I Want to See!
Commentary
In Morris West’s novel The Clowns of God, there’s a powerful scene where a father and his daughter are having an argument. She tells him that she’s going to go to Paris to live with her boyfriend. He won’t let her. Why would she want to do something like that?
“Because I’m afraid,” she says.
“Afraid? Whatever are you afraid of?”
She says: “I’m afraid of getting married and having children and trying to make a home, while the whole world could tumble round our ears in a day.” She goes on: “You older ones don’t understand. You’ve survived a war. You’ve built things. You’ve raised families. . . . But look at the world you’ve left to us! You’ve given us everything except tomorrow.”
“Everything except tomorrow.” And tomorrow is the one thing that we need the most.
While the gospel reading for today focuses specifically on bringing sight to the blind, all of our lessons have in them the theme of wanting to see, hoping for clarity, seeking horizons and perspectives and “tomorrow.”
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Apart from the brief prose narrative which sets up the drama at the beginning (Job 1–2), a tiny prose interruption to explain a change of scenes in 32:1–5, and a short narrative concluding note (Job 42:7–17), the essence of the book of Job is found in the dramatic dialogues which make up its bulk. These are rhythmically arranged, and contain nuances of theodicy which attempt to answer the question of why Job is suffering. After Job makes his initial lament (Job 3), there are three rounds of dialogue, in which Job’s primary friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, explain their views. Each time, Job responds in an attempt to refute their harsh judgments about him. The friends focus on some apparently secret, heinous sins that must recently have been uncovered by God. These, according to the human accusers, have necessitated Job’s horrible current condition as appropriate divine payback in a tit-for-tat mechanistic moral world. Job continually protests his innocence, and rightly decries their poor bedside manners.
The third round of these dialogues seems to be cut short. As usual, Eliphaz (Job 22) and Bildad (Job 25) rush in to challenge Job; Zophar, however, is not included this time. Moreover, Job’s final response is more extended (Job 26–31) when comparing it to his earlier rejoinders. The apparent incompleteness of this round of disputations may be a literary device hinting that Job’s three friends have not been able adequately to respond, or to give a meaningful explanation for Job’s nasty situation.
At precisely this moment, though, a new voice enters (Job 32–37). Elihu stands and accuses the others of failing either to comfort Job or to appropriately explain the cause for his suffering. Although Elihu claims to be younger than the other men, and therefore not as likely to utter wisdom, his brief speeches provide a more complex and nuanced moral matrix. While the earlier interactions, between Job and the first three friends, muddied down into almost tedious accusation and defense, Elihu adds the dimensions of divine chastisement and education as possible causes for pain. Although suffering is usually a sign of God’s judgment upon identifiable nasty deeds, Elihu notes, sometimes it comes merely because it is part of our lot as human beings, since we live in a compromised world. Moreover, even where there might not be any specific sins on our part that merit punishment, God often uses pain to remind us of our limitations and to encourage us to seek divine help.
We are not given an indication as to how Job responded to Elihu’s assessment. Before Job could answer, Yahweh suddenly thundered in (Job 38:1–42:6). Why does God choose to make a speech at this time? The text does not say. Nor are we party to whatever conversations might have happened in the heavens of the opening scenes, while the rest of the intervening earthly exchanges unfolded. Also, to our frustration, Yahweh does not directly answer the assertions made either by the friends or by Job. Instead, Yahweh gives ten object lessons from the physical realm (Job 38:2–38) and another ten object lessons from the animal realm (Job 38:39–39:30); these, apparently, are meant to remind the participants in the drama (and also those who read it) that Yahweh’s power vastly supersedes human exploration or co-engagement. Because of God’s infinitely superior wisdom and power, according to the brief encounters which Yahweh then has with Job (Job 40:1–42:6), we ought not presume too much about why things happen as they do, nor pride ourselves about any normative or comprehensive insights we might think we have.
In the end, Job is vindicated. The report is so brief, however, that we do not know how Satan responded. The drama never brings us back to the transcendent perch granted at the beginning, All we know is that Job’s suffering, which was not specifically brought on because of grievous sins in his life, was ended, and his world was restored to its former prosperity.
So what can we learn about our existence from this drama? Mechanistic worldviews belittle and reduce life, either by claiming that physical possessions and prosperity are the end product of right living (the perspective of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar), or that pain and suffering will automatically drive one away from God (the accusation of Satan). The former forgets that God desires to have meaningful relationships with humans, even when they are flawed and sinful. The latter believes that atheism is a viable option in a world where things no longer make any sense.
This is a moral universe, according to the drama of Job, though not all pain and problems are the direct result of our sinfulness (the insight brought by Elihu). The normal or natural human identity involves acknowledging and worshipping God, but this worship cannot be coerced (as Job’s wife insinuated). The fundamental challenge to human living is that of continuing to be our truest God-worshipping selves—even when the limited evidence of daily experience sometimes seems to speak to the contrary (hence the assertions made by Yahweh). Job neither gives in to his friends’ reductionist worldview nor gives up in the face of insufficient evidence to confirm God’s care or presence. In this, Job remains truly human at its most fundamental level: He believes in God, not for the sake of trinkets he might gain by that relationship, but because to lose that transcendent connection would be to deny his very self and its reason for existence.
To be human is to be connected to the Creator. To be fully human is to honor and worship our Creator. But our humanity also prevents us from perfect worship or completely moral behaviors. Because of this, pain and evil flow both discriminately and indiscriminately throughout our societies. We need to listen to suffering in order to hear divine perspectives and guidance. When evil is an expression of our own actions, we need to repent. But just as surely, we must believe that our Creator loves us, and wishes the best for us. And we must live in hope that Yahweh will ultimately resolve all matters to our benefit and blessing.
Hebrews 7:23-28
The story of God’s love in the Bible focuses on Jesus, as the writer of Hebrews constantly reminds us. But Jesus did not appear in a vacuum. Throughout the Old Testament, God made it clear that God would send a specially commissioned person to bring healing and forgiveness to the citizens of earth. As priests and kings and prophets were anointed with oil at the start of their careers, so this person, too, would be anointed. In fact, this special deliver would be called “The Anointed,” a term which comes across in Hebrew as “Messiah” and in Greek as “Christ.” This is the idea behind the quotations and reference allusions in the first several chapters of Hebrews.
While God’s people remained confident that God was about to do another tremendous redemptive work on planet earth, the details remained shrouded and misty. It was not at all clear how the looming “Day of the Lord” would emerge from heaven’s occluded hiddenness into earth’s everyday existence. So when Jesus appeared on the scene, various interpretations about his identity and its relationship to the prophetic “Day of the Lord” quickly developed.
One perspective emphasized Jesus’ humanity, but in a divinely asserted and uniquely empowered role. Seeking continuity with God’s saving initiatives in their people’s past, Ebionite Christians declared that Jesus was “Savior” and “Messiah” in a similar manner to Moses and Joshua and Samuel at the great points of crisis and change in Israel’s history. Jesus was the Messiah foretold by Israel’s prophets, but he was truly and fully human, not divine, empowered by God to bring about deliverance for God’s people. In the face of declining Jewish commitments to the ceremonial and legal codes of the Torah, according to the Ebionites, Jesus demanded a stronger fidelity that included heart devotion in addition to external practices. Jesus was killed, said the Ebionites, because the religious leaders of his day found him threatening and unsettling, particularly when he called them hypocrites and invited the general Jewish population to question their authority. These Ebionites believed God raised Jesus from the dead to vindicate Jesus’ faithful service. Christians, they said, should respond to Jesus’ calls for deep devotion to God, and serve as his witnesses in the Jewish community, emphasizing the need for Jews to more fully and faithfully keep the ceremonial practices and holiness codes. Gentiles might also become Christians, Ebionites admitted, but only if they first became Jews, and fully invested themselves into Jewish identity and religious practices.
In effect, Ebionite Christians understood Jesus to be somewhat like a man wearing a heroic avatar persona. Jesus remained fully human, but due to God’s special dispensation of divine empowerment, he was able to speak more clearly about the things of heaven, perform miracles, and call God’s people to truer faithfulness. Out of step with most Christians, the Ebionites would only read Matthew’s gospel as scripture alongside the Hebrew Bible. They believed Paul to be a monstrous blasphemer for having adapted so fully into the non-Jewish Hellenist world of his Gentile converts, and for violating true monotheism in his declarations that Jesus is God.
We recognize this Ebionite perspective as it lingers in our current society. Jesus was a good man, some say, perhaps one of the greatest who has ever lived. Jesus was an incredible teacher, or a superb moral prophet, according to others. We have so much to learn from him.
True, but if our appreciation of Jesus stops there, we miss the biblical point. God’s work among us is not limited to injecting larger-than-life leaders into our irredeemable situation now and again, either to wake us up or get us to cope and survive. God enters our world to address the realities of sin and evil that threaten and destroy us. And that kind of job requires someone more than merely human, no matter how good or insightful he or she might be.
A competing view regarding Jesus in the early church was held by the Gnostics. Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics—nonrelational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. But since the material world actually existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god must have served as a secondary or subordinate creator. Of course, any god which would bring into being material things was already compromised. So, clearly, the deity of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament, had to be a bad god. This distinguished Christianity from Judaism, according to Gnostics. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), the god of Genesis (and therefore all of the Hebrew scriptures) was certainly less than perfect, and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all), have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
Christianity, however, is the religion of Jesus, the liberator. Obviously, if Jesus is to bring salvation, He needs to transcend the material world, which is inherently bad. So Gnostic forms of Christianity took one of two approaches when theologizing about Jesus. The Docetists (from the Greek word meaning to “seem” or “appear”), believed that Jesus was only a divine projection into our world (like a hologram), who was not actually human and did not really interact directly with material substance. It was precisely because of Jesus’ intrinsic difference from us that he was able to speak to our condition, and provide a means of spiritual escape.
The Adoptionists, on the other hand, similarly to the Ebionites, believed that Jesus was a very good human being, who was then adopted by God to be used as a temporary transmitter of divine teachings. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came upon him, granting to the man Jesus the ability to see, know, and understand transcendent, spiritual things. Later, when Jesus was being crucified, he himself acknowledged what had happened, for he raised his face toward heaven and cried out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!” This, of course, was the release, or separation, of the divine spirit from the human Jesus. Many of the Adoptionist Gnostics believed that God was deeply grateful to Jesus (the man) for his faithful service and partnership for a time with the divine spirit, and that after Jesus (the man) died, God raised him up as a new kind of creature. This resurrected Jesus was the prototype that true Christians should emulate, and toward which they should aspire.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term Gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word, γνωσις, meaning “knowing” or “knowledge.” Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent, divine spirit can communicate this necessary knowledge to us. Jesus’ life was all about this, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God, and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize that we have. Of course, the sayings and parables of Jesus would be interpreted differently by Gnostic teachers than they would by John and those who followed in his steps. That was the reason for the controversy which erupted in Gaius’s congregation in the first place.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification, through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh, and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions, or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused: “I am on a spiritual quest …” “I am seeking truth, which you might not be privy to …” “I cannot be bothered by your needs or concerns, since I have moved into transcendence …”
Third, we must release the divine spark within us, ultimately through the death of our physical bodies. This is why, in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, for instance, Jesus tells Judas that Judas’s planned betrayal of Jesus is of supreme importance, and constitutes the most necessary task that any of the disciples could accomplish. Judas is the hero of the story, for Judas alone understands that Jesus cannot be a fully blessed immaterial spirit until his physical flesh and blood dies. Only this will release the divine spark within him. So Judas is praised by Jesus as the one who does the very best thing in having Jesus killed. Physical death is the only guaranteed way to get rid of the material substance that diminishes true human life. Thus, Jesus’ death and resurrection are at the center of Gnostic theology, but their purposes are strikingly different than expressed in the rest of Christian hope and understanding. For Paul and John and the rest of the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death was a scandal and a tragedy, even if it was part of the divine purpose and will. Jesus’ resurrection was an affirmation of the goodness of human life restored, precisely in its material state. For Gnostics, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jesus’ death was the great release, and the resurrected Jesus was fully spiritual, completely separated from physical influence or limitation.
These opposing perspectives about the intended or best expression of human life produced the ethical concerns that the Apostle John addresses in his first letter. Some Gnostics evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion, and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead us into. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of Gnostic behavior, apparently, was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering which others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning. We ought not to care for others, because such investments mess us up with material reality. These actions, in turn, only pull us away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthen the capacities and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies which hold our spirits in check, and prevent others, whose flesh is weakening, from gaining more quickly the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have fostered a kind of Gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know. We who have true knowledge from Jesus are on the track toward illumination and release, while those others are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren’t like us, but there is not a thing we can do about it. We are enlightened; they are not.
Like Ebionite views regarding Jesus, these Gnostic perceptions continue to whisper. Jesus is the on-going manifestation of God’s presence, appearing now and again to people in need, righting wrongs like Superman, or performing miracles in the unlikeliest of settings.
But neither Ebionite Adoptionism nor Gnostic Docetism fit the message of the writer of Hebrews. Jesus is truly God, and that means there is no higher or better or stronger advocate for us (including the angels, esteemed and powerful as they are) who are God’s favored creatures. At the same time, Jesus is fully and truly human, sharing with us all of the realities of material and physical life. Because we are struggling in a sin-compromised world, Jesus shared our journey completely with us. But because we need a powerful Savior who is able to take us out of and beyond the fears and failings and pains of this existence, Jesus is also fully and completely divine.
Mark 10:46-52
One newspaper recently carried this ad in its classified section: Hope chest—brand-new. Half price. Long story.
We have had so many long stories in our lives. And we have had so many broken promises. And we have had so many shattered dreams. We’re ready to give up. No more promises. No more commitments. Everything except tomorrow.
That is the situation with blind Bartimaeus on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. He is a capable person with limited horizons. The light of definition is gone. Within his head, the world and the universe function perfectly, but extending these into daily life is difficulty because of his inability to see others and things around him.
Though most of us have the capability of physical sight, we are too often limited with him. We live in a trembling world. We face an uncertain future. We are surrounded by a host of plagues and troubles. We cannot see the way ahead.
Still, in the middle of it all stands Jesus, on the road with us. The old hymn puts it this way:
Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea!
‘Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
As Thou, dear Lord, on me, on me.
Donna Hoffman, a young Christian mother who battled cancer for a number of years, wrote this little poem in her journal. She was in the hospital at the time. The cancer seemed so strong, and tomorrow seemed like an uncertain dream or a tragic nightmare. She called her poem “Journey”:
My soul runs arms outstretched down the corridor to you.
Ah, my feet may stumble but how my heart can stride!
That is the testimony of Bartimaeus when he calls out to Jesus. It is our cry as well. Only God’s grace can sustain us in a world turned upside down, even when our feet stumble, even when the journey seems too long, too troublesome, even when we cannot see the way ahead. “My soul runs. How my heart can stride!”
Application
Generations ago, young William Borden went to Yale University. He was the wealthy son of a powerful family. He could do anything in life that he chose. And when he graduated, he chose to become a missionary of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
His friends thought he was crazy. “Why throw your life away like that?” they said. “You’ve got so much to live for here.”
But Borden knew who held his tomorrows. He made his choices. And God gave him the inner strength to live his convictions.
He set out on a long journey to China. It took months in those days. And by the time he got to Egypt, some disease managed to make him sick. He was placed in a hospital. And soon it became obvious that he wouldn’t recover. William Borden would die a foreigner in Egypt. He never reached his goal. He never went back home.
He could have been troubled by the tragedy of it all. But his last conscious act was to write a little note. Seven words. Seven words that they spoke at his funeral. Seven words that summarized his life, his identity: “No reserve, no retreat, and no regrets!”
Can you say that? Those who spend time on the road with Bartimaeus, those who see with the eyes of faith, those who travel with Jesus toward Jerusalem can.
Alternative Application (Mark 10:46-52)
Famous psychiatrist Viktor Frankl remembers powerfully a day of despair turned to hope during World War II. Frankl was on a work gang, just outside the fences that hid the horrors of Hitler’s infamous death camp at Dachau. “We were at work in a trench,” writes Frankl. “The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces.”
Frankl tells how he was ready to die. It was as if the gray bleakness had claws, and each moment they dug deeper and colder into his soul. Why go on? What could be the purpose in “living” if, indeed, he was even still alive at this moment? There was no heaven, no hell, no future, no past. Only the clutching grayness of this miserable moment. He was at one with hopeless depressed.
Suddenly, to his surprise, Frankl felt “a last violent protest” surging within himself. He sensed that even though his body had given up and his mind had accepted defeat, his inner spirit was taking flight. It was searching. It was looking. It was scanning the eternal horizons for the faintest glimmer that said his fleeting life had some divine purpose. It was looking for God.
In a single instant two things happened, says Frankl, that simply could not be mere coincidence. Within, he heard a powerful cry, piercing the gloom and tearing at the icy claws of death. The voice shouted “yes!” against the “no” of defeat and the gray “I don’t know” of the moment.
At that exact second, “a light was lit in a distant farmhouse.” Like a beacon it called attention to itself. It spoke of life and warmth and family and love. Frankl said that in that moment he began to believe. And in that moment, he began to live again.
We often have the same need. The grayness of bleak days is stifling. The loneliness of the moment overwhelms. The blindness of our limitations and uncertainties keeps us frozen and falling. Is there a reason to carry on? Is there meaning beyond the drudgery of today’s repetitive struggles? Is there hope and is there God?
“Send forth your light and your truth,” we shout with the Psalmist (43:3). Don’t leave me alone! Give me some sign! Light a candle in the window and take me home!
John Greenleaf Whittier puts it this way:
A tender child of summers three,
Seeking her little bed at night,
Paused on the dark stair timidly,
“O Mother! take my hand,” said she
“And then the dark will all be light.”
We older children grope our way,
From dark behind to dark before:
And only when our hands we lay,
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,
And there is darkness nevermore.
Reach downward to the sunless days,
Wherein our guides are blind as we,
And faith is small and hope delays:
Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise,
And let us feel the light of Thee.
Bartimaeus’ story mixes despair with hope, for God never denies us the light we need. As Joyce Kilmer wrote:
Because the way was steep and long, and through a strange and lonely land,
God placed upon my lips a song and put a lantern in my hand.
And suddenly we know the way home.
“Because I’m afraid,” she says.
“Afraid? Whatever are you afraid of?”
She says: “I’m afraid of getting married and having children and trying to make a home, while the whole world could tumble round our ears in a day.” She goes on: “You older ones don’t understand. You’ve survived a war. You’ve built things. You’ve raised families. . . . But look at the world you’ve left to us! You’ve given us everything except tomorrow.”
“Everything except tomorrow.” And tomorrow is the one thing that we need the most.
While the gospel reading for today focuses specifically on bringing sight to the blind, all of our lessons have in them the theme of wanting to see, hoping for clarity, seeking horizons and perspectives and “tomorrow.”
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Apart from the brief prose narrative which sets up the drama at the beginning (Job 1–2), a tiny prose interruption to explain a change of scenes in 32:1–5, and a short narrative concluding note (Job 42:7–17), the essence of the book of Job is found in the dramatic dialogues which make up its bulk. These are rhythmically arranged, and contain nuances of theodicy which attempt to answer the question of why Job is suffering. After Job makes his initial lament (Job 3), there are three rounds of dialogue, in which Job’s primary friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, explain their views. Each time, Job responds in an attempt to refute their harsh judgments about him. The friends focus on some apparently secret, heinous sins that must recently have been uncovered by God. These, according to the human accusers, have necessitated Job’s horrible current condition as appropriate divine payback in a tit-for-tat mechanistic moral world. Job continually protests his innocence, and rightly decries their poor bedside manners.
The third round of these dialogues seems to be cut short. As usual, Eliphaz (Job 22) and Bildad (Job 25) rush in to challenge Job; Zophar, however, is not included this time. Moreover, Job’s final response is more extended (Job 26–31) when comparing it to his earlier rejoinders. The apparent incompleteness of this round of disputations may be a literary device hinting that Job’s three friends have not been able adequately to respond, or to give a meaningful explanation for Job’s nasty situation.
At precisely this moment, though, a new voice enters (Job 32–37). Elihu stands and accuses the others of failing either to comfort Job or to appropriately explain the cause for his suffering. Although Elihu claims to be younger than the other men, and therefore not as likely to utter wisdom, his brief speeches provide a more complex and nuanced moral matrix. While the earlier interactions, between Job and the first three friends, muddied down into almost tedious accusation and defense, Elihu adds the dimensions of divine chastisement and education as possible causes for pain. Although suffering is usually a sign of God’s judgment upon identifiable nasty deeds, Elihu notes, sometimes it comes merely because it is part of our lot as human beings, since we live in a compromised world. Moreover, even where there might not be any specific sins on our part that merit punishment, God often uses pain to remind us of our limitations and to encourage us to seek divine help.
We are not given an indication as to how Job responded to Elihu’s assessment. Before Job could answer, Yahweh suddenly thundered in (Job 38:1–42:6). Why does God choose to make a speech at this time? The text does not say. Nor are we party to whatever conversations might have happened in the heavens of the opening scenes, while the rest of the intervening earthly exchanges unfolded. Also, to our frustration, Yahweh does not directly answer the assertions made either by the friends or by Job. Instead, Yahweh gives ten object lessons from the physical realm (Job 38:2–38) and another ten object lessons from the animal realm (Job 38:39–39:30); these, apparently, are meant to remind the participants in the drama (and also those who read it) that Yahweh’s power vastly supersedes human exploration or co-engagement. Because of God’s infinitely superior wisdom and power, according to the brief encounters which Yahweh then has with Job (Job 40:1–42:6), we ought not presume too much about why things happen as they do, nor pride ourselves about any normative or comprehensive insights we might think we have.
In the end, Job is vindicated. The report is so brief, however, that we do not know how Satan responded. The drama never brings us back to the transcendent perch granted at the beginning, All we know is that Job’s suffering, which was not specifically brought on because of grievous sins in his life, was ended, and his world was restored to its former prosperity.
So what can we learn about our existence from this drama? Mechanistic worldviews belittle and reduce life, either by claiming that physical possessions and prosperity are the end product of right living (the perspective of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar), or that pain and suffering will automatically drive one away from God (the accusation of Satan). The former forgets that God desires to have meaningful relationships with humans, even when they are flawed and sinful. The latter believes that atheism is a viable option in a world where things no longer make any sense.
This is a moral universe, according to the drama of Job, though not all pain and problems are the direct result of our sinfulness (the insight brought by Elihu). The normal or natural human identity involves acknowledging and worshipping God, but this worship cannot be coerced (as Job’s wife insinuated). The fundamental challenge to human living is that of continuing to be our truest God-worshipping selves—even when the limited evidence of daily experience sometimes seems to speak to the contrary (hence the assertions made by Yahweh). Job neither gives in to his friends’ reductionist worldview nor gives up in the face of insufficient evidence to confirm God’s care or presence. In this, Job remains truly human at its most fundamental level: He believes in God, not for the sake of trinkets he might gain by that relationship, but because to lose that transcendent connection would be to deny his very self and its reason for existence.
To be human is to be connected to the Creator. To be fully human is to honor and worship our Creator. But our humanity also prevents us from perfect worship or completely moral behaviors. Because of this, pain and evil flow both discriminately and indiscriminately throughout our societies. We need to listen to suffering in order to hear divine perspectives and guidance. When evil is an expression of our own actions, we need to repent. But just as surely, we must believe that our Creator loves us, and wishes the best for us. And we must live in hope that Yahweh will ultimately resolve all matters to our benefit and blessing.
Hebrews 7:23-28
The story of God’s love in the Bible focuses on Jesus, as the writer of Hebrews constantly reminds us. But Jesus did not appear in a vacuum. Throughout the Old Testament, God made it clear that God would send a specially commissioned person to bring healing and forgiveness to the citizens of earth. As priests and kings and prophets were anointed with oil at the start of their careers, so this person, too, would be anointed. In fact, this special deliver would be called “The Anointed,” a term which comes across in Hebrew as “Messiah” and in Greek as “Christ.” This is the idea behind the quotations and reference allusions in the first several chapters of Hebrews.
While God’s people remained confident that God was about to do another tremendous redemptive work on planet earth, the details remained shrouded and misty. It was not at all clear how the looming “Day of the Lord” would emerge from heaven’s occluded hiddenness into earth’s everyday existence. So when Jesus appeared on the scene, various interpretations about his identity and its relationship to the prophetic “Day of the Lord” quickly developed.
One perspective emphasized Jesus’ humanity, but in a divinely asserted and uniquely empowered role. Seeking continuity with God’s saving initiatives in their people’s past, Ebionite Christians declared that Jesus was “Savior” and “Messiah” in a similar manner to Moses and Joshua and Samuel at the great points of crisis and change in Israel’s history. Jesus was the Messiah foretold by Israel’s prophets, but he was truly and fully human, not divine, empowered by God to bring about deliverance for God’s people. In the face of declining Jewish commitments to the ceremonial and legal codes of the Torah, according to the Ebionites, Jesus demanded a stronger fidelity that included heart devotion in addition to external practices. Jesus was killed, said the Ebionites, because the religious leaders of his day found him threatening and unsettling, particularly when he called them hypocrites and invited the general Jewish population to question their authority. These Ebionites believed God raised Jesus from the dead to vindicate Jesus’ faithful service. Christians, they said, should respond to Jesus’ calls for deep devotion to God, and serve as his witnesses in the Jewish community, emphasizing the need for Jews to more fully and faithfully keep the ceremonial practices and holiness codes. Gentiles might also become Christians, Ebionites admitted, but only if they first became Jews, and fully invested themselves into Jewish identity and religious practices.
In effect, Ebionite Christians understood Jesus to be somewhat like a man wearing a heroic avatar persona. Jesus remained fully human, but due to God’s special dispensation of divine empowerment, he was able to speak more clearly about the things of heaven, perform miracles, and call God’s people to truer faithfulness. Out of step with most Christians, the Ebionites would only read Matthew’s gospel as scripture alongside the Hebrew Bible. They believed Paul to be a monstrous blasphemer for having adapted so fully into the non-Jewish Hellenist world of his Gentile converts, and for violating true monotheism in his declarations that Jesus is God.
We recognize this Ebionite perspective as it lingers in our current society. Jesus was a good man, some say, perhaps one of the greatest who has ever lived. Jesus was an incredible teacher, or a superb moral prophet, according to others. We have so much to learn from him.
True, but if our appreciation of Jesus stops there, we miss the biblical point. God’s work among us is not limited to injecting larger-than-life leaders into our irredeemable situation now and again, either to wake us up or get us to cope and survive. God enters our world to address the realities of sin and evil that threaten and destroy us. And that kind of job requires someone more than merely human, no matter how good or insightful he or she might be.
A competing view regarding Jesus in the early church was held by the Gnostics. Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics—nonrelational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. But since the material world actually existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god must have served as a secondary or subordinate creator. Of course, any god which would bring into being material things was already compromised. So, clearly, the deity of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament, had to be a bad god. This distinguished Christianity from Judaism, according to Gnostics. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), the god of Genesis (and therefore all of the Hebrew scriptures) was certainly less than perfect, and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all), have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
Christianity, however, is the religion of Jesus, the liberator. Obviously, if Jesus is to bring salvation, He needs to transcend the material world, which is inherently bad. So Gnostic forms of Christianity took one of two approaches when theologizing about Jesus. The Docetists (from the Greek word meaning to “seem” or “appear”), believed that Jesus was only a divine projection into our world (like a hologram), who was not actually human and did not really interact directly with material substance. It was precisely because of Jesus’ intrinsic difference from us that he was able to speak to our condition, and provide a means of spiritual escape.
The Adoptionists, on the other hand, similarly to the Ebionites, believed that Jesus was a very good human being, who was then adopted by God to be used as a temporary transmitter of divine teachings. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came upon him, granting to the man Jesus the ability to see, know, and understand transcendent, spiritual things. Later, when Jesus was being crucified, he himself acknowledged what had happened, for he raised his face toward heaven and cried out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!” This, of course, was the release, or separation, of the divine spirit from the human Jesus. Many of the Adoptionist Gnostics believed that God was deeply grateful to Jesus (the man) for his faithful service and partnership for a time with the divine spirit, and that after Jesus (the man) died, God raised him up as a new kind of creature. This resurrected Jesus was the prototype that true Christians should emulate, and toward which they should aspire.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term Gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word, γνωσις, meaning “knowing” or “knowledge.” Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent, divine spirit can communicate this necessary knowledge to us. Jesus’ life was all about this, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God, and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize that we have. Of course, the sayings and parables of Jesus would be interpreted differently by Gnostic teachers than they would by John and those who followed in his steps. That was the reason for the controversy which erupted in Gaius’s congregation in the first place.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification, through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh, and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions, or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused: “I am on a spiritual quest …” “I am seeking truth, which you might not be privy to …” “I cannot be bothered by your needs or concerns, since I have moved into transcendence …”
Third, we must release the divine spark within us, ultimately through the death of our physical bodies. This is why, in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, for instance, Jesus tells Judas that Judas’s planned betrayal of Jesus is of supreme importance, and constitutes the most necessary task that any of the disciples could accomplish. Judas is the hero of the story, for Judas alone understands that Jesus cannot be a fully blessed immaterial spirit until his physical flesh and blood dies. Only this will release the divine spark within him. So Judas is praised by Jesus as the one who does the very best thing in having Jesus killed. Physical death is the only guaranteed way to get rid of the material substance that diminishes true human life. Thus, Jesus’ death and resurrection are at the center of Gnostic theology, but their purposes are strikingly different than expressed in the rest of Christian hope and understanding. For Paul and John and the rest of the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death was a scandal and a tragedy, even if it was part of the divine purpose and will. Jesus’ resurrection was an affirmation of the goodness of human life restored, precisely in its material state. For Gnostics, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jesus’ death was the great release, and the resurrected Jesus was fully spiritual, completely separated from physical influence or limitation.
These opposing perspectives about the intended or best expression of human life produced the ethical concerns that the Apostle John addresses in his first letter. Some Gnostics evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion, and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead us into. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of Gnostic behavior, apparently, was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering which others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning. We ought not to care for others, because such investments mess us up with material reality. These actions, in turn, only pull us away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthen the capacities and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies which hold our spirits in check, and prevent others, whose flesh is weakening, from gaining more quickly the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have fostered a kind of Gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know. We who have true knowledge from Jesus are on the track toward illumination and release, while those others are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren’t like us, but there is not a thing we can do about it. We are enlightened; they are not.
Like Ebionite views regarding Jesus, these Gnostic perceptions continue to whisper. Jesus is the on-going manifestation of God’s presence, appearing now and again to people in need, righting wrongs like Superman, or performing miracles in the unlikeliest of settings.
But neither Ebionite Adoptionism nor Gnostic Docetism fit the message of the writer of Hebrews. Jesus is truly God, and that means there is no higher or better or stronger advocate for us (including the angels, esteemed and powerful as they are) who are God’s favored creatures. At the same time, Jesus is fully and truly human, sharing with us all of the realities of material and physical life. Because we are struggling in a sin-compromised world, Jesus shared our journey completely with us. But because we need a powerful Savior who is able to take us out of and beyond the fears and failings and pains of this existence, Jesus is also fully and completely divine.
Mark 10:46-52
One newspaper recently carried this ad in its classified section: Hope chest—brand-new. Half price. Long story.
We have had so many long stories in our lives. And we have had so many broken promises. And we have had so many shattered dreams. We’re ready to give up. No more promises. No more commitments. Everything except tomorrow.
That is the situation with blind Bartimaeus on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. He is a capable person with limited horizons. The light of definition is gone. Within his head, the world and the universe function perfectly, but extending these into daily life is difficulty because of his inability to see others and things around him.
Though most of us have the capability of physical sight, we are too often limited with him. We live in a trembling world. We face an uncertain future. We are surrounded by a host of plagues and troubles. We cannot see the way ahead.
Still, in the middle of it all stands Jesus, on the road with us. The old hymn puts it this way:
Thou didst reach forth Thy hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea!
‘Twas not so much that I on Thee took hold,
As Thou, dear Lord, on me, on me.
Donna Hoffman, a young Christian mother who battled cancer for a number of years, wrote this little poem in her journal. She was in the hospital at the time. The cancer seemed so strong, and tomorrow seemed like an uncertain dream or a tragic nightmare. She called her poem “Journey”:
My soul runs arms outstretched down the corridor to you.
Ah, my feet may stumble but how my heart can stride!
That is the testimony of Bartimaeus when he calls out to Jesus. It is our cry as well. Only God’s grace can sustain us in a world turned upside down, even when our feet stumble, even when the journey seems too long, too troublesome, even when we cannot see the way ahead. “My soul runs. How my heart can stride!”
Application
Generations ago, young William Borden went to Yale University. He was the wealthy son of a powerful family. He could do anything in life that he chose. And when he graduated, he chose to become a missionary of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
His friends thought he was crazy. “Why throw your life away like that?” they said. “You’ve got so much to live for here.”
But Borden knew who held his tomorrows. He made his choices. And God gave him the inner strength to live his convictions.
He set out on a long journey to China. It took months in those days. And by the time he got to Egypt, some disease managed to make him sick. He was placed in a hospital. And soon it became obvious that he wouldn’t recover. William Borden would die a foreigner in Egypt. He never reached his goal. He never went back home.
He could have been troubled by the tragedy of it all. But his last conscious act was to write a little note. Seven words. Seven words that they spoke at his funeral. Seven words that summarized his life, his identity: “No reserve, no retreat, and no regrets!”
Can you say that? Those who spend time on the road with Bartimaeus, those who see with the eyes of faith, those who travel with Jesus toward Jerusalem can.
Alternative Application (Mark 10:46-52)
Famous psychiatrist Viktor Frankl remembers powerfully a day of despair turned to hope during World War II. Frankl was on a work gang, just outside the fences that hid the horrors of Hitler’s infamous death camp at Dachau. “We were at work in a trench,” writes Frankl. “The dawn was gray around us; gray was the sky above; gray the snow in the pale light of dawn; gray rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and gray their faces.”
Frankl tells how he was ready to die. It was as if the gray bleakness had claws, and each moment they dug deeper and colder into his soul. Why go on? What could be the purpose in “living” if, indeed, he was even still alive at this moment? There was no heaven, no hell, no future, no past. Only the clutching grayness of this miserable moment. He was at one with hopeless depressed.
Suddenly, to his surprise, Frankl felt “a last violent protest” surging within himself. He sensed that even though his body had given up and his mind had accepted defeat, his inner spirit was taking flight. It was searching. It was looking. It was scanning the eternal horizons for the faintest glimmer that said his fleeting life had some divine purpose. It was looking for God.
In a single instant two things happened, says Frankl, that simply could not be mere coincidence. Within, he heard a powerful cry, piercing the gloom and tearing at the icy claws of death. The voice shouted “yes!” against the “no” of defeat and the gray “I don’t know” of the moment.
At that exact second, “a light was lit in a distant farmhouse.” Like a beacon it called attention to itself. It spoke of life and warmth and family and love. Frankl said that in that moment he began to believe. And in that moment, he began to live again.
We often have the same need. The grayness of bleak days is stifling. The loneliness of the moment overwhelms. The blindness of our limitations and uncertainties keeps us frozen and falling. Is there a reason to carry on? Is there meaning beyond the drudgery of today’s repetitive struggles? Is there hope and is there God?
“Send forth your light and your truth,” we shout with the Psalmist (43:3). Don’t leave me alone! Give me some sign! Light a candle in the window and take me home!
John Greenleaf Whittier puts it this way:
A tender child of summers three,
Seeking her little bed at night,
Paused on the dark stair timidly,
“O Mother! take my hand,” said she
“And then the dark will all be light.”
We older children grope our way,
From dark behind to dark before:
And only when our hands we lay,
Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,
And there is darkness nevermore.
Reach downward to the sunless days,
Wherein our guides are blind as we,
And faith is small and hope delays:
Take Thou the hands of prayer we raise,
And let us feel the light of Thee.
Bartimaeus’ story mixes despair with hope, for God never denies us the light we need. As Joyce Kilmer wrote:
Because the way was steep and long, and through a strange and lonely land,
God placed upon my lips a song and put a lantern in my hand.
And suddenly we know the way home.
