Where Is God? – Ken Williams
Receiving and giving Jesus’ love reveals his presence.
The movie “As Good As It Gets” features needy, complicated, people reluctantly brought together by necessity. When one offers or gives help to the other, they instinctively think, “What’s the catch?” The character named Melvin, a man with many issues, is played by Jack Nicholson. Melvin, to put it mildly, is not used to helping others nor being helped by someone else.
When a lady named Nora comes to him for help for her sick son he says, “Go sell crazy somewhere else. We’ll all stocked up here.” Melvin is a stereotype of humanity apart from God – not used to receiving or giving love and help,
Victor Hugo’s novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” features two people of the needy masses in 1492 Paris. Quasimodo, Notre Dame’s bell ringer, had been severely deformed and abandoned on the church’s doorstep soon after birth. Beautiful Esmarelda, a gypsy street dancer, is not permitted in the church where they consider her defiled and possibly a witch.
In some ways Quasimodo and Esmarelda are like Melvin and Nora. In the case of Quasimodo and Esmarelda, they are used to fending for themselves, apart from Christianity, which has determined them beyond help.
The walls of Notre Dame keep the “sinners” out. Where is God? In the 1939 movie version of the novel, Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara alternately portray desperation and kindness. Their self-sacrificing commitment to one another demonstrate Jesus’ presence.
In one scene Esmeralda risks helping Quasimodo just a day after he attempted to harm her. He was arrested, convicted, tied to a pillory, scourged with 50 lashes, publicly humiliated, abandoned and exposed in the blistering sunshine. Helpless and in misery, he pitifully begs for water. The witnessing crowd jeers and abuses him further.
Moved with pity, Esmeralda forgives him and emerges from the masses to give him a drink of water. Quasimodo is overwhelmed by shame and refuses to drink her gift of water. Her compassion is obvious, and it frees him to gulp the water she pours into his mouth. Jesus is there in Esmerald’s action of love but sadly the church watches from a distance. Where is God? He is there, in Christ, in Esmeralda’s actions.
The second equally poignant scene takes place after Esmeralda is wrongly accused of witchcraft. The court convicts her and orders her to be hung by the neck until she dies. She is publicly humiliated on the same pillory as Quasimodo. Her fate appears beyond hope. but Quasimodo suddenly appears and takes her behind Notre Dame’s walls, crying “sanctuary!” Once inside they face each other and Quasimodo, too ashamed to look at her, looks away and says, “I never realized till now how ugly I am, because you’re so beautiful…” On the verge of tears he blurts out, “I’m not a man! I’m not a beast! I’m about as shapeless as the man in the moon!” He sobs and laughs simultaneously, uncontrollably. More calmly he says, “I’m deaf, you know, but you can speak to me by signs.”
Esmeralda asks, “Why did you save me?” Grasping what she asks, he says, “You ask me why I saved you? Oh, I tried to carry you off, and the next day you gave me a drink of water and a little pity.” Jesus is present in her self-sacrificing love for her fellow human being, Quasimodo. Jesus is present in Quasimodo’s self-sacrificing love demonstrated in saving her life.
Where is God in all of what we see, encounter and experience? Emmanuel, flesh and bone of our flesh and bone, daily makes his presence known by people like us receiving and giving each other his love. God does not watch us from a distance. Jesus lives, eats, and works with family, followers, friends, and strangers. 2,000 years ago, he experienced us at our worst, yet never stopped loving us and will not leave or forsake us. Jesus’ compassionate self-sacrificing love left him exhausted, dehydrated, hungry, and overwhelmed as he lived his sinless life, perfecting our adversarial nature he inherited from his mother Mary.
The incarnate Son of God embraced the Cross, loving all humanity more than he loved himself. Six days before he was crucified, Lazarus’ sister Mary noticed his need for support. She gave all she had by anointing his feet with a precious perfume and drying them with her hair. She touched him as he had touched many others. She prepared him for dying, perhaps the only person who took the time to show him some pity. I’m grateful for Mary’s self-sacrificing love for Jesus by giving him “a cold drink of water” and showing him “a little pity”.
Ken and Nancy Williams served for some 25 years in pastoral ministry, and then almost another 20 years serving and mentoring other pastors. With the heart of a pastor Ken continues to write and blog from upstate New York where he and Nancy live close to their grandchildren.
Plain Truth Ministries | Box 300 | Pasadena, CA 91129-0300
