Since then, we have been on the road with Jesus and his followers from Galilee. The total distance between Galilee and Jerusalem is about 120 miles, basically from here to Kittery, Maine. It would have taken Jesus and the disciples around six days or so to make that journey. The stuff we’ve been hearing about over these past six weeks is what Mark remembers about as the highlights, on the road. The early Christians were known as people of “the Way” – that speaks to me in the times we are living in, a people who are walking in the footsteps of Jesus.
Today we have reached the suburbs of Jericho, about fifteen miles from the city limits of Jerusalem. It’s the last stop on the pilgrims’ journey. In liturgical time it’s almost Palm Sunday, just hours before Jesus will enter the city on a donkey as the crowds shout Hosanna and lay down their branches of palm before him.
Jesus and his disciples were not the first Galileans to travel to Jerusalem. In fact, this religious pilgrimage was undertaken by faithful Jews as many as three times a year and especially to celebrate high holy days like Passover, which is what Jesus and the disciples are doing. Jerusalem’s whole economy was built on religious tourism and the temple. The route the disciples have been taking is the recommended one by AAA and along the way are places to stay in a time long before interstate highways.
So, of course, along the way there are also beggars because beggars are smart. Beggars don’t hang out where there aren’t any people. They like public places and well-travelled roads. Everyone coming from the north had to go through Jericho to get to Jerusalem. So we shouldn’t be surprised that there is a blind beggar in Jericho; there are no doubt lots of blind beggars in Jericho. But this particular story is about Timaeus’ son whose life intersects on that day with Jesus, on the road to Jerusalem.
Now this story may well be familiar to many of us, even if we don’t remember the details of this particular healing. We’ve heard plenty from Mark about how Jesus healed people in and around Galilee before this journey to Jerusalem began. We’ve heard about how he made the blind to see and the deaf to hear, about how he healed the woman with the hemorrhage and raised Jairus’ daughter. So it comes as no big surprise and really is no big deal that Jesus makes blind Bartimaeus see. We who have been on the journey already know this is who Jesus is, at least since Caesarea Philippi. He is the Christ – the son of the living God. This is what he does.
There are some details, however, in this story that I want us to notice together. First of all, when Bartimaeus cries out: “Jesus, Son of David…have mercy on me!” he is the first person in Mark’s Gospel to use that title for Jesus. We’ve come all this way since the Jordan River, where God said Jesus was his “beloved Son.” We’ve heard Jesus speak of himself as the “Son of Man.” We’ve heard Peter recognize Jesus as “the Christ/the Messiah.” But now, as we near the city gates of Jerusalem, Jesus is identified—by a blind man no less!—as Son of King David. Timaeus’ kid “sees” what no one else has yet been able to see, that the dawn of a new day is on the horizon. “Son of David” is a political claim. Implicit is that Jesus is Lord; Caesar is not.
The man makes a scene. He cries out and is silenced by the crowd but he cries out all the more until he gets Jesus’ attention. And Jesus then invites him to come to him. I find it interesting that Jesus doesn’t go to Bartimaeus; but rather calls Bartimaeus to come to him. I mean, the guy is blind, remember!? Wouldn’t Jesus be “compassionate” enough, given that he can see where he is going just fine, to walk toward Bartimaeus rather than making Bartimaeus grope in the darkness?
I find that detail interesting because of what it literally says and because of what it metaphorically suggests. Jesus is no enabler. I don’t want in any way to minimize the hardship of being blind or lame or deaf. But sometimes our disabilities can become occasions by which others treat us as less than human. And sometimes we do that to ourselves. Sometimes in our weakness others make us feel even weaker than we are, and then they do for us what we can and need to do for ourselves. Have you ever been around a couple where a “caregiver” feels the need to answer all questions addressed to the “patient?” It’s not uncommon.
If we aren’t careful, we create dependency rather than truly serving our neighbor. We may not mean to. But there is a difference between “helping people” because it makes us feel good or because we need to be needed and serving people because we see the image of God in them. The difference has to do with allowing people to keep their dignity.
So Jesus treats Bartimaeus with dignity and respect: as a person, as a human being, as a beloved child of God. In so doing I think he is already working toward making him whole, which is about more than simply giving him back his sight. Bartimaeus “leaps up and tosses off his cloak” (notice that this is before he regains his sight) and comes to Jesus. The tossing of his cloak is a bridge-burning act. That coat is the means by which a blind beggar would gather in the coins tossed to him by others and shake them in. What Mark is telling us is that this man completely trusts that Jesus is about to transform his life, and that is about more than healing his blindness. He’s not going to have to beg anymore. So he doesn’t need that cloak anymore.
Yet again, I find it interesting that Jesus asks Bartimaeus a question: “what do you want me to do for you?” It’s tempting to want to spoof a response—as if Bartimaeus might say: “hello…son of David, I’m BLIND…what do you think I want, cookies and milk?!” But I think this falls under that same heading as before: Jesus treats him as a person. Bartimaeus is asked to articulate what he wants, what he needs, what he desires. That’s empowering, in my experience rather than belittling.
I have no problem believing this happened this way. But I also think that the story is laden with metaphorical meaning and implications as well. Above all, we are meant to chuckle at how the blind guy sees better than the disciples who Jesus is and what he is about. He regains his sight and becomes a follower on “The Way.” He apparently has no illusions about what is coming but he has been touched by the amazing grace of Jesus, for he was once blind but now he sees and that is such amazing grace that he cannot but help to respond with his life.
I also think that we are meant to wonder about our own blindness or at least our blind spots? We tend to think we see it all. But that is a great illusion. Each of us sees what we want to see, or what we are able to see, from a fairly narrow perspective. None of us have eyes in the back of our heads. None of us have 20/20 vision, at least not in a spiritual sense. Much is hidden from our understanding. Always we are looking through a dark glass. Part of spiritual maturity is beginning to see things in new ways, to see from new angles. But part of it is also becoming more profoundly aware that we don’t see it all, that we don’t have all the answers, that what we see isn’t all there is to see. In and through Christian community, Jesus helps us to see in new ways, especially by way of other people, whose experiences may be very different from ours.
We may be tempted to sit back and wait for Jesus to come to us. But I think the journey begins in fact when we find ourselves groping in the dark and crying out, “Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me” and we stumble along trying to find our way to God. This kind of faith is not passive but active. Somewhere along the line I think some of us have been mistaught a kind of religious passivity, to just sit back and have God do it all. So if we lose our faith or experience doubt or blindness we think God has failed us. But perhaps we have failed God in those moments.
Perhaps it is incumbent upon us to cry out in the darkness, to ask for what we need, and to do our best to get up and move. In that moment, I think Christ encourages us and calls out to us and asks us what we need, what we want, what we desire. And as we begin to articulate that, we are already on the path toward health and insight. It’s not magic; it requires our participation. It requires our desire to see, our willingness to risk throwing off the coats that keep us dependent, and the risk of following Jesus even to Jerusalem – even to the foot of the cross. Prayer is, at least in part, about learning to articulate what we need. There is spiritual growth that comes simply by learning to articulate what we are asking for, not because Jesus needs for us to do that but because we need to do that.
It seems clear to me that what Jesus gives to Bartimaeus and to all of us is vision and what he asks in return is that we begin to live into that vision by following him. He helps us to see our neighbor and to see the stranger and to see the pain of the world and the injustice but also to see the beauty and truth and love and when we see all that we are asked to join him and to do the work he has given us to do. We may well feel that it’s easier to be a blind beggar on the side of the road than it is to be a follower of Jesus. Because it is! But that is the insight that Jesus has been trying to get through the disciples thick skulls for six days, or six weeks, or six years, or six decades, or six centuries: take up your cross! Follow me!
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