Lent 4AJohn 9:1-41
In the name of the God of wisdom
and strength, beyond our imagining.
Amen.
As a lot of people have been
trying to make sense of this experience of working remotely – an experience
that’s new for a lot of us. And one of
the ways that people have been exploring this new reality has been playing a
bit of a game that’s been running around Facebook for a few days. The game is simple: talk about the young
children or pets in your home as if they are your co-workers, and we’ll all
imagine how HR would respond to your complaint.
I saw one post that said, “My
coworker just chewed up my headphones so now I can’t listen to music.”
Another said, “My coworker asked
for carrots, so I gave her carrots. Now
she won’t stop crying because she hates carrots.”
I never did post it online, but
mine would be something like: “My coworkers scream and cry whenever I leave the
room. They’re so needy!”
But it has been sort of funny to
imagine how our dogs are reacting to this.
Michael and I love to speak for them, since they can’t speak for
themselves. The other day, I imagined
one of them saying, “Daddy, I’m so glad it’s always Saturday now!”. Michael thought about how we must be
interrupting their routine, and suggested that our Chihuahua might be ready for
us to go back to our offices. At the
very least, he must be feeling sleep deprived with us home so much!
But there is something sort of
comforting about the ways that young children and pets don’t really get
everything that’s happening in the world around us. They don’t understand the troubling
news. They may sense our worry, if we’re
worrying, but they don’t, on their own, know why we’re worrying. They’re just going about their lives.
As I was reading this story about
the healing of the blind man this week, I imagined the religious leaders in the
time of Jesus being sort of that way.
The world was changing around them, but they didn’t really understand
it. People’s perspectives were shifting,
but they kept trying to go about their daily lives as if nothing was happening.
Like some of our “coworkers” in
those Facebook posts, their reactions may not have made much sense to people
who did understand what was
happening. In the wisdom that can only
come from hindsight, their reactions probably don’t make much sense to us.
Why would they reject the signs
of the Messiah burgeoning around them?
Why would they respond to miracle healings with anger? Why would they interrogate someone sharing
good news? Why would they keep on, when
they didn’t like the answer?
It doesn’t make much sense to
us. But the thing is, the new world that
Jesus was introducing didn’t make much sense to them, either. Much like us, they had ordered their world
around a set of beliefs. And when those
beliefs were challenged, it felt like their world was falling apart. They had to cling to what they knew to be
true.
Right now, for a lot of us, the
world feels like it’s falling apart – at least somewhat. We, like those religious leaders of so long
ago, have ordered our lives around not just our faith, but our understandings
of the ways that the world is meant to work.
We had come to expect being able to find whatever we wanted on the store
shelves. We had come to expect being
able to shake hands and to hug and to worship together in one room, and to
feast on Sundays on the Body of Christ – both in bread, and in the
relationships we share with each other.
It’s a shift. And it’s not even the kind of forever shift
that the religious leaders of Jesus’ time had to make sense of. It’s just a little shift for a little while.
Of course the other side of
seeing our dogs’ reactions to our new, for-now patterns, is that sometimes,
their worry is unfounded. When a
squirrel wanders by the window, they may panic, but we’re not really being
invaded. We’ll be just fine. When they cry because Michael or I have left
the room, they don’t realize that it’s only for a time, and that we’ll be
together again soon.
Right now, while we’re worrying
and missing one another – I like to imagine that God is thinking about us the
way I think about the dogs’ outsized reactions.
I love them, but I know more than they can understand right now. And I know that they’re going to be
okay. And God knows that we’re going to
be okay.
Maybe God is looking at us right
now with the same love and greater understanding. Things are uncomfortable. Life feels a little uneasy. But when we focus on only right now, we’re
blind to the bigger picture.
But we will see. We will see that Christ is with us. We will see that God has been in the midst of
this, all along.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t disrupt our lives right now, because smart people have told us that it’s for the greater good. It just means that we don’t yet know the whole picture. Soon we’ll see more. Soon we’ll all be back together in the same room again. Too long, sure, but soon. Soon and very soon. Amen.
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