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Bartimaeus is my favourite character in Mark’s Gospel. Like the woman who snuck up behind Jesus in the midst of a pressing crowd to touch his cloak and be healed of a twelve-year-long menstrual bleed that made her an outcast (she’s my second favourite character), Bartimaeus only shows up once and he steals the show. He is the epitome of what it is to follow Jesus and what it is to be healed and transformed by Jesus in what one could call the resurrection-formed lifestyle found along the cross-formed way, i.e., what the Apostle Paul calls new life in Christ. With Bartimaeus we get a picture that there is something utterly, I mean utterly, life changing that arises from encountering Jesus who came to give his life to restore worth and dignity to a humanity who has forfeited the worth and dignity that God created us with as those who bear, who are, his image in the Temple of his creation.
Last week, we dealt a bit with the meaning of Jesus’ death - why Jesus said he had to die. He said, “the Son of Man has come not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” If you remember that word ransom does not mean he died to pay off a kidnapper. Rather, we have no good word in English to translate it. You just have to know that the word’s Old Testament use was what they called a “life price”, which was a small amount of money paid to the family of someone who had died accidentally by the person who caused the death. This life price, this sum of money, had a dual purpose. First, the gift symbolically said that the person whose life was now wasted to death had worth. Thus, it restored worth to life that was wasted. Secondly, paying this life price also redeemed or restored worth to the life of the one who caused the death for the penalty for wasting a life to death was to have one’ own life wasted to death. To waste the life of another is to waste one’s own life. Jesus’ death was the life price that restores human worth and dignity from how we have wasted our lives and the lives of others through the new life he gives us with the gift of the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell in and among us.
Coming back to Bartimaeus, he stands as the example of everybody who is honest with themselves before God and others. Looking at his, it means son of Timaeus. Timaeus is a Greek name that means “honoured one”, “valued one”, or “esteemed one”. “Bar” means “son of” in Hebrew. Metaphorically, Bartimaeus is “the son of one who has great worth”. He stands metaphorically for all humanity. We humans are born with great worth in God’s eyes. God created us in his image to live together in such a way that humanity looks like the loving communion of God the Father Son and Holy Spirit particularly at the level of family. (We discussed that a few weeks ago.) We are created as unique persons who are shaped within our relationships. We only discover who we truly are when we give ourselves unselfishly and unconditionally to serve and build up others, i.e., give worth and dignity to others. Imagine how beautiful God’s good Creation would be if we actually did that…but we don’t. We’re too self-inclined.
Back to Bartimaeus, Bartimaeus was apparently born sighted but somehow he became blind and this reduced him to being a beggar. Back then, the general population viewed people with disabilities as being cursed by God or the gods for some hidden sin and were being punished for it in this life. This stigma of being cursed resulted in becoming outcast. People would have had very limited contact with you for fear your cursedness might rub off on to them like dirt. Being outcast meant no job and thus led to begging.
As a beggar, Bartimaeus would have lived outdoors under whatever shelter he could find and his hygiene would have been horrible. His clothing would have consisted of a cloak and an undergarment. To beg, he would have taken off his cloak and spread it on the ground in front of him for people to throw coins on so that they wouldn’t have to touch him. Use your imagination, Blind Bartimaeus basically sat there alongside the road in his underwear with his only possession, his cloak, spread out before him, begging. Humiliating, to say the least. There sat Bartimaeus the son of the honoured one in his underwear blind and begging. Sounds a lot like humanity if we’re honest…and that’s how he presented himself to Jesus.
Let me back up in Mark’s storyline for a moment. Bartimaeus reminds me of someone we met a couple of Sundays ago. Believe it or not, it’s that wealthy man who had everything except a sense of at life-giving relationship with God and so his life was empty. Jesus and his disciples were setting out on the way when this wealthy man came, impeded him, and knelt before him in a sort of obsequious show of respect that wealthy people did to butter you up when they want something from you that only you could give.
Everything the name “Timaeus” meant this wealthy man would have fit the bill. Because of his wealth people would have considered him blessed for his faithfulness. In the same Karma-like religious mechanism that people considered Bartimaeus cursed for some secret sin that caused his blindness, People would have considered this man blessed for keeping the Law of Moses which he told Jesus he had done since his youth. He would have been a powerful, and respected, if not feared, man in the community.
But there was a catch to this wealth. The word for possessions, which he had lots of, that Mark uses indicates that he had a lot of land. Having lots of land meant he had a lot of people indebted to him in a sharecropping relationship. Sharecropping meant he let someone live on a plot of his land as long as they farmed it for his profit. It amounted to little more than slavery, debt slavery like we get into with credit cards. One bad crop and the wealthy man owned you. Consequently, he likely owned slaves as well. Thus, sis wealth, which made him so esteemed would have made a lot of people feel worthless and become actually become economically and societally worthless.
But, if you ask me, he was blind, spiritually blinded by his wealth and power and prestige and he knew it…and it was bothering him so he went to Jesus hoping Jesus could help him find the spiritual depth to life that he was missing; a living relationship with the living God. But, he didn’t like the remedy Jesus gave him. Sell your land and give to the poor. In today’s terms that would would mean making his wealth accessible to somebody besides himself. Maybe something like letting the dividends of his asset portfolio go to the people who worked the land for him, you know, the people who actually make the wealth for him. Anyway, he went away sad and disturbed.
His blindness came from his wealth and the power and prestige that he gained by it. He’s blind because this is the way he believes it’s supposed to be. It’s the way the world works and he’s at the top of it. He cannot imagine a world where abundance can be had by all if the spiritual discipline of sharing in generosity was practiced. This wealthy, cosmopolitan, trying to be faithful, achieved it all man, upstanding, tip-of-the-top-cream-of-crop, overall good citizen of a man; the only person for whom Mark said Jesus looked at and felt “the Love of God” …he walked away from Jesus blind. This wealthy man was spiritually “prior-sighted” in that he had a glimpse of who Jesus is otherwise he wouldn’t have wasted his valuable time to seek Jesus out on how to receive a God-filled life. Things went dark for him when he realized he would need to relinquish his wealth-based status and share the abundance God had entrusted to him with those whom he had made worthless.
In comparing Bartimaeus and this wealthy man I cannot emphasize enough the hope and joy that is present in Bartimaeus’ encounter with Jesus on the way and how it was lacking from the wealthy man’s encounter. Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is coming up the road. There’s nothing wrong with his hearing. He has heard and believed who Jesus is. His hope to have a restored life is walking up the road right at him. What does he do? He makes himself annoying by shouting out loudly and repeatedly something quite treasonous against the Roman Empire that could get a Roman garrison to come slaughter this crowd of people following Jesus who are already afraid of what’s going to happen to them in Jerusalem. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” The people “politely” told him to “Shut the …… up!” Yet, he continued to cry out all the more and louder. Jesus was his king and he wanted his king to show him favour and act on his behalf…to show him mercy. The word for mercy in Greek is the word the Greeks used to translate the Hebrew word for loving kindness – Chesed – the loving kindness of God. The same love with which Jesus looked at the wealthy man and felt.
Jesus summonsed Bartimaeus by means of those who shut him up (there’s a lesson there for the religiously “proper”). They changed their message from rebuking him to one of encouragement – “Take heart. Get up. He’s calling you.” That’s afar cry from shut up. Bartimaeus, now remember he’s blind, throws aside his only possession and means to survival. He sprang up and the word there is the same one used for raised up from the dead. And, he groped his way to Jesus. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked. We just heard him ask James and John that question when they came seeking to sit on his right and on his left when he takes the world over, the places of most honour and power. Bartimaeus doesn’t want glory. He just wants to see again. And suddenly…he began to see again. His sight with respect to perceiving who Jesus is and his following through on it left him healed. The sight he had in his spirit came through to his eyes. His worth and dignity were restored. But he didn’t “Go!” like Jesus told him to. He followed Jesus on the way.
The power, the hope, the joy of that moment. As someone hearing this story millennia later it makes me want to leap with joy. It is a “Yes” moment. God broke in and made things to be the way they ought to be. This is what it is to encounter Jesus, the One who came not to be served, but to serve and who gave his live as the life price to give worth and dignity to the many and yet he lives. God raised him from the dead and by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit Jesus still encounters us like he did Bartimaeus. It helps if we look for him in the areas where we feel disillusioned like the wealthy man and/or feel shame like Bartimaeus did.
In closing, Bartimaeus was sitting alongside “the way” and he wound up following Jesus on “the way”. Literally, “the way” was the road to Jerusalem. Yet metaphorically, it was the road that led to Jesus’ giving his life as the life price to give humanity back its worth and dignity. To us who follow Jesus, it is “the way” of being his disciples who serve rather demand to be served and who also do all we can to help one another discover our restored worth and dignity in Christ. The wealthy man felt himself too worthy and would not divest himself of his wealth in order to help others have worth and dignity. Bartimaeus, on the other hand, was painfully aware of his state of being a blind beggar (which, metaphorically speaking, is what we all are) and he joyfully accepted the new life of following Jesus along “the way”. If you are dissatisfied, disillusioned, wondering why it seems that “God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost took the last train for the coast”, feeling like the music has died, Jesus is here and is doing his thing. To find him, we need to get back on “the way”, get less self-absorbed. COVID has been good at leading us into the darkness of self-absorption. Get back on the way of disciplining ourselves in the practice of helping everyone to discover their worth and dignity. Instead of focusing on increasing our own worth and status in the world or, on the other hand, focusing on feeling like we are worthless and useless and all that; and, instead of hanging God out to dry because we feel God has hung us out to dry, which is what many to most people are doing today – how about we focus on serving and doing all we can to increase the worth and dignity of others. That’s where we will find Jesus. That’s the road Jesus is on and there’s hope and joy and healing on it. Amen.
