The three primary personalities on today's readings are each confident in God's intention. Yet each one is in a very different stage or place.Jonathan, the son of Saul, is young and naïve it seems. He is also confident in his abilities with battle. I do not know where this comes from. Just hours before, Israel has hidden man by man in holes and protected places from the might of the Philistines army with their superior weapons. Jonathan and his armor bearer have responded to Jonathan's faith or hope.
Is this a test or is it faith or is it the foolishness of youth untested? It is recorded as faith, for Jonathan works a plan that brings a victory which becomes the encouragement for Israel and her men to step forth in the future. Twenty Philistines fall at the swords of Jonathan and the armor bearer.
Perhaps it was this same clarity of God's purpose that Saul who will become St. Paul possess. Letters in hand, he sets out toward Damascus where he intends to bind the growing Jesus movement for trial in Jerusalem. He is so clear that God wants this impure belief removed from their midst. This vision of purity of faith, deeply rooted in some aspects of Judaism, forms his vision.
Yet on the road he is blinded by another vision or voice. His 'before eyes' do him no good now, only his hearing. After the voice from beyond identified as Jesus, comes the inner waiting silence. He is to know the spiritual truth by waiting for it. From this place of lost sight, lost world view as well, he holds to the tradition of fasting which is a preparation for an encounter with the holy. Having been so in control, he must yield deeply if insight is the gift he is willing to receive.
So often as we grow it is this willingness to yield our held views to deeper views that will awaken life and hope in us. The willingness is of more value than the holding on to the past.
Jesus may have been clear of God's intentions with him now, confident. This is long the Christian puzzle, how much did his humanity shade his view of divinity or how clearly could he see from the place of his humanity the task of his divinity. What we can see is his yielding. The cross is being borne, even shared. The weeping women are told to look deeper in the language of the prophets.
"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For the days are surely coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.'" Luke 23:28-29
This moment is not just his coming death. In it is humanity's judgement. As much as this judgment is seen and accepted, humanity's forgiveness might be found.
All who watched and reported these moments thought they saw a coming apart of things on Good Friday. If they were confident in their vision, in thirty-six hours or so they would have to cope with a new reality, resurrection, God intervening in unheard of ways. New eyes, eyes of faith, would be required to conceive this possibility within.
In so many ways, this is the journey of faith. In our spiritual awakening and youthfulness we are asked to accept a confidence in God and God's relatedness to us. Things happen on the way that will stop us in our tracks, knock us off our faith view, awaken us to something so new, if we are open to it. Like with Saul, our growth comes in the willingness to accept blinding to our old view, our waiting in fearful hope sometimes. Yielding to others' aid as we make sense may follow.
I think now of my mother after the death of my brother, or me after his death. I think of the many in New York after 9/11. The spiritual communities working hard to be in that place, to generate and feed workers, hold widows' hands, wait with each other as some made radical life changes. So many changes were about finding life's depth. After the empty anger was the puzzle of healing, seeing, beginning again.
For those of us who live by faith, we encountered the Jesus who bears not just his own cross arm, but in prayer and Eucharist and care, aids us in bearing our own. The compassion released in us became resurrection born of hope.
Confidence yielding to hope is so core to our faith and the faith of those gone before.
Where now do they meet in our lives?
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