We human beings have not infrequently been certain that we’ve got it all figured out. We find ourselves defining the inscrutable: categorizing things as good and bad, desirable or not, praiseworthy or contemptible. Certain qualities of each are outlined. We stick to those with remarkable alacrity—at least, until we decide to redefine them.
As common as false understandings of our reality are counter stories which contest them. In the seventies, one manifestation was Marlo Thomas’s “Free to Be You and Me” project, which sought to counter dualisms which placed man above woman, rich above poor, et cetera. Against popularly propagated fairy tales which suggested that one’s highest aspirations should be to find a prince and settle down, Thomas offered figures like Atalanta, a princess who wanted to be a scholar, a woman who wanted to be independent. The overarching message of “Free to Be You and Me” was that good is a more complex concept than we have traditionally allowed it to be.
Marlo Thomas’s project was stunning and important. It was conceptually also less than new. Where troublesome dualisms exist, counter-stories crop up to combat them. Examples of this are ancient: while some will always be content to view the world from an either/or perspective, others, perhaps even particularly among the religious, know that reality, like the God behind it, is more complex.
God is great; and yet to say that God is great imposes any number of connotations. By declaring God great, we imbue God with certain expectations, and burden God’s creation similarly. The same is true with much that we uphold as virtuous and desirable; we think we know what to expect of that which we align with grandeur. But as our chapters this week remind us: all things great defy our expectations and have the potential to surprise us in their full revelation, and this is especially true of what is God’s.
1 Samuel deals with kingship. More specifically, it deals with the throne in Judah, with the king in Jerusalem, with the anointed one, or messiah, on Israel’s throne. It recounts the story of the selection of the second king, one often thought of as Israel’s greatest: David himself. But what is interesting about 1 Samuel is that it introduces a David who predates the marvels and highs of his years as the monarch. We do not meet a man of great stature, an imposing or particularly impressive figure; he is not a prince decked out in princely attire. Rather, the David we meet is a mere shepherd. He’s so far from threatening that Saul doesn’t even enter the tale to express concern over maintaining the throne against him.
1 Samuel reduces messianic expectations to their barest form. Israel would later anticipate a great ruler of the late David variety: powerful, of great military prowess, visibly capable of protecting and upholding the nation. But in 1 Samuel God warns that such qualities are, at best, peripheral: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). However opulent David’s kingship became, however innumerable his kingly victories, we sense that his importance was never tied into his impressive position in the world; it was rather something central to his being, some inner inclination, some interior depth only he and God could comprehend. His “successes” as a monarch become almost secondary.
Who was the David who God selected to be anointed? Less the trickster who bested Uriah; less the weapon savvy boy who defeated Goliath. The David God loved did these things, of course; but the David God loved was first and foremost a tender of sheep, a “ruddy [boy], [who] had beautiful eyes, and was handsome” (1 Samuel 16:12). He was simple, good, and unexpected.
If 1 Samuel reminds us not to seek great world figures out in expected places, it also reminds us that those who enjoy blessings in life do not necessarily do so as a reward for implicit virtues. Assuming that happiness and comfort are deserved, and tribulations likewise, has been another misstep in religion. From biblical times through the dissemination of the “Protestant work ethic,” the myth that we reap the rewards and just desserts of our deeds in this life has been a sometimes failing within Christian life.
In John, we find the gospel writer indicting some Pharisees for such mistaken beliefs. Are the blind born blind because they are sinners, and those with sight given sight because they are good? Of course not, Jesus rebuffs. Not only God, but humanity, is more complex than that reduction.
Jesus, on the Sabbath, encounters a man who has been blind all of his life. His neighbors have further afflicted him with suspicion: his blindness is understood as a punishment, either for his own sins or because of his parents’. But Jesus says that his condition cannot be so easily understood: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:3). Just as we feel inclined to declare his blindness proof of either God’s inscrutability or injustice—what benevolence is implied by a God who does such a thing to an innocent man just to prove a point?—Jesus spits in the dirt, forms mud, rubs it on the man’s eyes and cures him.
Jesus calls himself the light of the world; he is certainly this man’s light (John 9:5). The man goes from being scorned as a certain sinner, to being in perfect control of his senses, and perfectly able to testify on Jesus’s behalf; he becomes, automatically, a figure of importance in his community. “Here is an astonishing thing!” he says, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John (9:31-32).
Jesus gives him new life; more than this, because of what he had suffered, the formerly blind man is able to appreciate life and its gifts in a way those around him cannot.
And what of those who could see all along? Jesus reveals that it is they, because they take their blessing for granted, who have actually always been blind. He uses certain Pharisees as an example. They cannot understand why he has healed a man on the Sabbath. They cannot understand why he appears to reject God’s rules. But Jesus says: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind” (John 9:39).
He says this to those who think that the injunction against Sabbath work outweighs the good of healing the afflicted; they ask, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” (John 9:40) But Jesus finds their discomfort with his act proof enough that they are: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘we see,’ your sin remains.” You can see and be sightless; you can blind yourself to God by presuming to claim you’ve comprehended God’s ways. To have power is not proof of God’s favor; to be afflicted and yet trust in God—to maintain that ability to trust in God beyond reason—may be.
These are stories of reversals and divine surprises, and they may well serve as a reminder to us not to get complacent when it comes to understanding God and God’s ways. We should take care to avoid absolutes, to praise what is outwardly impressive as proof of God’s favor, to condemn that which seems different as necessarily bad.
If those who God anoints were found among shepherds and stone smiths, as each of this week’s messianic characters respectively were, than looking for God’s guidance from those who sit on thrones and live in high houses alone must certainly suspect. We must turn our eyes to all. We must believe that God’s beauty does not exclusively shine out from those who have had an easy life. God comes via the humble; God’s voice is on the lips of the meek. When whole communities are condemned as bad or sinful because they have not had it easy, we must understand that participating in that condemnation is not God’s work; refuting it is.
We have to also avoid discourse which equates creature comforts alone with blessings. If when we say our evening prayers, we find ourselves listing material things most among our praises or wants, there may be some convolution at work. Those who Jesus called blind in John had things; what they lacked was the ability to see beyond them to God. The greatest imaginable blessing, it seems, is standing in God’s light. To live life with ease is not proof of God’s love; to face difficulties is not proof of his rejection.
There are those among us who say that God hates some people, or another. We should read their injunctions alongside John, and see what happens when we compare them to those who are willfully blind. We should stand those called “hated” up alongside Jesus, who “breaks rules” by healing on the Sabbath: is the good of his mercy not similar to the good of their love? Aren’t love and mercy at the heart of all “rules”?
There are those who claim that natural disasters are acts of divine judgment. We should similarly read those claims against the ridicule coming from the blind man’s neighbors: was he blind because he sinned? Because his parents did? Can we not assume that greater burdens, then, are as disassociated from our deeds?
Our world is much more inscrutable than we’d like to believe. The Bible underscores this, though there are some among us who would claim that its worldview is simple, and attached to either/ors. Yet so much is still a mystery, and we risk blinding ourselves to the enigmatic divine by reducing all of it to so very little.
The greater task, and the more worthwhile one, is to dare to struggle to see: to locate God in humble places; the observe God’s grace at work where we have not always thought to look for it. Faith, in this way, is not a resting place but a constant search; we need only to adjust our eyes to the road.
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