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)

Mark 10:35-45, from Proper 24(29)

This week’s reading brought to mind a quote from my pastor’s latest sermon.

“You are worse than you thought,” the Rev. Brady Cooper said in a sermon about the story in Acts of St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. “And God’s grace is greater than you ever imagined.”

After everything Jesus has said and done to hammer home his point that the Kingdom of God belongs to the last, least, littlest and lost, brothers James and John pull him aside, out of the other disciples’ earshot, and try to wheedle him into appointing the two of them as his seconds-in-command during the coming glory.

As David Lose points out in his excellent commentary this week, all sorts of painful irony ensues. Jesus tells the pair they have no idea what they’re asking for, but they’ll get more than they want of it before long. One wonders whether they still coveted the spots at Jesus’ right and left as he hung gloriously dying in bloody shreds on the cross between two also-crucified thieves. And don’t miss Sarah Hinlicky Wison’s wickedly funny commentary on the brothers’ confident assertion that they’re ready, willing and able to drink from Jesus’ cup and endure his baptism, in which she coins the pricelessly churchy word, “pyropneumatoheterobaptism.”

But all this ribbing we’re giving James and John about their presumption and naivete amuses us only because we know we’re no better. We all tell ourselves, on some level and at least at some times, that God treasures us more than anyone else, and we recoil from the paradox that, in his kingdom, nobody is special – precisely because everybody is special. The heart-breaker for me in this story is that Jesus knows this – knows it about James, about John, about the other disciples who get wind of what’s happening and respond with indignation, and about us, all these years later. And yet he went to the cross anyway. As Lose puts it:

“Three times Jesus tells the disciples what will happen in Jerusalem. Three times they misunderstand. And he goes there anyway. He keeps marching, keeps healing, keeps loving, keeps serving, keeps giving himself as a ransom to save us from ourselves. And he will continue to do just that. Until all of us are saved, overwhelmed, drowned, crucified, and raised again by God’s unending, all-encompassing love. Thanks be to God!”

That’s grace greater than I ever imagined.

Next week: Proper 25(30)

Mark 10:17-31, from Proper 23(28)

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson says that all we can do with a passage like this week’s is “manage it,” by which she means figure out a way to make it say something other than what it plainly says.

Jesus surly can’t have meant that we should sell everything, give the money to the poor, and follow him. I mean, where’s the sense it that? The real point of the passage must be (pick one):

• The rich, young ruler mistakenly thought he had kept the law. Jesus needed to disabuse him of that error.
• Nobody can keep the law. The story traps us into admitting as much.
• This particular rich, young ruler’s redemption involved his abandoning his wealth. Our redemption may involve something else.
• The “give up your riches” command applies only to the wealthy … wealthier than I am, that is.
• The “give up your riches” command applies to everyone, because everyone is richer than someone. But Jesus says God can handle our inability to do it. So all’s well.
• Like Peter, we have, in fact, given it all up.

But what if these are all just dodges? What if the awful, impractical truth is that Jesus really meant what he said, here – both to the rich, young ruler and to us?

Mark, of course, is no help at all. He just drops this story in our laps and moves on. As Wilson says, “Mark’s is a relentless Gospel, which seems not so much to invite to faith as to prove again and again the impossibility of faith.”

So with that happy though on the screen, what am I supposed to do with this passage? Frankly, I don’t know. And maybe I’m not supposed to know. Maybe I’m just supposed to react like the rich, young ruler did. Maybe my face is supposed to fall like his did, and maybe I am to walk sadly away without the answer I had hoped to receive. But maybe I also am supposed to notice that Jesus loved the rich, young ruler, and that he loves me, too. And maybe I’m supposed to cling to that hope in my bewilderment – and also to what the rich, young ruler didn’t hear: that, with God, all things are possible. And maybe, instead of continuing to walk away, as the rich, young ruler apparently did, I am to turn around, come back, lay this ambiguity at Jesus’ feet along with everything else I am able to lay there, and ask him to help me do all that he requires.

At least the rich, young ruler lacked only one thing. I’m afraid I lack many things. This week, at least for a while, I lacked forgiveness. Someone treated me badly, and not in a small way. I was angry, then I calmed down. Then, in a flash, I was angry again. I don’t know about you, but anger is like that for me. It comes in waves. One crashes over me. Then, in the trough after it passes, I think maybe, maybe, it’s over. Then I see another wave rising.

But in the middle of the turmoil, the person who had wronged me came around to try to patch things up. There was no apology per se. This person doesn’t do much apologizing. But the person at least confessed to having acted upon a few misperceptions. In the end, I think the person realized the harm that had been done and felt empathy and maybe remorse, if not all that much responsibility. But somehow, that half-baked outreach was enough for me. My anger vanished, as did my hunger for revenge. I didn’t trust this person before, and I think it would be unwise to begin trusting this person now. We are not, and probably never will be, friends. But at least I no longer … hate this person.

Had you told me back in one of those troughs between waves of anger that eternal life would be mine if only I would forgive this person, my face would have fallen, and I would have gone away sad, because in terms of the right to hate, I had great wealth. But Jesus saw me and loved me. And somehow, with God, all things are possible.

Next week: Proper 24(29)

 

Mark 10:2-16, from Proper 22 (27)

Read upside-down, this week’s Gospel reading goes something like this:

Some children needed to see Jesus. Some of them were sick and needed healing. Others needed – at least in the estimation of the adults in charge of them – Jesus’ blessing.

But Jesus was busy, his disciples said. He and they were deep in conversation about truly important stuff. Stop bothering us. Go away. You and your problems aren’t worth his time.

Maybe one of the kids started crying. Maybe one of the parents started shoving. Maybe Jesus just perceived what was happening in that all-knowing way he sometimes did. Whatever brought the situation to Jesus’ attention, he became “indignant,” in Mark’s words, that his disciples were giving the kids the brush-off.

Abruptly ending the discussion his disciples had considered so vital, he commanded, in what I like to imagine was a booming voice that silenced everyone in the house, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

And as everyone suddenly got interested in their sandals, or maybe even got upset with Jesus for so rudely ending the debate, he added, “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

And then he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.

It’s telling, I think, that Mark doesn’t describe what Jesus said as he bear-hugged each child.

“Welcome, little Reuben. My, you’re burning up with fever. There, there. It’s gone now. You’re going to be just fine.”

“Rebecca, my daughter. Thank you for coming. Of course I know your name. But I am pleased that you are surprised. Blessed are the meek. They will inherit the earth.”

“And here’s Jeremiah. A great man bore your name a long time ago. Are you brave, like him? I think you are. You have much to say, Jeremiah.”

“You have a famous name, too, Esther. Do you know the story? Of course you do. Esther showed faith and courage – and saved her people. You have faith and courage in you, too.”

“Hello, Levi …”

One after another they came, each a little miracle. And Mark didn’t think any of it was worth writing down. Just a bunch of kids, that’s all. What really mattered, what Mark thought we really needed to know about all these years later, was what the disciples had been discussing before the brats had interrupted them: The righteous way for a man to get rid of a wife he no longer wanted. Moses had clearly said that all a guy owed such a woman was a certificate of divorce freeing her to go charm some other poor sucker into having her. But Jesus, reminded by the Pharisees of this law, had said that not everything permitted by God was pleasing to God. What God most wanted, Jesus had said, was for husbands and wives to love and care for each other always.

That was a teaching that, for whatever reason, the disciples urgently felt they needed to get to the bottom of. So they were questioning Jesus about it. The ability to kick a woman to the curb gave men a lot of power. Giving that power up was a pretty big deal. But if they had been hoping for some wiggle room, or for some indication that Jesus had misspoken, Jesus disappoints them. Instead of easing up, Jesus doubles down. Divorce a spouse and marry another, and you make yourself an adulterer, Jesus tells them, be you a man or a woman. Perhaps the disciples where opening their mouths to object when those darn kids elbowed their way into the room, and Jesus acted like nothing in the world, not even such an important issue as divorce, was as important as showing love to a squirmy, snotty horde of … ugh! … kids!

Maybe we modern Christians wouldn’t put debating divorce ahead of serving needy children. But I’ll bet there are plenty of other things we would, and do, put higher on our priority lists. Look at the facilities we invest in, the political objectives we pursue, the rules we protect and enforce. Does love come before those things, or after? When we have to choose between love and those things, which do we choose?

Let the little children come. Do not hinder them. Whatever and whoever your kingdom belongs to, the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Next week: Proper 23 (28)