Saturday, 14 March 2015

LET HIM GO UP!

Let him go up!
‘People are healed and become more human as they enter into real relationships with others.’ These are the words of Jean Vanier, the founder of communities for people with intellectual disabilities and those who live with them, who this week has been awarded the Templeton Prize. Jean is 86 now and has spent his life discovering, and helping others discover, ways of breaking down barriers between people – especially between the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak.’ Over the years he has developed a universal heart that includes all people and longs to see people embrace and listen to each other.
He learnt this the hard way, by deciding to open a house and welcome two profoundly intellectually handicapped people to live with him. At first he thought he was helping them but he soon discovered that they were doing far more for him. He had been in the navy and a university lecturer and was competent in practical and academic matters. But he says he was impoverished in the ways of the heart. His two companions opened up in him whole areas of his being that he had kept hidden and of which he was frightened. He discovered he had the potential for hatred and violence and Raphaël and Philippe, his companions, revealed to him his own darkness. They did this not in words but in responding to his offer of friendship, of relationship, by being blunt, honest and open, things that were natural for them.
As his work grew and people came to join him and then found other communities, he helped them to come in touch with their own suppressed inner selves. The result was an inner freedom and an ability to relate to people whom otherwise they would have shunned. Jean believes this is a simple message that can break down barriers between ‘enemies’ – be they Muslims and Christians, rich and poor, healthy and sick and so forth; all the divisions we know exist in our world.
The Jews experienced this in a way. They were in desolation in exile, especially when they realised they had blown it and it was their own fault that calamity had come on them. God saw their misery and, through the pagan king Cyrus, restored them to their inheritance. Cyrus says, ‘God has ordered me to build him a temple in Jerusalem and whoever there is among you of his people, let him go up and build it!’ To ‘go up’ is to go from where I am now to another place. It is to leave a place that is familiar and go to somewhere new with all the anxiety that might involve. That was what Jean did when he started living with Raphaël and Philippe.
Jesus’ whole life was a ‘going up.’ Going up to Jerusalem was not just an ordinary journey. Jerusalem was the place where he would achieve his purpose. It was there that he was ‘lifted up’ on the cross so that ‘everyone who believes may have life.’ We go up with him every time we rise and move from our familiar secure home and go out to others who are different from us. This is the message of Lent and Easter. It is the message of Jean Vanier and it is the message that gives each of us new life.
15 March 2015                                   Lent Sunday 4 B

2 Chronicles 36:14-23                                    Ephesians 2:4-10                                John 3:14-21    

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