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I remember the day I got glasses. I was ten years old, in the fourth grade, and not all that excited about becoming a “four eyes”. I didn’t know I needed them. I walked out of the eye doctors and I could see the details of clouds in the sky, leaves on trees, the trees on the mountains. I could see. I did not know before that moment what it was to see these things that clearly. I had no memory of ever being able to see details in things far away. The world became new to me that day and it though happened 45 years ago, I remember it.
It might tell you something about the age of the people I hang with, but in the last year and a half three good friends of mine have had cataracts removed. They were all rather exuberant about the change in their sight: the clarity of vision, the vividness of colour, the restoration of a full life. To my friends this surgery was nothing short of a miracle. I remember when having cataracts meant being blind the rest of your life, but now. Now, when they do the surgery, they can also put little corrective lenses in your eyes so you don’t even need glasses anymore. It’s a miracle.
My appreciation for sight makes this story of the healing of Bartimaeus one of my favourites. Apparently, it was one of Mark’s favourites too; of all the people Jesus heals in Mark’s Gospel, Bartimaeus, the Blind Beggar is the only one Mark names. I didn’t go and look to make sure, but I think Bartimaeus may even be the only person in all four Gospels that Jesus healed who was named.
Oh, I might also want to mention that healing Bartimaeus was Jesus’ last miracle. If we consider that in the Gospels miracles are more than just miracles, they mean something bigger, then this miracle is quite significant. To heal a blind man’s eyes is more than just giving him sight because “seeing” in Mark’s Gospel means to truly understand who Jesus is. For example, the last time Jesus healed a blind person in Mark it coincided with Peter making his bold confession that Jesus is the Messiah but then Jesus had to rebuke Peter because Peter didn’t understand that the Messiah must suffer at the hands of the religious authorities and die and then be raised. You may remember having heard the story of that healing. Jesus had to make two attempts because after the first attempt the man couldn’t see clearly. People looked like trees walking around so Jesus had to try again. Peter’s incomplete understanding of Jesus being the Messiah coincided with the blind man’s sight not being fully restored. So, the healing of Bartimaeus and its culmination in his seeing again and following Jesus and this being Jesus’ last miracle all come together to say what true faith/faithfulness to Jesus is: healing and following.
Well, I could end this bit of pontification there and you all could breathe a sigh of relief and say, “That was painless”, but this story is just too rich in the depth of the meaning of its’ details to just leave it. So, let’s poke the sleeping dog here a bit.
When I read these Gospel stories I often try to imagine being there and I put myself in the place of the characters. Here I try to imagine being Bartimaeus. He was a blind beggar. He had nothing to his name but the cloak he had wrapped around himself. That cloak was more than just a security blanket, as if he were Linus in the Peanuts cartoons. That cloak was his home, his shade from the sun, his shelter from the rain, his warmth at night. Back then blind people were seen as cursed by God, so people didn’t give them shelter. All he could do to live was sit on the side of the road and hope people would throw scraps of food at him or maybe a coin. I can’t imagine what shape his skin and fingernails and toenails and hair were in; and his teeth. I don’t even want to imagine what he smelled like. But, there he sat, a shame-filled eye-and-nose-sore, with hand out probably barely audibly mumbling to everybody who passed by saying “Have mercy on me. Have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.” And the most of them, just walked on by. If that was the sum total of my life, I might find stumbling off a cliff to be preferrable.
Well, this particular day, Blind Bartimaeus was sitting on the side of the road and he can’t see anything. He can’t see anything! But they say if you loose one sense the others will compensate. So, he probably had a sharpened sense of hearing. He hears a large crowd coming up the road. He hears the sound of footsteps, too disorderly to be Roman soldiers marching and there’s no clippity-clop of horse hooves. He hears the loud din of the voices of people nattering on about this and that. But in the midst of the din, he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is somewhere in that crowd. That gets his attention.
Let me take a little aside here on the sense of hearing. In the Old Testament hearing is the most important of the senses. To hear doesn’t mean to just hear words. To hear means to do what you have been asked or told to do and to understand why you’re doing it. To hear the commandments of God is to understand and do them. Hearing is faithfulness. The only creed of faith in ancient Israel involved hearing. It was “Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” For Bartimaeus to hear that Jesus is in the crowd means that he somehow recognizes that the LORD his God, his only God, whom he is to love with all his heart, soul, and strength, is in that crowd somehow with and as Jesus and he must respond if he wants to be healed. He is hearing the Word of the LORD amidst the din.
Well, Bartimaeus stops mumbling to the passersby saying, “Have mercy on me” and begins to shout loudly and repeatedly, “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.” You’d think you were at a Pentecostal revival. It’s like Bartimaeus has transformed from just an unobtrusive eye-and-nose-sore sitting on the side of the road mumbling into a particularly gruesome annoyance. He starts to seem like one of those demon-possessed people in whom the demon knows who Jesus is and shouts it out and Jesus has to tell it to shut up. So, the people begin to shout back at Bartimaeus saying, “Shut up.” But not Jesus. You see, Jesus had heard his prayer. That loud, annoying, ceaseless “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” was prayer.
There is a prayer in the Eastern Orthodox tradition called the Jesus Prayer. It’s a one sentence prayer that they pray similarly to how Roman Catholics will pray the rosary. It goes: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” They pray that prayer over and over to themselves so that in time, in their inner thoughts they always have the sound, the rhythm, the cadence of that prayer going. Instead of the 8-track tape of worries that constantly play the same songs of trouble in our minds, they’ve disciplined themselves to pray this prayer without ceasing, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I have tried several times throughout my life to take this discipline upon myself. It’s work. It requires focus and simply remembering to keep at it. But, of all the spiritual disciples I have attempted to undertake in my life, attempting to pray the Jesus Prayer has been and still is the one I keep coming back to, particularly in times of trouble. It changes you. It helps you to be aware of God’s presence with you. It’s worth the effort.
A word about mercy here as well (and your Greek lesson for the day), the word for “mercy’ in Greek is the same as the word for olive oil. Olive oil wasn’t something they simply cooked with. It can sustain you when you’ve got nothing to eat. It can soothe skin conditions and heal wounds. Yes, there was a balm in Gilead. It was olive oil…with some spices. To talk of God’s mercy is to frame it within the healing uses of olive oil. To ask for mercy is to ask for sustenance and for healing. We have been conditioned by centuries of bad theology rooted in Medieval Roman Catholicism to think of mercy as a courtroom acquittal for our immoral, God offending, Hell-worthy sinning when, in fact, God’s mercy is God’s soul-healing restoration of life poured upon us like a balm of olive oil. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit who heals us of the disease of sin, it’s compulsions and shames.
Jesus heard Bartimaeus’ prayer for mercy; Bartimaeus’ loud, repetitive, annoying prayer for mercy, for the healing and restoration of his diseased life. And, Jesus responded by welcoming Bartimaeus into his presence and granting his request. Jesus didn’t shut him up or call him annoying or worse, point out that Bartimaeus was unworthy. It strikes me here just how courageously desperate Bartimaeus was, and considering the “repulsiveness” of what he had become he apparently had not lost a sense of his self-worth. It was still buried within in him hoping for the day.
Let’s step back and consider his name. Bartimaeus literally means son of Timaeus. The Hebrew word for son is “bar”. I have to think Mark’s redundancy in saying that Bartimaeus was also the son of a man named Timaeus is quite intentional on his part. The name Timaeus means “priceless one”. Bartimaeus is the Son of the “priceless one” and is thus invaluable too. Because he is a blind beggar does not mean he or his family is cursed. They are priceless to God.
It just goes to show that if we have a need that only God can meet or even if we’ve got a beef with God because it seems God has been unfair, praying repeatedly and annoyingly to God about it might be a welcome thing to do. Let us not get into this “I’m too worthless for God to value” line of thinking or “I’m too small of a speck on this little blue dot circling an ordinary star that’s just one of billions of stars in this galaxy that’s just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in this universe which may be one of an infinite number of universes for God to care about me” stuff or thinking we’ve not lived good enough for God to show any favour with us.” When it comes to God and prayer, get into the game, step up to the plate and start swinging. Don’t sit the bench because you don’t think you’re good enough to play or don’t think you know how to play. Pray!
When Bartimaeus prayed for mercy he had a specific need in mind. He wanted to see again. At one point in his life Bartimaeus could see, but something happened and it took his sight away and his life along with it. He wants his life back. He wants to be a whole, valued person in the eyes of the community. He probably had a feeling that God had dealt unfairly with him and he wants the relationship with God restored. He wants God to be God, fair and just, not God aloof and uncaring. If you look at the history of prayer in the Bible, study the conversations that the major characters of the Bible have with God, you will find that reminding God to be God, fair and just, occupies a good many of those conversations. You will also find that God listened and stepped up and started being God, fair and just, rather than God, aloof and uncaring. So, pray, pray and remind God that it is time to be God, fair and just, time to wake up and get off the pillow in the back of the boat and calm the stormy sea. Pray loudly, repeatedly, and annoyingly.
Winding it down, Bartimaeus stood as representative of the people of God, of Israel. There was a day when Israel could see. When it had faith and was faithful and perceived the presence of God in her midst. But they were blinded by the Roman occupation and the unfairness thereof so much so that they couldn’t see what God was up to in their midst as Jesus. Having lost their sight, they needed to tune their ears to Jesus, to listen to him and follow. Calling out to Jesus and following him was where their healing and restoration awaited. They were still priceless in God’s eyes.
This makes me think of our little Cooperative, our four small, small town/rural congregations. Have we become blind with discouragement? We seem just to sit on the side of the road wishing not to offend, mumbling to the community around us “Have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. Have mercy.” Yet, the crowds pass us by really not caring, really not valuing the invaluable role our communities of faith have played in the lives of the generations that preceded them…and it’s unfair. We four congregations are not worthless, even though our surrounding communities can’t seem to see our worth. And, there are those in our midst who say we are too old to really do anything about our situation, that it’s up to the younger folks to figure this out. Well, yes, the younger folks in our midst really do need to step up to the plate. When we come out of COVID, the vision of our younger church is going to be invaluable. Though you may feel like you are intruding into the stomping grounds of your parents and grandparents and think you are not worthy to carry the torch, you are priceless too. You are Bar-Timaeus, the children of the priceless ones. The Lord needs you. Come. The church is yours.
Anyway, young or old, we still have one thing we know for sure that we must do. Pray. Pray continuously, and loudly “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.” We need to remind God that it is time to be God and start calling people to himself through us the Body of Christ where rests the Holy Spirit who will heal them. I know our predicament seems an impossible thing…But so was Bartimaeus’ blindness…and God healed him. Amen.
