Seeing Through the Eyes of a Child

When I asked my students to question the Gospel of Mark, it turned out to be an eye-opening experience --- for ME!  The questions they posed seemed at first to be naïve, but as we began to delve into their questions as a group, it was MY eyes that were opened.  I began to see things that I had never seen before, because I had read things long familiar; they were reading as seeing for the first time, reading as the people who were encountering Jesus for the first time in Galilee must have been seeing Him.

For example, in Chapter 3 of Mark, there is a scene all of us have heard many times read in church:  the scene of the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.  For the sake of review, let me quote it again here:

Another time, he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there.  Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath.  Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Stand up in front of everyone."  Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil?  to save life or to kill?  But they remained silent.  He looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand."  He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.  Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

 

So one of my students asked why Jesus asked the question, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil?"  She said, Why even ask the question, 'Is it lawful to do evil on the Sabbath?'  It is never "lawful" to do evil, so why even ask?  The answer seems obvious.  I had never asked that question before, and since I had not, I had missed what was most obvious of all in the passage:  Jesus was plotting to "break the Sabbath law" by doing good.  What the Pharisees could not see was that, even while they were externally observing the Sabbath by not working, they were plotting to do evil on the Sabbath, plotting how they might kill Jesus.  His question to them brought out the thoughts of their hearts, even though it was not obvious to innocent bystanders what He meant.  

 

Hebrews 4:12 says, The word of God is living and active.  Sharper than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.  After having one of my students ask a penetrating question, I now see Jesus' question in the synagogue not just an "obvious" or "throwaway" question, but rather as penetrating and judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Furthermore, I see it not just as judging the hearts of the Pharisees in the synagogue that Sabbath, but as judging the thoughts and attitudes of my own heart and the hearts of those who judge others.

 

Is it lawful to do evil on the Sabbath?  Not so obvious a question, after all.  How many of us have gone to church on Sunday to fulfill the law, and even while there have we judged our neighbors who did not go to church.  Or even while at Mass have we looked around at those "public sinners" who dared to approach the altar, even though they were "unclean" in our eyes?  How many in the gathering have sat in judgment on the priest or pastor because the sermon was too long or for some other reason?

From the beginning, Jesus was always an outsider, on the fringes of respectability and acceptability by the leaders of the synagogue.  Very soon, they were plotting how to get rid of Him, but since He was so popular with the people, their schemes had to be carefully hidden.  His word turned things upside down, making the little ones, the ones of no account, enter first into the kingdom of God, leaving the "first" outside, or making them enter last.

Reading Scripture though the eyes of a "child," someone who is seeing it for the first time, is an educational experience for someone who has read it so often as to take it all for granted:  "Lord, open my eyes; I want to see!"