Mark 10:46-52
October 28, 2018
William G. Carter
They came to Jericho. As
he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of
Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that
it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David,
have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out
even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and
said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take
heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up
and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to
him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and
followed him on the way.
A number of folks in our
church family have been reading the Bible as part of our Immerse program. It’s
a wonderful addition to our education program. The participants read large
sections of the Bible and then gather in reading groups to talk about what they
have read. They tell me this is an enriching approach. They are getting a lot out
of it. Our plan is to keep at it! If anybody would like to take part, we would
love to have you join.
I like that they are
reading pages rather than paragraphs. When we hear the Bible in a worship
service, we usually hear it in paragraphs. But when we sweep through a wider
section of scripture, we see more than if we selected a single verse or two.
This story of
Bartimaeus, for instance. It sounds like any number of healing stories in the
New Testament. The plot is fairly standard. There is a person who has an
illness or disability. Jesus becomes aware of this person. After a brief
conversation, Jesus heals the person. That’s the standard plot: problem-brief
conversation-healing. But if you read more of the Gospel of Mark, you see a lot
more.
Bartimaeus is the second
sightless person to be healed in this Gospel. The first was in the village of
Bethsaida, up north near the Sea of Galilee. They lead this man to the Lord.
Jesus takes him by the hand and leads him out of the village. He applies the
standard healing practice of the day, and asks, “What do you see?” The patient
says, “I see people, but not too clearly; they look like trees walking.” So
Jesus has to touch him a second time, give him a second dose, and then the man
can see (8:22-26).
It’s a curious story
because Jesus has to give him a second attempt, a second whammy. It’s not to
suggest that Jesus isn’t strong enough to heal him the first time. Rather it
seems to suggest that some kinds of blindness are persistent. They linger. They
are difficult to heal. That story is back in chapter eight.
By contrast, the healing
of Bartimaeus is at the end of chapter ten. This time, the sightless person has
a name. He lives in Jericho, the oasis city down south, where he begs for a
living. This time, the people in the crowd don’t lead him by the hand to
encounter the Christ. Rather, the people in the crowd tell him to be quiet, to
shut up, to keep still.
The blind beggar is
sitting there, crying out to Jesus at the top of his lungs. With Roman soldiers
all around, Bartimaeus is calling out for the “Son of David.” That’s
revolutionary talk, Messiah talk. There’s a good chance the Jericho folk don’t
want any trouble. They tell him to hush. And Jesus heals his sight, this time
on the first attempt.
This is what we see if
we read the full sweep of this section of Mark’s Gospel. Two blind men are
healed. The first led by the crowd, the second hushed by the crowd. The first
needs extra help, the second needs no help and springs up to leave his beggar’s
cloak behind. As Jesus moved from success in Galilee to the cross in Jerusalem,
a good part of his ministry is equipping people to see.
There is a healing of a
blind person in chapter eight. There is a healing of a blind person in chapter
ten. The most curious thing is that between the healing of a blind person and
the other healing of a blind person, the twelve disciples of Jesus do not see a
thing. It’s painfully obvious if we read between the parentheses.
Immediately after the
first blind man is healed, Jesus says to the twelve, “I’m going to Jerusalem,
where I will be arrested, suffer, and be killed.” The disciples say, “No, not
you. That’s never going to happen to you.” From then, it goes downhill from
there.
·
They stammer when Jesus
is transfigured on the mountain, then say the wrong thing.
·
They are inept when they
have the opportunity to do a healing on their own.
·
They argue about which
one of them is the greatest.
·
They try to stop
somebody who is doing Christ’s work but is not part of their little group.
·
They try to chase away
the children that Jesus is blessing.
·
They hold on to the
notion that earthly riches will save your soul.
·
They push and shove to
get to the head of the line.
·
They argue about
privilege.
In paragraph after
paragraph, the followers of Jesus don’t see a thing. He says, “I am going to
Jerusalem to give my life.” In the grand sweep of things, they don’t get it. Do
you think this is true?
Somebody was telling me
about going out to dinner with her husband on a Saturday night. It was a special
celebration. They dressed up, went to a fancy place. Wine, appetizers, the whole
thing. The evening was ruined, however, by an obnoxious woman at the bar. She was
loud, she was rude. When the couple quietly complained, she heard about it from
the waitress, and started yelling obscenities. The couple decided to leave
after the woman fell off her barstool and needed to be helped back up. That was
Saturday night.
Imagine their surprise
when they go to church on Sunday, open the hymnal to sing the first song, look
across the aisle, and there she is, singing at full voice. At the door, they
recounted the story, shook their heads, and said, “Some people don’t get it.”
Some of you know I spent
last week with a group of mid-career clergy. As part of my responsibility to
the wider church, I serve two weeks a year as a faculty member for a church conference
on wellness. We delve into all the dimensions of what makes us human:
spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, vocational. It’s a great program.
But after attending the conference as a participant six years ago, and now
serving as staff for six conferences, do you know why the emphasis is on
wellness? Because so many of us are not well.
The faculty at that
conference has seen it all: fractured relationships, estranged children,
teenagers with drug problems, college students with eating disorders, spending
out of control, going into debt, emotions spiraling in every direction, serious
obesity, anger management issues, loss of faith. And that’s just with the
clergy. As one of my colleagues says, “Just like the congregations we serve.”
All of us have wounds and scar tissue.
The thing that’s so
fascinating is the level of denial, the inability to see. Ask the woman whose
credit score is shredded, and she says, “I guess I should have paid more of my
bills.” Ask the man with hypertension and diabetes who carries an extra two
hundred pounds, and he replies, “I really don’t have a weight problem.” It’s
astonishing what blind spots some people can have.
The only thing more astonishing
is how easy it is to see the blind spots of others when we can’t see our own.
Jesus says, “What do you
want, Bartimaeus? What can I do for you?” The blind man says, “I want to see.”
It is a remarkable request. He has been sitting on that street corner for a
long, long time. Every day he parks himself in a high traffic location. He
rolls out the cloak to catch whatever donations people will give out of pity.
He cries out for help whenever anyone passes by.
He says, “I want to see.”
He doesn’t say, “I want your money.” He doesn’t say, “I want your pity.” He
doesn’t say, “Give me a little something so you can assuage your guilt, hurry
by, and put me out of your sight.” He says he wants to see, and Jesus honors
that request.
Unlike the sightless
person in chapter eight, we are never told that Jesus touches him. That’s
interesting. It seems to suggest that the desire to see is the first step to
seeing. No more denial. No more begging. No more pathetic ignorance. With
complete trust, with determined clarity to stop living as he has, he throws off
the cloak that captures the pity-donations and goes face to face with Jesus. Then
he says, “I want to see.”
Anybody here want to
see? Good question. The problem with seeing is you can’t pretend you didn’t. As
one of my Christian Education professors once said, “Once you wise up, you can’t
wise down.”
Just picture the husband
who decides to see that his wife is drinking too much. He’s had enough of
embarrassment at parties, or the legal bills at his wife’s DUI arrests. He
doesn’t like that the kids hide from their mother, or that she shrugs off or argues
about his concerns. He has decided to see it – to really see it. Now the
question is, will he have the clarity and courage to take necessary steps to
improve the situation, however he can? Come what may?
Or the school nurse, who
sees evidence of neglect or abuse? Or the accountant who has a client with dark
secrets? Or the Christian who is weary of words of defamation, acts of
violence, and a hundred ways that the Christian faith is twisted out of shape
by people who don’t look a thing like Jesus?
We live in odd times. Clear
vision is a rare gift, and we need one another to keep our vision from going
out of focus. One of my teachers is a Presbyterian minister who died last
Monday. You have heard me speak of Eugene Peterson before, and you will hear me
speak of him again and again. He is the mentor who taught that megachurches
worship size and manufactured experience, rather than the Jesus who gives his
life on the cross. Gene also said, “A pastor should never serve a congregation
that is so big that he or she doesn’t know the names and stories of his people.”
Good advice, Christ-centered advice.
In his obituary in the
New York Times, he also had this to say: “American
culture is probably the least Christian culture that we’ve ever had, because
it’s so materialistic and it’s so full of lies. The whole advertising world is
just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst instincts we have. The
problem is, people have been treated as consumers for so long they don’t know
any other way to live.”[1]
What he’s talking about
is seeing people as children of God, and not as commodities to be plundered.
What he’s talking about is loving every neighbor, not pushing them away. What
he’s talking about is treasuring this wonderful gift of life and not cheapening
it in any way. What he’s talking about is seeing ourselves as Jesus sees us.
Bartimaeus asks to see,
to truly see. As somebody notes, right before this paragraph, two of Jesus’ own
disciples “wished for status and privilege; Bartimaeus simply asks for ‘his
vision.’ The one Jesus cannot grant, the other he can. It is Bartimaeus who is
told to ‘take courage.’”[2]
Courage is exactly what he needs – and what we need. For if his eyes are
opened, he will see Jesus. And if he sees Jesus, he will need courage to follow
him.
Remember how the story
ends? Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith
has made you well.” Immediately Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed Jesus
on the way. He followed Jesus all
the way to the cross…because he could see him.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[2] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading
of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1988) 282.