The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25B)
October 27, 2024
Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Isaiah 59:9-19
Hebrews 5:12–6:1, 9-12
Mark 10:46-52
With the election less than two weeks away, part of me is raring to preach a sermon on the responsibility of Christians in the public square. It is a subject I have treated before. I have preached the classic, Oxford Movement position that the Church exists to call the Nation to account. I have also put forth the equally powerful position that having been given Grace by God in Christ, the God of Love who has acted first in inaugurating the Kingdom of God, we must do everything we can in our daily lives to actively practice the neighbour-love to which we are called, not just in private, but within the context of our lives as citizens of the Earthly City.
I was even encouraged in this by our first lesson from Isaiah, where we read that, “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth has fallen in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.” It almost seemed like the text was speaking to me across the centuries, as God calls us all to account for our sins, not simply our private transgressions, but those we have committed in our public lives, and stand up for righteousness, truth, and love. Today’s Gospel, however, calls me back from this precipice – at least for the moment – as I seek to help us make meaning of this extraordinary encounter in Mark’s text right on the precipice of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and his passion, death, and resurrection.
The healing of blind Bartimaeus is, in fact, the last thing that Jesus does before riding into Jerusalem on that colt, and it sets the stage for everything that will happen next. On one level, the story is fairly straight-forward, and shares many characteristics with other healing stories. Jesus is going along his way, and a blind begger calls out to him seeking healing. Jesus’ followers and others tell the man to be quiet, to know his place, but Jesus responds, engages with him, and restores to him his sight. As I have said before, whether or not the supernatural ability to restore sight exists was not an issue for Mark’s audience. The people assumed that such men existed. So, of course Jesus restored his sight. There would be nothing too special about this. The question was, where does this power come from? Is from a benevolent source? Or a malign one? And the most critical question of all, what is this faith that Jesus assigns as the cause of the healing, and is this something that is active or passive?
So, where does this power come from? Bartimaeus recognised immediately that this power comes from the most benevolent God of Israel in the person of Jesus Christ. Bartimaeus recognises Jesus and knew exactly who he is. He exclaims, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” which is both a reference to the David’s literal son, King Solomon, who was renowned for his healing powers, and to Jesus’ own identity as the Messiah, God’s anointed one, sent into the world. And here we have another example of a stranger recognising Jesus and knowing who he is even when the disciples keep getting it wrong.
What we see here, then, is that Jesus, the Son of David, the messianic heir, God’s anointed one, God’s very son, heals the blind with the power of the God of Israel. The Hebrew God was a minority god in the heady mix of late antique religion, but in Jesus this God was, perhaps for the first time, crossing boundaries and entering into relationship not simply with faithful Jews, but all sorts. And Bartimaeus seems certainly to have fit into the latter category. He was “all sorts.” In fact, it is hard to place this (strangely specific) Bartimaeus, whose name simply means “son of Timaeus” (Bar - Timaeus). Indeed why Mark, who names so few people beside the apostles and characters in the Passion, emphatically and with repetition and emphisis on the patronymic, gives this man’s name is a mystery.
And it’s a funny name, too, a Semetic-Greek mash-up with the Jewish patrilineal prefix and a name we can’t help associate with Plato’s dialogue, Timaeus. In fact, it is hard not to wonder if it is some obscure reference to that text. Probably not. Most scholars note, but dismiss the idea, as it certainly would not be consistent with Mark’s setz-im-Leben, his setting in life. But I think we can’t discount it. Timaeus was a very wellknown at this time – recently translated into Latin, for example, by no less a figure than Cicero himself – treating metaphysics, especially questions about creation and the nature of God, in a way that would later certainly be seen as Christian-friendly. Connected or not, Bartimaeus was someone who conjured images of several identities at once: Jew, Greek, blind, and marginal.
What is amazing about this encounter, then, is that someone, begging by the side of the road – literally on the margins – and of uncertain birth, should have the audacity to call out to Jesus. And we know this is an audacious move when we hear the reaction of the crowd who rebuked him for this cheek. Bartimaeus was more than your run-ofthe-mill blind beggar: he knew Jesus. He recognised Jesus’ identity and sought healing, connection, and relationship with him. This is what faith looks like. Faith is, in fact, the proper response once we see Jesus and know who he really is. Jesus calls for us to connect with him, see him, in this way he wants to cure our blindness. Faith is the active coming to know who Jesus is, saying it out loud, asking to be in relationship with him.
So here we are. We see the interaction with Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, with an unusual name, discover that the God of Israel restores sight to someone who cried out to the Messiah, the anointed one, as an expression of his faith, his understanding of Jesus’ identity and his desire to be in relationship with him. But what does this mean for us? Over and over in Mark’s Gospel we have learnt that faith is deeply entwined with an understanding of Jesus’ true identity: his identity as God’s “beloved son” as revealed at his baptism (1:11), his identity as “the Holy One of God” known to the various spirits and cosmic forces he encounters (1:24). The woman with the flow of blood (5:28) understood, and she reached out to Jesus for healing and relationship. The Syrophoenecian woman understood, and sought the same, not for herself, but for her daughter (7:26-30). Bartimaeus saw Jesus, knew him, and he, too, reached out for healing. Even at the very end, another unnamed woman used up a whole jar of the most costly of perfumed ointments to acknowledge who Jesus is (14:3ff). In each of these cases, strangers and invisible women knew better than the disciples, who demonstrated that ignorance over and over in their attempts to keep these unclean women, these foreigners from getting close to Jesus. In each instance, Jesus defends the seeker, praises them, and offers his blessing upon them, giving them the healing they seek. Each of these strangers, in an expression of faith, sees Jesus more clearly than his closest followers, trusts Jesus, and seeks connection with him.
Faith, then, is active. It is about learning who Jesus really is, calling out to him, and seeking relationship with him. We know from today’s gospel and all those other stories in Mark, that God’s reach extends to everyone. We know then that God’s reach extends to us, and that we, too, can live in relationship with him. But what do we do? What do we actually do? And maybe this brings us back to where I started. We, too, are seeking something. We come here to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. We seek to be a part of the body of Christ. We want our sight restored. We want Truth to become visible. Justice to become visible. We call out to Jesus because we know who he is, and he restores our sight. Allows us to see with new clarity what is important, whose values are important, by whose values we seek to live.
If we as Christians believe that we are called to a life of faith, the life in relationship with Jesus Christ, the one who, when we call to him, allows us to see beyond ourselves, beyond our own selfish needs, then we are called to bring that faith into the public square. We are called to exercise our rights as citizens of the Earthly City and engage the powers and forces of the world that seek to undermine the Kingdom of God. We are called to do things like vote, and vote with the values of our faith foremost in mind. Our faith calls us to action. As we just heard in today’s passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews:
For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
God has acted first in sending Jesus to come among us, to give us all Grace and call us to lives of God and neighbour Love. We must respond to that call because of our faith, our relationship with God in Christ. We recognise that God has done something monumental and we desire to be a part of it. We have learnt that the fitting response in faith to what God has already done is to engage in the here and now with the works of love, and serve the saints.
Andrew Charles Blume ✠
New York City
Saint James of Jerusalem, 23 October 2024
© 2024 Andrew Charles Blume