Noticed that there is a lot ‘seeing’ in today's gospel?
Let me run through the list.
When Jesus saw Nathanael coming
Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree
Jesus said You will see greater things than these.
You will see heaven opened.
And it got me asking myself… how is it that I don’t see? What are the chunks of driftwood in my own eyes that stop me from seeing what should be obvious to me? To my great embarrassment I managed to draw up quite a list. Perhaps you have these same symptoms and if so, my message is one of encouragement. Perhaps we can learn from each other and see a little more clearly going forward.
Our own past can blind us. We see the present and future through the filter of our past. Take for example someone who has suffered as a POW in the war. Understandably the people of the same race as the enemy are looked upon folk to be feared and not trusted. Or the person who has suffered assault at the hands of another. Is it any wonder that they are often limited in their capacity to enjoy a flourishing relationship into the future?
Few of us would fit into these categories but we all have a past of some sort and it has shaped us to who we are and how we see things. The trick I suspect is to learn from our past and to understand that our warts and blemishes can actually enhance our vision of the future.
For your reflection you might like to hearken back to the bit where James and John get their mum to ask for the front row concert tickets in the next life. The important places. Clearly their past has given them a certain perspective on what is important. It’s a skewed perception but somehow they have gotten the idea that the best seats in the house mean lots of lovely dinner parties and hot and cold running servants. Our Lord, in the bluntest way just asks them a rather disturbing question. “Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?”. Being the servant is more important than having a servant.
What else blurs our vision?
Prejudice. And by this I don’t necessarily mean thinking less of someone because they happen to have grown up in a different culture. A little story might help here. Once upon time in a parish in another galaxy and in a different time zone I naively believed that Mr. Bloggs gave his wife a hard time. I saw it clearly in the way the couple interacted. So I quickly formed to my shame a certain set of prejudices and I interacted with Mr. Bloggs in a particular sort of way. What I didn’t find out until after the funeral of Mrs. Bloggs was that she wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. And all of a sudden the scales fell from my eyes and I saw things as if for the first time and it all came sharply into focus. Or at least a little bit more so. We have no idea what goes on behind closed doors, where someone has come from, or what might have scarred them or scared them and scares them still.
Familiarity is another thing that can blind us. For example when I read the scripture most of the time I just read it and think.. yeah… I know how this goes. I know what happens. But sometimes, just sometimes, something belts me between the ears and I see something that I have never seen before. And there is a little part of me that is disappointed with Fr. David for not seeing it earlier and there is a much bigger part of me that is excited by this new found insight. I wonder what else I might discover as the days go on. Some folk find it helpful to take their pew sheet home and with one of those highlighter pens just pick out one phrase or one word. Until I started writing this homily, I had no idea that the word ‘see’ occurred so often.
Weariness too can cloud our vision. We cannot hope to see things clearly if we are tired out of our skull. Is it any wonder that God had a day off after creating the heavens and the earth and is it any wonder that The Master consistently sought out a quiet place to be by Himself? Do we pause long enough to know and asses how much battery life we have within us? I am usually unpleasantly surprised as to just how depleted my resources are.
These are just some of the reasons why I don’t see as clearly as I should and perhaps you might relate to them.
Perhaps it explains why we don’t see others as we should. And perhaps if we recharged our batteries more often we would be open to the complexities of others and read our bible more slowly and as a joy, instead of an onerous duty. Maybe then we might even see angels ascending and descending.