For the next several months I’ll be dedicating the occasional post to my father-in-law. We’ll call him Bernard. By way of introduction, I’ve been married to his daughter for 7 years, 1 month, 28 days. On the day he walked her down the aisle to meet me I remember being more fixated on the sight of him than her. I had gazed upon her in person, in pictures, or at least in my mind’s eye, everyday for 4 years, and she always looked the same to me: a masterpiece. 44 seasons later and no change. She is still so obviously good and kind to behold. But Bernard was a looming edifice. Well over 6 feet tall and 300 pounds, by all appearances he was…a lot…to behold. Standing at the front of the church I recall the doors opening to reveal Bernard and the Masterpiece. I thought, “The time has come. Here she comes.”
One year earlier I had stood in Bernard’s kitchen. Leaning against the counter I wanted to know, “So I’d like to ask your daughter to marry me. What do you think?” I wasn’t looking for his permission. Bernard had told me often enough, “You got to do what works for you when it works for you.” Getting him to agree to my proposal wasn’t necessary then. On the other hand, getting him to say that my timing was good could only work to my advantage. So, after pontificating on some metaphor about tools and having enough wrenches in the toolbox of life, he reached out his hand, more of a giant paw. It was a peace sign I would come to feel many times in the years to come. Bernard saying, the time is right.
Now, looking all the way down the aisle, my body lilting forward with my whole heart, I knew, the time is right. Except Bernard just stood there. Canon in D was now into its second movement. What was he doing, standing there, that looming edifice, grasping in his bear paw my masterpiece? Finally he stepped off. In reasonable time they made it to me. “Dearly beloved we gather here in the presence of God, with friends and family all around, to witness two people saying yes to each other. Yes to life, yes to death, yes to poverty, yes to riches.” It was a moment of sacred intensity, fulfilled only by Bernard holding out his peace sign. “The time is right. Love her even more than I do,” he whispered to me.
Now Bernard lies in a hospital bed following a horrible motorcycle accident. Most of his ribs are broken, one leg all out of whack, a busted ankle, his organs all discombobulated, and he had to lose both his arms. There is no irony rich enough to humor us even a little bit. Before he bought his Harley he told himself a hundred times he shouldn’t have it. A luxury in a world of great need, he would say. But for a guy who never took what he didn’t need and who rarely got what he did, a little merciful love seemed to be in order. And so he got that motorcycle. First though, he signed himself up for a dozen safety courses, and even then, on the day the bike was ready for pick-up, he called on his brother to drive it home for him. “Keep it in the right lane. Don’t go over 55,” he probably told him. How he and his bike have come to lie in disrepair we really don’t know. Why it has come to be, we really don’t care. I suppose some might ask such questions.
How?
Why?
Most of the stories we read in the Bible and in our lives are about broken down people, people whose existence has been defined along a razor thin edge between blessing and curse, cruising and crashing, life and death. More often than not, what breaks us down is that we tempt fate and faith to step over the edge. In some cases we run head long right past it. We might also wake up not knowing how or why we got there at all. That’s when we trust fate and faith to get us up and back onto the edge.
Among the tales of the broken down are a lame man and a blind one. They are just there. Maybe they sit. Maybe they stand. Most everyone who passes by them tries to figure out how and why they got there. “Were they born this way? Did they bring it on themselves (like they read too many magazines in the dark or played too much football in high school!)? Is this a sign of a divine whipping that I should stay clear of lest I get caught in the crossfire? Surely nothing happens without cause or reason, right? How? Why?”
In the end I choose to believe that we all want simply to be in the right place, doing the right thing in the right way to make everything all right. But along comes Jesus who doesn’t believe these are the right questions for getting us there.
“Do you want to be made well? What do you want me to do for you?” he asks instead.
What type of foolish questioning is this? Who doesn’t want to be made well? Does such a question even need to be asked? But alas we know it does. For sometimes the healing we want is simply not available to us. The arms are gone, the bear paw is missing. No amount of surgery can bring them back and no amount of determined focus can distract us from seeing what is not there. We can sit there for as long as we will to. No matter.
But still it is up to us. There are many, Jesus not being the least of them, who can make it all right again, but like true love, real power won’t force itself upon us. It does, however, invite us. “Stand up, walk. Go, wash, and see.”
“I can’t,” we insist.
And the only thing Jesus does demand is that we believe we can. Not because we can now but because Jesus, the most broken down of all human beings is asking, “What do you want me to do for you?” It would seem there’s always one who believes now is still the right time for healing. Thank God for that.
PleaseGrace 