This blog comes to us by way of Liza McGrane, a 1st-year student here at the Mount.
Recently I read through John’s Gospel for the first time. I was shocked to see how many times Jesus literally tells them exactly who he is, and they still didn’t believe him. This made me ask myself the question, “How often is Jesus right in front of me and I don’t see him?” So, I ask you the question, “How many times has Jesus been right in front of you and you don’t see him?” It’s hard to say, isn’t it? There are basic answers we could give, like, “Oh, I’m sure there have been plenty, but I can’t think of anything specific,” which would be correct. Similarly, there were plenty of times Jesus revealed himself to many individuals and groups in the Jewish community.
One of the very first examples of Jesus revealing himself is the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. This is significant because A: Jews weren’t supposed to talk to Samaritans and B: because men didn’t talk to women in public places in those times. After talking for a little while, in John 4:25-26 they have this exchange. “The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Anointed, when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he the one who is speaking with you.”” And that’s it, that’s all it took: she believed him, that he was the Messiah. It really is that easy. All we have to do is believe-- however, this wasn’t as easy for many who spoke with and saw Jesus, the same way it can be difficult to see Jesus when he’s staring right in front of us.
In John 5, Jesus talks a lot about how “the one who sent him.” To us this seems obvious that he’s talking about God the Father, but the Jews think he’s crazy. I’m paraphrasing, but Jesus says things like, “I came so you might believe in the one who sent me” and “There’s no way you’re going to believe in God if you don’t believe in me.” John 5:39-40 says, “You search the scriptures because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life.” Jesus is basically saying to the Pharisees, “You think the scriptures will give you eternal life, but they literally tell you of me. They tell you exactly who to look for and now that I’m here you’re not paying attention. You’ll just keep looking in the scriptures when I’m right in front of you.” So now I ask the question,: In what are we searching for Jesus when he’s staring us in the face? Or is our idea of what Jesus is “supposed to” look like that’s getting in the way of us seeing him?
There comes a point in Jesus’ ministry where the Jews start to argue over whether or not Jesus is the Messiah. Some think he’s just a prophet, other’s do think he is the Messiah, and some don’t believe he’s the Messiah because, “The Messiah will not come from Galilee, will he” (John 7:41). This is an example of letting our notion of what Jesus should look like get in the way of allowing us to see him. There’s no “correct” way to see Jesus,; either we see him, or we don’t. When a friend takes time out of their day to go on a walk with us or when the flowers start to bloom in the spring, we can see Jesus there through the kindness of that friend or the beauty of life. Not only can we fail to see Jesus in the world and those around us, I think we can fail to see Jesus in ourselves. I think in today’s world we've been conditioned not to be confident or take pride in ourselves because we didn’t want to be seen as prideful or too vain. So instead of having the right amount of confidence or belief in ourselves, we decided we couldn’t have any at all and so it’s hard to see Jesus in ourselves then. But Jesus is in us, too. If we’re that friend who takes time out of our day to go on a walk with someone else, they can see Jesus in us, and we can see Jesus in ourselves too.
I am currently reading a scriptural devotional for women called, I Choose the Sky by Emily Wilson. Although this is a devotional geared towards women, I thought there was one message that was especially pertinent for everyone and related well towards this topic. One specific devotional tells the story of a crippled woman from the Bible, always forced to look at the ground:, that was her physical perspective. But, how often are our perspectives of our hearts like that of the women’s physical perspective. what about the perspective of our hearts? Every time we choose negativity and pessimism and complaining, we choose to look at the ground when we have every opportunity to choose to look at the sky. “When we choose pessimism, we place blocks in our hearts to seeing the goodness of God or even recognizing His presence before us” (p. 33). This is what negativity does to us. If we are always looking at the ground, we will be like the Pharisees trying to find Jesus in the scriptures when he was right in front of them. If we are only paying attention to the negativity in our lives, it’s going to be really hard to see Jesus. It also goes back to being able to see Jesus in ourselves. If we are constantly bringing ourselves down that’s all we will be able to see. We won’t be able to see him present in ourselves and all of the gifts and talents he has given us as blessings to be Christ to others.
“A life spent in awe of God’s goodness, of speaking uplifting words, of sacrificing with joy for others - this is the life and perspective which allows us to look up at Christ before us in our lives” (p. 34).
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