Beloved Members of St. Martin’s,
This weekend our gospel passage features the last healing story to appear in Mark’s gospel, and it is the story of Bartimaeus. Most subtitles call him “blind,” as a shorthand that we may anticipate the healing miracle that awaits him. But “blind” can also mean “refusing to acknowledge what is right in front of you”—and that descriptor absolutely does not apply to this man.
Sitting with his begging bowl along the roadside to Jericho, he might have been easy to ignore. But as he hears Jesus and his disciples walking past him, Paramus immediately knows that this is his chance, and he seizes it. He calls out to Jesus for mercy, and even though the disciples tried to shush him, Jesus hears and calls him forward.
Jesus then asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” It’s the second time in two weeks we have heard this question from Jesus, as he had said it to James and John. Their request was shallow and grasping. Bartimaeus is clear and decisive: he wants healing, specifically to see again. He knows what being able to see means to him, and has faith that Jesus can grant him this request. In return Jesus not only heals him but calls to him, and Bartimaeus answers. Instead of “going,” as Jesus urges him, instead, Bartimaeus will join the throng that is following Jesus on his way from Jericho to Jerusalem.
What we see presented here is that the blind man sees clearly who Jesus is and what’s his ministry means, even though he is a stranger, not a disciple, and is physically blind. Meanwhile, the disciples with been alongside Jesus for these last 10 chapters have repeatedly shown themselves incapable of seeing and recognizing Jesus for who he is, much less accepting his predictions about his ultimate fate.
One could take Jesus’s words as reminding us that as humans, we have choices whether or not we want to ask for healing. Some of us have no faith; some of us have no awareness that there is anything within us that requires healing.
In our daily prayer life, we are given the opportunity lay our hearts bare before God. Too often we devolve into treating the God whom we address as a spiritual ATM, and present a laundry list of things we want. But when was the last time we asked for healing of all the afflictions that precent us from being able to truly follow Jesus? The hesitation, the anxiety, the lack of trust that makes us unable to see who Jesus truly is in our lives and, further, to see who Jesus is calling US to be?
Jesus calls us to him, offers us healing of our faith, and from that healing a resurrected life that is constantly renewing, If only we have the faith to answer Christ; call, and walk along his path. That is always the first step in being a disciple.
In Christ,
Mother Leslie+