Sometimes you teach or preach and you really feel like everyone’s tasting the flavors you’re cooking. People even tell you afterwards: You’re right! We DO need to be more welcoming! And then the same person ignores the visitor, or complains about the church in front of strangers, or angrily refuses to help set up coffee for Sunday School. People hear your message and then say: You’re right! We really should become a more prayerful church! And then when you ask them to sign up for the prayer room, the sheet is permanently blank. You get frustrated because no matter how much you counsel someone, they totally don’t even see that they are the heart of their own problems.
10 Jesus’ disciples came and said to him, “Why do you use parables when you speak to the crowds?”
11 Jesus replied, “Because they haven’t received the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but you have. 12 For those who have will receive more and they will have more than enough. But as for those who don’t have, even the little they have will be taken away from them. 13 This is why I speak to the crowds in parables: although they see, they don’t really see; and although they hear, they don’t really hear or understand. Matthew 13:10-13, CEB
We can’t see our own blindspots…that’s what makes them blindspots. You could tell me all day about my blindspots and I would just assume you’re talking about someone else. I am like those who don’t have understanding, even the little that I think I have is taken away from me, the moment you speak the truth to me. When I hear the truth about my blindspots from a perspective of non-understanding, my defensive walls go up and I compensate anyway I can to distract myself and you from the truth.
If the secrets of the kingdom of heaven open us to receive more than enough, the Christ in me rises up to meet the Christ in you. Having Christ means receiving more and more Christ. Disillusionment with our false realities and blindspots is the beginning to a more expansive truth.