B – 30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 29 October 2006
Jeremiah 31: 31-34; Psalm 100
MARK 10: 46 – 52

What Do You Want?

A Sermon by John C. Bush, Interim Pastor
First Presbyterian Church
Birmingham, Alabama

On the street where I grew up there were quite a few boys my age. One of our favorite games was "Blind Man’s Bluff." Did you ever play it? Someone blindfolds you and turns you around and around in order to disorient you. Then everyone else scatters, and in your supposed blindness you are supposed to stumble into this or that trying to catch someone. The other plays keep out of reach, because if you touch anyone they become the next person to wear the blinder. For them, watching you stumble and grope is a hilarious experience, but for you it can be frustrating or even upsetting – not being able to see where you are or what is happening around you.

Of course, there is no connection at all between that childhood game and actual blindness. I can hardly imagine what that must be like, can you? Flannery O’Conner’s blind evangelist, Hazel Moses, insists that blind people see more. At one point, he says, "If there’s no bottom to your eyes, they hold more."

I don’t know about that – and I’d rather not find out whether it’s true. But I am sure that those of us who supposedly have all our faculties frequently seem pretty lost and disoriented. We must admit that the physically blind are not the only ones who have difficulty keeping tract of where they are and what is going on around them. Having our sight doesn’t necessarily mean we possess insight into the people, things and circumstances of our lives.

On there way down to Jerusalem, Jesus and his followers pass through Jericho – a prosperous agricultural town about fifteen miles northeast of the city. A blind man, whom we call Bartimaeus, hears the commotion and asks those around him what all the excitement is about. We don’t know much about this fellow. We call him Bartimaeus, but that may not be his name. The word is Aramaic, and it means "Son of Timaeus." So it may be his ancestry rather than his name that we know. Obviously, though, either this man or his father was well known to the later church who preserved this story for us, because it is rare for names to be given in the accounts of Jesus’ encounters and conversations.

When he hears that Jesus is passing by, he begins making a terrible commotion – calling out for Jesus to have mercy on him. He makes so much noise, the others can’t hear what Jesus is saying, so they try to shut him up. But the blind man will not be silenced. There are always stern voices around to try to hold others down, push back the cries for mercy, compassion and justice. "Settle for what is; be content with your lot; leave the status quo alone. Why are you people so pushy?" But Bartimaeus would have none of it. The more they try to shush him, the more insistent are his calls for mercy.

His pleas get through to Jesus. And there is no small comfort for us in that. Surrounded by this great multitude of followers and hangers-on, Jesus hears the desperate appeal of one who has neither status nor ability – one who, in fact, has nothing going for him except a need to be heard and helped. That is good news for those who sit on the edges, or outside the church, looking in. This Bartimaeus is one of you: an outsider, and he stands in favorable and stark contrast to the insiders in Mark’s story. The Lord hears, and makes a place for the outsider. There is good news here for any of us when we feel cut off and not sure where to turn for help.

There is also instruction and judgment, for how often are we among those who want the beggars, the disadvantaged to stay away, keep quiet and leave us undisturbed? We are offended by the impertinence of the street people, the homeless, the destitute who invade our space with their hands out, demanding that we look at them, see their plight, give them some assistance. How many excuses can we invent – how many reasons can we find – to push them away, shush them up and get on with our important, middle class business?

But that isn’t the way Jesus handles the problem, nor is it the way he teaches that we should. Over and over again, he warns us that our affluence can be, if we let it, a roadblock in the way of our spiritual journey. Not that poverty is better than affluence, but that we who have much tend to put our trust in what we have – things, influence, resources, contacts. While the disadvantaged know they can’t rely on such things: they have nothing to rely on except grace. And that is what makes the difference.

Jesus sends someone to bring Bartimaeus to him. Again, that is the way God often does things. When there are needs to be met, people to be helped, problems to be solved, God chooses one or all of us to take on the tasks at hand. Over the 135 years this church has been on this corner, God has given us many such tasks, and most often – sooner or later, occasionally under some duress – you have said "yes" to God’s call. One of those responses has been the way you have chosen to staff this church for growth – to take advantage of the renewal coming to the downtown Birmingham community. And saying "yes" is costly in many ways, including financially. Finishing this year, with all of its challenges, is especially costly and your church needs some extra help from you now to meet the challenges God is putting in front of us.

"This is your lucky day," says the messenger from Jesus. "He is calling for you." Now, that probably is not how Bartimaeus saw the situation. He probably thought he was the one doing the calling. But well before we are aware of it, the initiative for our welfare – for our healing, our future and salvation – has already been taken, by God. That is part of what we Presbyterians mean when we talk about predestination: not that our spiritual journey is all mapped out and guaranteed in advance, but that before we were yet ready or able to recognize it, God has already acted on our behalf in Jesus of Nazareth. When we are able to hear it, we too will come to know the reality: "He is calling for you." God is already out there, in this city, calling this congregation to renewal, and to yet more faithful response to the future God is giving us.

"What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asks. And what Bartimaeus asks is not for personal power or special privilege. "Let me see again." Give me vision; give me insight; give me what it takes to move into a new future. And the response of Jesus is straightforward. "Your faith has made you well."

There is a story that comes out of Cambodia during the era of the "killing fields." When outsiders were at last able to go in and saw the indescribable horrors of what Pol Pot and his regime had done, they found many, many women who had gone blind. Doctors examined them to find what disease had caused their blindness, and they could find no physical reason why these people could not see. They concluded that the women were blinded by what they had seen and what had been done to them – the murder, the cruelty, the rape and pillage. Finally, they had seen enough – had seen too much, and they could see no more. And so they were blind.

"What do you want me to do for you?" As Tertullian observed, "Christians are made, not born." We do not grow into faith by natural inclination. We are brought to it by God’s grace meeting us along the way, beginning with the astonishing realization that God is with us and for us, and meets us in the places of our need. Meets us not in the murky waters of mysticism or in the high sounding platitudes of noble ideas, or in the urbane discourse of human reason, nor even in the safe confines of rules and commandments, of doctrines and creeds. God’s truth comes to us, not as a proposition but a person. Christian faith is both personal and relational – and it begins with this person, Jesus Christ, and with how our destiny is bound to his, and to how we find our story wrapped up in his story. And it leads us on into the relationships of a community of faith within which our souls are nurtured and fed. "What do you want me to do for you?"

"And immediately he received his sight, and followed him on the way." That is how the story ends, and its final words are fascinating. He "followed him on the way." What does that mean?

It may mean simply that Bartimaeus joined the crowd that was following Jesus up to Jerusalem. But, just a year or two later, the followers of Jesus would come to be called "the people of the way." This may be a testimony, preserved for us from the early church, to the faithfulness of this son of Timaeus. It may be a way of telling us that this person who met Jesus by chance on that dusty roadway, and who received the wonderful gift of sight, received as well a level of spiritual insight and commitment that carried his forward, not just as part of the crowd going up to Jerusalem, but well beyond that. Beyond Palm Sunday and Easter, to be among those who went on to build the future of God’s church. To be a faithful follower, sharing God’s good news of healing, justice and peace, in the spirit of one who is in the business of asking, "What do you want me to do for you?"

This church has been faithful, and as a result God is offering us yet more challenges. What do you suppose God now wants to do with and for us?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow composed a poem from this story of Blind Bartimaeus. He concludes it with this invitation:

Ye that have eyes yet cannot see,
In darkness and in misery,
Recall these mighty voices three:
‘Jesus, have mercy now on me!’
‘Fear not, for he is calling thee!’
‘Thy faith from blindness gives release.

[COPYRIGHT 2006, John C. Bush.]

NOW TO THE ONE WHO IS ABLE
BY THE POWER AT WORK WITHIN US
TO DO FAR MORE ABUNDANTLY
THAN ALL WE MAY ASK OR THINK:
TO GOD BE THE GLORY,
IN THE CHURCH AND IN CHRIST JESUS,
FROM THIS DAY FORTH AND FOREVER MORE.
AMEN.