Today’s Scripture
Reading (October 26, 2017): Luke 13
The Beatles released “I Saw Her Standing There” as the first track to
their 1963 album “Please, Please Me.” The song was
credited to McCartney-Lennon, as opposed to the later formula of Lennon-McCartney. “I Saw Her Standing There” was principally written by Paul McCartney. But
that does not mean that John Lennon had nothing to do with the song. The historical rumor is that Paul had written the
first lines of the song as “She was just seventeen, never been a beauty queen.”
John looked over Paul’s shoulder and howled with laughter, finally responding
with “You’re joking about that line, aren’t you.” Together they changed the
line to “She was just seventeen, you know what I mean.” They liked the line
because nobody knew what they meant. It is doubtful that even John and Paul
knew what they meant.
“I Saw Her Standing There” is a typical song about teenage love. The unnamed
boy sees the girl at a dance, and that was all that it took. He knew from that
first glance that he would fall in love with her. To be honest, I think that I
prefer McCartney’s original lyrics, “never been a beauty queen.” While
admittedly sexist, the original lyrics do
take the boys like of the girl past the arena of appearance. “You know what I
mean” seems to have a creepy feel to it. The song ends with a profession of everlasting love. “Now I’ll never dance
with another, oh, since I saw her standing there.”
While, admittedly, “I Saw Her Standing There” follows an accepted formula
for The Beatle’s Music early on in their career, before the Fab Four realized
that they could use their music to speak
up on other societal issues, the song does touch on a fundamental problem. What do you see? How is it that you interpret
the world in which you live? For the anonymous boy of the song, life changed
because of what it was that he saw. (It is an interesting contrast between The
Beatles “I Saw Her Standing There, ” and
Trooper’s “Three Dressed Up as a Nine” which contains the line “You looked a whole
lot better to me from twenty feet away.” Both songs essentially “saw her
standing there” but reacted differently to the revelation.)
The truth is that all of our lives are influenced only by what we metaphorically
see. And much of what we see is heavily
influenced by our worldview. Most upper and middle-class
people do not see poverty, and so they don’t
do anything about it. We don’t see rampant drug use from our suburban palaces,
so it doesn’t affect our lives. We do seem to see
the great divide that exists between Islam and Christianity, and that produces
much fear in our lives that is generally
unwarranted. I am a little tired of
conversations around Muslims bringing Sharia Law to North America, which most North
American Muslims I am acquainted with don’t seem to want. I wonder what kind of
cultural coloring it takes to rage against Sharia Law and yet somehow sanitize
Mosaic Law which we profess to follow and has some of the same offensive
aspects to it as other ancient legal systems. But it all starts with
what it is that we see – and how we see
it.
Jesus saw the woman, bent over with sickness, standing there. Jesus saw
her with eyes that other people didn’t seem to possess. To the Pharisees, she
was a bother. It was evident that sin had
caused her sickness. She was one of the unfortunate ones, but her illness was
either brought on by her own sin or that
of her parents. She was disregarded, a
case study in how not to live your life. The Pharisees saw sickness, but Jesus
saw her – the person. She was a daughter of Israel, and she deserved better,
and because Jesus saw her, he was about to make a difference in her life.
As we live our Christians existences, our prayer should always be that we
would see the world the way that God sees it – the way that Jesus sees it. We need to be willing to see beyond the cultural understanding, beyond
color and religion, beyond sex and sexual orientation, and just see
the person who is standing in front of us. Because that is all that ever seemed
to matter to Jesus. Person always trumped
sin – and every person, even you and me, were of extreme value to the one who
sees us standing there.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Luke 14
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