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October 25, 2009—Proper 25

Lectionary Texts: Job 42:1-6, 10-17 or Jeremiah 31:7-9; Psalm 34:1-8, 19-22 or Psalm 126; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52

Sermon Text: Mark 10:46-52

“Seeing Clearly”

Vision Problems

Life can be tough if you’re not seeing things clearly.
I don’t know many people with perfect vision. My wife is one; my kids are doing pretty well. Most people I know are more like some variation of my mother-in-law, with eighteen pair of Wal-Mart reading glasses strewn around the house in every room. Vision problems can be terribly frustrating—all the glasses and contacts, solutions, cleaning, scratches, sports, and so on (If you wear glasses or contacts, you know what I’m talking about).

I’m no stranger to vision problems. Toward the end of seminary, I had done so much reading that the muscles in my eyes stopped functioning correctly; I was having a terrible time focusing on things up close. I get migraines that are related to blood vessels malfunctioning behind my eyes. A couple of years ago, when my daughter was one, her favorite thing to do was pull my glasses off my face, twist them into a pretzel and jump on them. Great times.

Life can be terribly frustrating when you’re not seeing things clearly . . . in more ways than one . . . because the truth is, we can have vision problems on a couple of different levels.

Yes, there are the physical vision problems, but there are also the problems where we don’t understand or interpret something correctly. Sometimes we might figuratively refer to a problem like that as “not being able to see it clearly.” Maybe you could say that sometimes we “just don’t quite see it,” meaning, of course, that we “just don’t quite get/understand/interpret/comprehend it.” Like I said, life can be pretty tough if you’re just not seeing clearly.

The Blind Man--Bartimaeus

In Mark’s gospel, we need to keep both kinds of vision problems in mind because much of it is about people with fuzzy vision about Jesus learning to see clearly. Vision is the particular focus of Mark’s story of Bartimaeus in chapter 10:46-52.

Let’s set the scene so you can picture it. We’re told there’s a crowd of people with Jesus and the disciples who have come and are now leaving Jericho. It’s the last pit stop on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which is only a day’s journey away. It’s the same city that Joshua took for the people of Israel so many years ago when “The walls came a ‘tumblin’ down.” Off to the side of that dirt road heading out of town there is a man sitting down, propped up against a wall, walking stick in one had and a small cup in the other, cloak draped around his shoulders--besides his undergarments, the only three things he owns. He’s shaking his cup, hoping that the change makes enough noise that some kind person will see him, have mercy, and add a coin to it.

He’s a beggar. His name is Bartimaeus, which essentially means he’s the son of Timaeus. And he also happens to be blind.

It’s A Framing Story

We’ve already heard one blind man story in Mark’s gospel. A couple of chapters ago we’re told about another man who was blind. Jesus heals him in a strange two-step process involving spit (How would you like to have that as your story? “Jesus spit on me.”). The man begins blind. Jesus spits on him, touches him, and he sees incorrectly (the people walking around look like trees). Jesus touches him again; he sees clearly.

It’s the same process for the followers of Jesus. They started blind, have begun to catch glimpses of what God is up to in Jesus, but they don’t understand completely.

That first blind story sets off a series of stories that help identify the person and mission of Jesus. Peter’s confession comes next, although he doesn’t understand that Jesus’ identity as the Christ doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. Peter ends up being rebuked for trying to get Jesus to shy away from God’s mission. Three of the disciples witness the transfiguration, where a voice from a cloud declares that Jesus is His son. Jesus spends time over the next two chapters sharing with the disciples that He’s going to Jerusalem to be handed over and crucified; but on the third day He’ll be raised from the dead . . . things they just can’t quite get a handle on, no matter how many times they hear Him talk about them.

Still, whether they understand or not, they know that God is up to something special in Jesus, so they stick with Him.

And they find themselves outside the city of Jericho, on their way to Jerusalem to witness a chain of events that their fuzzy eyes just aren’t quite ready for, no matter how many times Jesus tells them about it.

Back to Bart

Then there is Bartimaeus.

While he is blind in one sense of the word, in another sense, he’s seeing just fine, because when Bartimaeus finds his voice in this story, the words coming off his lips are a declaration of the true identity of Jesus: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me,” he begins to whisper, his mouth dry from the desert heat and dust. He doesn’t speak often because nobody stops to listen, but he’s heard about Jesus. From what he’s picking up in the conversation from the crowd that day, he understands that Jesus is in the crowd.

Maybe he’s hoping Jesus won’t spit this time . . . but hey, sight is sight. So he’s trying to find his voice.

It’s scratchy at first. He clears his throat and tries again, but the crowd is full of conversation. The disciples are probably still upset over what James and John had just tried to pull, asking Jesus to sit on His right and left in His kingdom--proof that they still don’t quite see clearly just what it is that Jesus is doing on this trip to Jerusalem. They’re still seeing trees walking around.

Bart tries again, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. . . .” This time some of those on the edges of the crowd hear him and begin to hush him. “Quiet,” they say, “Jesus is busy. He’s on His way to Jerusalem you know. Kingdom stuff. Stay out of the way. Blind people don’t make good soldiers.”

Now the dust is shaken from Bart’s vocal chords and he begins to downright holler. What are the chances he gets another opportunity like this one? He shouts out, repeatedly this time, and loud, “Son of David, have mercy!” Then he waits.

Where exactly did he pick up that phrase, Son of David? It’s the only place in Mark’s gospel where Jesus is referred to as the Son of David. Jesus has been keeping a pretty tight lid on His identity as the Messiah, apart from the twelve, who don’t get it anyway. Where does he get it?

It’s an interesting picture isn’t it? Mark definitely wants us to see it like this: a crowd of people following Jesus, including the disciples, who see just fine, but just don’t get it no matter how many times Jesus tells them . . . and then a blind man, who can’t see a lick, but understands perfectly.

He can’t see what’s happening, but he can sense that people in the crowd are stopping. He can hear the conversation quiet down and shuffling sandals disappearing. Then he hears the voice of Jesus to one of the disciples, “Call him.” It’s a beautiful voice really. What a great couple of words.

It gets better. Some from the crowd come running over to Bart and tell him, “Cheer up! Take heart! He’s calling you!” For someone who’s spent a lifetime in darkness, these are the best words he could have heard that day. Jesus, the Light of the world, the one who can bring him from darkness into the light of day, the one who can heal, mend, restore, redeem, make whole, has called him.

Yes, we are meant to understand these things on levels that aren’t just physical.

Bart does what so many haven’t been able to do, he throws off his cloak, leaves his walking stick, drops his beggar’s cup--his only three possessions--and runs to Jesus in his underwear (well, it doesn’t say it quite like that, but you know).

The last potential follower of Jesus, just three verses earlier in the story, was a rich, respected, young, influential, powerful man with all the world at his fingertips. He couldn’t let it go to follow Jesus. Blind, destitute Bartimaeus drops it all at the mention that Jesus is calling him. Yet another example of a blind man seeing very clearly.

He runs to Jesus. Never mind about the walking stick. He heard where Jesus had spoken a moment ago and rushes in that direction. There are plenty of people around to shove him in the right direction if he gets off track. He just runs toward Jesus.

The crowd funnels him to Jesus and stands him in the right direction. Bartimaeus stands there in front of the Son of David, the Savior of the world, and he looks in Jesus’ direction, head bobbing around a bit. From a distance, it looks like he’s searching with his eyes for Jesus, but really the movement is because he’s searching with his ears for where to point his malfunctioning eyes.

Then Jesus speaks to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” It’s the same question He just asked James and John when they were talking about the seats on His right and left. “Give us seats on your right and left when you enter your kingdom,” they said. Trees. Uughh. Blind people asking for chairs. Wrong answer. When Jesus questions Bart, his answer is very different: “Rabbi, I want to see.”

And there it is.

The request Mark wants all of us to be asking. Of course, he wants to see. But Mark wants us to be asking Jesus for eyes to understand who He is and what He means for us, our lives, our world.

It’s no small thing that Bart is standing in front of Jesus asking to see--so that if his sight is restored, the first thing he’ll see clearly is the face of Jesus. “Go,” Jesus answered him, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. The last follower of Jesus in Mark’s story was a blind man who actually saw quite clearly.

What Are You Asking?

It takes a work of God to uncover the junk from our eyes, the build-up of years of nonsense about God and life and even Jesus--the expectations, the assumptions, the indifference. Even the most seasoned disciples should have been asking that question all along instead of the other ones. “Jesus, we just want to see you clearly.”

Is that a question you’ve been asking? Maybe, when you think about it, you’ve been asking all kinds of other questions--about status, rewards, all kinds of things that are built on assumptions about who Jesus is, or might be. Maybe your questions have been about church strategies and ministries and positioning and offerings and staffing.

Maybe, however, the question that Jesus longs to hear from you is, “Jesus, I want to see you clearly. Would you help me to look into your face and see you for who you are and what you want to do in me and in my world?”

“Jesus, we just want to see you clearly.”

Somehow, if that’s the question we’re asking, God has a way of clearing things up for us.

Ben

A couple of years ago, some good friends of ours had a child named Ben who developed a lazy eye when he was almost two years old. When his parents took him to the optometrist, they found out that Ben’s vision was so bad, the muscles in his eyes were pulling his eyes in different directions to try to compensate. He was basically blind because of it, but Ben didn’t know any different. He didn’t have the words to tell anyone about it.

I remember the parents just felt terrible that they hadn’t known, but they did what the doctor prescribed and got him some of the strongest, thickest glasses they could buy. These were the definition of coke-bottle glasses. Ben’s eyes looked two inches wide through them.

I remember the first day Ben had his glasses, his dad told me the story of what happened:

When he put them on, he just looked all over the place like he was seeing the world for the first time. It was sad and beautiful all at the same time. Then when we got home, he pulled a chair up to the window that looks out into our back yard, and he just sat there for hours looking out the window . . . smiling and pointing at the birds.

Maybe receiving a touch from Jesus is something like that. May you see the Savior--and the whole world as a result--that clearly today; then follow Him wherever He goes.