What Are You Looking For?

Van Gogh, Self-Portrait With Straw Hat, 1887

I’ve been reflecting, actually for months now, on this amazing painting by Van Gogh, Self-Portrait With Straw Hat, painted in 1887, just three years before he took his life, tragically at the age of 37. When I look at those eyes, though, I think about a man who knows how to see deeply into the heart of things, as Wordsworth phrases it. I’ve been pondering for years about how I might see more deeply. This painting encourages me.

What is he looking for? Well, beauty, for one thing, judging from all of Van Gogh’s paintings where beauty seems captured for a moment. Surely longing for love, knowing something about his rocky relationships. Maybe contentment, a peace that might come from more sure faith in his God. Perhaps we see a longing for rest for his restless soul. Maybe there is a touch of fear here, some slight premonition of what’s out ahead in the next few years, where life was filled with both prolific productiveness and fierce psychotic chaos.

What I know for sure is that this man looks and looks and looks. I believe he sees, deeply. I believe he sees things I don’t always see, things I would like to see.

Do you ever ask yourself the question “what are you looking for?” It seems like a question we ought to be examining. Jesus asked just this question. He asked a group of folks milling around in the park one day: “What are you looking for?” They were slightly knocked back on their heels. That question jolted me too one day. What am I looking for? Am I looking for the right things? And then Jesus says to these folks, well, “come and see,” and invites them over to his place for a good conversation, until four in the afternoon, we are told. (John 1:35-39)

I’d like to have been part of the conversation. With all of the confusion being thrown our way, relentlessly, daily, hourly, wouldn’t we like to know what Jesus thinks is worth looking for?

Just this morning I ran into another of the big questions Jesus asks:

35 As he approached Jericho a blind man sat at the roadside begging. 36 Hearing a crowd going past, he asked what was happening, 37 and was told that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. 38 Then he called out, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.’ 39 The people in front told him to hold his tongue; but he shouted all the more, ‘Son of David, have pity on me.’ 40 Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came up Jesus asked him, 41 ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ ‘Sir, I want my sight back,’ he answered. 42 Jesus said to him, ‘Have back your sight; your faith has healed you.’ 43 He recovered his sight instantly and followed Jesus, praising God. And all the people gave praise to God for what they had seen. Luke 18:35-43

Can you imagine Jesus just passing by? Can you imagine one of those moments where you want to call out to Jesus “have pity on me?” Come and see the troubles I’m going through. Come closer. Give me new vision to see things more clearly, more deeply. I don’t in any way want to take away from the horror of physical blindness here, or the miraculous response from Jesus, but I do believe this story reminds us of that other kind of seeing, seeing more deeply, seeing more clearly, seeing through the fog of confusion that plagues our world. Maybe it begins by seeing Jesus just passing by.

Jesus asks here the most important of questions: “What do you want me to do for you?” Oh my, the profound generosity takes my breath away. Well I’ve got a bunch of answers to this question, I suppose, but my answers begin by asking for my sight to come back in fresh and new ways. I feel like I’ve been robbed of seeing things very clearly. Too often I see only on the surface of things, as my culture teaches me.

But Jesus says he will bring back my sight! Just tell him that’s what you want when he asks. Don’t we all need to plead, loudly, for new vision, when Jesus passes by.