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Bartimaeus, bible, faith, gospels, healing, Jesus, Mark, poor, social concerns
Image shamelessly stolen from MadPriest at "...I could be wrong"
I love going to church every Sunday. I seem to always find peace and a certain enlightenment there week to week. I deeply appreciate the congregation I am a part of. So many dedicated and hard working people.
I admit I am blessed to be in it. And yesterday’s liturgy had powerful teaching for us all.
The other day, I focused on Job, one of my favorite books of the bible. Today, I wish to revisit Mark’s treatment of the story of Bartimaeus, in chapter ten.
Mark is an interesting gospel. Written perhaps around 70 CE, and perhaps from the environs around a just fallen Jerusalem, his audience must have lived in some fear. The Romans were overrunning everywhere, and a small band of Jesus followers threatened no doubt that Empire even more than the traditional Jews with their strange practices.
Mark prepares his audience for further sacrifice, in fact making it clear that their lot in life may well be harsh and dangerous. They may only get their reward in death. Here we find the suffering servant at it’s best. Some suggest that Mark is the most reliable gospel we have, arriving first and before other gospel writers started to tailor their writings to reflect the emergent church and taking into account the realities of the day.
I tend to think that might be true, and that makes the story of Bartimaeus somehow more urgent, more real to us. Poor Bartimaeus, a man apparently not born blind, but certainly now so, begging for his food and shelter, unwanted, unclean, marginalized in a society built on class. Bartimaeus was the bottom of the barrel, just the kind of person Jesus tended to seek out.
He is helped or manages to find his way to the roadside where he has heard presumably that the faith healer Jesus will soon pass along. He hears the crowd approaching, and when he is sure that it is indeed him, he shouts out–“Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.”
The crowd jostles him, and urges him to be quiet. We must assume that at least some of these are followers. Some indeed are disciples. We are close to Jerusalem, close to the end, and these disciples have been with Jesus nearly three years at this point. No voice is heard in opposition to the stern words to Bartimaeus. Until Jesus, hearing, calls him forth. Then the crowd turns on a dime and also calls encouragement to the blind man.
This is the focus of the periscope. There have been a number of stories about blindness in Mark, both literal and figurative. Jesus has been telling his disciples of his coming passion and death. He has tried to explain to them that the they must serve–that is their greatness. They don’t get it. They never get it, not until the end. They remain on this road to Jericho, blind too.
They are insiders, privileged to be with the Master all this time, learning and watching, listening and one would hope, meditating on the wonders they behold, from this man/God. Yet, they raise no voice against the crowd “quieters.” They are serious, about the business of travel. They wish no slow down by some beggar along the way.
Until Jesus, once again radicalizes the scene. He stops, he calls, he heals, and then he moves on again toward his destiny.
Bartimaeus, asks to be made whole. Don’t we wish we were? Why are we ready to deny wholeness to another because it is inconvenient, time consuming, bothersome. We are asked to get our hands dirty. The poor don’t dress well, don’t smell very good, they are often unattractive.
Did Bartimaeus become blind because of sin? Certainly most in his society believed that he must have. Perhaps the disciples still did as well. But Jesus knew better. He asked Bartimaeus no questions of “qualification.” He didn’t call Bartimaeus to meet some standard of worthiness. One can argue, no doubt, that Jesus knew the answers, but that but begs the question. If Jesus has nothing to tell us about our humanity, then his teachings are worthless, mere platitudes to mere humans.
So we must conclude that such things did not matter to Jesus. What mattered to Jesus was one thing: do we have faith? If we do, then we deserve our healing. And perhaps, even when we don’t. There were other healings, many in fact, wherein no question was posed about faith. No all the healed were conscience at the time. But even when they were, Jesus never stated faith as a prerequisite. It merely made his job easier. Perhaps in reality, Jesus sought sincerity.
As Church, as people, we must ask the question of ourselves. Are we as insiders putting up stumbling blocks to the outsider who comes in need? Do we establish standards of entitlement? Are we turning away Bartimaeus on a regular basis because we have concluded he is unworthy of our charity? Do we have the right to ask at all? Is this not up to our God to fathom–the one who has known us in the womb, and knows our every thought? Who are we to judge?
Jesus radically turned upside down nearly everything he touched. He gave us a new way of looking at the world and relating to it and to each other. That is and should always be our focus. I am told that yesterday ONE BILLION people went to sleep without adequate nutrition. We grow enough for everyone, but ONE SIXTH of our population is hungry.
How many Bartimaeus’s out there are we turning away and denying? How many are you?
Existential Ennui 
The story about Bartimaeus is one of my favorites, probably because I wrote a paper on that pericope! Amazing how he dropped everything he owned, which admittedly wasn’t much, and asked to be healed and THEN followed. Whew.
And you’re right–how many are asking for healing of some sort, be it food, shelter or a drink? Lord, open our eyes and hearts to help those you love, which is everyone.
Yes Jan, you are right. Bartimaeus flung off his cloak which was probably all he had and was ready to follow. Such an inspiration and such a lesson in service.
Just altogether beautiful, Sherry. How far we’ve fallen from Christ’s immediate responsiveness. We hear of people in trouble and our first inclination is to form a committee!
There’s a most disturbing youtube video currently on the loose, drawing peals of laughter from numbskulls and gasps of horror from the sentient among us. It’s the middle of the day and a young man in his 20’s walks into a liquor store. (The whole incident is caught on the store’s security cams.) He’s hopelessly drunk and either under the influence of other drugs or possibly in the middle of insulin shock. He reels down the cooler aisle and gets his mitts on a six-pack. Within seconds, on his back. He struggles for nearly 5 minutes to get up. While this goes on, the store manager and a couple others watch from the aisle’s foot. NO ONE helps him. Eventually they walk away. There’s more to it as he careens through the store and AGAIN falls without assistance getting up.
All sorts of questions race through your mind. At first, you want to throttle him for buying more beer. But as it goes on, you accept this is what it is. Like Bartimaeus, how he got this blind is irrelevant. He needs help. You start wondering where he came from? Did he drive? Are there others in similar or worse condition waiting for him in a car? And though he appears to pull himself together by the time he leaves (nearly 15 minutes later; without the beer), the idea of him getting behind the wheel of a car or trying to cross a busy street is terrifying.
What’s wrong with us that we can look at so many blind cases around us and feel comfortable standing back and watching them fall? In Jesus’s day, blind people were of little or no threat to others. But in today’s world they’re running corporations, running for office, driving cars, beating wives and children, breaking and entering, and all sorts of things that make them very present threats to innocent people. Walking away is not an option.
In contrast, there’s another video on the loose, which was highlighted on GMA last week. A masked man enters into a check-cashing joint and points a gun at the sole employee there. She starts praying, first for her own life, but her heart is touched and she sees what’s really happening–this is bigger than just her. She asks the gunman about his family and finds out he’s a father and husband driven to crime because he’s lost his job. The woman–who in the interview is perhaps one of the most guileless of God’s creatures–urges him to consider what he’s doing. By the time the video ends, he’s shed the mask, handed her the gun and extra bullets, and allowed her to pray for him. He later turned himself in and most likely will be sentenced for attempted armed robbery. But this amazing lady is prepared to testify in his defense.
When we reach out, instead of getting all puffed up about helping the needy, we might think the “lives we save” may number many more than just those we touch. They may even be our own.
Thanks so much for this. It touches a real nerve in me.
Tim, you are so right. I was aware of the second story, not the first. We are all too willing again and again to walk away. I have certainly been guilty of that and it’s painful to recall. We are all more close to disaster than we realize and we would wish others to help us if it were necessary. we are not strong in our empathy it seems. I think Jesus tried so hard to make us feel something, and yet, all too often we are like the Zebedee brothers, wondering what is in it for us.
And don’t you love the contrast between Bartimeaus and the rich young man? RYM goes away sad, back to his stuff, still unable to see. Bartimeaus leaves behind his begging bowl and follows Jesus on the way. (Cue the music to point to the important words there: on the way. Followers of the Way was the name for early Christians.) I love the lights-going-on effect at prison yesterday when that insight grabbed folks.
Oh Shannon, so true. I love the “the way” analogy. That whole periscope is so very rich in lessons. The work you do much find great reward. There are so many in need.