WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO FOR YOU?
Jeremiah 31: 7-9; Hebrews 5: 1-6; Mark 10: 46-85
If you think about it, there are two really challenging questions that every Christian must wrestle with. Well, there’s probably a lot more than just two, but there’s two primary ones that I’m thinking about today: “Who do you say that I am?” And “What do you want me to do for you?”
The first is almost a given. It’s THE question. The primary proclamation of faith. It also happens to be the question that we’re actually given the answer to. Peter says it in scripture, “you are the Messiah.” It’s the question we answer each week when we join in saying those difficult, mysterious, poetic, and ancient words of the Creed. That Jesus is the Son of God: True God from True God, yet also somehow truly and fully human: the Son of Man, the messiah, the Promised One, the anointed one, the Christ, our savior.
This formulaic answer is reiterated in all of our Eucharistic prayers, occasionally using slightly different metaphors and images, but all pointing to one reality - that Jesus is The One, and one with The One.
We all still have to wrestle with that question and answer - with what it means to us personally. We still have to fill those words - “Messiah,” “Son of God,” “Christ,” “Savior,” - we still have to fill those with meaning for ourselves. But at least we have the containers . . . we know the words.
This other question, the one we heard last week and then again today is different. “What do you want me to do for you?” There’s no single answer for that. Every answer to that question will necessarily be unique, and keyed to the individual responding. And, for each of us, I imagine, the answer might even be different at different points of our lives.
For those of us who are genuinely hurting, who are really desperate, for Bartimaeus, for example, the answer is simple. Heal me. Save me. Help me.
Most of us have been in a similarly desperate place, and if you haven’t been there yet, well, I hate to say it, but you will, at some point.
In those periods of real anguish the response to “what do you want me to do for you?” is often clear and simple. It’s when we’re living with more stability, when we’re higher up the ladder of privilege, further up the hierarchy of needs, that’s when the answers get harder. Because, like those whose need is desperate, what we cry out for is to be transformed, to become who we have been created to be, to be made whole, complete, but on a much deeper lever - at the core of what makes us who we are, at the depths of our soul. And so the response to this question then becomes a different kind of faith proclamation. It requires a different level of understanding. Not who is Jesus? But who am I? And who is God calling me to be?
Take a moment and imagine Jesus standing in front of you. Imagine his eyes filled with love for you. Looking at you the way a dear friend might look at you after not seeing you for a very long time. Now, imagine him asking, “What do you want me to do for you? What needs to be healed, fixed, transformed in your life, what can I do for you for you to become optimal; for you to become the person you’re dying to be, the person God gave you life to be.”
I’ve been struggling to find a response to that question in my own life lately, and I still think that, for me, answering that question requires a level of self-awareness that I’m not sure I have yet. Oh, sure, there are things I want, questions I’d like answers to, situations I’d like changed, people whom I know are suffering, and I’d like them not to be suffering But this isn’t a genie-in-the-bottle-you-get-three-wishes type of question. And if I turn it into that, I end up sounding like James and John last week, asking for something completely wrong or outrageous, something that will make Jesus respond, “you don’t know what you’re asking for.”
The question, “What do you want me to do for you?” requires that we dig deep. It asks us to grow up, to grow more and more into the full stature of Christ. To become more and more the person God has created us to be. And that, in my experience, is much harder than affirming that Jesus is the Messiah.
Most Christians (especially really smart ones) can get caught up in trying to figure out the first question - Who is Jesus? How is he both fully human and fully divine? Trying to parse and understand and intellectually wrestle with that question, we can do it so much that we don’t ever get to the second question, which, for many of us, might actually be more important.
And maybe it’s when Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” when everything seems right in our lives and in our world, the answer becomes more difficult because it requires soul-searching and it requires honesty, it requires us to admit that just maybe things aren’t as good as I’d like them to be because maybe I’m not as good as I’d like to be. THINGS are great; maybe I’m not.
As difficult as it might be to respond with integrity that Jesus is the Son of God, it’s maybe even more difficult to respond with integrity to this second question. Because it requires us to know ourselves as we are known. To see ourselves as Christ sees us. As beloved and broken. As flawed and forgiven. And to clearly, and bravely, ask for that deep transformation.
What do you want me to do for you? is essentially Jesus offering us the gift of our true self.
God wants us to be who God created us to be. God needs us to be the people God created us to be. But daring to look for that person, to ask Jesus to show you that person, to ask him to help you become that person, that’s a daring thing to do. Because that person you are, the person you were created to be, is the image of God within you.
This week, take some time and let yourself get quiet, let yourself be in God’s presence and consider how you would answer that question. What would you like God to do for you? What inside you is longing to be revealed? What do you desire to see brought to life in you. What do you need healed, transformed, renewed? What do you want me to do for you? Jesus still stands before you, ready to respond. What will you ask for?
And after you do respond, maybe you will then have a question for Jesus: “What do you want ME to do for YOU?”
