It came when I read something a friend of mine wrote about how dense the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Why-Could-They-Not-Sees must have been to have had three or four twenty minute conversations with the Word made Flesh over three years and not have caught on that Jesus was the Messiah.
It brought to mind how many years I self-righteously wondered how the Pharisees could be so lame as to not get it in the beginning. Now that I think of it, the disciples were not exactly the brightest bulbs in the packet themselves.
On further reflection, I began to come face to face with the fact that after two thousand years of telling the Story to each other, studying the Bible until we are blue in the face, spending our Sabbaths in places where people argue whether Latin or tongues or praise choruses or the 1928 prayer book are the most proper vehicles for worshipping the One Who made us and the One Who came among us, staking out positions theological and political that cover everything from slavery to witch-burning to the Inquisition to the Crusades to celibacy for some and not for others — after two thousand years of such carrying on in the name of righteousness, we are likely to be just as confused, just as afraid, just as uncertain, just as mystified by the Presence of the Christ as were those devout Jewish folks so long ago.
I for one, to quote a character from a parable actually, am not worthy even to lift my hands to heaven. A parable, of course, being a story the One Who came made up to tell folks something about their real selves since they could not bear to hear straight talk about their real selves. I think I may well be, along with some other folks, in a new category of modern religious, the folks known as the Do-Not-Want-To-Sees.
At the very least, it means that I for one am not worthy to pat myself on the back as though I understand this Mystery when another could not.
I am not even worthy to lift my hands toward heaven.
