Blind Bartimaeus

By

Reverend Litton Logan

October 29, 2004

Scriptures:

Mark 10:46--52 (NRSV)

⁴⁶They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. ⁴⁷When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁸Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁹Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” ⁵⁰So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. ⁵¹Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” ⁵²Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Sermon:

          We’ve all heard the phrase “Blind Faith” I am sure.  It means someone has a profound trust in something or someone without question or equivocation.  An example:

          There is a story told about a Western Oklahoma ranch family that was in the process of digging a tornado shelter.  There was a big hole dug in their back yard awaiting the forming and pouring of concrete.  As bad luck would have it, before their shelter was completed a tornado developed and was headed straight for these folks’ home.  The father gathered his family and they headed for the big hole in their back yard.  Everyone jumped into the hole except the youngest boy.  The wind was blowing terribly, the air was filled with dust, and dirt and he couldn’t see to jump.  He called out to his dad. His father told him to jump.  The little boy said, “I can’t see you, I can’t see you.

The father, looking up against the sky called to the silhouette of his son, "But I can see you, Jump!”  The boy jumped, because he trusted his

          In today’s scripture, Mark talks about a Christian’s blind faith in what has never been seen but known to be true as we jump off into the unknowns of life and death.  Throughout this story there is a play off of seeing as knowing and knowing as seeing as dimensions of our faith.

Mark in this story about a blind man continues to emphasize that outsiders, the so-called inferior and vulnerable have a clearer idea about who Jesus is than do the insiders—the disciples.  Consequently, Mark leaves an implied question with his readers, “Do we see, that is know, who Jesus truly is for our life and times?  Or, are we like the blind man with a seeing eye dog at his side who enters a grocery store. The man walks to the middle of the store, picks up the dog by the tail, and starts swinging the dog around in circles over his head. The store manager, who has seen all this, thinks this is quite strange and approaches the blind man swinging the dog and says, "Pardon me, Sir. May I help you with something." The blind man says, "No thanks. I'm just looking around."  All too frequently Christians, appear to be spiritually blind, swinging their religion around hoping to see beyond their willingness to commit and know who Jesus really is for themselves and for the world.

A little background on Jewish charity—“ẓedaḳah”=righteousness--will help us put Blind Bartimaeus into a larger context.  A larger context of the power of our faith in God.

During Jesus’ day, nearly every Jewish village or community had a group of elders that were responsibility for caring  for the widows, orphans, the poor and needy, and the stranger that fell upon hard times, including the non-Jewish poor and needy.  These men were the foremost men in the community and were empowered to collect money for the poor and even to tax people or seize property until an appropriate sum was given.  These men then could make non-interest, bearing loans to facilitate a poor person’s mode of living as well as distributed money, food, clothing, and shelter under the principle of “what is sufficient for his need in accordance with what he lacks”.[i]  Charity was to be done in such a way as to preserve the dignity of the recipient.  These elders of charity also ensured the burial of the poor, who died without means or family to bury them.

The Jewish individual’s and Jewish community’s sense of charity was viewed as a human obligation based upon scriptures (Deut. 23:5, 1Kings 20:31; Amos 1:11-2:1; Philo, “De Caritate §§ 17, 18).  Portions of a person’s blessings in life were claimed by God for the benefit of the poor and needy.  There were criteria for determining a person’s needs and merit to receive community assistance.  One group of people, however, who were excluded from receiving help were Jews who willfully transgressed the Law. [ii]   Those folks had to fend for themselves as best they could.  Thus, those poor, diseased, and handicapped people who had to beg for a living because they were viewed as being outside the pale of the Law were held in contempt and worth only of coins from passers-by.

          If you look closely at scriptures, you notice there is an absence of instructions for the care of the door-to-door or street-corner beggars in the Old Testament.  This is because a person—Jew or non-Jew--having to beg for food, shelter, clothes, etc., was generally illogical in a Jewish community.  Several rabbis said that those communities that didn’t have a charity box—a system for caring for the poor--weren’t worth living in.  In addition, the men charged with the care and keep of the poor and needy who didn’t discharge their duties in a conscientious manner would have been in serious trouble with the community and God.

Therefore, one may draw the conclusion that Bartimaeus was personae non-grata and had to beg for a living because in the eyes of his community, he must have willfully transgressed the Law and blindness was his punishment.  Notice that Mark indicates he was once a sighted person--“My teacher, let me see again.” Bartimaeus may be classified as a Jewish insider, who became a true outsider, relegated to begging for a living. Bartimaeus may have had to beg for a living, he may have been a contemptuous, object lesson of sin and punishment, but he was not to be taken advantage of or abused.  To counteract this notion that blindness was punishment from God, blind people were accorded protection under the Mosaic Law as evidence by passages in the book of Deuteronomy 27:17 and Leviticus 19:14.

Therefore, as we look at Bartimaeus’ healing through his own faith, occasioned by Jesus’ passing by, there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye.

Bartimaeus as he sits begging hears a commotion, “What’s going on?” he asked.  He was told, “…Jesus the Nazarene was passing by, he began to cry out, “Son of David, Jesus! Mercy, have mercy on me!” Many tried to hush him up, but he yelled all the louder, “Son of David!  Mercy, have mercy on me!”

Evidently Jesus’ reputation as a mighty man of God from Nazareth, a healer of the possessed, the diseased, the blind, and sinners as well as the longed for savior and redeemer of Israel had preceded him.  Blind Bartimaeus has heard of Jesus and he sees the possibility of his healing.  As he cries out, loudly and incessantly people try to shut him up.  Did you ever wonder why the people tried to shut him up?  Where they ashamed of him or were they afraid of the name he called Jesus? 

          Bartimaeus called Jesus “Son of David,” a reference to the earthly warrior-priest-king of Jewish expectations.  This is the first time in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus is called this name. This title “Son of David” was loaded with dangerous, political implications.  Prior to this time, Jesus is referred to as Son of Man, a man whom God has sent into the world to proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom on earth not a political-military heir to David’s throne and emancipator from Roman domination.

Thus, we may assume that the crowd—the common rabble as many of the Pharisees called them--were afraid that Bartimaeus’ yelling out this title might get everyone into trouble with the Jewish leadership and the Romans.  Calling Jesus, Son of David, would have been construed as sedition?

We see this name, Son of David, yelled out again in Mark 11:10 as Jesus enters into Jerusalem and he is proclaimed the Son of David, the one who would who come and reestablish the glory days of the Jewish people.  It was in such names and the ideas of hope that they engendered that set the stage for civil unrest, which eventually engulfs Jesus and leads to his crucifixion.

          Notice that Jesus asks the same question of Bartimaeus as he asked of James and John when they petitioned him--“What do you want me to do for you?” Notice that Jesus doesn’t heal Bartimaeus as he had a previous blind man any more that he granted James and John their request for positions of honor and power. The implications we gather from this exchange is that the closer Jesus gets to Jerusalem and Calvary the more important the believer’s faith takes on primacy.  In Jerusalem, Jesus does no more miracles; he only teaches.  In short, as Jesus is about to be crucified the believer’s faith in God’s love made known in Jesus Christ becomes the source of healing from the eternal and temporal effects of sin like in Bartimaeus.

Be that as it may, look at what Bartimaeus does after he is healed.  Did you notice that Jesus did not heal Bartimaeus by physical touch or with words of healing?  However, Bartimaeus none-the-less gets up and follows Jesus.  Previously, blind people who were healed by Jesus didn’t follow him.

          Here Mark’s story of Blind Bartimaeus drives home once again the point that as Jesus heads for Jerusalem to be crowned and crucified King of the Jews, those on the inside as well as those on the outside don’t fully comprehend Jesus or his mission.  Those on the outside and inside know that Jesus is God’s holy one, imbued with power and authority.  They know that he is different from earthly rulers and the religious leaders of the day, but they don’t fully comprehend him.   Those on the inside as well as those on the outside, including the demons, don’t grasps the idea that Jesus comes as the suffering servant, who proclaims God’s kingdom on earth through love, mercy, compassion and moral and spiritual wholeness not through military, religious, or political might.  They also didn’t understand that to be followers of Jesus was to live a life of self-expenditure for all people without undue regard for one’s own life just as Jesus did.

          Right up to the end, the Apostles and many of his followers thought Jesus was going to run into a phone booth, rip off his clothes, and emerge as a superman--the conquering warrior-priest-king—Son of David--and over throw the Romans and reform Judaism.  In this new order, Jesus would place the Apostles and his other disciples in positions of power and leadership with all that goes along with such things. 

At the personal level, Jesus never did anything but good nor taught anything new or seditious.  However, the Jewish leaders, the crowds, the Romans, and the disciples, treated him shamefully and then he was crucified.  Jesus wasn’t crucified for what he had done, but rather for not doing what others thought he should do or what others said he did.  It was only in his suffering and death that his life and ministry take on their fullest meaning and power.  Nevertheless, even then, as now, it seems people still do not see or understand him.

          Jesus tells his followers that they must be prepared for the powers of this world to do to them as they have done to him.  However, those who preserve to the end, living as Jesus did, they will be reward according to God’s standards and will be conquerors of the damning effects of sin and death.  

How did Jesus live?  He proclaimed God’s universal love for all humankind; he taught and lived the highest morality and ethics known to humankind; he discounted no one, he never made any person, rich or poor, religious or irreligious, an object of contempt.  He healed without discrimination. He was a servant to all. 

          Bartimaeus was blind and could not see the physical Jesus or his miracles of healing and feeding.  Yet, in his heart of hearts, the things that he heard about Jesus resonated with his faith in God’s beneficence and love made real in Jesus’ ministry.  He came to see with his physical eyes what his blind, knowing-faith had seen so clearly—God is forgiving and compassionate.  Bartimaeus was a powerless and dependent person, whose faith in God’s compassion and mercy empowered him physically and spiritually to follow Jesus “on the way”.  So compelling was his experience of God’s presence in Jesus, he doesn’t even take time for his eyes and brain to adjust to his regained sight before he follows Jesus “on the way”

It is sad to say, that for some people their Christianity is little more than a form of eternal life insurance with no depth of life-commitment.  The premiums they grudgingly pay are to be nominally religious and somewhat charitable.  In truth, what it means to be a Christian is to be willing to cry out, struggle, to relinquish the blindness of selfishness, egotism, and insipid human understandings and to seek new, divine-eyes and a new, divine-psychology.  To be a Christian is to be a sinner who is willing to cry out for God’s healing mercy and then seek to see the world through the eyes of God.

          I don’t know what happened to Bartimaeus. I imagine he was in the crowd when Jesus entered Jerusalem still proclaiming his hopes in the Son of David.  I don’t think he was in the crowd that cried, “Crucify him, crucify him,” but I don’t know.  You can never tell about people when their lives are in danger.  I do know, however, Bartimaeus, like the disciples, was not around the cross. 

Truth be told, Bartimaeus as much as he is seen as a paragon of faith he still didn’t understand who Jesus was any better than anyone else.  Son of David,” he cried.  Bartimaeus like so many was blind to Jesus’ true nature.  “Rabbi,” he said. Bartimaeus like so many were blind to Jesus’ kingdom teachings based in love.  Bartimaeus did not call Jesus the Son of Man, who must suffer many things to ransom a lost and wandering humanity.  Bartimaeus saw the promise of God in Jesus, clearly enough that he followed Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, but not clear enough to follow him to Calvary any more than Jesus’ disciples of old or of today.

I derive much comfort from the story of Blind Bartimaeus.  That comfort comes from the fact that my faith in God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness made known in Jesus Christ enables me to face life or meet death, not because I can see, but because I am seen; not that I know all the answers, but because God knows the sincerity of my faith as wrong or misguided as my religion may be at times.  Bartimaeus’ faith in God’s compassion and forgiveness, like yours and mine, has been and will continue to be the source of moral and spiritual healing in our lives and in the world.

In Christ, jump into life, face the future, live your life as best as you can according to the teachings of Christ, because God sees what we cannot.  God in Christ became for us what we could never be for ourselves no matter how righteous we are.  Like Blind Bartimaeus, in faith let us accept God’s forgiveness of sin and be “on the way” of Christ every day of our lives even if we don’t always quite get it right or see it clearly.