Jesus’ auscultation

Readings
1 Samuel 28:3-19
Lukes 18:35 -19:10

Reading this brief story about king Saul and his desperate attempt to regain God’s support using a medium as a last resort to consult the spirit of Samuel, is like watching the 5th season of House of Cards or the Game of Thrones without having ever watched the previous seasons: you basically won’t have a clue about what’s going on, who is who, and why is doing what is doing!

The books of Samuel, originally one book, can very much be described like a great saga or a glorious trilogy in three episodes. Episode 1 -the shortest- is about Samuel, the great judge, who refuses to be king and struggles to keep Israel faithful to Yahweh. Episode 2 is about king Saul, who symbolically represents the beginning of a stable monarchy, but fails to be a good king. Episode 3 is the story of David, the rise of the great king of Israel. The more you read, the more you realise that both books of Samuel are very much about the saga of King David. He is the hero to rival any other. From the very beginning it is very clear that he is the one, while Saul appears like a small-minded person, full of jealousy and envy toward David who even when gets the chance to kill Saul refuses the lay his hands on him. In the saga of King David there are all the elements that would make this story a great series of films: treachery, hatred and love, friendship and jealousy, power, great fights and battles. The difference between the Saga of King David and, let’s say Game of Thrones, is that in the biblical narrative God always plays a central role while in the novel that inspired the Tv series God is completely absent and plays no role in people’s lives.  

When we meet Saul today, he has already attempted to kill David who has to flee and find refuge with the Philistines, the abhorrent enemies of Israel. Saul feels lost. The reader can get a hint of what is about to happen because God is not with Saul any more. Saul will fall in order for David to rise and be king. When Saul goes to consult the medium, we are at the vigil of a great battle and, from what the story says, we know that the king of Israel doesn’t know what to do. He is afraid, and God is not with him. He is blind and even the spirit of Samuel invoked by the medium confirms that he is doomed to die because God turned away from him. Now how are David and Jesus related to each other? There are two story in Luke’s gospel that may help us understand the connection: the stories of Bartimaeus and  Zacchaeus.

Firstly, the blind man of the gospel of Luke calls Jesus Son of David, which was certainly one of his titles among others, like Son of Man, but it has a special connotation when referred to Jesus. Secondly if you remember, at the very the beginning of Matthew’s gospel we find the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah -that very boring list of names (Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, etc.)- which tries exactly to proof this point: Jesus was of the lineage of king David so that the history of salvation would come without interruption from Abraham to David and finally to Jesus.

Also, what’s fascinating about the saga of king David is that it shows us that the history of salvation is deeply mingled with our human history and our humanity as well as it is for Jesus, true man and true God. What the books of Samuel relate is God’s constant involvement in the history of his people, and his redeeming love always in action. Lukes’ stories of the blind man and Zacchaeus shows the same compassionate love for the people Jesus meets. In that sense, there is no difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. What really seems to be distinctive is Jesus’ approach. In the great saga of king David we are still talking about kings and essentially powerful people. God seems to work more on macro level in the Old Testament, while in the New Testament Jesus is among people and relate to them as equal. Think of the story of the blind man. We don’t even know his name. He is a man of the street, a beggar. Zacchaeus, instead, is a more important character because he is a chief tax-collector, but still not a king or chief commander of an army. Jesus has a personal approach as well. Even if you know that they meet in the middle of the street or in the temple among hundreds of people, you feel like they are having a one to one encounter. And certainly a transformative one.

Let’s have a closer look at these two men.   

   

They have something in common: both of them can’t see Jesus. One because of his blindness, and the other because he is short. They certainly come from very different social status: one is a beggar, the other is a rich man. And perhaps what the gospel is suggesting is that they represent symbolically two different but complementary types of discipleship. The blind man, once healed, will actively follow Jesus along the street of Jerusalem, while Zacchaeus after converting to Jesus, will work to re-establish himself as part of the renewed Israel right where he is. Different calls and rather distinctive vocations, but the same personal encounter with Jesus.

Their physical condition becomes  the symbol of their spiritual situation: something is stopping them to see the Lord. We may call it sin, but in the case of the blind man is not entirely clear that is his sin the cause of his blindness. In Zacchaeus, instead, we can easily identify the most despicable people in Israel: the tax-collectors.  However, he knows his condition. He acknowledges to be a professional thief despised by his own people as soon as he makes a public declaration to give half of his possession to the poor and pay back four times to all those he defrauded.

Again, the blind man and Zacchaeus are not the focus, but Jesus is. There is no moral judgment in his attitude toward them. To the blind man he asks: “What do you want from me?” Zacchaeus must have been very surprised that Jesus knew his name. And he simply says: “Hurry up because I’m staying at your house today”. That was enough for him. We don’t know what they talked during the time Jesus was with Zaccheus in his house, and would probably never know. What we know is that they met and the outcome of meeting Jesus is Zacchaeus’ marvelous conversion.

Very often when we look at the world as it is, we may be tempted to feel despondent and discouraged because of the violence and hatred we see in it every day. The selfishness and narcissism are big idols of our society. There is always a big moralistic temptation in our look to the world. Sometimes it is very subtle, but it is there.

The books of Samuel perhaps remind us that human history is deeply mingled with God’s history and any attempt of separating them would probably end up generating big monsters. Lastly I feel that our call is to enable people to meet Jesus, to help them removing the obstacles that prevent them to meet him. This is why sharing our experience of faith is so important, we learn by listening to each other. From Jesus we don’t just listen to what they say, but to their hearts, which may be called auscultation.  In medical terms auscultation is the action of listening to sounds from the heart, lungs, or other organs, typically with a stethoscope, as a part of medical diagnosis, but in spiritual terms is the art of listening to people’s lives, feelings, emotions and stories from the heart.  

The conversion of the blind man and Zacchaeus is the result of Jesus’ listening to them or -as we may call it- of Jesus’ auscultation. Because Jesus listened to them this way, they felt loved and ready to let him in and transform their lives. We are witnesses, not judges. Witnesses of this love.

Last Thursday I went to the one of the events of the Bedford Park Festival, a very entertaining and funny one, I have to say. It was called the Tome of the Unknown Actor with Christine Ozanne (writer and sit-com actress) and director Patrick Tucker, who talked about the secrets of the acting profession. Apart from being both very funny, there was something that Patrick Tucker said that was very illuminating for me. He asked the audience: “What is the difference between acting on stage and on Tv?” Someone replied back saying: “On stage actors have to project their voices, while on Tv they don’t”. Tucker then said: “Thank you. It was a nice try, but unfortunately the wrong answer”, and went on explaining why.

According to his experience, the main difference between Tv and on stage acting is the screen that effectively changed it all. On stage acting is fundamentally about exaggerating the reality, but not changing it, while the screen requires a complete alteration of the reality, when very often acting on screen forces actors to a very unnatural acting. For this reason, acting on Tv is full of lies and cheats, Tucker says. What you see in not what it is, but it looks great on screen, and that’s why they keep doing like that. The truth is a distraction and, therefore needs to be avoided, because it would probably take the attention of audience away from the story, which is what they want you to follow. I found this very intriguing. Now stay with me while I’m walking you through my reflection on today’s gospel and keep this in mind while you are listening to me.   

As you may already noticed, this year we read the Gospel of Matthew. He is the evangelist who tells us about the Gospel of the Church. What we usually know about the four gospels is that the first three -Mark, Luke and Matthew- are essentially the same, while John’s gospel is different, very rich and profound in its theological meaning, but rather difficult to be interpreted and understood. You can then read Mark, Luke and Matthew from the beginning to the end and in parallel. This is why they are called “synoptics”, which literally means “in one view”, because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose content is comparatively distinct. You can actually place them in three columns on the same sheet and read them simultaneously without losing sight of Jesus’ story, and at the same time compare the differences.

It is true then. At a first glance they seem to tell the same story and follow the same narrative. However, especially Luke and Matthew, lay emphasis on two different but complementary experiences of who is Jesus and what  relationship he has with the church. For instance, Luke makes it clear at the end of the gospel that the Ascension is the event that marks the end of the “time of Jesus” as a human being on earth, and, almost simultaneously, the beginning of the “time of the Church” with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. For Luke the Ascension symbolises a breakthrough: there is a before and an after Jesus’ time,  while for Matthew there is no discontinuity. The risen Jesus remains rather than going away. There doesn’t seem to be a farewell in Matthew gospel. In Matthew’s mind then the Lord Jesus abides with his Church “to the end of the age”.

Also, Matthew alone of the Gospels uses the term ‘church’. It does not really refer to the universal Church, but rather to the local Congregation of Christians. Therefore, from Matthew’s perspective and experience as evangelist to his community, Jesus, the risen Jesus is in the midst of those who are the church and walk them along their journey to become the Church. He is with them when they rejoice and also with them when they suffer. In the light of it, we can understand that this is the church that is suffering because of persecution and to which Jesus is talking to in Today’s gospel. “Do not be afraid”, says Jesus, “because I’m with you”.

It is a powerful message that has a tremendous echo in Jeremiah’s experience of persecution as well. If you heard the story of Jeremiah, you would know that it ends really badly. His prophecy is not heard at all by the people of Israel. He preaches the destruction of Jerusalem, and more the once is persecuted, arrested, thrown in an abandoned tank in the middle of no-where, and eventually dies stoned by his fellow country men. In hindsight this is the man who we almost immediately identify with Jesus as an image of him in his experience of prophecy and suffering. But he is also the man, who in the middle of the most nagging persecution, is able to say: “But the Lord is at my side, a mighty hero; my opponents will stumble, mastered, confounded by their failure”.  

It requires a strong dose of faith and stamina to say something like that when there is no immediately apparent proof of God’s support. What he was saying was true to him, but nobody else. Paraphrasing Jeremiah, we would probably ask: “How can we sing to the Lord, praise him and believe that he has delivered the soul of the needy from the hands of evil men, when what our eyes show us on a daily basis is quite the opposite?” It is really hard to believe it.

I don’t know about you, but from time to time my faith crashes against a wall of indifference, violence, and a huge idol of selfishness. My beliefs are at stake when the violence that surrounds me touches the most vulnerable people, wound them and leave them without any hope.

How do I answer the question from the people on the street about suffering, hatred and resentment that seem to overtake us?

My only answer lie on Jesus’ words: “Do not be afraid”.

What it is absolutely fascinating about today’s gospel is that does not answer the question of why we suffer or why Christians are persecuted, or innocent people die, but it rather offer a method to help us to deal with all that. Instead of telling the truth that should lie -at least according to our human logic- behind the suffering, violence and persecution, it show us how to get to the truth.

Think of the efforts we make to understand the violence behind the recent terrorist attacks in Manchester, London Bridge and now Finsbury Park, try to give some explanation to tragedy of the Grenfell Tower, but the truth is that we don’t know what to say and what to believe.

Influenced by our modern culture and literally inundated by real time news and information, we seem to know the truth or have the ability to get to know it. However, based on what director Tucker says about the Tv screen we must probably be bewildered, confused and suspect about what is true and what is false. Sometime the truth seem to be completely made up.

From the gospel, all we know is that “For everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear”. What that means? Is it talking about discovering the truth or something else? This is perhaps more about our Christian method. The gospel is the way or the method, which actually means “the way”, or the “how”. It seems to be rather disappointing. I know what you are thinking: “All my life I have been told that the gospel is the truth, and now you are saying all I have got is “the way”? Now think for a moment of your experience of faith, go back in time to your childhood, and then your youth. Let your memories flow. Was your faith and love for the Church an idea you read in a book, listened in the news? Was it a fascinating theory about the world? Or maybe, it was something more related to the people you met, your dad and mum’s experience, your friends and community what really transmitted your faith to you? What do you really remember if not a story, a song, a hymn, a tune, words and people. Faith does not seem to come into our lives as a free-floating content. As Eugene H. Peterson would say: “Everything we know about God and are passionate about the church is always embedded in a form of some kind”.

Today’s gospel tells us that how we learn something is more influential that the something that we learn. Jesus tells us today: “Don’t be afraid, I’m with you”, in the hardest and darkest time of your lives. He shows us the way, but we may have to walk along his path and trust him.

Where do we find him? In the church -as Matthew says- our Christian community, the space where we shape our faith primarily through the Eucharist, and the proclamation of the Gospel, our worship and our solidarity towards each other -like we wonderfully did, and many people keep doing with the victims of Grenfell Tower Fire and their families.   

With Matthew we preach the gospel of the Church, the symbol of our values, tradition and religious and social commitment to our local community. He tells us the way, and even more, he is the way, and because of that we have faith that he will lead us to the truth. There are no tricks, no lies, no screen cheats in him, but the way to the truth. “Don’t be afraid, I’m with you”.