Mark 10:46-52
Jesus and his disciples 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.
Blind! It’s a word that creates fear. Back when I was in my twenties, I worked for an ophthalmologist, and there were several types of patients we saw often and on a regular basis. There were the elderly, who usually came because of their cataracts or glaucoma. There were the young children, who presented with crossed eyes (eso or exo tropia) or with wandering eye, (amblyopia). And then there were the various eye infections or occasionally, an odd case of injury.
One day, a mother brought in her young son, five or six years of age. He’d been playing outside, when he ran headlong into the branch of a tree, which had badly gouged his eye. The doctor I worked for had children of his own, and was marvelous with children, but he had to sadly tell the mother that the only solution was an enucleation, the boy was going to lose his eye. Blind for life on that side. I can still remember how terribly upset the mother was. Blind! It strikes fear in our hearts.
Today, we have marvelous organizations and statewide services for the blind. My husband, who is legally blind, is helped by all of them. But in ancient times, there was nothing to help persons with disabilities. Bartimaeus is a man who has very limited control over his world. To be blind in Jesus’ time meant to be worth next to nothing. One could not hold a job, or learn to read, thus one could not read or speak in the synagogue. If one became blind early in life, marrying and having a family was out of the question. Bartimaeus has done what anyone in his position would have been forced to do by such circumstances. He has become a beggar, dependent on the generousity of strangers he cannot even see.
We meet him today as he sits by the side of a well-travelled road, and he is being very annoying. He keeps shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me”. Today, we might try to help this man, but not the crowd around him back then. Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly. He was a man who knew what he wanted, and he would not be thwarted by those who would prevent him from getting it.
But even more important than Bartimaeus’ persistence in this Gospel is Jesus’ response to him. 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.’ So, throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.
Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’”
This is one of the most important moments in the entirety of the Gospels for telling us about who Jesus is. Jesus does not assume that Bartimaeus wants to be made able to see. He does not assume that Bartimaeus sees his blindness as a disability.
To us, that may sound odd, but I remember from my time with the ophthalmologist, one young woman, born blind, who told us that she had dreamt that God had restored her sight – and she had asked Him to take it away. She didn’t want it, nor could she cope with it.
Although Jesus undoubtedly knows what is best for Bartimaeus, Jesus does not force it on him. Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Neither does Jesus impose his will on us, or make any assumptions about what we need or want. He asks us as openly as he asks Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?”
Just by asking this one question, Jesus provides us with a way to deepen our spirituality It’s a deceptively simple question, but take a moment and think about it. What would your answer be?
Jesus asks us, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Here at Mystic Side we’d have a couple of immediate answers, because we pray for them almost every week. Grow our congregation and, please, our bank account could use a large infusion of shekels. Or to put it another way, please Lord, could you magically make all our money and membership worries go away?
But, that’s not really what we truly want at the bottom of our hearts. And Jesus asks again, “What do you want me to do for you?” So, let’s try again.
Help us to do more, to try harder, to do better, we say. Now that gets closer to the truest desire of our hearts. Help us to do better loving and serving others. And now we are close to the deep and mysterious place within us, but Jesus asks us one more time with such gentleness in His voice: “What do you want me to do for you?” And then it comes to us, “My teacher, let me see.”
Bartimaeus’ words become our words. Let us see how loved we are, let us see how hungry for love others are, how worthy of love they are, how precious and beautiful and wonderful our neighbors are. And let us see that all this Love comes from You, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and God the Creator, and the indwelling Holy Spirit. “My teacher, let me see.”
Digging down through all the immediate superficial answers, down through fear and ego and all the concerns of this world, we reach the center of our being, and there we find the desire to give and receive Love, the desire to give and receive God. Below all the noise and through all the distractions and beyond all the divisions that can isolate us from one another is the Presence that outlasts the stars. Lord, let us see the Love. And then let us share it.
Sometimes, we feel unequipped to answer the call Jesus places in our lives, too broken and mixed up, sinful or apathetic or trapped in a net of responsibilities and habits that seems inescapable, even for doing the work Jesus calls us to do. How could someone as “unhealed” as we are do something essential for Jesus? Surely we must wait to be healed.
But we do not have to wait for healing to answer Jesus’ call. Bartimaeus doesn’t. The people in the crowd say, ‘‘Take heart; get up, He is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.” Still blind, relying on guidance from the people around him to feel his way, reacting with joy and abandon, he throws away his cloak and goes to Jesus.
This is a pivotal moment. Bartimaeus was homeless, a blind beggar on the street. His cloak was his only asset. It was his only protection from the weather and the cold, the closest thing to shelter he had. He cast it away without a second thought, and still blind, still unhealed, answers the call to make his way to Jesus. We can do the same thing.
Where do we start? We listen, and we call out to Jesus, just as Bartimaeus did: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus is always calling us and always healing us. And He always begins by asking us His simple question: “What do you want me to do for you?” We have a choice, we can ask for the superficial things that so tempt or distract us, or we can take Bartimaeus’ words to our hearts, and answer Jesus, “Teacher, let me see.”
Let us pray – (John Henry Newman)
Lord Jesus, help us to have open hearts, that we may always, promptly and joyfully obey Your will. Shine through us, and be so in us, that every soul we come in contact with may feel Your presence in our soul. Let them look up and see no longer us but only You! Stay with us, and then we shall begin to shine as you shine; so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus will be all from you. This we humbly ask for Your Love and mercy’s sake. Amen.
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