Blind
Bartimaeus is one of my favourite people in the Bible. He is one of those insignificant characters
in the Gospels who only show up once to show us what faith/faithfulness is. We’d think that this would be the role the
disciples play as the story unfolds, but oddly they only show us an incomplete
faithfulness. To their credit, they heard
Jesus’
call and quite remarkably left everything behind to follow him yet they never
quite seem to get who he is or what exactly is his mission of bringing in the
Kingdom of God or their place in it. But
Bartimaeus, Blind Bartimaeus, the insignificant outcast, the annoying beggar on
the side of the road…he gets it – Jesus and Jesus alone can bring “salvation” to him. So, in desperation he goes all in making an
annoying spectacle of himself. He has
faith. He is faithful.
Well, since it is the case that when “faith” and “Jesus” meet up that “salvation” is the result, maybe we ought to take a moment
and talk about what salvation is? If
someone were to ask us, “are you saved?” our first thought is likely going to be that “salvation” means going to heaven
when we die due to believing that Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sins
and we have been good and more or less faithful people. But, is this definition of salvation really
what the Bible says it is.
Now, I’m
going to say something that’s going to throw you back a bit and I encourage
you to go and check for yourselves on this: the Bible never speaks of salvation
as going to heaven when we die. From the
Old Testament right on through the New, the Bible presents salvation as the
result of an act of God done to or for a person or even an entire people that
brings to them healing, freedom from oppression, or even freedom from demonic
possession in order to restore them to authentic human community. Salvation is the result an act by God that
either gives or restores life as God meant it to be.
In the big picture, which involves what happens to us after death, salvation
is not my soul going to heaven (though for a while we will in some form be with
Christ), rather salvation is bodily Resurrection into Creation made new with a
new heaven and a new earth. Humanity will be made new, immortal and
imperishable and there will no longer be the disease of sin and death. In that Day God himself will unhidden from us
and we won’t
hide ourselves fro him. This big picture
of salvation is what God has started in, through, and as Jesus Christ whom we
shall see face to face and, this salvation is what God is working in us right
now by the power of the Holy Spirit. He
is making us alive now in Christ that we might live in the Day as he lives. That’s the big picture, but most frequently
salvation as we find it in the Bible is a “right now” event in a person’s life in which God
delivers us from what ails or oppresses us and he then brings us into the
authentic loving community of his people and we know him more than we did
before.
Blind Bartimaeus is a prime example of “faith” and “Jesus” meeting up and “salvation” being the result. Though he was blind, Bartimaeus was “looking” for salvation, a real act
of God in the “right
now”
of his life that would restore him to true life and he knew Jesus would give
him that. Bartimaeus was a blind
beggar. In his day any physical
disability was seen as punishment from God for some great, secret sin. People with disabilities were believed cursed
and were ostracized especially by the religious and devout who refused to get
involves with people with disabilities because they were afraid the cursedness
might rub off on them. And so, all they could do to live was
beg.
We
find Bartimaeus sitting there at the roadside begging. He could hear a crowd was passing by and when
he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was par of it he began to cry out as loud as he
could, “Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me!” The
crowd, of course, got annoyed at him and commanded him, “Shut up!” They were likely thinking “What right did this cursed
blind beggar have to address the Messiah?” But,
Bartimaeus had faith, desperate faith.
He couldn’t
see Jesus. He couldn’t just go to him. The only thing he could do on his part was to
keep on shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Well,
Jesus heard him and stopped the roadshow and gave the command and it wasn’t to shut him up. Jesus happens to respect desperation. The command was “Call him!” and out went some good
news to Bartimaeus, “Take courage!
Get up! He is calling you!” In a foreshadowing image of the Resurrection,
Bartimaeus shed his cloak, the clothes of his old beggarly self, and jumped up from
his beggar’s
grave on the side of the road and…I like to imagine him here as alive in hope,
exuding hope, as he sets off groping through the blurry darkness to find
Jesus.
Suddenly
Bartimaeus heard a voice, “What do you want me to do?” The last time Jesus asked that question it
was to James and John when several days before they had come to Jesus asking
him to do for them whatever they asked him to do. For some odd reason they thought themselves
worthy of sitting at Jesus the Messiah's right and left when he became
king. They were power seeking, trying to
use Jesus as the means to fulfill their ambitions for power. But not Bartimaeus, when Jesus asked him “What do you want me to do?” his request was simply
for salvation, an act of God that would restore him to life. “Let me see again!” he begs.
Well,
giving a blind man his sight back is something only God can do. To have asked that Bartimaeus must have somehow
saw that Jesus isn't simply Israel’s Messiah; he is somehow the Lord God of
Israel. He asked Jesus to do something
only his God could do and there was more to it than simply seeing again. It was more like: “Give me back my sight so that I can live
again. Give me back my worth in peoples’ eyes. Give me back my human dignity. Restore me to community. Have mercy on me.” This act of grace is something only God could do.
Jesus’ answer was brief and to
the point, “Go! Your faith has saved you.” Immediately, Bartimaeus began to see again. Bartimaeus was blind yet in faith he saw the faithfulness
of God working in and through Jesus the Son of God and he trusted. He regained his sight. He regained his life.
There
is one last lesson to learn from Bartimaeus. An analogy is at play here in that “seeing” is life-giving faith and
blindness is its opposite, which is hopelessness and fear. It is likely that Bartimaeus was not blind
from birth, but somehow he had lost his sight.
Yet, it was his physical blindness and the societal and spiritual
consequences that set the stage Bartimaeus to “see”. It was
his blindness that caused him to look to Jesus.
Things
happen in life that challenge our “sight” and make us blind – the death of parents,
spouses, or children; marital infidelity and divorce; being rejected by our
children; losing jobs; life threatening illness, addictions – these are things that
take our lives away and can often wipe us clean of any sense of faith we may
have had in God or ourselves. They fill
us with fear and hopelessness. But the
example of Blind Bartimaeus and his annoying and desperate faithfulness is the
one we should hold on to. In times of
grief, anger, and shame, crying out to Jesus for salvation in the “right now” is our only hope because…seriously…when the time is right, he
answers. It might take days, months,
even years of crying out but he answers and he saves us, he calls us to himself
and he gives us “new
sight”,
a new way of seeing life as being filled with him. Some of you have been through this “blindness” and know what I am saying
is true and have reason to give thanks.
So give thanks, but also tell about it because there are people
everywhere around you who need to know that there is hope. Some of you are “blind” at this very moment. Cry out.
Jesus does hear and will come to save.
Often, he doesn’t come immediately because he’s using the blindness and
the crying out to heal even deeper hurts than the ones we are presently
suffering. Call out to Jesus and it is
ok to be as desperately annoying about it as you can be. Don’t let anyone try to silence you. In time he will call you and you will be
healed. I’ve been there I know. Be annoying. Amen.
