12 – 5 – 17 "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see."

"Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.
For I say to you,
many prophets and kings desired to see what you see,
but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."

Link to Daily Readings

Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. How often are we grateful for not only the presence of the Gospel in our lives, but all the things we have the privilege of experiencing. How blessed are we to see what we see. To hear what we hear.

There is this notion of the fulfillment of a longing in Jesus’s coming. Prophets, sages, kings, and all manner of holy people have been looking forward, for all of history and everywhere, to this moment, this man. There has been this palpable hole in the human existence, in the human experience for as long as we can remember. Ancient peoples could feel this, and guessed at what might fill it, what came was greater and stranger than any of them anticipated.

I’ll focus on the ways He is greater than what they anticipated first, and how this contradicts with many of our own experiences.

If you’ve ever waited, or worked, for something for a long time you know that when that thing is achieved or comes to fruition it’s often somewhat of a letdown. Think of the person who tends their garden with joy and precision. They are glad when their crop comes to bear, but somewhat disappointed that their labor of love will have to cease until next season.

Or when we wait for something truly important thinking this, this will be the thing that really changes my life. This will be what makes everything okay, what makes me happy, fulfills my purpose, etc. It’s never quite all there when we experience it. Sometimes those events we anticipated being the most powerful experiences in our lives are a bit underwhelming because they shrink before the importance we have placed upon them.

Christ does not destroy the joy of the process (tending the garden) nor does He ever disappoint. When He comes into the world it is to grant us a higher labor, an even more demanding, fulfilling, and strengthening life-work. He lifts careers into vocations and inclinations to callings. It is a profoundly different thing to have a goal than it is to have a purpose. Christ will lift us up into being ever more productive, ever more joyous, ever more indefatigable members of his body. Once one sees how vocation and purpose are such integral parts of what we do day-to-day, it is easy to see that work is life, and Jesus is looking to give us a promotion.

The second is, I think, more obvious. No one anticipated Christ to be as powerful and benevolent as He was and is. The prophets of Israel were looking for what appears in scripture to be more like a demi-god warrior king who will establish their nation as preeminent within the world. How much greater is Christ than some mere Gilgamesh? How could one even compare the two? If you were expecting a Christ and got a Gilgamesh, you must have thought you’d received someone else’s package, how could you confuse the two? I think a similar thing happened when Christ came into the world. He was so much different, so much greater, than anything the Jews expected that they had difficulty seeing Him as the Messiah.

Stranger. So much stranger. He talks to the Father as we talk to one another yet takes the time to talk to a Samaritan woman at a well. He could make bread from stones yet chooses to use what little has been offered by those who believe in Him and the service of his disciples to feed a great multitude. He has the power to command demons by His whim but allows Himself to be crucified so that He might fulfill His purpose.

The power of the Christ is not a power that seeks to increase itself. Secure in its all-encompassing grandeur the only movement that can be made is a debasement. A kneeling down, as for God to be at his full stature is to be completely beyond our comprehension.

Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.

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