Sermon by Felicity Thompson, Seminarian, 10/27/2024
Centering Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, may your will be done, through me.
Our gospel reading is taken from Mark 10:46-52. Most of us are familiar with this story. Let's look more closely at this encounter between Jesus and the blind man, Bartimaeus. There is an image of this story on the cover of our service pamphlets. I believe it leaves a lot to the imagination and accurately describes this miraculous scene. But the lines are blurred. So using this as a template we can complete the picture, making the blurred lines sharper.
Bartimaeus is not just blind. He is poor. He is a beggar. He is dependent on the generosity of strangers. To receive spare change or food, he has to be situated in a place on the side of the road depending on the generosity of people passing by.
I am sure he wished he could take a break, just one day, take a break from begging. Imagine, no vacation, no sick days, no holidays. He did this every day in all types of weather. If he was lucky, he had family who helped him get ready. Someone woke him up. Someone assisted with his personal hygiene. If he was lucky, someone probably helped him get something to eat. If he was lucky, someone assisted him as he put on his clothes and hurried him out the door to find a spot on the side of the road where he sat to beg for hours. He was there with others who found themselves in similar circumstances. They were the invisibles of society.
The disciples were returning from Jericho with Jesus and noticed Bartimaeus. Instead of talking to Bartimaeus, they talked about him. Bartimaeus is blind. He is not deaf. He hears what the disciples are saying about him. Bartimaeus knows he won’t get anything from them because the disciples have already made a premature decision about his physical and spiritual circumstances. The man probably thinks, “they see me but don’t know me”.
Can you imagine, the disciples are behaving as though blindness is a sin. What other differences and personal characteristics have we assigned as sins? Because once that label is assigned, it never goes away.
Bartimaeus was tired of his condition. He had no vision, no foresight, no plan for anything different in his future. Like you and me, he wanted to be a better person. On this particular day he heard Jesus was passing by. There was a crowd, and he hoped he would get some extra money, enough to take a break for a day or two. Imagine that he stood up and held his hand out as he shouted and begged and was knocked down by the crowd and ignored. No one responded.
There were lots of people. Some stepped on his feet as they rushed by. In the midst of all the activity Bartimaeus used his other senses - hearing the noise, the shuffling of sandals, the smell of others and animals, the taste of dust, as he sat desperately reaching. He saw through his mind’s eye, the crowd. Picture it, you can imagine, Bartimaeus not knowing what direction to go, felt the excitement. He raises his voice asking, “What is going on?” Several people, including fellow beggars yelled back, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by!” He heard another person say, “Jesus healed a blind man”. And another, “this is the man who performed miracles. He healed the sick”. Bartimaeus paid attention to the voices and the feet stomping as most in the crowd were running, some walking in a hurried manner. These voices as they shouted to each other, were voices of hope.
The light bulb went on. There was something that welled up inside him. He understood he could not keep doing the same thing over and over again, and expect a different result. Bartimaeus understood he needed to do something different. So he shouted even louder. He realized he had a reason to rejoice. That was the greatest healing. That awakening that caused Bartimaeus to give God some glory, happened before he was blessed with sight. He recognized hope and self-agency. He realized he himself could make something happen here!
This was his chance. He had nothing to be ashamed of. He was not embarrassed. He understood that God was a willing giver and he, Bartimaeus, was ready to receive. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Asking for help is an expression of our faith. This was it.
This encounter with Jesus, Jesus restores the blind man’s sight. But wait a minute, Jesus gave him what he didn’t even ask for. It’s one thing to know that what you got is an answer to your prayer. It’s another to know that God gave you some stuff you didn’t even ask Him to do. The greater miracle was the discovery of self agency and that’s what God gave him that Bartimaeus did not ask for, did not ask for, could not have thought about it! Is there anyone here who has experienced that? You didn’t ask God to wake you up this morning, God just did it. You didn’t ask, it’s a miracle, God just did it.
Unlike James and John, last week, who asked to rule the world, something that Jesus was not authorized to give, Bartimaeus asked for something that affected one person. Up till this encounter with Jesus, Bartimaeus believed he was unworthy, he believed he deserved the abuse, he believed he deserved society’s neglect. He believed he was at the bottom of society’s totem pole because he was a sinner. Something transformative happened when Jesus gave him sight. The Lord blessed him with sight which he probably thought he didn’t deserve but he needed to survive, he wanted it and most important, he asked for it.
I don’t want to be insensitive, preaching about the restoration of sight. Some of our brothers and sisters who are worshiping with us this morning, may find this story to be a distressing reminder of a healing they have longed for and not yet experienced. A healing prayed for and not answered. You may ask, how do we relate to a Jesus who gives sight to one person and not to others? Don’t other blind people deserve the healing of sight? Why hasn’t Jesus responded to our cries the way He responded to Bartimaeus? Here we are celebrating the restoration of this man’s sight. Let’s not focus on Bartimaeus’ physical sight. Let us celebrate the gift he didn’t ask for, his spiritual insight, the claiming of self agency!
In Christian theology, blindness is often a metaphor for spiritual ignorance or inability to perceive truth, while sight represents understanding, belief, and faith. By healing the blind man, Jesus showed that He is capable of opening our spiritual eyes so we can see the truth of God’s message and see a path to salvation.
The misconceptions about Bartimaeus, Jesus fixes all that … Jesus shows up with receipts! Jesus has knowledge about this man, information that the disciples don’t have. Stay with me here. In the middle of a community that had ignored his needs, silenced his voice and devalued his personhood, Jesus had seen him, heard him, brought him out of the margins society relegated him to, seen his heart and insisted on a face to face conversation. We have friends and family members who have been ignored by society, denied physical healing, silenced and had their personhood devalued.
No safety net. No Medicaid. No Medicare. No Social Security. No life insurance. No trust fund. No generational wealth. No inheritance. He had important information. He knew he had to do something quickly. He couldn’t run towards Jesus because he couldn’t see Him. So he shouted and cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He kept shouting knowing that Jesus would hear him and come to him.
I am sure it has been a very long time since anyone had a meaningful conversation with Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus was a dreaded nuisance. Jesus settled for nothing less than a face to face interaction with this marginalized soul whom the crowd attempted to silence and dismiss. Jesus said, ‘Bring that man to me. Don’t ignore him! Assist him! Help him up and guide him to me!’ Jesus may have continued, ‘he may not matter to you, but he matters deeply to me. He cried out to me with a desperation that none of you possess. I will honor his personhood and his preciousness in a way that you have not. Guide him to me!
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?”
In the transformational grace of God, this man was healed and reaffirmed of both his belovedness and his sacred worth. With God, no one slips through the cracks - not Bartimaeus, and not any of us!
This restoration of Bartimaeus’ sight is a lesson for all of us. Jesus’ mission was not just to heal, save, and offer grace, it was also to serve, to challenge rigid traditions that lacked compassion and true understanding of God’s will. In our communities, we create systems not to see, touch, smell or hear the cries of those who are different.
Some of those systems are iron clad. Some of those roads are impassable.
Jesus is showing us to hear the cries of those who are in need. Now, that is living our faith! Let us not let our physical challenges separate us. That is how to be better children, better brothers and sisters, better aunts and uncles, better mothers and fathers, better grandparents.
Looking at the image on the front of our bulletins, Pastor Minzi reflects this. We hear the voice of Jesus - calling us to be the kind of community that works hard to accommodate people’s unique needs and allowing them to accommodate ours; calling us to seek out the marginalized and mistreated souls that have been forced to the roadside and to walk with them toward the Savior who beckons us into His presence; calling us to remember that, in the peculiar economy of God’s grace, every soul is sacred, every voice is heard, and every hurt matters deeply to the heart of God; calling us to embrace the deeper vision that Bartimaeus experienced - a deeper vision that has nothing at all to do with his physical eyesight.
If a blind man could find Jesus in a crowd, we have no excuse!