Making God Manifest—a meditation on the blind man and the beatitudes

“And His disciples asked Him: Rabbi,

who sinned, this man or his parents, that

he was born blind? Jesus answered:

It was not that this man sinned, or his parents;

but that the works of God might be made

manifest in him.”  --John 9:2-3

When we wonder about suffering, whether in the world art large or at our own particular “ill luck,” or insufficiency, we might want to remember that the suffering isn’t our fault, and it isn’t the fault (or the sin) of our parents.  When some pain or lack in our lives gets too hard to handle, we often seek someone to blame.  We look for some kind of explanation; and it often seems easiest to blame a person—make them the villain of our story.  It feels like a curse has come upon us, and someone has to be at fault; either we have brought this on our self, or someone else is the cause. If we blame bad luck, or fate, or “the world,” then in effect we are actually blaming God (whether we are using a big “G” a little “g”).  But, here in this little story, the Lord seems to be telling us that what feels like a curse (or bad luck) may in fact be a kind of blessing.  Even better, an opportunity for a blessing to be shared: for the “works of God to be made manifest” through us.

In my personal Bible study, I am still reading through the Psalms, and in my work Bible study group we are reading Isaiah, and now for Lent I am rereading a wonderful book by the Orthodox writer Jim Forest, The Ladder of the Beatitudes (Orbis Bks.1999). Which (in turn) sent me in search of John's gospel and this story about a man born blind.   (As the psalmist says: “All doers of evil are scattered…” –and boy am I!)

Anyway, as part of his introduction, Forest devotes a brief chapter to this story from John 9 about a man born blind. And because it seems to have nothing to do with the beatitudes, I almost skipped right over it.  I was too eager to get to the whole "tofu and potatoes" of the poverty and mourning and all that "blessed are" stuff… What does this blind guy have to do with beatitudes, anyway?

Aside:  Let me back up a moment here.  Some people are of the opinion that reading is a linear act… i.e. page 1 is followed by page 2 and then 3 and then 4 and so on until the end is reached (or the book is lost on a bus –whichever comes first).  But I (being a librarian) am a professional and have never felt constrained by things like page numbers and chapter order or plot progression.  To my family’s chagrin and frustration (I fear), I often will begin a book somewhere near the middle and read for several pages (or chapters) before going back and picking up pieces of the earlier action (at random).  It is possible this odd habit of reading a book as if it were a cubist painting is a form of literary dementia, or simply a sign of intellectual instability… Nevertheless, it is true, and I thought I should confess it. 

Back to the story at hand:  Instead of skipping the chapter, for some reason I kept reading; and as I did, I had that wonderful exhilarating sense that something of great import was being said; a truth revealed.  Near the end of his brief chapter, Mr. Forest takes a moment to put himself in the place of the blind man.  He imagines sitting in darkness and hearing people talking; they are asking someone questions (about him!). Whose fault it is that he was born blind (him or his parents)? And with some curiosity, he listens to hear what will be said.  But what he hears catches him off guard. It is someone speaking not about fault or sin or blame, but about making the works of the Lord visible.  Forest imagines the blind man’s confusion; how can his blindness have anything to do with the glory of God?  But then something happens.  The voice comes near and a man puts wet clay on his eyes and tells him to go wash it off.  And when he does, suddenly it is true; the work of God is made manifest in all His glory. 

And that is when I started thinking back to that discussion I was having with my wife the other day. Driving home from work, we were trying to remember all the beatitudes, and wondering what Jesus actually meant by these paradoxical teachings; and how we (personally) might find a blessing in each of them.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… blessed are the persecuted…

And we struggled.  How can one find a blessing in poverty? Where is the blessedness in mourning? How does one find good in being persecuted? To be concrete, how is homelessness a blessing? In the moment, in the experience of it, they all feel like crushing weights, disasters even.  Yet, Jesus tells His apostles that the blindness of this man isn’t a punishment or a disaster, but an opportunity for the work of God to be made known.  Thinking about this, I realize that I too was blind.  I was getting to wrapped up in the darkness of my own anxieties (and habits) to see the truth; I was too busy blindly searching for the “right answer,” to let God’s work be made manifest.  Yet, something stopped my heedless rush, someone slowed me down with a little simple discussion of a seemingly unrelated passage from a different gospel (simple as dirt and spit) and opened my eyes: the beatitudes are not just about us, or about our comfort, they are about making the glory of God manifest to the world. They are about creating opportunities for God’s presence to be revealed.  And where does Jesus promise He will always be: in the hungry, in the naked, in the prisoners (the persecuted)…

Take a moment and read John 9, you can read the whole chapter in less than 5 minutes.  Then open Matthew and read the Beatitudes (5:3-12), and spend a little time praying over it with that blind man in mind. (And maybe pick up a copy of Jim Forest's book.) Anyway, that will be part of my Lenten prayer this year and if I am lucky, I may begin to see my life in a whole new light. 

Anyway, that’s my plan. This Lent, I will be contemplating the beatitudes with the help of Jim Forest.  And my hope is that I can learn something about the blessing of poverty, or mourning, of hunger and thirst, of mercy and peace or… perhaps, I will wait a while to ask for that other one…

Lord,

Let me not be blind to Your presence in all

those who hunger, in all who mourn, in all who

feel persecuted, belittled or forgotten. Open my eyes

to Your glory, Your grace, Your love made manifest

in the needs of others. Stir my heart, that I may greet

all those in need with generosity with love and humility.

Amen

The Crown of Christ the King

“Come you who are blessed by my Father…

For I was hungry and you gave me food…”

--Matthew 25:31-46

“I was hungry…” This reading from Matthew has always spoken to me –as (I am certain) it does to so many.  It leaves me pondering the many times I have met and turned away from Christ.  He was standing right before me and I turned away or I drove right past him standing at a corner or I rolled up my window as he approached to ask for change.

How often have I turned from Christ and hardly given it a thought?

When we look at that man standing on the corner holding his sign or holding out his hand many times we don’t see Christ; we see a wreck of a person or we see a possible threat, or we see someone we suspect is trying to take advantage of us (a scam?), but rarely –I imagine-- do any of us look at that person and immediately see Jesus.  And yet, that seems to be what He is saying here.  Jesus doesn’t say to us: When you do this, it’s like you were doing it for Me. Consider it a form of spiritual simile, if you will. The poor are symbolically my presence and therefore if you do something for them, then metaphorically you are doing something for Me –at least on a spiritual plain.  Jesus seems to be saying that when we care for the poor, the hungry, the prisoner, the sick, the stranger we are in fact caring for, visiting, feeding, helping him.  It seems to me, that He is being pretty clear about this. That when we care for those in need, we are caring for Jesus. And yet, knowing that –in my heart of hearts—how many times has God come to me, literally walked up to my car window and presented Himself to me, prepared to touch my life with His presence –His grace—and I turned away because I was too busy or too scared. Because he looked too grimy or too tattered or too smelly or too desperate.  And, of course, there were times when I thought the guy standing there with his hand out wasn’t tattered looking enough; he was probably just some guy pretending to be poor.  Some cheat who will just take my money and waste it on beer or drugs!

               

But, what if I rethought that; what if I just retyped it:  what if I simply changed “he” to “He?”  Would that capital H make any difference in how I treated him/Him: the poor woman or man, the sick, the half-naked hungry stranger?  I think it would.  If I started looking at that destitute person at the stoplight not as some “thing” to be avoided, but as “someone” to be welcomed (a King, perhaps), I think it would make all the difference in the world.

What if I really heard these words and believed them?  What if –instead of letting this oh so familiar reading wash over me and fill me with a sentimental feeling, what if really listened and let it change my life.  Hearing these words, really hearing them, what if I went forth filled with a desire and a commitment to meet Christ in the poor and the sick and the prisoners?  What if I went out filled with a desire to reflect God’s generosity back to Him by giving freely to the poor, the sick, the naked, the stranger. What if I opened my heart to the blessing of God’s special presence in His poor? What if every time I went out, I was prepared to meet Him face to face in His people?

Instead, too often, on hearing it I am momentarily filled with a sentimental love of the poor that fades almost as I get up from the pew (or close my Bible), and dissipates too quickly into worries about myself, my family and my “poverty.”  And then, instead of looking for Christ, I avert my eyes, roll up my windows and keep my wallet safely in my pocket when He approaches.  Too often, instead of looking for God in the poor and the hungry, I find I am looking only at myself, and seeing there (in my reflection) my real god. 

All of this reminds me of Dostoevsky’s Fr. Zosima (from The Brothers Karamazov). Zosima is an elder in a monastery who presents Dostoevsky’s simple and faith-filled response to Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor allegory.  In a relatively early scene in the novel a “woman of little faith” comes before Zosima asking for help. She claims she just wants to know for certain that there is a God, and that the soul is immortal.  Zosima tells her that there is no proof for the existence of God, but one can be “…convinced of it… by the experience of active love.  Strive [he says] to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably. Insofar as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul.  If you attain to perfect self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will believe without doubt.  This has been tried.  This is certain.”

That doubtless certainty is perhaps what Christ means when He calls speaks of those "blessed by My Father..." They are blessed with a faith that sees Jesus in the poor and doesn't look away.  

If I want to know for certain that God exists, if I want to know without doubt, if I want that blessing, then I must love my neighbor (and that includes my wife and kids and mother-in-law) actively and indefatigably.  I must treat them,the hungry, the homeless, the stranger, the sick, the prisoner (and the mother-in-law) with love and compassion. Then, and only then, I will know without doubt that there is a God. Because then (and there) I will meet Him face to face.  

“When did we see you hungry or a stranger or sick and feed
you or welcome you or visit and care for you?”

This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King.  How is it we recognize a king? Most of the time, we recognize a king by his crown.  Ask yourself, where do you find your king? Where do you see His crown?

Praying for hunger: Corpus Christi & the food of God

“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood, you do not have life within you.”
--John 6:53

 “Brothers and sisters: The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not
a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break, is it
not a participation in the body of Christ?  Because the loaf of bread is one,
we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”
--1 Corinthians 10:16-17

What does it mean to eat the flesh of the Son of Man? What does it mean to participate in the blood of Christ?  What does it mean to hunger after the body of Christ?

Here in the 21st century, as we struggle with all the issues of our day, how do we live out this calling? How do we truly participate in the blessing of His blood? His body? Those are questions that are key to the solemnity of Corpus Christi. We are called on this day to give special attention and adoration to the sacramental presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.  And the church has selected these two readings from Corinthians and John's Gospel to help us remember that we are called to participate in the blessing that is the body and blood of Christ.  And so, some churches will have processions and set aside time for adoration of the exposed Eucharist: the body of Christ. It is a call we must not ignore, because it is a call for us to grow not only in our faith but in our hunger for God.

The first reading for today's mass is the one that spoke to me today.  The Old Testament reading  from Deuteronomy. And especially this passage:

“…He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you
with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers…” (8:3)

In my New Jerusalem Bible, this verse reads:

"He humbled you, He made you feel hunger..."

I think that reading it I was reminded of poor Abram (in Genesis) being called out of his homeland and away from his kinsfolk and lead to a foreign land. Humbled and probably feeling a bit afflicted by God asking so much of him. And, of course we see the same kind of reaction from the Jews wandering in the desert for 40 years, complaining to Moses that He led them out of Egypt (where at least they had food and shelter) only to let them die of hunger in the desert.

  When God leads us away from the familiar and the safe, He leads us into a kind of hungering --and certainly it is  (as far as I can tell) always a humbling experience. God leads us out of our safe space and allows us to be afflicted with hunger, if not for actual food, then for safety and security, for friends and family, for comfort and reassurance.  And God lets us be afflicted by this hunger, not to test us or prove to us He's the boss, but in order that He might feed us with a bread unknown to us and to our parents. 

What is this bread that we do not know? This manna? That is my question?  And how do we get it? I think there is a clue in a famous scene in John’s Gospel.  When the apostles return to find Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well, they offer Him something to eat, but Jesus tells them He has food to eat that they don’t know about.  And when they are puzzled by that, He explains:

“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete His work…”
–John 4:34

I wonder if that doesn’t tell us something about Heavenly food, about manna, and also about the importance and the work of prayer. We tend to think about prayer as a way of filling our tank. We go to God in prayer so He can fill our spiritual tank up for the work we have to do, or the world we have to face, etc. etc.  We go to God because we need grace and we have a spiritual longing for the divine.  I certainly don’t deny any of that.  But, I also wonder if the paradox of prayer is that instead of filling us up, the real work of prayer is to empty us out. And that by emptying us it prepares us to be filled by the real food of God’s blessing; the real manna; that food that Jesus is talking about.  We go to prayer not to be filled, but to be emptied, so we can be made hungry for  the will of God, the work of God.  To be made ready for this meal, we have to be humbled, and perhaps a sign of this humility, of the process of being humbled is a growing hunger, a longing for something we cannot achieve on our own; something we cannot even imagine for ourselves: a food unknown to us and to our parents.

Like Abram, lead to a strange land, when we kneel in prayer we are emptied of all our earthly resources, all our powers and glories and achievements; humbled; we are emptied so that God can fill us with grace and make of us a blessing to the world –That is how we participate in the work of God. We pray not to be filled up, but to be emptied, so we can be fed by the work of God.
Want to know what work God has for you? Empty yourself in prayer. Let God afflict you with hunger through prayer. And then let God feed you with the food that Christ spoke of: the Work of God. 

Are you listening, Mr. Sutter?  Put down those chips and that bowl of dip, something better awaits you.