3-18-20 - In Trouble

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

It’s kind of amazing that Jesus has been held up as a role model to generations of children, given his penchant for talking back and getting in trouble. He’s the “Dennis the Menace” of world religious figures.

Of course, John’s gospel tends to emphasize his increasingly tense dealings with the religious authorities. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are based on common story traditions, Jesus always seems to be doing a miracle. In the Fourth Gospel, which is more “shaped,” the stories of Jesus’ signs are fewer, but build upon each other, involving greater and greater risk as Jesus confronts the scribes and Pharisees with evidence of divinity they’d rather not acknowledge.

It doesn’t help that Jesus seems to heal people any day of the week, even the Sabbath, leaving himself open to charges of violating the Law by "working.” This miracle with the man born blind really shakes things up: 

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided.

They interrogate the newly sighted man a second time; this time he says, “He is a prophet.” Not liking that answer, they call in the man’s parents to witness that he was indeed blind from birth, and that he now sees. The parents are terrified – they’ll admit he was born, and born blind; they refuse to comment on this new turn of events.  “Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.

Banishment is an extreme threat – and a measure of how threatened the Jewish leaders were by all that Jesus represented. The evidence of Jesus’ holiness and spiritual power was always before them – but to accept his claims seemed blasphemous, and would mean acknowledging his authority. These were men clinging to limited power under the thumb of the Roman occupiers… too much was at stake.

How about us? What order in our lives might be threatened by acknowledging the “God-ness” of Christ? Accepting that his power is real and still at work in the world around us? Are we keeping Jesus at a safe distance, locked up in a pretty building, visiting him for an hour or so once or twice a week?

Or do we invite him into our lives, into our cluttered living rooms, into our frenetic days and never-done to-do lists? Are we willing to let him roam freely through our work and relationships and leisure activities, perusing our bank accounts and spending patterns? What if he suggests some changes to our priorities? What if he asks us to commit some time and resources to other things, other people?

There’s a lot to pray about in these questions – and a lot to offer to God, if we want to open our hands and hearts. We must issue the invitation; the Spirit of Christ seems rarely to come where not invited. And, most of the time, Jesus doesn’t even knock that many things over. He takes his time and lets us come around to his way of seeing before inviting us into new patterns of being.

Sometimes. Other times, he can be a little “Dennis” like… but, you know, like Dennis, kind of lovable.

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