October 24, 2021

 Dear friends, I am enjoying these weeks with you, delving deep into the Gospel of Mark, where one reading follows closely on the last and we can really get a sense of what Mark is trying to tell us.  When I first came to you, we had a reading from Mark in which Jesus healed a blind man.  Since then, we’ve had 3 predictions by Jesus of his death, and now we are coming out the other side of these concentric circles, the stone thrown in the pool of water that is Jesus’ foretelling his death, and on the other side we find the bookend, the matching story of another person who is blind.  These two bookend stories remind us that just because we can see, doesn’t mean we can really see.  They reflect the spiritual blindness of the disciples and the religious authorities and a lot of us who are relatively comfortable and settled.  All these stories unsettle us, so that we realize that we need Jesus and learn to have faith in him.

          We begin with this man by the roadside, shouting and crying out to Jesus.  He is in need and he finds Jesus responsive, consoling those who weep, hearing the cries of those who are suffering.  This is such a comfort to all who struggle.  Whatever your need, you can cry out to Jesus, who will hear your cries and comes to bring comfort.  We often come to worship, trying to bring our strengths, put our best foot forward, give a smile and show everything is ok.  But Jesus gives us permission not to be ok.  It is in our admission that we aren’t ok that we realize how much we need him.  Jesus loves to be with people who are not ok.  That’s part of why we begin with the confession.  This is our cry from the roadside, “Jesus help me.”

          This is the only healing in the book of Mark in which the person who is healed is named.  His name is Bartimaeus.  He is named and his name is telling us something.  Bar means “son of” and “Timeaus” is a Greek name from outside Jesus’ culture and religion.  Who is Timaeus?  There was a well-known main character, of that time, in a dialogue of Plato, who was named Timaeus.  In this dialogue of Plato, there is a long passage about sight.  Timaeus, who is a great philosopher, says in this dialogue, that if a person is physically blind, they cannot be a philosopher.  He says, in other words, that if a person can’t see, they can’t inquire about the nature of the universe.

          In this Gospel, Mark and/or Jesus, is having a conversation with Plato and all of society of the time, about sight and philosophy.  This is Mark’s critique of the philosophy of the time.  This son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus is calling out to Jesus.  That means his father’s philosophy is not working for him.  Secondly, he is blind, which Timaeus already says keeps him from being able to inquire about the nature of the universe.  Bartimaeus is unable to follow in his father’s footsteps since his father said that blindness would prevent someone from being a philosopher.  Finally, Bartimaeus throws off his cloak in this Gospel, which would have been read at the time as being a philosopher’s cloak, because not everyone at the time wore cloaks, but philosophers, especially, would have worn them.  Throwing off the philosopher’s cloak signifies that Bartimaeus is throwing off the philosophy of his father Timaeus.

          We’re overhearing a disagreement between different philosophies.  One is Greek philosophy, which is saying that someone who is differently abled is unable to reach the higher ranks of thought and be a full member of society.  The other is Jesus, who hears Bartimeaus crying out as he has heard people who were hungry, ill, poor, and rejected crying out.  Jesus responds to them as people, worthy of his attention and love, and capable of participating in and contributing to the Kingdom of God and even capable of seeing and understanding much more than people who would have been expected to, like Disciples and religious authorities.

          Remember last week the James and John ask Jesus to grant their request, whatever they ask of him?  Jesus is unable to give them the seats next to him in his glory.  Contrast that with today, when Jesus asks this man, “What do you want me to do for you?”  He doesn’t ask for any special honor, but he asks that he would see.  Jesus tells him, “Go.  Your faith has made you well.”  Jesus is saying that this man could already see.  He saw Jesus as his healer.  He saw that healing and wholeness is the intent and trajectory of God’s plan for all of Creation.  He saw that Jesus is merciful.  With the return of his sight, this man will not only see what is beautiful and life-giving, but this man would also see suffering and pain.  He didn’t ask to skip the hard parts but he was ready to see everything that this world holds.  Some people say that this is the same man in the Garden who lost his robe there and that he also appears at the foot of the cross.  His sight will take him to depths of sorrow as well as to delights and joys, and yet he is ready to receive all of it together.

          This story highlights that we all have limitations.  We’re fine with that when someone is young and just learning to walk and talk.  We enjoy little people and the way they see the world.  It even expands our world to see through their eyes.  We realize what we had been taking for granted, when we see the world through the eyes of someone small.  “What’s that?  What’s that?” these little children say about an insect or flower that we would have just walked right by.  My little two year old niece Norah calls jets in the skies, “fishies.”  She thinks they are fish, flying through the sky.  Why not?  Jets moving quickly through the blue sky remind me very much of fishies swimming through the water.  She is seeing and delighting in something that has become so ordinary to me—she is calling attention to the wonder of this amazing world and relating it to something she understands a little better—fishies.  When we interact with children, we expect and enjoy the limitations we encounter, until it is nap time and the mood moves from delight to resistance!  

With adults, we don’t always appreciate the limitation we have.  We get frustrated and impatient with ourselves and others, even though we all have limitations.  We need our rest.  We can only reach up so high.  It takes time to get between places.  We can’t read each other’s minds.  Our bones get weaker as we age.  We get cataracts in time.

We all have limitations but maybe that the man was blind seemed unusually limiting to some people.  But Jesus has just been dealing with the especially limiting blindness of the disciples when they set their minds on worldly things and not godly things. Jesus deals with the blindness of the world which cannot accept that a poor man like Jesus could be the Son of God.  They couldn’t imagine that someone who includes children and puts them at the center, and who talks to divorced people and tax collectors and touches lepers, could be the Son of God. 

          Most of us are blind to God in our midst.  What would it take to open our eyes to see God in our enemy or in the person sleeping in front of the church door?  What would it take to honor God in creation and stop destroying this earth or seeing it only in its usefulness to us?  What would it take to expand our circle of friends to include all those people we work very hard every day to avoid—people suffering from mental illness, people addicted to drugs, people in prison or unable to find a job or housing because of a previous conviction.  Our blindness is that we have already made up our minds about these people, but they are Jesus in our midst. 

They see better than we do.  Every day they encounter the systems of justice, the people who have already made up their minds, and they see clearly the hypocrisy of those of us who say we follow Jesus, but turn a blind eye to their cries.

          The good news for us today is that Jesus hears our cries and our limitations do not keep us apart from him.  Our Great High Priest, Jesus, showed us that limitations do not separate us from God, when he took on limitations himself.  Jesus took on a human body with all our limits, physically, and mentally.  He threw off some of the limitations that we take on because of human expectations, like talking to and spending time with unexpected people like those who were poor or blind or of a different philosophy or religion.  And he accepted the human limitations, subjecting himself to trial and execution.

          We are by the road this morning and Jesus is coming near.  We cry out to him, “Jesus have mercy on us and open our eyes.  We are ready to see the pain along with the beauty and we are ready to go all the places you lead us.  Heal us, Jesus, from our spiritual and cultural blindness.  Help us embrace our limitations, knowing they can never separate us from you.  May we show kindness and compassion to others with limitations and appreciate their worth and dignity.  Grant us faith and courage to follow you to the cross, through times of suffering and challenge, and lead us through to eternal, abundant life, one with you and each other and all creation, whole and holy.