God’s Quid Pro Quo is our Delight

http://usccb.org/bible/readings/111819.cfm
1 Maccabees 1:10-15, 41-43, 54-57, 62-63
Luke 18:35-43

He replied, "Lord, please let me see."
Jesus told him, "Have sight; your faith has saved you."
He immediately received his sight
and followed him, giving glory to God.
When they saw this, all the people gave praise to God.
(Luke 18:43)

The blind man had faith. Did his request require that he have faith? In a very real sense, and in this specific case, yes. Yes, because the request itself comes from a hope to see. That hope, then, allowed him to receive faith from God. That faith might have been minute, just an acknowledgement that God could fix his sight. Faith in any amount, though, is still faith. So, his faith, built upon a deep-seeded physical desire to see, did spark the opportunity for the man to be healed.

Jesus clearly claimed that the blind man's faith is what “saved” him, by the way. We might interpret that saving to mean rescuing him from a dark existence, one with him fumbling about only on his wits and other senses. That would be a parochial, constricted view, however. We know from Jesus’ recorded miracles that physical repair is used to reveal God’s power as from the loving, restorative redeemer of creation. Jesus used healings to save people and restore their full beings.

A number of things come up in Jesus miracles over and over — hope, faith, and love. The story of the blind man exhibits all three. Beyond just the sheer wonderment and startling surprise of a blind man being able to see, the miracle of the blind man tells us about every instance in all of our lives. Every restorative moment we each experience (I would argue this happens daily to us all) requires our hope, our faith, and our love. These are not just rare things, but a regular pattern of living with God. These three things leads us to God's quid pro quo, the thing that God wants from each of us.

Hope repeatedly triggers appeals for God to help us. Hope imagines a life without evil and chaos and angst. A life without blindness. Hope loudly cries out from broken people, which is quite convincing that hope draws everyone to God. Everyone who senses their brokenness, that is. Those who turn their hope inward rely upon something inside of themselves rather than outside. That works for awhile, but then we get sick, or go crazy, or we are attacked by forces beyond our control. Then we’re broken in a way that offers us only two options — hope or hopelessness. God forbid that we choose hopelessness. That’s the bottom of the barrel hope right there — calling upon God because nothing else is working.

Across all religions — formed and populated by folks who choose hope — most of us fashion a similar-looking hope. We desire that a loving, knowable, and communicative God exists. We don’t want a god who dominates, oppresses, and kills us off. I could be wrong about that, but I can't imagine how. Other than there is no God. Since I "know" there is a God, I reject that notion. Any doubts I have are about me and other people, but not about God.

We also don’t truly rely upon the gods of our own creation. Not really. We hope for the God who is so good that we can’t contain him, can’t control him, and don’t need anything more than him. We hope for the God who reveals himself to us, not one we concoct. Most importantly, we hope for eternal life. We hope God’s plan is headed in a wholly wonderful ending. This current “age” or life or existence allows evil to happen to everyone. Evil is inescapable because we all die; and death is certainly an evil act in itself. So, if you live a radically evil-free life you'll finally get the idea of evil when you begin to die. That's the ultimate pressure to hope.

So, upon our baseline hope, which we might all agree is somewhat similar regarding a good God, we next come to faith. Here is where the blind man changed from a hopeful man to a faithful man.

At its simplest, faith activates our acknowledgement of God. Our hopeful selves gather up courage and a huge chunk of humility and we speak our pleas to God. The step of faith means we sense God is there. How else can we be driven to proclaim our plea? The Judeo God prophesied a Messiah — the embodiment of God himself as one of us. The Judeo-Christian God claims Jesus was that Messiah. The Spirit of God, already present in the Judeo temple is sent out by Jesus into the temple of each person of hope.

Those who live out the Judeo-Christian faith are not the only persons of hope. Any authentic religion, ones with a faith that ascribes to a sense of hope in goodness, fills their temples and gathering spaces for this very reason of hope. We could argue over which religion is correct. That is a worthy academic, liturgical, and theological exercise in truth. In every case — including our Judeo-Christian fellowships — none of us should be offended to find out that our source of hope is always God.

Religions have hope-filled faith. We Spirit-filled, Judeo-Christians have the same hope-filled desire for faith. When God speaks to us, fulfilling our hopes, we grow in faith. The exercise in faith brings us to the culmination of the blind man’s experience of hope and faith — love. Love completes the process. In full love, as St. Paul say, hopes are fulfilled and faith is rewarded. This exercise was not an academic one for the blind man, and the same is true for us. It's simply the way to God, and the practice of relating to him.

A series of events probably led to the man’s awareness that Jesus could heal his blindness. The connection of Jesus’ healing and God’s power contributed to the man’s hope. Folks must have been talking about Jesus, and the man overheard them. Grace falls upon us even when we do not have faith. Grace is the active presence of God in our lives. Our Judeo-Christian faith believes that God loves us, intimately. Each of us. No-one is left behind. The blind man recognized that his hope matched the person of Jesus. His faith in God was probably planted much earlier in his life. He was able to recognize Jesus for the redeemer the Jewish people knew would come. Jesus, then, loved the man by healing him, and saving him too.

God's love is exhibited to us in everything. Beauty, justice, order, family, and so on. The intimate love of God for us, individually, can only be identified in our relationship to him. That's where the faith part establishes a physical awareness of God's presence and active participation in our lives. God initiates our hope. He then instills faith. Finally he shows us his love. Sometimes these could go in a different order, I suppose.

With hope, faith and love in place, and daily acknowledged, the reality of God's role in them overwhelms us. He allows us brokenness which sparks hope. He infuses us with faith, which sparks love. With love, then, where do we come in? What does he want from us? To love him back?

That is the question for the doubter. What does God expect from a grace-filled life that blesses us with constant repairs, courageous opportunities, and holy encounters? Since God provides a creation that drives us to him with a very real hope for eternal goodness, and since he also provides us with the very faith that awakens us to the Spirit who will fill us, we can suspect that he will next surprise us with his expectation. I believe he expects us to be giddy and stunned with delight. He expects us to be so loved that we praise him.

Does God need praise and worship? In every case, in every miracle, the people that Jesus healed were delighted. You might think we are expected to praise God, or perform some righteous duty, because it fulfills some need on God's part. That's not theologically logical if God is complete.

There’s another way to look at this praise of God. Our excitement over God’s interventions and lovely, daily encounters in our life represents what God actually wants. Our delight. He wants us to be loved as if in ecstacy.

Our delight drives us to praise God. It’s not duty that God wants, in some perfunctory worshipping steps. Worship with praise in our hearts — that is what God expects. He expects us to be over the moon. He expects us to be astounded, mystified, and even audacious. Our delight with God means that we are fearless, daring, and unafraid to praise him. We love him.

The blind man revealed the quid pro quo for God:

He immediately received his sight
and followed him, giving glory to God.
When they saw this, all the people gave praise to God.

The blind man was delighted. He was over the moon. Consquently, so was everyone else. They gave glory and praise because they were astounded, mystified, and from such a loving God they became audacious. That's the true purpose. Unfailing in our delight with God.