I did not know him!
John the Baptist seems surprised.
Perhaps a little disappointed. Here
is the one I have been preaching about, looking for, anticipating, and I didn’t
know him. Finally John saw the Holy Spirit
descend on Jesus. Then John got it. OOOOHHH, He’s the one. John comes to insight.
This failure
to recognize Jesus is common in spiritual histories.
St Martin of Tours, when he was a soldier came across a
beggar one dark and stormy night. The
beggar was shivering in the cold. Martin,
then a Roman soldier, took his sword, cut his heavy military cloak in two and
gave half to the beggar. That night in a
dream Jesus revealed to Martin that the beggar was himself, Jesus. However, at the time Martin did not recognize
Jesus.
So if many
holy people like John the Baptist and Martin of Tours had difficulty recognizing Jesus, maybe we could have
trouble recognizing Him as well.
Why is it so
hard to recognize Jesus? Perhaps we
have wrong expectations; looking for
someone handsome, coifed, long flowing colorful robes that are well tailored
and immaculately clean like the holy pictures,… but maybe He is poor, hungry,
worried, sick …..
Pope Francis
for his Birthday a few years ago had breakfast with homeless men. Maybe Jesus was there? What do you think?
John the
Baptist saw Jesus with his eyes. But John did not recognize him. This is not really John’s fault. Our human ability to recognize what is really
going on, who is really before us, is quite limited. Like John, we need the Holy Spirit in order
to recognize what is really going on, to see beyond the surface, beyond the
wrapping, to perceive what is real.
In a way, we spend most of our day
blind; not recognizing what is really occurring. First of all we often fail to recognize WHOSE
we are. We like to think of ourselves as
independent and free, not beholden to anyone.
But that leads to profound isolation
and pointlessness. We are God’s beloved
children. That awareness gives purpose
and meaning to our lives. Only when we
truly see and recognize WHOSE we are,
that we are created by God to be in a loving relationship
with God, can we really know and understand our lives.
Only then can we truly see who Jesus
is; not just a good man, not just an example of how to live, not just a challenge
to our behavior, but as something fundamentally much greater, as a Savior,
someone powerful enough and engaged and loving enough, to save us from a
pointless, meaningless existence.
Powerful enough to save us from our sins.
All of us need to be healed of
blindness. Not physical blindness, but
the blindness of our hearts, to see how we are all children of God, and how we
are brothers and sisters. We need to be
healed of the blindness that keeps us from seeing why we are truly here, what
the meaning and purpose of our life is all about, how we are brothers and
sisters, how what we do or fail to do is important, and how Jesus offers us the
fullness of life and happiness.
What do you
see? You know, Jesus could be in this
church right now. Would we recognize
Him, would we know Him?
What if we
expected to meet Jesus every day? What
would it be like if every day when you get up you said to yourself: where am I
going to find Jesus today? What is He
going to look like? How am I going to
respond?
The Holy
Spirit had to show John the Baptist who Jesus was. Coming down in the form of a dove. Personally I find that kind of cheesy, overly
theatrical, but it worked. The Holy Spirit
had to reveal to St. Martin of Tours in a dream who Jesus was.
We too need the
gift of the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of our hearts to see Jesus. He’s sitting right next to you.
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