Pentecost 22B

If you've been watching closely, you’ll have noticed by now that every week for the last couple of months, we’ve been working our way slowly through St. Mark’s Gospel account. In the last month we’ve been in Chapter 9, and we heard about Jesus casting out an unclean spirit, and then he settled an argument about which of his followers was the greatest. Then there was the part about “whoever is not against us is for us.” which was followed by a warning to not cause anyone who believes in Jesus to sin…and encouragement to be salt and light.

When we moved into Chapter 10, Jesus began by answer questions from the Pharisees about divorce. Right after that, there’s a part where the apostles tried to stop some children from getting close to Jesus, but he quickly told them to “let the children come to me.” Just 2 weeks ago, we heard about the rich young man who wouldn’t give up his wealth…and last week’s Gospel reading continued Jesus’ teaching about earthly wealth. Between that lesson and this week’s passage, we have the story of James and John who want to sit on either side of Jesus. Their teacher tells them how hard that will be.

Now in today’s lesson, we have a poor, blind beggar named Bartimaeus. And before we talk about him, I want to look back over what’s happened in just these 2 chapters of Mark’s book. We have people of faith who want to be favored by God and Jesus, who want to be close to Jesus, close to God the Father in Heaven; we have a story of a rich man who thinks he’s a pretty righteous dude, but ultimately he can’t - or rather he WON’T - give up his wealth to follow Jesus, and we have more people of faith who want to be honored by God. In each of these passages, it seems pretty clear that those people who think they’re pretty good at living a life of faith, end up getting it wrong, and finding that Jesus’ teaching shows that they can’t get to the Promised Land by doing what they’re doing. Ultimately, they misunderstand the Gospel.

But Jesus doesn’t identify any barriers between him and certain other people. Children are not only welcome to come to Jesus, but he uses the example of a child as the model for how to “receive the kingdom of God (Mark 10:15, ESV). Remember that in the culture of the day, children were quite far down on the social ladder. And now in this week’s lesson, we have someone else who’s low on the social ladder. This poor, blind beggar, sitting on the side of the road, calling out to Jesus of Nazareth. Did you notice the reaction of the crowd? They tried to shut him up. They rebuked him and told him to “be silent”. Which, of course, he didn’t do. “He cried out all the more” and yelled even louder. “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Jesus has no reason to stop for this man…not according to worldly standards. He’s poor, so he has nothing to offer the Teacher. He’s blind, which in that time was extremely limiting. And he’s a beggar, sitting on the roadside. That’s not the cleanest place to be sitting, and without his sight, he might not even know how dirty he is, if he’s aware of it at all. And don’t forget how cleanliness is critically important to devout Jews.

One of my favorite scholars also points out something else about this episode in Jesus’ story: “It is not for the sake of the miracle, for Jesus had healed many blind persons. It is on account of this beggar’s yell which addresses Jesus as ‘the Son of David,’ the standard title for the Messiah among the Jews. Note how [Matthew, Mark, and Luke report using] this title [Son of David] twice and … [all 3 draw] our attention to it. In other words, now that Jesus is going into his death at Jerusalem he accepts the Messianic title openly before the multitude. [Before this] he had avoided it as much as possible because of the wrong political and worldly ideas which the Jews connected with the Messiah whom they expected.” [R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Mark’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), 469.]

So, Jesus singles out this one blind man and calls him. Bartimaeus has now publicly identified Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah - the Son of David - and has begged him for mercy. Jesus decides to respond. He calls the blind man to come to him. Bartimaeus responds with appropriate energy and enthusiasm - he “threw off his cloak and sprang up.”

Now once again, as he has in the past, Jesus asks a question to which the answer seems quite obvious. “What do you want me to do for you?” As I asked you a few weeks ago, I ask you now: do you think Jesus knew the answer to his question? Do you think he *knew* what Bartimaeus wanted him to do? Of course he knew. He’s the Son of God, so he knew. But in this case, I don’t think you needed supernatural powers to know what blind Bartimaeus wanted from the man he believed was the Messiah. He wanted his sight back. And Jesus gave it to him.

I have been cautioned by a mentor to not overlook the miracle that HAS happened here. A blind man asked God to heal him, and God did exactly that. All of us can easily tell that this is a no-kidding miracle. That, by itself, is a wonderful testimony to God’s love for this poor, blind, beggar. I just don’t think that we should leave this story at that.

We can ask ourselves how Bartimaeus knew who Jesus really was. Mark doesn’t actually tell us that. By this point in Mark’s account, Jesus had built quite a reputation for himself, and so when Bartimaeus heard the commotion of the crowd, and the name they were all talking about was this famous teacher Jesus who also healed the sick, the lame, and the blind…it’s no wonder that Bartimaeus got excited and yelled out for him.

But Jesus calls him over and makes him say out loud what his request was. “What do you want me to do for you?” I suppose it’s a reasonable question. Bartimaeus only shouted “have mercy on me”. He didn’t shout for his sight to be restored. Only “have mercy on me.” So it’s not too awfully picky of Jesus to ask him to clarify his request. But I seriously doubt that Jesus asked this of him for clarification. That same scholar explains that Jesus pulls this answer out of Bartimaeus “so that the man who cannot see may know what Jesus is now about to do.” [Lenski, 472.]

I like this next part of the description. He says: “Jesus always worked to produce faith. But this faith sometimes came after the miracle, at other times it was already present before the miracle. In the present case this faith met Jesus and appealed to him, and Jesus rewarded it.” (Ibid, 472-473)

Now don’t take that wrongly - this isn’t saying that the amount of faith you have determines the reward you get. But here, a man who already had faith encountered the Living Christ, and was perfectly situated to receive blessing from Jesus…blessing in the form of healing and wholeness.

The final piece here is that once he is made whole, Jesus tells him to go his way, now that he is well. In other words, “now you can go wherever you want.” Go YOUR way. So which way does Bartimaeus go? He goes *THE WAY*. He followed Christ.

And where did Christ go from there? As we are told at the beginning of this lesson, he is on his way to Jerusalem. And that means, he is approaching his own death on the cross. He is coming to the end of his earthly ministry, to perform the ultimate act of selflessness the world had ever seen or will ever see. He is about to pay for the sins of everyone to assure the free gift of God’s grace and mercy for all of us.

In a very short time, we are going to celebrate Holy Baptism and welcome a baby boy into the Lord’s family. It’s a great moment in our church family, and a great reminder to all of us of what a gift we have in our Baptism, and that it’s not what we bring to it, but what God does for us and continues to do for us. We are merely the recipients of this amazing gift.

It almost seems cliche at this point to compare ourselves to a blind beggar…but it’s an apt comparison. We really don’t have anything to offer Christ that will benefit him. But when we yell out his name and ask the Son of David to have mercy on us, he does. That’s kind of a miracle in itself, isn’t it? That he would stoop to our level, to our uncleanness, to care for us and to save us and make us whole? Our baptism cleanses us, and brings us to a state of belonging. In it God claims us and shows us what he has done for us.

Baptism also sets us free from the trap…the prison of the old. We don’t have to repeat the mistakes, the sins of our ancestors. We don’t even have to repeat our own mistakes and sins. We’re actually freed from them, too…even if we don’t realize it or recognize it. Baptism is wonderfully liberating. We are freed to go whatever way we choose. Jesus doesn’t insist that we follow him when we make that choice; but I’m sure he’s hoping we follow him. I’m sure he wants us to follow him.

When we celebrate Baptism this morning, and we all participate in the liturgy, pay attention to what is promised and who makes the promise. The baby doesn’t make any of the promises. The parents will make some promises. But guess what: you, “people of God”, will also be called upon to make some promises, both to our youngest new brother, but also to God and to each other. Take a moment this morning to reflect on those promises…because they are not a one-time statement. They are part of our life of faith, and the life of the church community of which we are all a part. These promises are what define our membership in this church. They are how we respond in faith to the gift we have been given, and they demonstrate what we are to do with that gift.

Yes, the gift is given to us freely, but it’s expected that we do something with it. Where will you go with your gift? Let’s all pray that God would show us what He wants us to do with that gift, now that we have, like Bartimaeus, been made well.