Why do you follow Jesus Christ?
I was asked this question last week.
It was a serious question.
I realized something. I follow Jesus because he gives me eyes to see.
When I was eleven or twelve years old there was a special art program at my school and I ended up having extra time to learn to draw and paint. My art teacher, Mr. Gibson, taught me to begin serious drawing and painting, and it turned out that it really wasn’t about paper and pencil and paint.
It wasn’t even about skill.
It was about seeing, about paying attention.
When Mr. Gibson taught me to begin serious drawing and painting he taught me a new way of seeing, I gained my sight.
Seeing is all about paying attention to and loving the lines, the colors, the shading, the balancing of objects and people in relation to each other, perspective, distance.
Sight is a gift to develop, seeing is a discipline, a habit of paying attention and loving all the details of the world.
What blinds us? What stops us from paying attention, from noticing?
How do we gain our sight?
A few years ago I was asked another question, about poetry this time. Why read poetry? Why write poetry?
I answered, “Because it helps me to pay attention to things that I don’t see, it helps me to see better the things that I don’t see well.”
Jesus is like that art teacher that opened my eyes, like poetry that calls my attention to a whole world that I didn’t even know was there.
Jesus opens my eyes to love all the details and relationships that make up the Heavens and the Earth, he calls my attention, he draws me into love, into responding.
Job died old and full of days. I love that turn of phrase. Old and full of days, feasting and fatted on all those days of living, so full he just couldn’t eat another bite, so he finally passed away, at a meager 140 years old, topped off and overflowing, the long painful story ends happily ever after-for those who survived.
After all the trials and ruin of his life he still demanded of God an answer, he is finally granted audience with the Almighty, and Job’s last words in the story are, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job’s story begins in comfort and blessing he is then in grief, pain filled misery and ruin, he demands to know why from God, he never gives up, and he ends in consolation, humility and blessing after he now knows God in person, where as before God was only someone he had heard of, and he dies plumped and fatted full of the vision of God, full of seeing God, full of sight.
Blind Bartimaeus has that same tenacity as Job, he calls out to Jesus, those near by shush him, and he cries out even more insistently and incessantly, he jumps up runs to Jesus and his faith heals him and his story ends with the words, “he regained his sight and followed (Jesus) on the way.”
Job and Bartimaeus are examples of what is found through out scripture, examples of what true prayer looks like, it looks like yelling at God, being insistent and stubborn and overbearing, and it ends with a longed for yet unexpected meeting with God and with seeing and a new way of living. It is about seeing and knowing God for ourselves rather than just hearing about and knowing about God.
These examples of prayer say something about who God is and what God’s people are like. They are a rowdy bunch. They do not make for quiet victims or settling for less than God being who God has promised to be.
God you are just, where is your justice?
God you are merciful where is your mercy?
God you are good, why can’t I see it?
God your love and loyalty are fierce and unrelenting, why have you abandoned me?
This is the religion of scripture, we are always drawn to address God, to bring all these things to God, even when we don’t believe, even when it doesn’t make sense, we do it any way until one day we will be consoled and overwhelmed.
Why does God do this? I would not presume to know, but having said that, let me go right head and presume. Somehow our relationship with God echoes and feels that same fierce love and loyalty that is relentless and unyielding that God has for us, and that somehow God feels that same distance and separation. The experience is mutual yet neither gives up. This is the witness of Scripture. What are we to draw from this stubborn commitment?
These days religion is often packaged as entertainment and as a quick fix with all the answers. The scriptures for today show us a different kind of faith that is not engineered for consumer tastes. We see an enduring love and we are invited to share in that enduring love through Jesus Christ, to hold on and insist until our eyes see.
I wonder if we asked God, “Why do you follow us so carefully? We are you so passionate about us?”
I wonder if God would answer, “Because you show me things I have never seen, you open my eyes, and I’m never letting go until my eye sees you.”