Eye Contact

I’ve mentioned before that I’m watching The Chosen with the guys in the jail. When I first started as chaplain I sort of resisted “just watching TV” during chapel. We should read and talk and share instead, surely (don’t we all watch more than enough TV?!). Maybe there was some curriculum we could get through. Maybe I could, with great humility and luminous, penetrating insight, lead them through my favourite Jesus stories. And The Chosen was a bit too American evangelical-ish. It’s surely not very respectable for (self-styled) theological sophisticates to associate themselves with any of the products of a bloated and crassly consumeristic Christian media industry, right?

Wrong. The guys simply love this show. Sometimes they’re turning their seats around to face the screen before I even have a chance to say hello or ask them how they’re doing. They know they’re on the clock and if we don’t start immediately, we might not get to finish a whole episode uninterrupted. They cheer Jesus on (sometimes loudly) when he puts the religious leaders in their place. The laugh at the antics of Peter and Andrew. They exchange knowing glances when there’s a scene involving a Roman soldier abusing his authority.

But it’s the healings they love the most. Jesus healing a leper, Jesus forgiving the sins of a paralyzed man lowered through a roof and then telling him to stand up and walk, Jesus exorcising the demons. Jesus mending broken bodies, Jesus speaking peace to tormented souls, Jesus summoning the dying to life, Jesus undoing the curse as far as it is found. During these scenes the silence is only broken by an occasional sniffle, the passing of the roll of toilet paper. It’s not uncommon to look around and see a few tear-stained faces. It’s not uncommon to feel a tear or two on my own.

The most recent episode we watched was the one where Jesus heals the man by the pool in Jerusalem. He had been there for nearly forty years, struggling and failing to drag his broken body into a pool believed to have healing powers when the water was stirred. “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asks him. And then this shell of a beaten down human being is suddenly standing and walking and laughing. And Jesus is laughing. And the disciples are looking on, incredulous. And the inmates are laughing and whooping and cheering. A few of them even stood up to applaud. I guess they figured Jesus deserved a standing ovation.

We were discussing the episode afterward. One guy touched his heart and said, “You know most religious shows suck, but this one makes me feel something here every time.” Another offered, “This Jesus is awesome.” Another just said, “I f***in’ love this show!” There was a bit of enthusiastic banter before things quieted down. Then, a young Blackfoot man who rarely speaks said, “I know what you mean about how it hits you here” (he touched his chest). My sister has cerebral palsy, she can’t talk, can’t walk, and… you know, it’s hard. Thirty years… So that guy sat there for forty years and then Jesus healed him. It’s so powerful to think about that, that it could actually happen.”

A guy across the room thanked him for sharing. And then asked, somewhat hesitantly, “So, why didn’t Jesus just heal everybody at that pool? Why just that one guy?”

Oh boy. That’s a question, isn’t it? It’s certainly one I’ve long wondered about. You know Jesus, as long as you’re there… and as long as you’re in the mood… you might as well keep going, no? But there are no answers, obviously. Why did Jesus heal some and not others? Why does Jesus heal some and not others? Yeah, these were little irruptions of the kingdom, kind of a signposts to a new day coming. Hints, foretastes, etc. Yeah, I get all that. But like the guy in the jail, I wonder about all the other people at the pool that day. Pretty cool to see your friend get up and walk. Not so cool to still be stuck on the ground yourself.

Well, I hummed, and I hawed, I talked about “the mystery of God’s timing” or some such thing. I danced around the answer that doesn’t exist. They weren’t having it, all this mystery business. I should know this by now. “Living with the tension” might work in a theology grad seminar but not so much in a concrete prison chapel. One guy blurted out, “Well, those others must not have had faith. Or maybe Jesus was waiting for another time. He knew their hearts.” There were plenty of nods around the circle.

I cringed inwardly. A thousand theological objections jostled around in my brain. No, we can’t make it a formula! We can’t tie Jesus’ healings and miracles to worthiness. The whole point is that they are interruptions of pure grace! Healing isn’t something that we engineer with our faith! That kind of theology will crush people! I’ve seen it crush people!

I didn’t say any of that. My thoughts instead went to a recent series of blog posts from Richard Beck. Beck is poking around in critiques of the prosperity gospel, suggesting that the people who mock this tend to be the theologically learned, the professional class, not those on the bottom, the poor, the failing, the down and out who are most in need of a divine surprise. These are the ones desperate to believe that miracles can indeed be pried out of the hand of God. Same goes for healing, I thought. Sometimes it’s the ones who need it most who are most convinced that if they could just summon the right kind of faith…

There’s probably a time and a place and a way to push back on this kind of thinking. But this wasn’t it. I think I just ended up saying, “Yeah, maybe. Jesus does know our hearts. Even better than we know them ourselves.”

There was another guy who hadn’t said much thus far. Which was unusual, because sometimes you can hardly get him to stop talking. He had been watching this episode intently. He had leaned forward when Jesus leaned down to heal the man. I had seen the tears falling down his cheek. Near the end of our time together, he said, “You know for me, the most powerful part was when Jesus looked that man right in the eye… he saw him… and when he said, ‘pick up your mat, you’re not coming back here anymore.’ And, you know, I think that’s me. I don’t wanna keep coming back here anymore… I wanna stop going back to my addictions… I wanna stop hurting the people I love… I really believe that Jesus sees me and was speaking to me.”

He wiped his eyes and looked around. There were a lot of mumbled “thank-you’s” and “yeah man’s.” There was a lot of eye contact. Miracles come in different forms.