercy at The Lord's Table

 

The Last Supper by Dave LaChapelle, 2023 A.D.

The Eucharist

challenges our notion

of what God does 

and does not touch

and what He does

or does not fill.

+ Strahan Coleman,

Beholding

Along with Our Church Speaks, Prayer, Living Under Water, Can I Say That?, and The Ache for Meaning, I continue to return to Beholding by Strahan Coleman during this season (along with some regular meals of Deep Down Faith by Cornelius Planting Jr. with the teens connected to Emmaus City Church I get to spend time with). "Beholding" has been a theme in my life that I think Jesus wants to regularly invite me back to. 

There is wonder in beholding. 

There is artistry in beholding.

And there is mystery in beholding.

Where I have learned this posture of embracing mystery as a way of life the most in recent years has been at the The Lord's Supper. Jesus continues to serve us at His Communion Table, a humble and eternal Giver providing us generous nourishment from His humble and eternal meal of the Eucharist.

Even more so, I think here is where we find the answer to Samuel Rutherford's powerful quote:

When I am in the cellar of affliction,

I look for the Lord's choicest wines.

At the Lord's Supper,
Jesus offers us the choicest wine
from His own cellar,
where He plunged into hellish depths
to swallow up death in His death
so He could raise us
and renew us with life eternal.

We can come to His table and

receive His mercy freely with gratitude.

And in honor of a friend who was recently wondering about how such a miniscule meal could be a life-changing gift, here are some excerpts from Strahan Coleman's Beholding.

 | 1 | Real Presence

Christ is mysteriously yet

substantially present in the Eucharist

in a real and true way

The Eucharist is the name we give to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. On the night before Jesus was crucified, He broke bread and poured wine, saying it was His body and blood. He told His disciples that whenever they gathered like they did that night, they should do the same in remembrance of Him. Since the earliest moments of Jesus' Church, believers have done this together every Sunday, teaching that it is one of the unique ways that God meets, loves, and empowers His Church with grace.

This genuinely humble sacrament

of eating bread and drinking wine

helps us to see, feel, and touch,

literally, what life looks like

when God fills it.

It's the place where imaginary

spirituality becomes earthed

spirituality, and through some

of the most widely shared

and commonly held elements

humanity has at her disposal.

Of all the ways Jesus might have

commanded us to celebrate the 

mystery of His God-humanness, 

of what it looked like when God 

walked the earth as one of us, 

He chose this.

It challenges our notion of

what God does and does not touch

and what He does or does not fill.

In the incarnation of Jesus, we experience God as someone who is unafraid of not only human flesh but human nature as well. We discover that the world and all its mundane responsibilities and necessities are no barrier for the miracle of divine life. In Jesus we ourselves are invited to be unafraid to be human and, even more shockingly, to see it as the home of God. In the Eucharist, we eat and drink of that very same reality.

As I was awakening to what it meant to bring all my humanity to God, I felt drawn to understand the Eucharist and what it had to teach me even more.

 | 2 | Holy Mysteries

Continuing the spiritual practice

of receiving in faith, not sight

The word sacrament itself being derived from the Greek mustérion, which is where we get our word mystery, and as we've already seen, a great mystery it is.

The bread and wine

look the same, 

taste the same,

and smell the same,

but in the Eucharist

they've become enchanted

by the Spirit.

It's a mystery in the same sense that we are born again of God. Externally we look exactly how we used to, though with a little more life in the eyes. But in reality we are a "new creation." And it's also in the same manner that somehow Jesus could be totally God and totally man simultaneously without tension, issue, or compromise.

It's a miracle that demands to be embraced, not sense-made, to fully appreciate its beauty. Or as my friend and mentor Bishop Bruce Gilberd put it, 

"In the Eucharist 

reality and mystery are fused; 

there is no either-or."

Wasn't it the same with Jesus?

The living God Himself lived

among humanity for decades

unknown as such 

by those around Him.

Think about that:

God lived, spoke, made tables,

and laughed and cried amidst

humanity in such an ordinary way

that He lived undetected 

most of His life.

Even when He did "go public,"

He was still so much made up

of normal stuff that

He wasn't believed!

In His form, Jesus looked

sublimely ordinary.

In His nature, He was

shockingly divine.

And so it may also be

with the Eucharist.

Jesus lived, died, resurrected and ascended 2,000 years ago. We could be forgiven for forgetting how ordinary and natural He must have seemed to the world around Him; we weren't there! But the Eucharist lives this truth out again and again in our present lives.

 | 3 | Supernaturally Natural

Walking with God,

and Heaven invading our world,

is more natural than you think

Whilst we often spend so much of our lives seeking the spiritually extraordinary, God came to us embodied in our mundane ordinary and said, "Look! This is what divine life looks like!" To live fully alive, in obedience to, and in pleasure with Me is to be more human, not less!"

So often we're participating in God's activities without knowing it. Because as it turns out, just as with Jesus, God's divine purposes are ordinary too. For thirty quiet years Jesus went about eating, cleaning, building, being a friend, being a son, being a participant in community. He lived this way because these are all good things God has made. And so is every aspect of our lives.

That's what the Eucharist does for us. It lands our experience of God in our lives. Then we're invited to see the rest of our lives in the same Spirit-enlivened way. If humans experienced Jesus and passed Him off as just an ordinary person, we're likely to make the same mistake in our lives.

The Eucharist invites us to accept

how ordinary divine life can be,

and when it comes to beholding,

this is liberating.

Sometimes when we pray

and look out to God,

all we see is nature,

ourselves,

quiet,

or the day-to-day feelings

of malaise and struggle

we feel — 

the bread and wine.

But with a Eucharistic mind,

we can see too that those things

aren't separated from God,

but the places, people, and things

His divine life is filling.

We can see Him there.

To look at the world

is to see Christ hidden amidst it,

and though it may not always

feel ecstatic or outer body,

it's as valid as sharing a meal

with Jesus in Cana,

where before He transformed 

water into wine,

He was just another 

ordinary guest.

The Eucharist demands

that we see the world

enchanted.

The miracle of God filling

ordinary stuff is 

that ordinary stuff

suddenly becomes sacred

and otherworldly again.

To say that God fills our 

mundane lives is the same

as saying once we see

the world Eucharistically,

there is no such thing

as the mundane.

Jesus' disciples probably

didn't really understand

much of the weight of what

was going on that first night

Jesus led through the

Lord's Supper,

but that wasn't the point.

Because the table isn't 

mental assent but about

receiving Christ and

letting Him be enough.

When we eat and drink

together with the intention

of celebrating Christ's life,

death, resurrection, and return,

we're embarking on

the highest form of theology

in the most practical

and ordinary way.

If it's the ordinary stuff

of grains and grapes

that God visits in

communion to make it

Christ,

then it's the ordinary stuff

of my day-to-day life that I can

trust He'll do the same with.

+ Strahan Coleman

in Beholding*,

pgs. 116-126, 139-140

*If you are intrigued or excited by what you read, purchase Beholding: Deepening Our Experience in God by Strahan Coleman as there is more to be enchanted by in Chapter 6: The Importance of Eating God and Chapter 7: Sharing the Table then what I can include in this one post.

Bonus Deep Down Faith Goods

Q. What does it mean to eat

the crucified body of Christ and

to drink His poured-out blood?

A. It means to accept

with a believing heart the

entire suffering and death of Christ

and thereby to receive forgiveness

of sins and eternal life.

But it means more.

Through the Holy Spirit,

who lives both in Christ and in us,

we are united more and more

to Christ's blessed body.

And so, although He is in heaven

and we are on earth,

we are flesh of His flesh

and bone of His bone.

And we forever live on and

are governed by one Spirit,

as the members of our body are 

by one soul.

+ Catechism Q&A 76

Eating and drinking not only nourish us, however; they also nourish others. When we share a meal with others, we are saying we don't want them to die. We want them to flourish and thrive and be alive with us to nourish them too.

The Lord's Supper is a meal of this kind. In this meal we act out the death of our Lord by spilling wine or juice into a cup and breaking a loaf into pieces. Then, by eating and drinking, we identify ourselves as people of the cross and all that this means. And by taking nourishing bread and refreshing drink into the center of our bodies, we sign and seal our union with Christ.

In the Lord's Supper, 

we are also doing something else.

We are nourishing the body of the Lord,

Jesus' Church.

We are sharing the gifts of His food and drink

as a way of building up

our fellowship together.

As believers lift the cup

and take in a piece of broken bread,

they also serve and offer and pass

these good things to other Christians.

They are saying, 

"We don't want your faith to die.

We want you to flourish and thrive

and be alive to Jesus Christ with us.

Here, take and eat.

Here, take and drink this cup."

For Reflection

If you currently participate 

in the Lord's Supper,

how does taking communion benefit you

and help you as a follower of Jesus?

If you don't currently participate

in communion, how do you think doing so

would benefit your faith?

Baptism joins one to many, and
the Lord’s Supper makes many into one.

+ B. Robin

Prayer Starter

Say a prayer of thanks to Jesus 

for His Supper,

for reminding us of His death 

for our sins,

and for binding us close to Him

and to each other.

A sacrament is always a passage,

a transformation. Yet it is not a 

"passage" into "supernature,"

but into the Kingdom of God, 

the world to come,

into the very reality of this world

and its life as redeemed and

restored by Christ.

A sacrament therefore is not a

"miracle" by which God breaks,

so to speak, the "laws of nature,"

but the manifestation of the

ultimate Truth about the world

and life, man and nature,

the Truth which is Christ.

+ Fr. Alexander Schmemann,

For the Life of the World,

pgs. 123-124

When we consume the Eucharist,
we become what we eat:
a body given to others,
and blood poured out for others.
Your Christianity is not for you;
it’s for the world.

+ Fr. Robert Barron

Where Else Can I Go by Anchor Hymns, 2024 A.D.

Bonus Eucharist Song

Where Else Can I Go

Anchor Hymns, 2024 A.D.

Oh, oh, oh, oh

You are the Living Word 

Come down from heaven 

And anyone who eats this bread 

Is gonna live forever. (Repeat)

Blessed are the desperate ones

Who knows where their help comes from.

Oh Lord, my Lord, 

Where else can I go? 

(Repeat)

Oh, oh, oh, oh

You are the blood poured out on the altar

And anyone who drinks this wine 

Is one with the Father. (Repeat)

Blessed are the desperate ones

Who knows where their help comes from.

Oh, oh, oh, oh

I’m gonna follow Jesus the Holy One.

I have decided to follow Jesus.

No turning back. No turning back.

Next Post:

"Jesus, I Have My Doubts"

More Eucharist posts:

+ Table of Hope | Beauty of Communion 

+ Celebrating the Presence of Christ

May God's Kingdom come, His will be done.

Que le Royaume de Dieu vienne,
que sa volonté soit faite.
愿神的国降临，愿神的旨意成就。
Nguyện xin Nước Chúa đến, ý Ngài được nên.
Jesús nuestra Rey, venga Tu reino!
🙏💗🍞🍷👑🌅🌇

With anticipation and joy,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us