May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 20
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 29, 2000
TEXT: Mark 10:46-52 - Then 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.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”
See also: Isaiah 59:1-19 - “We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.”
ISSUE: - A poor blind beggar wants to see again. He is willing to cast off the past in hope of restoration to community, a whole, full, strong, healthy life. He calls out to Jesus Christ in faith, and by his grace the blind man is restored and follows him. As humans we all often stumble in the darkness and keeping the status quo. We’re satisfied with some of the meager things in life, the monetary materialistic things that satisfy. But, the blind man in the story does not want mere hand outs, he wants life. By faith he receives the grace to be with Jesus Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The story from Mark which tells of the blind man receiving his sight is a powerful and wonderful story. It tells of a poor blind man whose life has been given to begging for a living. Tired of all that he calls out to Jesus Christ giving him great honor, calling him Son of David. And by his clear intentional faith, grace comes to him and he receives his sight and follows along the way.
In Jesus’ time, the first century, blindness was quite common. The disease was Trachoma, a contagious infection of the mucous lining of the eyelids and cornea. It was spread by flies and poor hygiene. Hand washing would have helped, but water in the land was scarce and not readily available among the poor. Pharisees, in fact, criticized Jesus’ disciples for not washing their hands before eating. But wealthier persons in position of leadership had that luxury. Peasants did not, and thus you had significant number of blind beggars. The disease is curable today.
Blindness in the first century was also thought by many to be a curse, the result of some sinfulness. It meant that a person bore great shame, and could not enter the Temple in Jerusalem. Blind person got their living through begging along the roads.
The story today tells of Bartimaeus, the Son of Timaeus (a name meaning highly prized or honored) who seeks out Jesus for healing. The crowds are on their way to the temple in Jerusalem taking the route through Jericho. This time was a good time for beggars who would stand outside the city gates to beg from the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. As the crowds are passing by, this one Bartimaeus learns that Jesus is in the crowd passing by. He calls out to Jesus: “Jesus, Son of David have mercy on me!” The crowd tell him to “Shut-up.” How dare this shameful, sinful, beggar cry out. He’s an expendable nothing. But he dares to challenge the crowd, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” The blind man is bestowing a title of great honor upon Jesus. He gives to Jesus an honorable messianic title, “Son of David, the greatest King of Israel, the father of Solomon who was wise and considered to be near omniscient and omnipotent ruler.” (J. Pilch) “Honorable Jesus, you can reward me with healing.” This scene is one in which the blind beggar is so focused in faith and loyalty, trust, that Jesus can restore his sight. Jesus accepts the accolade and rewards him. So Jesus calls him to him. The blind Bartimaeus gets up, throws off his coat and runs to Jesus.
Mind you, a blind man does not throw his coat away. He may never find it again. We are given an enhanced appreciation of the great faith of the blind man.
Jesus asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Get this point, and get it good. It’s important. The poor shameful blind beggar who sits in the gutters on the side of the road dares to approach Jesus with the title “Son of David”, an extremely royal and highly honorable title: you are as great as they come O Royal One, high potentate. But, Jesus taking the role of a slave says to the beggar, “What do you want me to do for you?” What shock to his disciples that wanted to sit at his right hand and left hand when Jesus came into his glory. “What can I do for you?” are the words a slave asks of his master.
The blind Bartimaeus replies to this servant master with another title of great honor, “My teacher (or rabbi), I want to see again.” He wants to be enlightened. He wants to come into the light. He wants to live a meaningful fulfilled life again. And he believes that through his faith in Jesus Christ he can be fully restored with his shame done away. He risks everything. He’s thrown away his coat, perhaps a symbol of his past. He’s given up his way of life. He may have been a beggar, but at least it was a living, and his only living. He gives it all up. “Teacher, let me see again.” Through his faith in Jesus Christ, the grace of healing restoration flows. Having given up his past, he follows Jesus on the way. Incidentally, “The Way” was what Christians were originally called, “People of the Way.”
Note too that the blind man when asked by Jesus, “What can I do for you?” could have replied, “Give me five bucks.” It was not affluence, materialistic gain, which would have kept him there always at the beggars gate that for which the blind man asks. He is ready in faith to move on, to be changed, to be enlightened, to carry on new life. He throws away his old coat in eager hope of healing restoration so that he can see the way of God’s free gift of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation (friendship with God) through Jesus Christ.
This story is such a powerful and wonderful one, of a man whose life is in darkness, whose life is despairing, whose life is shamed, whose life is reduced to the gutter, but who finds great hope and healing in and through Jesus Christ the great high priest, and yet the slave of all who extends the graciousness of God. Who of us have not known such times in our lives when we felt deep in the dark not knowing where to turn, groping in the darkness. Sometimes life can be like groping in the dark. Sometimes it is hard to know which way to turn. The human condition is described in the Isaiah passage today (59:1-19) in a time when people had lost touch with God:
“We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.”
This passage came from a time when people were very litigious, suing one another frivolously, cheating one another, having no respect for human need of the poor. Government was corrupt. It was nation robbed of its dignity and godliness. Sound familiar? We as a people and nation still have our problems and a great deal of indifference and apathy, blinded to our need for vital responsibility to community, and to the common good.
The situation in the Middle East today appears to be one, at least from the American perspective, where the Israeli’s and the Palestinians cannot find the way to peace. The old ways of pride, fear, prejudice, corruption, terrorism keep getting in the way. They can’t seem to throw off the past and cry out for mercy, compassion. There are blinders that keep them from seeing the larger picture. Continued vengeance maintains the status quo. There appears to be no surrender to God, and need for God’s mercy to help and heal. The misery goes on without a commitment to real peace.
One of the things in my ministry that has been troublesome is how spiritually blind many men are. So many families have been destroyed by men who cannot see the abounding grace in their midst. I think of men who have nice homes, good jobs, children, devoted wives in many instances, but who will throw it all away on the whim that they can have a better life somewhere else, when a good life is in their midst. Jobs, and children, and wives, and homes are work. They are all demanding, and life in God, in Christ is servanthood. That’s the clearer picture. We are called to be faithful, as God is faithful and responsive to us. But the values of faithful devoted commitment to our vows becomes hazy, out of focus, and lame excuses for our behaviors lead us away from stability to groping in the darkness.
It is hard for us to see (another way of saying that we are blind) that unless we embrace our faith in God, in Jesus Christ, unless we embrace ministries, a character of servanthood, nothing ever changes very much. Without we become committed to justice, then we face blight, insurrection, rebellion, decaying cities, communities, and nation, not to mention a decaying church without people with a focused faithfulness.
Many of us Christians today have allowed ourselves to be hazy, unclear, out of focus so far as our faithfulness is concerned. The world encroaches on our way to finding insight, hope, and we let it. We are undisciplined. We are casual about our religious commitments. The world tells us not to claim Christ as Lord, and we say, “Okay”, and shut up. The meager hand outs of shallow plastic affluence and materialism suffice, but people are miserable, and nothing changes.
For those of us who wear glasses, we know that without them we get to the point where we are legally blind. We see colors and shapes, but things around us get very fuzzy. Unless the print on the page is very large and very dark, we cannot see to read. We can’t find our way through the pages, until we put our glasses on and then things around us become sharp and clear again. It’s a lot like putting on faith in Jesus Christ. It helps us to see things in perspective again.
The blind man in the story had some inkling that the love, the forgiveness, the hope, the wisdom, the teachings of Jesus offered more than what his world of shame, depravity, alienation, prejudice, and injustice could ever offer. He dared to break free and to honor Christ. He dared to throw off the burden of the past and risk in faith a new way of life that was devoted unequivocally to Jesus Christ. The servant Christ responded to him. He could see again.
Sunday, October 29, 2000
Sunday, October 15, 2000
PENTECOST 18
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: PENTECOST 18
PROPER: 23B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 15,2000
TEXT: Mark 10:17-31 - As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” . . . . . . . . .Jesus looking at him loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.
ISSUE: - This passage from Mark is definitely a radical one, as Jesus calls for the rich young ruler to sell everything, and abandon his present life for life in the Kingdom of God. Having all that the young man has till leaves him with a sense of some emptiness. The passage appropriate in its time, as it is today must not be minimized. It calls all of us in a secular world enchanted with wealth and possessions to put God and service with Christ first and foremost. Without that kind of commitment and relationship our humanity is empty, unreal, meaningless, and not authentically human.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This passage from Mark is a really challenging one. “Go, sell it all, give to the poor, and follow me!” The preacher is tempted to try to find ways to make this radical scriptural passage more palatable. Well, Jesus maybe didn’t quite mean that you sell all and follow him. As we might want to minimize the passage, the fact remains that all of the synoptic Gospels tell this story: Matthew, Luke, and Mark. In fact, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke, tells how in fact early Christians did sell lands their lands and gave it to the apostles to be used by all. An old professor of mine in New Testament Studies at the University of the South repeatedly reminded his students, “It’s our Bible, and we’re stuck with it!” It’s our faith, our Lord and we can respond or not.
A rich young man, or ruler, runs up to Jesus, kneels before him, and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Again in this culture, questioning was usually confrontational, or aggressive. He refers to Jesus as Good Teacher, which may well have been sarcastic. Calling someone good, “buttering them up”, may have implied that Jesus was assuming too much honorable status. ‘So how do you smart guy presume to tell us how to get eternal life?’ Jesus again takes the young rich ruler on: “What do you call me Good? No one is good but god alone.” Jesus dismisses any idea that he has any honor. Only God has honor and status. He confront the young man on his own level, you know what gives eternal life, the commandments of God: don’t murder, commit adultery, don’t steal, lie, or defraud you neighbor; honor mother and father.” You know the rules Jesus implies that gives us the best of life. So the rich young ruler proudly replies, “been there; done all that since I was a child.”
“Well then,” says Jesus looking at him lovingly - he is a fellow Israelite committed to the law - “Maybe you lack still one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Or a place in the domain of God). The implication is that then your life will be an authentic, meaningful, purposeful, real human life. But the young rich man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. And Jesus humorously responds, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for the rich (greedy) to enter into the kingdom, the domain, or the realm of God!”
What is also interesting here, is that the disciples themselves are amazed. They’re confused. Who then can be saved or enter into the realm of God, if the rich can’t? The belief of the time was that the poor, the dishonorable, the blind, lame, deaf and mute, the tax collectors and prostitutes were the last to be worthy of God’s Kingdom. They were the cursed. The wealthy were seen as the blessed and honorable. They had clients that looked to them for help and favors, and thus they were the ones with status and honor, and thereby worthy of being in the domain of God. They were the ones who had, like the rich young man, the ability to keep all the laws from the time he was a child. But here again, Jesus is proclaiming a great reversal: “the first shall be last, and the last will be first.”
The rich young man wants to hold on to the stuff that gives him honor and status. You might say that he has become possessed by his own possessions and comfortable way of life. However, at the same time it is likely that by the very fact that he comes to Jesus at all, his life is unsatisfactory. He has so much, and is yet still uncertain as to what is meaningful in life, what gives a purposeful, useful, authentic, real life of value. He wants to keep the rules, the religious laws and regulations, and visit the shrines the give him the semblance of respectability. But Jesus looks lovingly at the young man, and says if you want real authentic life you have to give your stuff away and enter into a way of sharing, caring, serving, compassionate way of generosity. You have to change your priorities as to what is really important. Even the disciples are confused who can be saved?
Jesus calls the man and his followers to renewed trust, faith, loyalty, and commitment. By the grace of God all things are possible, new things can happen, and lives can be changed. Jesus Christ makes the promise: go, sell, give to the poor, follow me, and you will still have a life with more than enough in the family of God with houses, brothers, sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions, meaningful, eternal, purposeful, authentic, real life. But the young rich ruler unable to grasp it, unable to get it, goes away grieving, lamenting, his inability to find release from his possessions to claim the real prize of the Kingdom, Domain, or Realm of God.
Today we Americans are living in the most affluent age of all time. One of our hit television shows is “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” “The Survivors” TV show has its contestants try to vote one another off the island in hopes of becoming a millionaire. The prospect of such wealth keeps people enchanted and vicariously glued to their TV sets. Who doesn’t want to win the Lottery? We also have an instant lottery for those of us what need instant gratification. We send our athletes off to bring home “the gold.” Americans are maybe profoundly obsessed, don’t you think, with commitment to solid portfolios for the purpose of security in our old age. We want to win as many chips as we can. Remember the man with the most toys wins. These comments are not meant to say that we are all bad. We aren’t. But often goodness and being religious, gives us status and respectability, like the young man in the passage. We have filled lives with so much to do and so much to buy and so much to take care of, and yet our lives often feel unfulfilled; filled lives by yet unfulfilled.
In the midst of our national affluence, in this time of building great monuments to our rich athletes at Camden Yards and the Ravens Stadium, we have schools for our children that are less than effective, old and deteriorating, and a diminishing number of people willing to work and teach in those schools. Our money and resources, our political interests are going elsewhere. We have a tragic yearning among so many of our nation’s young people for drugs to give them a “high” that nothing else in their lives can do. We are a people that have a hard time keeping our human relationships together, and sorting out our priorities and values as to what is really important beyond a big house with lots of ground around it. It may getting to the point that our good fortune, our affluence, our wealth is bordering on, if it is not already, being seen as the greediest nation of self-centered, lackadaisical, apathetic people in human history.
A self-confident, sophisticated, educated, wealthy young religious whipper snapper (a first century yuppie) comes to Jesus wanting to know what’s the deal. How do I get more? How do I get eternal life. Tell me about that old man Jesus, if you think you’re so smart. I do all the right respectable things. And Jesus, the old man, dares to say, “Sonny, you’ve got cash in your chips. You’ve got to become generous; you have to cash in your life that you think has given you such security. Give it to the poor and follow me.” Unless you are willing to die to a stifling greedy life, you can’t know what it means to be a real, authentic human being. You can’t know what it means to have a life of real purpose. Unless you die to yourself and popular feel-good psychology and popular pious respectable religion, you can’t be a follower of mine on the way to the Kingdom of God’s Domain in a world where justice prevails. Jesus sets off a depth charge in this passage that shakes the very foundations of popular thought and religious piety. He requires wholeheartedness, half measures won’t do. He requires death and rebirth. He dares to challenge his followers to put their money and their respectability where their mouth is. Cash it all in. Scary isn’t it. He even shook his own disciples. How is that possible? Maybe we need to try it. We might like it. We might even find lives that seem more human, more worthwhile, more loving, and caring, more forgiving, more Christ-like, more like the real Kingdom of God with eternal quality and substance. All things are possible with God. Instead of praying to win the lottery tonight, maybe we might pray to be changed, for a new life with Christ that leads to God.
SEASON: PENTECOST 18
PROPER: 23B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 15,2000
TEXT: Mark 10:17-31 - As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” . . . . . . . . .Jesus looking at him loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.
ISSUE: - This passage from Mark is definitely a radical one, as Jesus calls for the rich young ruler to sell everything, and abandon his present life for life in the Kingdom of God. Having all that the young man has till leaves him with a sense of some emptiness. The passage appropriate in its time, as it is today must not be minimized. It calls all of us in a secular world enchanted with wealth and possessions to put God and service with Christ first and foremost. Without that kind of commitment and relationship our humanity is empty, unreal, meaningless, and not authentically human.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This passage from Mark is a really challenging one. “Go, sell it all, give to the poor, and follow me!” The preacher is tempted to try to find ways to make this radical scriptural passage more palatable. Well, Jesus maybe didn’t quite mean that you sell all and follow him. As we might want to minimize the passage, the fact remains that all of the synoptic Gospels tell this story: Matthew, Luke, and Mark. In fact, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke, tells how in fact early Christians did sell lands their lands and gave it to the apostles to be used by all. An old professor of mine in New Testament Studies at the University of the South repeatedly reminded his students, “It’s our Bible, and we’re stuck with it!” It’s our faith, our Lord and we can respond or not.
A rich young man, or ruler, runs up to Jesus, kneels before him, and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Again in this culture, questioning was usually confrontational, or aggressive. He refers to Jesus as Good Teacher, which may well have been sarcastic. Calling someone good, “buttering them up”, may have implied that Jesus was assuming too much honorable status. ‘So how do you smart guy presume to tell us how to get eternal life?’ Jesus again takes the young rich ruler on: “What do you call me Good? No one is good but god alone.” Jesus dismisses any idea that he has any honor. Only God has honor and status. He confront the young man on his own level, you know what gives eternal life, the commandments of God: don’t murder, commit adultery, don’t steal, lie, or defraud you neighbor; honor mother and father.” You know the rules Jesus implies that gives us the best of life. So the rich young ruler proudly replies, “been there; done all that since I was a child.”
“Well then,” says Jesus looking at him lovingly - he is a fellow Israelite committed to the law - “Maybe you lack still one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Or a place in the domain of God). The implication is that then your life will be an authentic, meaningful, purposeful, real human life. But the young rich man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. And Jesus humorously responds, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for the rich (greedy) to enter into the kingdom, the domain, or the realm of God!”
What is also interesting here, is that the disciples themselves are amazed. They’re confused. Who then can be saved or enter into the realm of God, if the rich can’t? The belief of the time was that the poor, the dishonorable, the blind, lame, deaf and mute, the tax collectors and prostitutes were the last to be worthy of God’s Kingdom. They were the cursed. The wealthy were seen as the blessed and honorable. They had clients that looked to them for help and favors, and thus they were the ones with status and honor, and thereby worthy of being in the domain of God. They were the ones who had, like the rich young man, the ability to keep all the laws from the time he was a child. But here again, Jesus is proclaiming a great reversal: “the first shall be last, and the last will be first.”
The rich young man wants to hold on to the stuff that gives him honor and status. You might say that he has become possessed by his own possessions and comfortable way of life. However, at the same time it is likely that by the very fact that he comes to Jesus at all, his life is unsatisfactory. He has so much, and is yet still uncertain as to what is meaningful in life, what gives a purposeful, useful, authentic, real life of value. He wants to keep the rules, the religious laws and regulations, and visit the shrines the give him the semblance of respectability. But Jesus looks lovingly at the young man, and says if you want real authentic life you have to give your stuff away and enter into a way of sharing, caring, serving, compassionate way of generosity. You have to change your priorities as to what is really important. Even the disciples are confused who can be saved?
Jesus calls the man and his followers to renewed trust, faith, loyalty, and commitment. By the grace of God all things are possible, new things can happen, and lives can be changed. Jesus Christ makes the promise: go, sell, give to the poor, follow me, and you will still have a life with more than enough in the family of God with houses, brothers, sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions, meaningful, eternal, purposeful, authentic, real life. But the young rich ruler unable to grasp it, unable to get it, goes away grieving, lamenting, his inability to find release from his possessions to claim the real prize of the Kingdom, Domain, or Realm of God.
Today we Americans are living in the most affluent age of all time. One of our hit television shows is “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” “The Survivors” TV show has its contestants try to vote one another off the island in hopes of becoming a millionaire. The prospect of such wealth keeps people enchanted and vicariously glued to their TV sets. Who doesn’t want to win the Lottery? We also have an instant lottery for those of us what need instant gratification. We send our athletes off to bring home “the gold.” Americans are maybe profoundly obsessed, don’t you think, with commitment to solid portfolios for the purpose of security in our old age. We want to win as many chips as we can. Remember the man with the most toys wins. These comments are not meant to say that we are all bad. We aren’t. But often goodness and being religious, gives us status and respectability, like the young man in the passage. We have filled lives with so much to do and so much to buy and so much to take care of, and yet our lives often feel unfulfilled; filled lives by yet unfulfilled.
In the midst of our national affluence, in this time of building great monuments to our rich athletes at Camden Yards and the Ravens Stadium, we have schools for our children that are less than effective, old and deteriorating, and a diminishing number of people willing to work and teach in those schools. Our money and resources, our political interests are going elsewhere. We have a tragic yearning among so many of our nation’s young people for drugs to give them a “high” that nothing else in their lives can do. We are a people that have a hard time keeping our human relationships together, and sorting out our priorities and values as to what is really important beyond a big house with lots of ground around it. It may getting to the point that our good fortune, our affluence, our wealth is bordering on, if it is not already, being seen as the greediest nation of self-centered, lackadaisical, apathetic people in human history.
A self-confident, sophisticated, educated, wealthy young religious whipper snapper (a first century yuppie) comes to Jesus wanting to know what’s the deal. How do I get more? How do I get eternal life. Tell me about that old man Jesus, if you think you’re so smart. I do all the right respectable things. And Jesus, the old man, dares to say, “Sonny, you’ve got cash in your chips. You’ve got to become generous; you have to cash in your life that you think has given you such security. Give it to the poor and follow me.” Unless you are willing to die to a stifling greedy life, you can’t know what it means to be a real, authentic human being. You can’t know what it means to have a life of real purpose. Unless you die to yourself and popular feel-good psychology and popular pious respectable religion, you can’t be a follower of mine on the way to the Kingdom of God’s Domain in a world where justice prevails. Jesus sets off a depth charge in this passage that shakes the very foundations of popular thought and religious piety. He requires wholeheartedness, half measures won’t do. He requires death and rebirth. He dares to challenge his followers to put their money and their respectability where their mouth is. Cash it all in. Scary isn’t it. He even shook his own disciples. How is that possible? Maybe we need to try it. We might like it. We might even find lives that seem more human, more worthwhile, more loving, and caring, more forgiving, more Christ-like, more like the real Kingdom of God with eternal quality and substance. All things are possible with God. Instead of praying to win the lottery tonight, maybe we might pray to be changed, for a new life with Christ that leads to God.
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