What are the things that get in our way? Not just the stumbling blocks that make life a little rough, but the things that are actual obstacles to our lives of faith. It’s a question worth pondering, because I think that for many of us those obstructions are things we couldn’t have imagined.
Our Gospel reading today begins by telling us of a woman who had spent much of her life crippled. Jesus who happened to be teaching in the synagogue when she walked in immediately called her over and identified her condition as a spiritual affliction. Luke also tells us that she had been living this way for eighteen years before Jesus healed her. So it’s no mystery why everyone was so excited about this, especially the woman. However, not everyone is quite so happy.
This is of course the kind of response we’ve come to expect in the Gospels—namely that Jesus’ opponents are interested in discrediting him at every turn. Once again, Jesus’ opponent is absolutely right according to the Law—the Sabbath laws are very clear about how one should take rest. But, as we can once again plainly see the opponent misses the bigger picture—Jesus has performed another miracle, and one more person is made whole and restored to the community.
For this man who challenged Jesus, perhaps his opposition was related to his strict adherence to the Law. However, whether or not it was because of a sort of pettiness as the Gospel writer seems to suggest, the point is that the man seems to be so detained by his views that he cannot even see divine action right in front of him. His own short-sightedness literally makes him miss the power of this moment.
But if we were to consider a best intentions scenario in this reading, we realize that this man simply could not get past his own ‘stuff’ (to use the theological term). And if we’re willing to be honest, we could probably think of times in our own lives when we’ve missed God. Times when we couldn’t get beyond some thing that had us hung up, and we just missed the boat. Perhaps if we just could have identified those things sooner, things might have been different.
So, what are the things that get in our way? It’s actually a pretty difficult question to answer, like I said, it’s not always the most obvious things that are our stumbling blocks. In fact, when I asked myself the question, I was a little surprised at what I discovered.
First off, let me say that it is a strange thing being a clergy person. Even if I’m not wearing my clericals, inevitably I will happen into a conversation with someone who will ask me my profession, and I tell them. What happens next is a series of awkward retractions and apologies for certain kinds of language, behavior, et cetera, ad absurdum. As you can imagine, that’s the part I hate. It’s as if suddenly I’m no longer the person they struck-up conversation with, and suddenly I am a sacrosanct prude who just got let out of my prayer cell.
This isn’t the worst part of it, though. Instead, what I find is that in those moments, I tend to understate what my vocation really means to me. It’s as if I’m somehow worried that by me being honest about how much I love this work and all of this Church stuff that I will somehow offend someone, or turn them off to Christianity forever. After all there are a lot of people with baggage when it comes to religious and spiritual life.
But what I realized is that I may also be missing an opportunity to show how deeply my faith affects everything that I do. I miss the chance to show that there are genuinely devout, young clergy people in the Church, and that we’re not all crazy. And if someone does have baggage, couldn’t it be helpful to see and hear positives about the whole thing?
Certainly I want to react against the old clergy-centric models. I do believe in being approachable. But while I want to respect the comfort level of another person, I also don’t want to miss an opportunity to be honest about what God has done in me and might be trying to do through me in the moment.
We find a similar issue in the church, where it feels as though we may be encroaching on someone if we’re honest about the depth of our faith, or our personal piety. And while I do believe there is a time and place for such conversations, it does seem ironic that such conversations never seem to surface—not even at church. Perhaps in this case what we have come to believe to be congeniality may be disingenuous, and as such an impediment to our faith.
But this is just one kind of issue, for each of us our obstacles may be quite different. For the young would-be prophet Jeremiah, he couldn’t get beyond himself enough to realize that God was calling him to be a prophet. It’s true that he would have his work cut out for him, but what Jeremiah missed was that God was calling him in spite of his shortcomings. If God hadn’t set him straight, Jeremiah could have gotten in his own way and maybe even missed God’s call.
Jeremiah’s obstacles may not be the most common, but just like in his case, we find that God is the one who reveals such obstacles to us. And inevitably, God puts them all into perspective and helps us get past them.
So what are the things that get in your way? What’s more, how do we identify them? First, we have to seriously ask ourselves the question, and then be brave enough to hold it up in prayer. And I believe that the God who leads us into all truth will never lead us astray. But, because of the deep love that God has for us, he will make clear those things that make our way difficult—whether we recognized them or not. Because as St. Paul said, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:38-39).” If that’s the case, we can be certain that God won’t leave us in the dark about the things we allow to get in our own way. But it all starts with our willingness to allow God to help us realize them. In the end, all the work will be worth it if it makes our journey with God that much easier.
No comments:
Post a Comment