Our Deepest Love

 

 Acts 8: 5-8, 14-17; John 14: 15-21

 

Near the end of Beauty and the Beast, there is a scene where all the characters, the candlestick, the clock, piano, and all the rest realize that time no longer seems to be on their side and that this spell that they had been put under, hardening all of them, may soon be an eternal reality.  They’re left wondering as to why, though, because they realize that the Beast has finally learned to love Belle and yet it hasn’t broken the spell.  One of them comments that it wasn’t just about the Beast learning to love after living a life of using people for his own self-interest while looking down on others that he has seen as less than himself.  However, it wasn’t just about the Beast learning to love Belle it was also about her loving in return.  In those moments when time seems all but lost, hardness seems to be their fate.

 

Love tends to be a word that we throw around quite easily.  As a matter of fact, in the world and culture we live it seems that we have grown much more accustomed to loving things and using people.  It seems as if we love things that we can’t seem to live without but people can often become dispensable.  In order for love to deepen, as couples that have been married for years can attest to, often comes from a great deal of sacrifice, letting go, and surrendering, in order to move beyond the superficialities that we often become attached to in relationship.  It was the problem of the Beast.  He loved what others had, how they looked, while growing more deeply hardened in his own heart that he was no longer open to this deeper love, until he finally has to let go of the one he had experienced love with in Belle.

 

This deeper love is where Jesus tries to move the disciples in their own call to discipleship as we move to some of the farewell discourse of Jesus in John’s Gospel.  This message of love seems to go on for chapters in John’s gospel but even they won’t necessarily understand what it’s all about until they walk through it themselves.  The experience of Jerusalem will do nothing but strip them of their own attachments and expectations of who this Jesus was and is.  They will learn first-hand the depths of his love for them and us as they witness that love poured out on the Cross, where water and blood flow. 

 

We know, first-hand ourselves, by our reading of Acts of the Apostles that they too move to this deeper place of love in their own lives, being freed of their own hardness and self-interest.  As a matter of fact, they become more attuned to it in others and aren’t so quick to give it away, this Spirit of Truth that Jesus speaks.  No, not even what we have made truth to be, facts and knowledge; but rather this deep knowing that love is all we need in our lives and it’s love that breaks that hardness, pursuing us until we surrender.  They face that reality as they enter Samaria today and encounter a young man who wants what they have.  His name is Simon the Magician.  His story is smack dab in the middle of what we hear today with Philip but they find themselves leery of Simon.  Like the Beast, he simply wants what they have for his own good, to make money and to use people, violating them in their own vulnerability.  He wants power on what he sees that they are capable of but really not love.  There is no mutuality in order for the love to grow, the give and take, and so they refuse.  They lay hands on the rest of the community.

 

For them and for this who process of forming disciples, it was about keeping them connected to their center.  In the everyday world it was about Jerusalem and the experience of love poured out on the cross, where their lives were transformed.  But even for us it’s about finding that center within ourselves as love moves us to this deeper reality, leading us to the sacrificial love of letting go and surrendering.  The more we allow love to move us to such deep places and to break through our own hardness, even if it doesn’t seem like time is on our sides, love still grows and frees.

 

As we move to these final weeks of the Easter season we live with the same challenge of recognizing and being aware of the places that remain hardened, entombed, in our own lives.  Where are we not being open to receiving that love.  We all know what it feels like when we’re rejected by people we have loved.  We know what it’s like to hold grudges and hate, simply as a way to hold power over others, or so we think.  We certainly live in a world and culture that thinks that’s the answer.  We settle for war.  We settle for violence, even in our own lives at times, all in the name of what we think is love.  Like Beast and Belle, there is a mutuality to this deeper love in which we are called to be.

 

The call to discipleship and missionary disciples, going out as the early disciples we hear of in Acts of the Apostles, challenges us to evaluate our own lives and our own ability to receive and give this love.  This season has been about conversion and transformation, to create space in our hearts to be open to such love and to begin to see people for who they are, fellow journeyers in this world, trying to make it work, and without a doubt, aware of their own deepest longing to love and to be loved in return.  It is the tale as old as time, not only for Beast and Belle, but for each of us.  Over time we have a tendency to become complacent and crusty, hardened as the characters were in that story.  But we do believe in a God that never stops pursuing us and never stops breaking through that hardness, realizing we are never but satisfied by anything but love.  It may not come in the ways we expect or even want at times, but without a doubt, no matter what remains unfinished in our own lives can be transformed by and into love.

 

Rubber Hits the Road

Acts 6: 1-7; IPeter 2: 4-9; John 14: 1-12

For the first four weeks of Easter much of what we’ve heard from Acts of the Apostles were these great speeches of Peter on Pentecost, reminding the people of what they are about as followers of the Way.  It’s about Christ crucified, raised from the dead, and the descent of the Holy Spirit moving them forward.  He was a witness of these events and expresses that experience of this paschal mystery, as the Opening Prayer eluded to today.

But today the rubber hits the road.  We all know from our own lives and experiences that all the talk of Peter can be just talk when it rubs up against the realities of people’s lives.  Despite Peter reminding them of who they are in this deeper inherent dignity that they share in the Christ, today it appears that it’s about to all fall apart around them.  There are these two groups referenced to today in Acts.  There are the Hellenists, the Greek-speaking followers and the Hebrews, the Aramaic-speaking followers and those who we might refer to insiders.  Many were witnesses of the events and hold true to the letter of the law and it begins to push against this new-found freedom of the Hellenists who are taking the community in another direction.  It creates this tension and animosity between the two all hinged on this prejudice that the Hebrews have against the Hellenists.

All of this, over the fact that the Hebrews wanted nothing to do with the Hellenists and wouldn’t help to take care of those in need, in particular, the widows.  They were blinded by their own prejudice and couldn’t recognize the need of the other.  It puts the disciples in a difficult place and they feel overwhelmed by what’s happening and fear an early split in the community and so find a quick-fix.  They appoint and anoint Stephen and these other, now what we call, deacons, to care for the widows who are being neglected.  However, they too are Hellenists and so on a deeper level they never address the real issue.  They don’t address the issue of the prejudice and find a fix to the problem.  It won’t go away, though, and will eventually lead to the first council of the church, the Council of Jerusalem where this tension will come to fruition and will become the stumbling stone to so many of the folks who only saw things one way, creating their own letter of the law, their own blindness.

It is that stumbling stone and cornerstone that Peter speaks of in today’s second reading.  Paul uses that language in his own writings and quite honestly, the stumbling stone and the cornerstone are one in the same, Christ Jesus and what it’s going to be to be followers of the Way.  The resistance they face in that early community is often resistance we face in our own lives.  We become so attached to the way things are done and what we have deemed as the only path that one must follow that we become blinded by our own narrow-mindedness.  It becomes our stumbling stone without even knowing it half the time because it becomes so entrenched in our lives that it becomes our own prejudice that we fail to see.  Like even the early community, for many of us we’d rather die than face the change in our lives that would lead to a fuller life.

That has been the over-riding message of John throughout this season and will be the Way that the disciples will now have to face and decide if they’re willing to confront as the approach Jerusalem and the crucifixion of Jesus.  Jesus is well aware of the difficulty of choosing to follow the Way and so offers words hope to a make-shift community that is about to experience pain and that stumbling stone in the Cross.  Of course we know that they pass through and experience that same freedom as the Hellenists but doesn’t mean it gets easier.  They will quickly learn as a community that this paschal mystery that we speak of is not a one-time deal but a lifelong process of conversion.  The community will have to learn that it must die and recreate in order to become the new creation that the Gospel has spoken of these weeks and to bring to fruition the words of Peter the past few weeks, that deep down, despite this prejudice that has existed and this tension that has risen up in the community, there is this inherent dignity that lies at the heart of who they all are, Hellenist and Hebrew alike, that can only be realized in this process of conversion and transformation, this process of cycling through the paschal mystery of life and death and life again.

It’s not easy for any of us and quite frankly, we become our greatest stumbling stone to change.  Our blinders become so think that we often fail to see the more abundant life that we are created for and allow ourselves to die for the letter of the law.  We become trapped as individuals, community, even nation and world, when we don’t open ourselves up to these tensions and allow ourselves to fall into them.  It’s messy and it’s difficult but it is the path of the Way and it’s what the followers of the Way had been called to.  Sure, maybe there are different paths, but at the heart of it all, when the rubber meets the road, first and foremost it is about conversion and the transformation of our own hearts, creating space within for the Mystery to change us, free us, and lead us to a more abundant life as individuals and as community.

 

Humble Service

Exodus 12: 1-8, 11-14; ICor 11: 23-26; John 13: 1-15

One thing that Pope Francis reminds us of all the time is our gospel mandate to serve the poor. He says we are a “Church that is poor for the poor.” Certainly there is a superficial element to it when it comes to material goods and the greed, as he often says that accompanies it in the Western World, but there’s also a deeper meaning to it and a deeper longing that it often comes from deep within us, a place of poverty that yearns for us to be. Our avoidance of it so often in our lives leads us to where we do find ourselves in the world with countries like our own about accumulating while others lack beyond our imagination. It says something about our own poverty and what it is we are being invited into on this three day retreat and how we use the symbols that are a part of these days to lead us there.

On this first night, we hear a familiar gospel from John of the washing of the disciples feet as he too leads them to a place of poverty within themselves in what appears to be a rather uncomfortable position for them. The first symbol we encounter in the passage is Jesus disrobing. For the disciples of that time, something like that would have been scandalous, accompanied by the fact that the leader of this movement will then go on to wash their feet; unheard of. But as this liturgy goes on this evening we will do the same thing to this altar. Before we leave we will leave this space in a rather unusual place. None of us would do it if we were expecting guests in our own homes; we’d want it to look the best and for everyone to see what we’re about. We move away from that place of poverty within ourselves and put on a show. But the service that Jesus mandates this evening is quite the opposite. Disrobing, the stripping of the altar, the bending down, the place of humility calls the disciples and us to a different kind of service.

We are often much more comfortable with the service that we can do indirectly. There’s no harm in it all, but a Church that is poor and for the poor demands something different from each of us, to go out and within to where we are most uncomfortable, most vulnerable, and allow ourselves to be exposed as Jesus does and as we will do to this space as the evening wears on and in turn allow ourselves to be changed. John’s Gospel is predominantly about conversion of heart and it’s done by being led to those vulnerable places in our lives, humbling us, bending down, disrobing, allowing ourselves to be exposed, not to change the other but to allow our own hearts to be changed. We heard that in the weeks leading up to this point with the Woman at the Well, The Blind Man, and the Raising of Lazarus.

It was a concern for Paul as well as we are invited into Corinth today. Paul was aware even at this point that the poor were being separated from the community celebration of breaking bread. The community began to become elitist and separating itself from anyone that it deemed worthy to participate. If they were allowed it was at a different time than everyone else. In many ways, to eat the scraps left over. There was a disconnect in the mandate of the gospel to serve. Although John doesn’t come out of this community, he does originate from one of Paul’s communities and in many ways takes it all a step further. Paul lays the groundwork for this theological basis for what’s going on and then John puts skin to it and makes it real, bringing it down to earth and what it means to serve on a deeper level. It is obvious that Paul and John knew and had allowed themselves to be taken to that place of poverty within themselves and their lives are changed for ever, while remaining connected to their larger story of faith.

That’s what we hear in the first reading today from Exodus and the Passover celebration. Our Jewish brothers and sisters just a few days ago told this very story around their tables. They tell the story not to take them backwards to that place, but rather as a reminder of their story and their own journey, as a people and community, to that place of great struggle and poverty in their lives. They mustn’t ever forget who they are and where they had come from and so the telling of the story and the participation in the great symbols of the faith lead them to a place of change in their own hearts.

These days are filled with many symbols as our the readings we are invited to enter into this day. Some would say that John’s story of the washing of the disciples feet was one used in early baptisms, connecting what it was all about and the service that was being demanded of them. It throws everything off kilter from the other gospels because it’s out of order, happening not during the Passover, that somehow this Christ was breaking through even at this very moment, from the depths of their being, that place of poverty within.

The challenge for us to allow all the symbols to speak to us and to lead us to that place of conversion in our lives. It may be the bending down, the washing of feet, the humbling movement, the stripping of the altar, disrobing as Jesus does. Which of the symbols makes us most uncomfortable? That’s so often the place that God is trying to break through in our lives. This isn’t just about Holy Thursday and all we have made it out to be over the years. Rather, for John, it’s already about Easter. Lent has ended and we enter into the great feast. John is going to ask how we make resurrection a part of our lives in this moment, and this evening it comes in the form of humbling service from that place of poverty within. We are a Church that is poor for the poor, but maybe in ways we don’t always expect. Allow the symbols to speak and to change what it is we hold onto in our lives, now being washed away in the humble giving of Jesus, and as Peter eventually teaches us today, through our humble reception of that giving. That’s the point of change, the point of conversion in our lives.

Listen

Exodus 17: 3-7; John 4: 5-42

In his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey makes the point, and I paraphrase, that more often than not we don’t listen to understand the other but rather listen with the intent to reply or react. We have it all figured out, and so often without even knowing it, we predict the end of a conversation or another’s thought based on judgement, our own opinion, or simply the tapes that play over and over in our heads that have already determined the outcome. We don’t listen to understand but rather listen to reply, to react, to the other. Any, in the word of Jesus, life-giving water we may have becomes stagnant in the process. We like predictability. We like certainty. Listening to understand, however, puts us in a place of vulnerability of possibly having to let go of things and change.

That brings us to today’s gospel of the Samaritan Woman. Even that story we can predict where it’s going. We know it and it’s hard to listen to it in a different way, a new way. But that’s also the life of this woman and she likes it that way or at least wants it that way. Even the fact that she arrives at the well at noon. It’s crazy. No one in their right mind would go to the well at that time of day. It’s too hot and it would be grueling. The time for the women to go was early in the morning or at evening, when the sun isn’t so hot. But mindful that she wants the predictability, she already knows all of that and it becomes a way to avoid others, to cut herself off from them and their judgment. You see, she not only has a set of tapes about all of them, she has them about herself. If she avoids them she can avoid that feeling of guilt and shame that she has defined herself by because of her life. Jesus points out that she’s been married several times and is currently in another relationship but not married. She knows it and they do as well.

This time is different, though, because she encounters Jesus. Now even in this case she comes off as rather terse towards him. He too doesn’t belong there so she doesn’t quite know what to do. Her predictable situation now has uncertainty. But she also has a running tape about men and Jews that only complicates the matter and so she’s less than thrilled for this encounter. Our immediate thought often with John’s Gospel, though, is that Jesus is the one that doesn’t listen to understand. He seems to talk past her and there is a great deal of misunderstanding. The tapes are no longer working with him. I’m guessing it’s often the case in our own relationships as to why there is conflict, because there is misunderstanding. But it’s not Jesus that doesn’t understand. It’s me and it’s you; it’s us that don’t understand. He’s not trying to move himself to a deeper understanding he’s trying to move her and us to a deeper place, trying to break through the wall we create for ourselves that cuts us off from others and God’s love and mercy. We think these defense mechanisms are going to somehow protect us from hurt, but they only isolate us more and cut us off from each other and God. Her hurt and pain runs so deep but she begins to show signs of it breaking down. In John’s Gospel this conversion, this transformation is all a process. She begins to doubt. She begins to question. No, not necessarily God because she still hasn’t come to that realization, but certainly the predictability that she has created for herself, the tapes that she runs were beginning to break down.

It’s not just her, though, it’s also the disciples in this passage. They too are confused and rather dumbfounded by the actions of Jesus. Again, it appears that it’s him that doesn’t understand but it’s them. As Jews they too are aware of the judgment and the relationship that they have with Samaritans. As much as she knows it with them, they too know it with her. They aren’t to cross in the way that Jesus is leading them. They ask about food knowing he must be hungry and he speaks about something deep within them, the food that nourishes the heart and soul but they don’t know how to react, to respond. Their tapes as well seem to be getting frayed. When we cut ourselves off from the living water and the food of eternal life, we become stagnant. As Jesus says, you will always want more because you thirst and hunger for something that just isn’t satisfying you. There is a deeper hunger and a deeper thirst that Jesus will try to lead us through these weeks of John’s Gospel. He listens to understand. Can we do the same in return?

Which brings us to the Israelites. If anyone like predictability it was the Israelites. Think about it. These are the people that have just been led to this great liberation, set free from bondage, but almost immediately want to return to what they know. We find comfort in certainty and predictability. It makes us feel safe and gives us something to hold onto in life. But it also dries them up and dries us up. They quickly flee the living water of their own lives and return to grumbling, what they so often do best. They love to complain and see themselves as victims. That’s the tape they play. They, more often than not, do not listen to understand what and where Moses is leading, they listen to reply, to react through their own selfishness and their own small view of the world.

The readings the next few Sundays are going to challenge us in this way and to try to listen to them with fresh ears and hearts. Our natural inclination is to listen with the old tapes, knowing how the story ends and predicting its outcome. We like it that way but it also leads to suffering, isolation, and cutting ourselves off from the living water. We are invited to imagine ourselves sitting at the well with Jesus. The encounter alone breaks down our predictability of the situation and of our lives. He doesn’t listen to reply or to react but rather to understand. Can we do the same? Or better yet, do we want to do the same? Sometimes we just don’t want to change and be transformed. It’s much easier to live in the predictability of our lives, no matter how miserable we may become. Courage, we pray for that courage, to sit with Jesus at the well and allow ourselves to be vulnerable, open, and generous with sharing our story, our hurt and pain that continues to cut us off. He wants so much of and for each of us if we can simply listen to understand, and before you know it, sure, it may lead to doubt and uncertainty in our lives, but if can finally begin to open us to the love and mercy the savior of the world has to offer each of us.

Healing Divides

2 Kings 5: 14-17; 2 Tim 2: 8-13; Luke 17: 11-19

So often when we hear these healing stories within the gospels, the physical healing taking place almost becomes somewhat secondary to the spiritual healing that takes place. They appear to be so intertwined with one another. But it’s not just the physically wounded one that Jesus tries to heal. If you look at it from the perspective of God, healing is not limited to just a select few. It’s what causes so much of the tension with Jesus, that this God somehow seems to go beyond the boundaries that have been set by the people. Only by the grace of God will that begin to fall away and hearts begin to expand.

On the part of Israel and his Jewish brothers and sisters, Jesus tries to break down their image of who they think God is. They were the chosen people and began to believe it on all levels. They thought somehow the grace of this God was somehow limited to them where everyone else perishes. At times they probably felt that they didn’t even need this God; they had it handled on their own. There’s no doubt that there was contention with the Samaritans. That’s our first hint that this is more than just a physical healing that is going to happen. But the Samaritans as well need healing that goes beyond the physical. They were considered outsiders and often less-than-human, especially one suffering from leprosy. There had to be some feeling, for any of us, that this God had somehow abandoned them. So it all sets the scene for Jesus to bring about healing. For one it is a humbling and for another a raising up. How often does our own pride get in the way, thinking we can do it ourselves?

For Israel, as with Naaman in today’s first reading, there is a need for humility. He too had to get over himself. He just constantly fights with Elisha over what is being asked of him in order to be healed. Again, he had this idea of who God was and couldn’t understand why he was being asked to go into the murky waters of the Jordan to be healed. He couldn’t get over that. He was better than that and was insistent that he deserved better treatment from God. He questioned how this could happen to him in the first place, knowing his place. Yet, there was this one thing that he hated about himself that he couldn’t let go of. But Elisha was persistent as well. Elisha already understands the imminent God.

We see it in his response to the gift Naaman tries to give him. Elisha refuses and not because he somehow doesn’t see himself as being worthy of it. Rather, Elisha knows full well that this healing had nothing to do with him. It was all this God who leads Naaman to the murky waters of the Jordan working within and through him. Elisha the Prophet was an instrument of God’s grace and healing. In turn, Naaman comes through the experience a changed man, humbled by a God manifested in a different way, a new way than he ever could have expected. The very thing he hated about himself becomes the fullness of the grace given by God. Naaman finally opens himself up and God steps into his life.

Yet, there must be an openness on our part if we are going to experience such healing in our lives. We live with such division in our city, our country, and our world, with each side claiming to hold the truth. Yet, they’re all wrong. It’s God who reveals the truth. If we are in need of healing with anything beyond the physical, it’s a healing of God. We have a God problem. Using the imagery that Paul uses today in the second reading, our hearts remain chained. When we close ourselves off to the gospel we remain chained. Here he was in his final days of life, in prison, and yet speaks with such freedom. He has allowed himself to be open to the healing power of God, and even for him, persecutor of the Christians, the boundaries begin to fall away and God expands. Paul stands as a witness to us all of the possibility of conversion in our own lives. When we allow ourselves to be opened in that way, we become agents of change. We become agents of healing as he was and as Elisha was in today’s first reading.

In the time of such division with our politics and beyond, we must seek healing. If we feel we don’t need it, then we pray for an openness to it. We are all in need of healing from the divided lives we often live. It will only be through God that we will find such healing, such reconciliation. We can’t survive much longer as a race if we don’t find a way to seek understanding rather than living in fear and allowing our pride to stand in the way. God desires this healing for us now, at this very moment. As we open ourselves up to this healing, we begin to change the world. We become the agents of change. We become the agents of healing. It’s what this city, this country, and this world need now more than ever and God has us primed for such a healing in this very moment of our lives.

Love Never Fails

Jer 1: 4-5, 17-19; I Cor 12: 31–13:13; Luke 4: 21-30

Love never fails. It’s hard to ignore these words from St. Paul this weekend in one of his most poetic writings to the people of Corinth. If you’ve been to a wedding, you’ve probably heard it used as couples make that commitment. But it wasn’t written for weddings, unless we’re speaking about Paul’s only desire for union with God. The reading is a self-examination of his own life and where and when he falls short of being that love. Paul understands and believes, at the very core of his being, and the core of everyone, is love, and that never fails. Yet, we know from our own lives that seeking love is never easy and comes with great cost and great commitment. As much as it never fails it’s also not so simple to understand.

Jeremiah is one such person that struggles with it. Jeremiah, along with us at times, wants love on his own terms. As a matter of fact, he wants nothing to do with Love because he’s already aware of what’s being asked. He must wrestle with the idea and the reality of love because he also knows, once it’s been found, his life is changed forever. He can never go back because nothing is ever going to fill that longing that love does. It’s only in the moment of surrender that he finally begins to become love. He thinks he’s too young. He doesn’t think he has what it takes to be the person he’s being called to be. All he can see is the pain and the rejection it’s going to afford him. He wants love on his terms, but then it’s not love. It’s the examination that Paul addresses, a gong and clashing cymbal, all talk without love. Jeremiah was going to have to surrender to Love in order to become and be love and he does. His life is changed forever. Jeremiah becomes what he had been called to be, one of the great prophets we celebrate in the Old Testament. He becomes the voice, despite the rejection and the cost, of how Israel needed to change it’s ways. They had become comfortable with fear. They had become comfortable and complacent with war and hate. But as Paul reminds us, that all passes. It is only love that never fails and that remains eternal, otherwise it’s not love.

Jesus, of course, is Love. And as we begin this weekend in the gospel all seems fine. They love what they have to hear. But they only hear what they want to hear. They only see what they want to see. As Paul challenges himself and us, we then remain shallow, surface people, without much depth to go with it. All of that will be brought to nothing, he says. But then, without even being aware of what was happening, Jesus turns the tables on the people gathered in the synagogue. In some bizarre twist, Love has no borders and seems, in the stories Jesus says, to go beyond and even come with greater awareness beyond Israel. Of course, the chosen people are infuriated with him and want to throw him off a cliff! It becomes the downward journey in the life of Jesus who will pay the ultimate price for Love. As we move towards Lent, the crowds grow more restless when it becomes the reality that it’s not love that brings them together, but rather hatred and fear. Is it not the same today? Why is it that we humans are more attracted to the dark, to hatred and fear? We see that in our culture and certainly in our politics. Maybe they point us to the reason today. Maybe we too are aware, like Jeremiah, of just what it costs to choose the greater way, the more excellent way, as Paul states. We can’t face the demand that it places before us. But like Jeremiah, once we find it within, nothing else will satisfy, nothing else will fulfill the longing from within. All we can do is surrender to it and our lives are changed for ever.

Paul provides this great poetry to us today and warrants a look on our part to see where we have come up short. We all have and all we can do is become more aware of it, and like Jeremiah, continue to surrender to Love. It does come with great cost but the cost of not surrendering to it is even greater, a life less lived and a world that never benefits from it. It’s not just about doing things. Paul is even aware of that in his own life. Anyone can do good, know much, have faith, but without love, he says, I am nothing. Nothing. It is only love that never fails. The demand of love is not just about doing and having the right words, it’s also facing the cost of the commitment to love, and the more I surrender to it, nothing else matters, because the more I become love and I become the man God has created me to be, to become love and most importantly, to be love. Love never fails.

What Do You Want me to do For You?

It seems rather ridiculous that Jesus would ask blind Bartimaeus, “what do you want me to do for you” in light of the fact that we are all aware and know his condition, he’s blind. Wouldn’t that be the obvious answer for Bartimaeus or for any of us, for that matter, that I’d want to see? But maybe it isn’t that obvious. What makes this encounter different, knowing that this section of Mark’s gospel began with a healing of another blind guy, where the same question was never posed to him?

I have used that question many times in hearing confessions with people and we often have no idea just how hard it is to answer. I dare say that it carries with it a lot of our baggage, at least what I have been able to tell in talking with people. Our automatic reply is that God already knows what we want. Another response is a thinking that we’re not worthy enough to be asked such a question, holding not a great deal of guilt and shame that prevents us from even hearing the question. It’s not easy to identity the deepest longings of the heart and soul, especially when we really believe that there is something wrong with us, not even recognizing that it’s not only the healing but also a restoration of our dignity in God’s infinite creation.

However, before we even get to the question in today’s gospel there is first a call that takes place. Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus and in turn Jesus calls him. Remember some of the other stories we’ve heard these past weeks. It wasn’t that long ago that we heard the call of the rich man and we know how that ends; he walks away sad, unable to give up his riches. Although the disciples are directly called, they were fighting over who was the greatest, brothers bickering about who will sit on the left and right, unable to give up there thirst for power. And then the call today, from Bartimaeus and to Bartimaeus. Maybe this takes us to that deeper place of the question asked by Jesus, leading to an authentic call and response from the one who has given it all up and then follows the Lord. The one who is powerless in the life of the community, seeks the Lord in his own desperation, humbled and primed for this encounter.

The irony for all of us, though, is we often are not aware of our own blindness and blindspots that we have. The more the Lord calls out, we can continue to get stuck in that question of worthiness, believing the shame and guilt we’ve lived with our entire lives, thinking that’s the way, believing that voice when it calls. Yet, that voice of the Lord will continue to call out and penetrate through the blindness of our lives until the call from within is in union with the call from beyond, an encounter with the living Lord as it is with Bartimaeus.

As we know it was never an easy response for Israel either. They often found themselves being asked that question from within and beyond and seemingly lost over and over again, whether in the Exodus or in exile as many of the prophets write, such as Jeremiah today. Yet, that voice never stops calling them forward. But like Bartimaeus, they too often have to reach the point of desperation and humility, letting go of their own pride and shame before they can respond to the call to return to the land of life. Just at that moment when you think you can’t go any further, the mercy and love of God unfolds, eyes are opened, and we follow on the way.

In the end, the call and response is one and the same, coming from and to that voice of God that calls us out like Bartimaeus. How often do we not have time to even listen to it or get stuck in the worthiness question that prevents us from the free response to the Lord. Bartimaeus provides us the opportunity to sit with your imagination in prayer and to begin to hear the voice of Jesus speak to us, “what do you want me to do for you,” but rather than shying away, allow yourself even to be moved to tears, knowing, like Batimaues, God’s mercy and love has begun to penetrate our blindness and we can be restored to wholeness and holiness. Once penetrated, we too will pick up and follow on the way and our lives will be forever changed.