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SERMONS

The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
October 29, 2006

By The Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky

I’d like to pay homage to the World Series this morning, by entitling this sermon, “Jesus in the Home Stretch.” Jesus in the gospel for today is rounding third base and headed for home, metaphorically at least. In terms of Jesus’s earthly life, our gospel takes place as Jesus is leaving Jericho, about a day’s walk from Jerusalem.

He is headed for Jerusalem -- the place where he will be tried, killed and buried in an earthly tomb, and Jericho is his last stop before he heads to Jerusalem. (The next scene in the gospel of Mark after this one is the scene we reenact on Palm Sunday -- where Jesus processes into the city on a colt, and the events we chronicle in Holy Week begin to unfold.)

So Jesus has rounded the last base and is headed for home. He’s like a racehorse who has made his final turn in the race and is headed for the finish line. And the reason this is important, I think, is that Jesus knows -- and we know -- what lies ahead for him when he gets to Jerusalem. But the disciples still don’t seem to understand. Jesus has tried to tell the disciples three times that he is to suffer and die, but the disciples seem blind to this truth, and unable to take in this reality.

And it is into this story of the disciples’ metaphorical blindness that we get the story of a man who is literally blind -- Bartimaeus, who seems in some ways to have a better idea of who Jesus is than the disciples do!

Our gospel tells us that Jesus and his disciples “came to Jericho” and then left Jericho, accompanied by “a large crowd.” We don’t know what they did in Jericho, we just know that they were leaving Jericho, and had accumulated a rather large crowd around them. “...[A]ll kinds of people were swirling around Jesus at this time” , so it was probably fairly chaotic.

And into this chaos comes the voice of a blind man named Bartimaeus, sitting by the side of the road. Somehow, despite his blindness, Bartimaeus has figured out that it is Jesus who is passing by, and so this man, from the side of the road, maybe from a gutter or ditch, calls out to Jesus from where he sits, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Now the first thing that happens when he does this is that some in the crowd “sternly” try to shush him. “’Be quiet, beggar,’ someone hisses.”“Leave him alone,” someone else pleads. But Bartimaeus won’t be shushed. In fact, he only cries more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And this time, Jesus hears him.

Jesus stops in his tracks, and says to those around him, “Call him here.” And so some in the crowd call to Bartimaeus, saying, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”

We’ll continue with this scene in a second, but pay attention to this: the crowd around Jesus in this scene has participated in the action in two very different ways. At first, the crowd tried to shush Bartimaeus. They try to shut him up so Jesus can get on the road to Jerusalem.

But after Bartimaeus refuses to give up, and calls to Jesus even more loudly, the crowd participates in the story in a very different way -- now, instead of trying to keep Jesus and Bartimaeus apart, the crowd is trying to help Bartimaeus get to Jesus! And I’m not sure whether these were different members of the crowd or the same, but it doesn’t really matter -- the point is that the crowd turned in this story from shushing Bartimaeus to helping Bartimaeus.

I mean, think about it. Bartimaeus is blind. He cannot see. He must navigate the world without the benefit of sight, and he’s probably gotten pretty good at that over time. but what it means as a practical matter, is that Bartimaeus needs the crowd’s help, to get from the ditch he’s sitting in to the place where Jesus waits.

And the crowd helps him. They call to Bartimaeus, “...get up, he is calling you.” They make sure that Bartimaeus gets the word that Jesus is calling him, and sure enough, when Bartimaeus hears this, he throws off his cloak, springs up and comes to Jesus.

Now, even though the text doesn’t say this directly, I think the crowd must’ve helped the blind man make his way to where Jesus was standing.

Maybe with their voices. Maybe somebody offered Bartimaeus a hand up and led him part of the way. Or maybe somebody guided the blind man with his hands has he passed.

I’m not sure how they did it, but I am convinced that they did -- somehow the crowd helped Bartimaeus get to Jesus, and then things happen pretty quickly. Jesus asks the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” (You might remember that question from last Sunday’s gospel and Frank’s sermon, if you were here.

Jesus asked that very same question -- “what do you want me to do for you?” -- of the disciples James and John, and their answer to Jesus’s question was very different from Bartimaeus’s.)

The blind man says to Jesus, “My teacher, let me see again.”

And Jesus says to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”

And Bartimaeus regains his sight, and joins the crowd following Jesus. And the story is over.

There are several other things about this story that really speak to me today. For one thing, notice this: Bartimaeus didn’t beg for the usual stuff beggars beg for, at least in my (limited) experience with beggars.

Beggars typically want money, or food, or clothes. But this beggar did not ask for any of this. This beggar asked for mercy and healing instead. And that tells us alot about this man, and what kind of healing power he believed Jesus had.

And that leads me to a second point: When Bartimaeus realizes it is Jesus calling to him, he immediately jumps up and lurches forward to Jesus, and we get some pretty vigorous verbs in here -- “[T]he text says that [Bartimaeus] ‘sprang up’ and ran” to Jesus; “There was no hesitation in this response -- no prudent asking of someone to look after his cloak” which was probably the only thing of value he had.

“No -- with the abandon that is characteristic of genuine hopefulness, Bartimaeus jumped the moment the door of possibility opened before him.” And he sprang forward to Jesus, “the source of his hope.”

And this scene raises the question: “what kept such a spirit of hope alive during all those years of blindness and poverty -- sitting, day after day, at the mercy of the crowd, with nothing more tangible to look forward to than simply eking out a beggar’s existence?

Most human beings in such circumstances would have long before either surrendered in despair or blown up in...frustration. What was it that kept” Bartimaus from giving up? Here was a man without sight, without resources and perhaps without the encouragement of others, and yet, he hadn’t given up hope.

Bartimaeus bounds forward and reveals himself to be a person of “abounding hope.” And that’s how he appears in this story, to me: a figure of great hope, who doesn’t give in to the temptation to despair, even though he has every right to.

Even though Bartimaeus is blind and broken and sitting in a ditch by the side of the road, he still calls to Jesus from the ditch, and begs Jesus to heal him and restore him to wholeness.

And so Bartimaeus becomes a kind of model for us of hope -- of seeking Jesus’s healing power out no matter how hopeless things seem, or how many things we bump into as we stumble in the dark,, or how deep the ditch we’re in seems.

“Like Bartimaeus we can recognize -- even in our blindest and most broken moments” -- that God is present, that God has the power to help us and heal us, no matter what ditch we’re in or what kind of blindness we’re suffering from. And that makes Bartimaeus a beacon of hope -- a light in our darkness.

Finally, I’ll leave you with one last thought on the story of Bartimaeus. The question I find myself asking, at the end of this story, comes from the behaviour of the crowd in this story. Remember how that crowd first shushed Bartimaeus, then later helped him get to Jesus?

What kind of crowd we are -- we in this church? Are we the crowd that’s shushing Bartimaeus, actually interfering with the blind man’s attempt to get Jesus’s attention and come to him for healing? Or are we the crowd that’s helping Bartimaeus find his way to Jesus? What about that?

Can you think of a Bartimaeus in your life, somebody who seems a little lost? Maybe it’s someone who longs for the healing and hope that Jesus offers, but can’t quite grope her way to Jesus, without help from somebody like you or me. And are you trying to help that person find her way to Jesus’s healing power, or are you the one changing the subject, whenever the conversation strays too close to matters of faith?

And in this time of talking about stewardship and thinking about the church and its role and importance in our lives, aren’t these questions we ought to be asking ourselves? Really, though, shouldn’t we be asking ourselves these question all the time?

Are we the crowd that’s shushing Bartimaeus? Or are we the crowd that’s helping Bartimaeus find his way to Jesus?

What was it the crowd said to Bartimaeus? “Take heart, Get up. He is calling you.” Amen.