Sing What You Could Never Say
Revival At Asbury University
I encountered a story one morning last week that touched me to the core. Jesus and his disciples decide to get into a boat and cross over the Sea of Galilee. And then,
they arrived at Bethsaida. There the people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Then he spat on his eyes, laid his hands upon him, and asked whether he could see anything. The man’s sight began to come back, and he said, ‘I see people–they look like trees, but they are walking about.’ Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; he looked hard, and now he was cured and could see everything clearly. Then Jesus sent him home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village.’ Mark 8:22-26
This story is about Jesus patiently restoring the eyesight of a man who is blind. It is tender and profoundly human. It is real. But Jesus wants us to see this miraculous event, not only as possible, but as well as metaphor. He’s always doing that. He goes about doing really big things, but then he turns back to us and asks really big questions.
The disciples discovered they had no bread for their journey. Jesus becomes exasperated. You mean, guys, after feeding five thousand people, you mean you still don’t get it?
Why are you talking about having no bread? Have you no inkling yet? Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed? You have eyes: can you not see? You have ears: can you not hear? Have you forgotten? Mark 8:17-18
I feel deeply convicted. So I am reading this story all the while I am carefully watching the big news coming out of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. Revival has seized this small campus in this backwater town. Revival continues day after day. It’s spreading to so many other campuses. People are flocking in from miles around finally swamping the capacity of the campus to handle it all.
What in the world is happening? Is this for real? How can this last much longer, at which time things will go back to normal? But normal feels not very appealing as we hear story after story, mostly from young people, feeling touched by the hands of Jesus. It’s as if Jesus is really present, opening eyes. Do we have eyes to see what is really happening? Do I?
For a longtime now, I’ve been praying for another Pentecost, for me, for our churches, for our world, that the Spirit would sweep across the land like a fierce wind. And I’ve been trying to come closer to Jesus, every day, in a practice of prayer, because I truly believe we are changed through such prayer and this is exactly what is needed to change the world.
And yet, I still know I walk around looking at people as if they are trees. I’m always letting my little doubts get in the way of really seeing. Do I believe that revival is actually possible? Do I really believe that prayer can change my life and change our troubled world? Do I believe that Jesus can open my eyes to what is truly possible? Indeed, Jesus was asking me the other morning: “Can you not see?”
I find myself humming that lovely hymn, sung so long ago in my childhood:
Open my eyes that I may see
glimpses of truth thou hast for me.
Place in my hands the wonderful key
that shall unclasp and set me free.
Silently now I wait for thee,
ready, my God, thy will to see.
Open my eyes, illumine me,
Spirit divine!
I am also reading a book of lovely reflections by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, called A Century of Poetry: 100 Poems For Searching The Heart. I discovered there some lines from Michael Symmonds Roberts, a poet I’ve not known before, that make sense to me for this moment. If Jesus is ready to heal my blindness, maybe the only thing I can do right now is sing:
sing as if singing made sense,
sing in the caves of your heart,
sing like you want them to dance,
sing through the shades of your past,
sing what you never could say,
sing at the fulcrum of joy,
sing without need of reply.
It’s not that we need to win an argument about revival at the moment. No, we need to sing as if we make sense. We need to rest at the very fulcrum of joy. We need to sing what we can never fully say. This is what happens when Jesus opens our eyes, a second time, and we see everything clearly. I find myself this morning singing for joy at what’s going on.