Some thirty years after Father Sorin built the University of Notre Dame, its main building suffered a major fire which gutted the structure. There was no loss of life but this building was essential for the university because all the classes were held in there. Fr Sorin was on a trip when it happened, but he quickly returned and was seen walking through the ruined building. Everyone thought he would be devastated that his life’s work was destroyed. Many probably asked themselves why Mary did not protect the building that was dedicated to her honor and was built through a radical trust in her. Not Fr Sorin though. He said, “This fire is my fault. I dreamed too small. Mary obviously wants a bigger university,” and he set out immediately to build it.
In today’s Gospel we have a similar situation where the people did not dream big enough. They thought that Jesus could only heal the sick and, maybe, perhaps bring someone back who has just died, as in the case of the young man at Nain and the twelve year old daughter of Jairus. There could be doubt about that whether they were miracles or simply Jesus knowing the signs of life. But a decaying corpse? No, that can’t happen. Both Martha and Mary determined that it couldn’t. If only you would have been here, Lord, he wouldn’t have died. This is what they determined Jesus should have done. Now, Lord, it is too late, too far gone. So, thank you for coming but it doesn’t work with what we believe. Martha had an idea when she said, “Even now, I know God will grant you what you ask of him.” But yet she herself did not believe that because she challenged him when he told them to remove the stone.
The problem with Jesus is that he doesn’t always, in fact he rarely, fits into the little box that we want to keep Him in. He is not a tame God but an all-knowing God. No one really ever could guess what He was going to do next. They knew he would heal, that he would drive out demons, that He would preach and teach but they never knew what it would look like. Would He use a sinful woman to convert a town? Would he put mud on the eyes of a blind man and use a despised person to correct the self righteous Pharisees? No one ever suspected these things. Would He use twelve, for the most part, poorly educated men to preach to the world? Would He allow a prostitute to be the first to see His resurrected self? We know that God is going to act but we don’t get the right to tell Him how He gets to act. We often want to control God and we can’t because we can’t control love. Love acts, Love loves and we simply have to be open to it.
We need to change our expectation of God and simply let Him be God and let ourselves be pleasantly surprised. The teachers were telling me of something similar that when they give the students a project, give them a problem and materials to complete a project, that most times the students come up with a entirely different solution than what they expected, which they often find amazing. If that is the case with human beings, then it must be the case with God who made human beings.
It is far more important to know God than to know of God. We know He will act but we must allow Him the freedom to act, otherwise we, like the people who killed Him, won’t get to see what He is doing and will miss all the great works of God. If we have asked, we must be at peace because for certain He will act. We know not how He will act, just that He will and that He will act out of love. We need to ask God to reveal Himself to us, to open our hearts to His actions, and to have the faith to believe.