Visitors to the Vineyard, pt. 2

Before I left for Mass tonight I was working on a continuation to the previous post, Visitors to the Vineyard. I was writing about how when I left the church after hearing Jesus’ parable explained anew, I resolved to start PAYING ATTENTION to who crossed my path. That homily got my attention and opened my eyes like they had been washed clean in the waters of the Pool of Siloam. I’d resolved to start looking for and really listening to whom God sent my way...

And I have been doing just that. The trouble is that real listening is harder than you think. It’s very hard. So is processing what you hear and learn. I never thought myself a shabby listener before, but now I was trying to be an even better listener. ‘Visitors’ from God coming to ‘obtain...produce’ from my vineyard might come in the form of people needing help or work I need to do—but not necessarily. Work and help are just the obvious examples of our productiveness. There are also ways—known to God alone—in which we grow inwardly: fighting off secret temptations, surrendering our own wills in humility and obedience, struggling to become small, go last, take less or do without. This ‘reverse productivity’ is harder to appreciate because it’s so invisible. But it doesn’t make it any the less real. In fact, I’m inclined to think it’s the harder of the two—well it is for me anyway.

Before I finished the post I was writing—and this isn’t it—it was time for Mass.

The Gospel this week-end is Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It’s full of irony and missed messages. Jesus speaks metaphorically about the sleep of death and it goes over the disciples’ heads. He has to explain what He means plainly. Jesus wants to teach about the glory of God and Thomas talks about becoming a martyr. Meaning hangs like a thick fog over the entire story and yet nobody is listening to what Jesus is trying to say.

And in the middle of it all, Jesus weeps.

Tonight at Mass, Father’s homily was based on the premise, ‘And Jesus Wept’—the shortest verse in all of Scripture. But did Jesus weep as it says in the Gospel just because he loved his friend Lazarus?

Or were there other reasons why Jesus might have cried? I immediately thought of a pie chart e-mail a friend sent me recently entitled, ‘Why Women Cry’. Answer: 10% of the time because we're happy; 10% because we're sad; the other 80%, we don't know!

Could Jesus have been frustrated? Scared? Upset? Discouraged? Confused? Disheartened by his friends’ lack of belief? Their failure to understand Him? Did He experience a premonition of impending death? Was He feeling lost and alone in the middle of that crowd—their God who loved them and was about to die for them and they just didn’t get it.

Based on my own experiences this Lent, I’d say Jesus had good reason to cry. Real listening and communicating from the heart are the hardest things a human being ever does. We want so very much to be known and understood. It is probably the greatest and deepest longing of the human heart. And yet those thoughts and feelings which mean the most to us, are often those which frighten us and others.

Do we run the risk of sharing them? Or do we play it safe and remain quiet? Or do we just cry?

People don’t always want to listen or see or understand. In fact, we very often don't want to... I know.

I’m so sorry Jesus for all the times I failed to listen to You ... refused to listen ... that I made You cry.

Forgive me.