May 16, 2014
So if you could be an animal, which one would it be? Or if you could use a color to describe how you are feeling, that color would be? Questions like these sometimes open retreat or planning sessions, and participants have various feelings about them. Some are intrigued: am I a lion or a squirrel? What will others think of me when I suggest an animal or a color? Is red too aggressive, blue too aloof, yellow … just to yellow? Other just think it’s all silly.
I was thinking of this when I read a long article by a noted editor who was trying to describe his 20-year involvement with Parkinsons Disease. It affects muscles, of course; but it also affects the mind, he was saying. But how can a mind know when it’s being affected? Do those tests really reveal what is going on inside our heads? Can we really describe ourselves, our inner states, or our inner changes?
If it’s so hard to show the inner state of our mind through external words or tests, how does one show the ultimate mystery behind all being? How does one show God? This is Philip’s issue in the Gospel. “Show us the Father,” Philip says – perhaps the boldest thing a Jewish person could say since it was commonplace for the Scriptures to say that if someone sees God he or she will die. Jesus says to Phillip one of the key insights behind Christian faith: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
We need not think primarily of the physical body of Jesus. To look at his hair, or eye-color, or how much he weighed. Jesus is talking about the signs that he has done, each of which was to accomplish two purposes: to show how God is, and to lead followers to faith. You want to see the Father? Let’s see what God is like: let me bring joy to a wedding party, read the heart of a Samaritan woman, give sight to blind people, call Lazarus from the dead … let me wash your smelly feet, let me give my life on the cross as a sign of unconquerable love. You can see the Father in what I do.
“Greater works than these you will do,” says Jesus. He ascends to the Father – that is, he comes to share in the glory and power of God, precisely to allow others to share in his works. The Spirit that he sends will bring about deeds of love and grace in us. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” says Jesus. These are not just descriptions of him and his role; these words are a method for Christian life. For when we live Christ’s risen life, through the Holy Spirit, we discover the truth that Jesus is – that self-giving love is the ultimate meaning of everything. And this, in turn, allows us to follow Jesus’ way – to make his way our way of life, to become his disciples.
When we do this, we reveal something of God even in our own lives. We see this in the readings from the Acts of the Apostles, how their devotion to the Word of God, and to service, led others to experience God as well. Become the living stones of God’s new temple, says St. Peter, by the deeds that we do and the way we live. We have seen so many horrible deeds, from civil war in Syria, to mass kidnappings of girls in Nigeria, to immigrants drowning in the Mediterranean. These deeds of anger, violence and neglect hide the face of God. Our deeds should show his face.
So would this not be a great examination each night, before we go to sleep: how have my deeds revealed the Father to the world? How have my actions made God either more visible or, God forbid, more obscure? For Jesus tells us again and again: he has been raised to send the Spirit upon us, and this Spirit works in us as it worked in Jesus, revealing God’s love and life in our midst.
So, in a little shift here, if you could be a saint, which one would it be? How about being and becoming the saint that Jesus is making you through your deeds and through his Spirit?