We spend too little time entering
into other people’s stories and we then miss the message of God. It would take me years to experience how rich
is this creation with varieties of yearning for life, decades of allowing the
coverings of my eyes to fall away. Urban
life was my best tutor, but urban life lived in Christ.
The icon that comes to mind this
day is Raul, sitting in the back pew of the church, larger than his years, gone
before I got to know him, Sunday by Sunday. Until the Sunday we spoke and the
next, slowly we know each other. Not 23
but 16, I am surprised. He is sent looking for God who was larger than in the
Church of his “youth.”
Even this was the Church he found
on his own seeking to meet the God he knew to be and found under sacrament and
senses and care.
He would teach me much, what it
is to be young again and look older, what it is to be vulnerable, to appear to
belong and be without legal papers. I would learn again the fierce love of a
mother who risked much to bring self and two children to America to save their
lives and begin again. Only Lady Liberty’s
torch was not so bright. To begin again is
no longer our national welcome. I learned what it is to live in domestic
shadows hoping for the in break of light.
I would be useful to God in connecting some resources, and then slowly
life took the fuller shape of green card to citizenship.
But none of this matched the
wonder of watching faith be and grow and become. Not just in Raul but in me, there was this
tender green shoot of faith.
And so when I read of Jesus and
the man blind from birth and the ridiculous but taught question; “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind?” I am relieved at
Jesus retort, “Neither this man
nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed
in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is
coming when no one can work. As long as
I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
And then with clay and spittle, the common things of life and touch which reaches to the
depth of God, Jesus ‘anoints’ the blind man’s eyes and he sees once he washes
in the pool of Silo’am. Does he stumble in darkness as he goes to the pool or
does someone take his hand and lead him?
Has he navigated so long by blindness that this he can do alone? We are not told but he returns seeing.
Jesus disappears for a while it seems. People who know the man puzzle at the grace of miracle and its Sabbath timing and its outside-the-law-ness. Can anything outside the law be of God who orders all things correctly? We know the answer. Too often the law has the human twist of no concern, or partial concern where the right order overshadows the right care.
But when all is spoken there remains the question of Jesus who has
slipped away.
Others said,
"How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?" And they were
divided. So they said again to the blind
man, "What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened." He
said, "He is a prophet."
I
do not know why God put Raul in my life or my life in Raul’s way. I only know that on a Christian Sabbath,
there he was and on the days and months to follow, we would both be granted
sight. He alone can speak for what he
was granted to see. I was granted the
gift of youthful faith and hope and journey, a chance to be of some use to him
and God. I was granted an invitation
into another’s life and journey and search for what makes whole. But most of all, I saw the Christ pass
between us and anoint my eyes as the taken for granted nature of citizenship
was washed away from my eyes and care was given as sight once again.
Was
either of us born blind? If so, whose fault?
Perhaps
we are all just born “so God’s works
might be revealed.” Is this not
sight. Is it not just kindness assumed and given as we yield to the divine kindness
of Christ and mud and hope.
Maybe
this poem says best what happens in God's time when we are willing just to yeild to the Christ who comes from every place and is found in story, sacrament and sign.
Christian’s Poem by Jorge De Lima
From
Divine Imagination pg. 167
Because the blood of Christ
spurted upon my eyes
I see all things
and so profoundly that none may
know.Centuries past and yet to come
dismay me not, for I am born and shall be born again,
for I am one with all creatures,
with all beings, and with all things;
all of them I dissolve and take in again with my senses
and embrace with a mind
transfigured in Christ.
My reach is throughout space.
I am everywhere: I am in God and in matter;
I am older than time and yet was born yesterday,
I drip with primeval slime,
and at the same time I blow the last trumpet.
I understand all tongues, all acts, all signs,
I contain within me the blood of races utterly opposed.
I can dry, with a mere nod,
the weeping of all distant brothers.
I can spread over all heads one all-embracing starry sky.
I invite all beggars to dine with me,
and I walk on the waters like the prophets of the Bible.
For me there is no darkness.
I imbue the blind with light,
I can mutilate myself and grow my limbs anew like the starfish,
because I believe in the resurrection of the flesh and because I believe in Christ,
and in the life eternal.
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