Mark 10:46-52, from Proper 24(29)
Stories about blindness in the Gospels typically have as much to do with insight as with sight.
This principle is perhaps nowhere more evident than in John’s story about how Jesus healed a man who had been blind from birth. The Pharisees, who can see the miracle’s results but can’t see how it could have been divine in origin, argue with the man and then throw him out of the temple. Later, Jesus finds the man and introduces himself, saying, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
The sight-vs-insight theme is woven just as tightly, if more subtly, into this week’s reading about blind Bartimaeus.
As the story opens, Bartimaeus is begging, as usual, along the roadside when Jesus, the disciples and a large crowd go walking past on their way from Jericho to Jerusalem. Recognizing a chance at healing, Bartimaeus begins to bellow, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The crowd’s attempts to shush him only make Bartimaeus cry louder. Hearing him at last, Jesus stops in his tracks and summons Bartimaeus to him. The crowd, reversing course, begins cheering Bartimaeus on. “Take heart! Get up! He is calling you!” Bartimaeus abandons his beggar’s cloak, springs to his feet and makes his way to Jesus. When he arrives, Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus replies, “My Teacher, let me see again.” Jesus tells him, “Go; your faith has made you well,” and Bartimaeus immediately regains his sight. Then he promptly disobeys Jesus. Instead of going, he follows – that is, follows Jesus to Jerusalem, the place Jesus is knowingly heading to suffer and die.
Sorting out who is blind and who can see in this story depends entirely on what you mean by blindness and sight. The crowd can see both Bartimaeus and Jesus, but it can’t see who either man truly is. To the crowd, Bartimaeus is a blind man. Given the crowd’s callous response to his pleas for healing, all the emphasis appears to be on “blind,” and none of seems to be on “man.” Meanwhile, it’s hard to say who Jesus is in the eyes of the crowd. Most likely, they saw him as many things – rabbi, healer, rebel leader, and more. But only Bartimaeus seems to see who Jesus truly is: the “Son of David,” a title reserved for the Messiah promised to King David by God through the prophet Nathan in II Samuel 7. Perhaps it is hearing this insight, shouted so clearly and unexpectedly over the din of the crowd’s many misperceptions, that brings Jesus to a halt and prompts him to summon Bartimaeus.
And in that moment before Jesus heals Bartimaeus’ physical blindness, perhaps, as Debie Thomas’ essay suggests, Jesus heals the crowd’s spiritual blindness toward Bartimaeus. Suddenly, the crowd sees Bartimaeus as a man, not just as his blindness, and they begin encouraging him to pursue the healing they had been trying to deny him only moments ago. As Thomas writes:
“Once the crowd sees Bartimaeus, they can’t unsee him. Once Jesus opens their eyes to his full humanity, they must respond with compassion: ‘Take heart; get up; he is calling you.’ I don’t know this for sure, but I suspect that Jesus heals the crowd first so that they can, in turn, participate in Bartimaeus’s healing. What the blind man needs is not physical sight alone; he also needs visibility and validation within his community. In this double miracle story, Jesus grants him both.”
These layers of meaning about sight and insight should prompt us to mull what we ourselves see, don’t see, and think we see. In my other life as a media communication scholar, I both research and teach about how media and other social, cultural and psychological factors combine to influence our perceptions of others, of what things are like, and of how things work. As I write this, thousands of people from Central and South America are making their way toward the U.S. border with Mexico. Border guards and soldiers from the U.S. are preparing to confront them. What will happen when the two groups meet remains uncertain.
But the motivations you ascribe to the groups involved, the predictions you make about what will happen next and then after that, and how you should respond, and your assessment of whether the story is vitally important, not important at all, or somewhere in between depend greatly on your news consumption habits, your political orientation and world view, and – for Christians – you thoughts, or lack of thought, about your faith’s relevance to what is happening. The struggle in times like these – and in all times, really, because in important ways, these times aren’t all that different from those times or any other times – the struggle is to see as Jesus would have us see, whether we are looking at him, at others, or at ourselves.
The good news is that Jesus sees clearly and clearly sees each of us. And more likely in spite of what he sees than because of it, he has invited each of us to come and be healed.
So take heart. Get up. He is calling you.
Next week: Proper 26(31)
