Sometimes these homilies just write themselves.
Guess where I was last Sunday when the following scene played itself out? Go ahead – one guess. (I am beginning to think it is the only place I go besides Church, but that’s another story for another time …)
Leaving Wawa (you guessed it), a gentleman approached me tentatively, his voice gruff and his breath smelling faintly of alcohol: “You a Catholic priest?”
Admittedly in these moments, I hesitate more than I should. My mind runs the gamut of possible responses and outcomes: Will he ask for money? Berate me for my faith? Should I just tell him I’m Episcopalian?
In the end, I always tell the person who approaches that I am a priest, and then silently whisper a prayer to the Spirit for wisdom and compassion.
The gentleman standing before me blurts out: “I need help.” That was it. No other information offered.
And I found myself repeating the very words of Christ from today’s Gospel, without realizing it: “What would you have me do for you?”
As I reflect on Jesus’ words – which in that moment became my own – I realize just how powerful and merciful those words are.
Of course Jesus knew that blind Bartimaeus wanted to see. Even had he not been the Savior, Jesus certainly would have heard the plaintive cries for help; he would have noticed the eyes that stared off vacantly into the distance. And yet, he still asks the question: What do you want me to do for you?
It is one of the most important questions we will be asked on this journey of faith, and beyond a shadow of a doubt, it will be asked of each of us.
Now, we can handle the question one of two ways: stay “surface level” with the question, or let the request burrow deep into the core of our very soul.
Sadly, I think must folks – myself included – never truly allow the Christ-question to penetrate the very places within where God longs to go. Sure, we will ask Him for things: help me pass the test; heal my sick grandmother; let me get this job or date this girl. They aren’t bad requests, and we should have these conversations with our Lord on a daily/regular basis.
But this is really not what Jesus is asking when he challenges us with the question: “What do you want me to do for you?”
In asking us to go deeper than surface level, Jesus wants to cure our blindness – spiritually and emotionally. He wants those places where our hearts are closed and broken. He longs to take from us the things that shame us the most – the very things of which we say God can’t (or won’t) love us.
Charlie – the gentleman who approached me at Wawa – responded to my question with a burst of tears that surprised even him. It was as though he were holding the blindness in for years, which he probably had been. By his own admission, he had cheated on his wife, abandoned his children, started drinking heavily and joined a motorcycle gang notorious in the county for hate crimes, theft and other offenses.
“I just need so much help, Father,” he whispered hoarsely. “I don’t know where to start, but figured you might know.”
(This is where internally, I sigh deeply and pray for guidance.)
In that moment, standing by the trashcan outside the convenience store, I simply offered the words that Charlie’s heart needed to hear: “God still loves you.”
It seems like such a trite and childish response, I know, but it was heartfelt and truly of the Spirit – the very One who uses us to reach souls that are lost and alone. Charlie needed to hear that statement of unconditional love in a way he hadn’t heard or accepted it before, because then he began to sob uncontrollably, nearly falling into my arms.
As all of this is happening, mind you, a woman who happened to be getting in her car comes over, handing Charlie a wad of tissues. “I figured you could use these,” she said before she started to slip away. It was clear that she was carrying a heavy Cross herself: she looked gaunt and sickly, her bald head covered in a scarf indicating chemo treatments. In her pain, she reached out to help another fellow sufferer.
That’s the other beautiful part of this Gospel that strikes me so profoundly: Jesus uses others to call his lost ones to a place of wholeness and healing. It was not the Lord who went to Bartimaeus; it was the believing crowd whom he asked to assist in the process of shepherding.
As Church, that’s our call. As individual disciples, we must do the very same thing to those God puts in our path – be they family, friend, or stranger. Our mission is to bring the spiritually-blind and soul-sick to the One who accompanies and heals through His merciful love. There is nothing more important than that.
I really am in awe of how God worked last Sunday afternoon in the life of Charlie, as well as how He moved the heart of the other customer to offer such a simple kindness – a Kleenex – to move a man to see for the first time in a long time.
As she started to walk back to her car, Charlie blurted out to her, to me and perhaps to the universe: “My boy died 25 years ago by suicide. He was only 17. I found him before my wife did and gently laid him on the floor so she wouldn’t see him that way. My poor boy.”
In that moment, Charlie saw – really saw – for the first time in a long time. Grace broke through a heart riddled with pain, anger and grief. Admitting aloud the deepest wound, Charlie opened up a space within himself and Christ entered in.
Charlie’s faith, be it ever so weak and shaky, encountered Mercy in the compassion of the strangers who took the time to stand with him and share his burden. Where two or three are gathered, there God is. There healing begins and sight is restored.
To think it happened right outside the Claymont Wawa.
As Church, may we never be afraid to enter into the hearts that are crying out to see. Be not afraid to be the crowd who points the way for others to encounter God’s love. And in the moments of our own blindness, may we always have the courage to go deeper and cry out with all our heart as Charlie did: “Lord, I want to see.”