By the Rev. Barbara Mraz
It is the season for haunting… ghosts hang from trees in people’s yards, skeletons pose outside doorways, witches abound. Of course, more creative costumes are available now, images from the popular culture — Harry Potter, Marvel Comics, and others I am clueless about. Halloween encompasses many stock images of fear. We know this stuff is seasonal and supposed to be funny-scary so we go with it.
However, lots of things can “haunt” us or bother us or scare us, including those things we have seen that we wish we could unsee, For me these are images of people suffering or being treated in the most cruel ways imaginable. Movies about the Holocaust are impossible for me, as well as even “funny scenes” like the dentist torture in “Marathon Man.” One reason I don’t like violent movies is because I don’t want those images in my head!
In a recent Faith Formation class, Holly Stoerker brought in an picture of a painting that portrayed Jesus speaking to the “Young Ruler” — a person who had plenty of money and did not like being told that he should give it away if he wanted to follow Jesus. The man is on the right (adorned in velvet and finery) and Jesus is on the left. Jesus is pointing or gesturing toward the doorway that frames two people outside who are clearly suffering.
No matter how many times most of us see news footage of extreme poverty, famine, disease and people dying, they can bounce right off of us. But this picture has a directness to it: Jesus is gesturing towards the suffering people. There is no mistake about this, no explanation, no qualification. It is utterly convincing. Even convicting.
I have started to remember that picture and that gesture more than I want to as I confront my own finances, my own expenditures my own credit card bills, my own checkbook, the extent of my own generosity and giving.
Some things haunt us that are not going away after Halloween.
See you in church where we will examine the intricacies of sight and how we see things differently now than pre-Covid, especially in light of the story of Job and that of the blind man, Bartimaeus.
Barbara
P.S. You know that Scandinavian names that end in -son (Johnson, Peterson, etc.) originally meant John’s son, Peter’s son. Likewise, Bartimaeus was the son of Timaeus, also a beggar. “Bart” means “son of” in the same way. I can’t help it. I like to research.
