“Where I am, there also will my servant be.” These words are both the most liberating and the most challenging of the words of Jesus. They direct both his disciples “in the moment” and us, across the centuries, to seek and find him in all of the places of life where he will be found. These words free us to seek him in all the places, circumstances, and people that come into our lives, not just in carefully designated settings or only in the company of recognized, holy figures in a given community.
But if that is true, Jesus also challenges us to seek, recognize, and respond to the sacred in places, circumstances, and people where we might not expect it to be found! This is what particularly irritated the religious leaders who watched so carefully to catch Jesus in some compromising situation so as to diminish him in the eyes of those who looked to him for hope. No matter where he went, to whom he spoke or how low he bent to touch their woundedness, their criticisms and charges didn’t stop him or even slow him down.
Jesus went into Samaria, almost a “forbidden zone” to a practicing Jew, and spoke at length with a Samaritan woman at a well. He spoke often with notorious sinners, both men and women. He ventured into the realm of the sick, whose broken bodies he healed, and even into the realm of dead and dying, restoring some to life – the embodiment of his statement that the seed that dies gives life for the glory of God.
Where do we go, and where do we fear to go? What are the boundaries or barriers to living that we accept without effort, or even erect on our own? Whom do we accept as “out,” beyond our reach, without effort? On the heights and in the valleys, in the light and in the shadows, there Christ will be. Basking in a smile or confronting a frown, there Christ will be. Will we?
Fr. Tom