Mark 10:46-52
46
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving
Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the
roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out
and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" 48 Many sternly
ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, "Son of David,
have mercy on me!" 49 Jesus stood still and said, "Call him
here." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart; get
up, he is calling you." 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and
came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for
you?" The blind man said to him, "My teacher, let me see again."
52 Jesus said to him, "Go; your faith has made you well." Immediately
he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
Now, I don’t know what your Bible
says, but my NRSV has a heading to this section: “The Healing of Blind
Bartimaeus.” Of course, those headings aren’t part of the actual text; the
translators, editors, etc. of the English versions placed them there as helpful
tools for quickly referencing the central theme or narrative of a particular
text. Therefore, the heading helps us to know (before we ever read the verses)
that the passage before us this morning is about the healing of blind
Bartimaeus. But this story doesn’t just fall out of the sky and onto the pages
of our Bibles; it isn’t like the story a father makes up out of thin air in the
hopes it will get his child to wind down into a night-long sleep. No, this
story takes its place in the wider narrative of Mark’s gospel, and it seems to
play a specific role in a selection of stories that make up chapter ten (here
again, chapter and verse are not part of the original text, but they’re helpful
in taking the books of the Bible in smaller, easier to swallow doses).
If we take it as a singular story,
there is power enough to go around: a blind beggar named Bartimaeus hears Jesus
is passing by, calls out his name, Jesus stops in his tracks, calls the man
over, and Jesus heals him, says, “your faith has made you well.” Why,
you could get a lot of miles out of that story, and rightly so. In fact, this
particular healing story in Mark has always been one of my favorites, if for no
other reason than that it disrupts a smooth reading of the gospel story, with
Jesus stopping mid-sprint on his way to Jerusalem in order to listen to the
prayer of a blind beggar. But can I tell you something? When I reread this
story recently it upset me, made me squirm a bit in my seat—not because of the
miraculous power presented by Jesus in the healing of Bartimaeus, but because I
found myself identifying with the last people in this text one would want to
identify himself, the disciples of Jesus.
You see, the disciples aren’t
exactly exemplary Jesus-followers in the gospels; they have an even rougher go
in Mark’s gospel, and in this tenth chapter, they seem to be tripping over
their own feet to get in Jesus’ way. Just look up a few verses in the chapter,
around verse thirteen: parents are bringing their babies to Jesus to have them
blessed. We were bringing our babies just a few weeks ago to be blessed,
weren’t we? I mean we literally were:
Sallie and I stood up here with Carter (and Kohl, who just couldn’t bare to sit
the whole thin out) and four other families with their babies in arm. Now can
you imagine if one of your fellow worshippers had stood up in the midst of that
service and said, “Now look, we got church to get to. Wrap up this baby-blessing
nonsense so we can get on to singing the doxology and nodding along with the
choir!”? Can you imagine such a thing? Well, that’s about the gist of what
these disciples do in verse thirteen: “People were bringing little children to
Jesus in order to that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly
to them.” In other words, the disciples were telling these mommas
and daddies with their babies to hit the bricks because Jesus had places to be,
empires to topple, and rules to lay down. He’s no typical politician with time
for kissing babies and eating corn dogs for photo-ops at the county fair—he’s
got stuff to do!
Of course, you know what happens,
right? “But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the
little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that
the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the
kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’" The disciples likely thought they
were doing Jesus a solid, keeping the riff-raff from bothering him on this
all-important “kingdom of God” tour to Jerusalem, but Jesus scolds them and
points out that these children and their blessing-seeking parents are free to
come to him. And the truth is, they seem to get the message about letting folks
alone who want to come to Jesus, because the next thing you know, here comes a
rich man with a question.
Now, we heard this guy’s story a
couple of weeks ago: rich man comes to Jesus, asks what it’ll take to get
eternal life, heaven, salvation, etc., Jesus tells him to keep the
commandments, the man says he has, Jesus does not laugh in his face and tells him to sell everything he has and
come follow, man goes away sad because he had a bunch of stuff. Now, did you
notice the disciples didn’t say a word in that incident? They don’t ask to see
the guy’s papers, his credentials, nor do they vet his questions to Jesus. Why,
I can almost see them physically stepping out of the way as this rich man
approaches Jesus. Still, I wonder if they didn’t kick themselves just a little
bit when, after the man goes away grieving, Jesus says, "‘How
hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the
disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children,
how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom
of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be
saved?’ […and] Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and
followed you.’”
Maybe if they had just halted this guy before he approached Jesus with
his loaded question, made him wait until a more appropriate time, set him
straight with their own working knowledge of what Jesus is about, then maybe
they wouldn’t have had to hear what Jesus had to say about the difficulty of
rich folks getting into the kingdom. We do that from time to time, don’t we?
Someone has a deep, burning question for God, for Jesus, and like an office
manager running interference for the CEO, we’ll step in, give our opinion, and
send them on their way, hoping to avoid what may actually be some deeply
revealing truths for us. After all, it’s much easier to tell people what we think than to honestly listen to what
the Spirit of God does (or maybe worse) does not have to say about the situation.
But the very next thing that happens may be the most infuriating thing in
this entire chapter. In verse thirty-five, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came
forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us
whatever we ask of you." Excuse me? The Zebedee brothers come to
Jesus and say, “we want you to do whatever we ask.” The guts on these two! (Of
course, Matthew doesn’t do them any favors in his telling, because he has their momma come and ask Jesus…good
Lord!). Where are the other ten disciples while this is going on? Still hanging
back after that scolding about the children? Are they waiting to see how Jesus
might treat two of his own when they come asking for something? All I know is,
after Jesus (again) responds to these two with the grace and gentleness that
only Jesus can, we’re told, “When the ten heard this, they began to be
angry with James and John.” Now, can you blame them? They’re either
angry because James and John have done the very thing they’ve been trying to
keep others from doing, or (and I think more likely) they’re angry because none
of them had the thought or the guts to do it first! All I know is that it seems
this little stunt from James and John was enough, and the disciples click back
into their “Messiah’s secret service mode” when they came to Jericho.
There had been enough lollygagging, enough distractions. It was time to
get back on track with their expectations of Jesus and this kingdom he kept
promising. That’s why when this blind beggar on the side of the road starts
shouting, "‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many
sternly ordered him to be quiet." They’ve had a belly full of this
sort of stuff! There are things to do, an agenda to stick with—we’ve got to get
this thing moving! Who’s got time to humor some old beggar on the side of the
road? You know, I heard he’s probably not even really blind, owns a big
house—tax-free—in some gated community, and only sits there with his sign a
couple of hours a day—that’s what I heard, saw it on a 20/20 special or
something. Anyhow…Shut him up! Somebody tell him to “Hush!” before Jesus hears
him and we’ve got to stop this whole thing again!
How many people have we tried to keep from crying out to Jesus because of
our own ideas about what Jesus is up to? How many people have we told to hush
because we wanted to get on with this whole thing? I get the feeling sometimes
we’re like those kids who sit in the back of the class, close to the door, that
day when the prof says, “It looks like we’re going to get out a few minutes
early today…unless someone has a question, something they need clearing up,”
like we’re daring anyone to raise their hand, subconsciously threatening anyone
who might be confused because we’ve got other things on our minds. I mean, how
many folks who follow Jesus are out there trying to protect him from those who
might call out his name—as if he needs protecting! How many folks have we kept
from Jesus because we decided they
weren’t worthy of the time it would take to acknowledge their existence? How
many people have been held back from Jesus—the Jesus they themselves are trying so desperately to know, to meet, to
love—because those of us who call ourselves Christians have determined that it
is our job to run interference, to treat the Church like some sort of movement
that can’t stop for the likes of those who aren’t already a part of it? How in
the world can any of us think that?
I suppose we could find some solace in the fact that these first
disciples did it—and with Jesus physically in their midst no less! They try to
get Bartimaeus to hush, to keep him quiet, to stop him from distracting Jesus,
but Mark says, “but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’"
You see, try as they might, Jesus’ disciples could not silence this one who
longed to see Jesus, this one who longed for mercy from Jesus. Did you notice that? Every one else in this
chapter wanted something from Jesus: “Jesus, bless my baby so he’ll grow up strong
and smart…Jesus, bless my little girl so she’ll grow up pretty and land a good
husband and never have to work a day in her life…Good Teacher, tell me what I
have to do to get in, what I need to do so I can go to heaven when I go
toes-up…Teacher, give us what we want, chairs on your right and left hand, the
number two and three jobs in this coming kingdom…Jesus….” But Bartimaeus…ol’
Bart isn’t asking for anything like that: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
They can’t hush the one seeking mercy!
So many looking for mercy. So many longing for a taste of grace. So many
yearning for the slightest sliver of love. I wonder, do we tell them to hush?
Do we tell them to hush when, within their longing, hurting, within their very
souls is the faith to make them whole? Do we jump at the chance to defend the
Jesus we think we own when another cries out hoping to hear a word from God in
Christ? How many times have we tried to silence the cries for mercy from those
sitting on the side of life’s roads, on the margins of our clearly defined,
self-drawn lines for who’s in and who’s out? Still, they cry out…Jesus, have mercy on me! And every time
I draw that line, every time I try to hush the cries of those outside of the
lines I’ve drawn—lines I’ve drawn with proof-texted passages of scripture,
lines I’ve drawn out of my comfort, lines I’ve drawn out of my ignorance,
arrogance, selfishness, and sinfulness—every, single line and every, single
time I’ve said, “hush!” to those who just want a taste, a glimpse, some faint
shimmer of love from God, I have
somewhere down the road found myself crying out, “Jesus, have mercy on ME!”
Because, friends, the truth is, no matter how many times we tell those folks to
hush, no matter how many times we try to keep Jesus out of the hands of those
we deem unworthy, unfit, sinners, no matter how many times we try to keep Jesus
clean, undefiled, and unsullied by the cries of those “outside,” Jesus still
hears them. And Jesus stops—right in the middle of whatever we think he ought
to be doing—calls them unto himself, and shows them the faith already present
within them. In other words, friends, Jesus is going to hear them. Jesus is
going to love them. And there’s not a thing we can do but either get out of his
way or join in the wonderful work of hearing them and loving them too. Amen.
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