|
There’s a joke that I think I’ve told
before about a man who was a window washer. He went into the
downtown area on an early Saturday morning to work on the windows of
a skyscraper. It was a bit windy but he put the scaffolding in place
to do the outside windows starting from the top. He lowered himself
and began washing. After just a short while a gust of wind caught
the scaffolding and pulled half of it loose. The man managed to grab
a hold of the scaffolding still attached and found himself dangling
high above the ground. He was unable to pull himself up and began to
cry for help. It being a Saturday morning, there were few people in
the building and no one heard his call. There were a few people on
the streets below but with the wind no one could hear him there
either. In desperation he looks up to heaven and cries, “God, please
help me!” From heaven God answers and says, “What can I do for you,
my son.” “I’m about to fall from this scaffolding. Please save me!”
God answers, “OK, let go.” The man pauses a few seconds and say, “Is
there anyone else up there?”
Though this is a silly joke, it does illustrate the reality that we
don’t easily trust God with what is really important in our lives.
We say the words often enough and it’s part of our intellectual
belief, just not how we live.
In today’s gospel story we hear of the blind man, Bartimaeus. In
Jesus’ time, a blind man could only survive by begging. A seemingly
irrelevant but actually amazing detail is that as he went to see
Jesus, he flung his cloak aside. A blind man would use the cloak to
keep warm and as a bed at night. But most critical is that a blind
man would spread the cloak out on the ground for people to toss
coins on for his support. Then he could find them by gathering the
cloak.
But how much do we trust God with what is important in our lives.
Most of us ask God to help us do what we think is important in our
lives. We are already trying to take care of it but we would like
God’s help to better assure good results. We also call on God when
we are no longer able to be in control such as when our health is
poor and we feel powerless. But God is almost just an extra on the
side, we remain in control. This is part of why it is so hard for
the wealthy to enter heaven. It’s not that God is biased against us;
rather it is that we don’t have much need for God. Let’s face it,
calling on God for most of the things we’re looking for doesn’t help
much. Prayer to God doesn’t guarantee good grades in school, that
we’ll be popular, that we’ll find a good spouse, get a good job and
career, make enough money for our wants, live in the safest
neighborhood, etc. If these are our goals, God’s a minor player in
our lives.
We, the rich, are blinded by the sense that we are in control. We do
not easily see a need for God because what we pursue is not where
God is leading us. God does not help us attain what is passing but
rather what is everlasting. We live in a culture that denies the
reality of death. We live in, as Pope John Paul II called it, a
“culture of death.” What matters is what a person can do or attain.
A person who doesn’t produce is irrelevant; the unborn, the elderly,
the sick, the poor, the guilty. We’re OK with these dying as they
don’t matter.
Unlike Bartimaeus, we probably cannot fling our cloak away as Jesus
calls us, we’re too comfortable with what we have. We can’t easily
imagine life different than the way we live it. But perhaps we can
take a small step. We can ask to be able to see our blindness enough
to see the need for healing. Maybe we could push ourselves to be a
little uncomfortable as we seek to let go of our own securities and
find we can trust in God. |
|