THE BAREFOOT ORGANIST

“What do you want me to do FOR YOU?”

Mark 10:46-52 (NRSV)

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

October 22, 2015

Lectionary 30, Year B (October 25, 2015)

Since yesterday was "Back to the Future Day," I thought it only fitting to go back in time, so I hope you will indulge me.  It is April Fool’s Day, 1996.  Giessen, Germany, about a half hour northeast of Frankfurt.  I had been officially pregnant for exactly 292 days, and it was finally my daughter’s due date.  So far this day had lived up to its name.  It had been raining, the car was in the shop,  so I took a bus to my midwife’s, since I thought my water had broken.  She checked it out, shook her head and sent me back home  — on yet another bumpy, painful bus ride (complete with Volksmusik, which needs to be experienced in order to be understood.  It's a little bit like a blend of German folk music and American country) back to our little village.

The day dragged on, and I spent much of it sitting on the porcelain throne, not daring to move from this place because every second felt like something was about to happen, only it never did.  I felt like this oversize water balloon with a slow leak.  It was a vague but increasingly real discomfort that left me stuck.  Already, but not yet.

My mother was visiting us at the time, in hopes of sharing this blessed event.  I called her over and told her that I couldn’t go on this way, it must be time to maybe do something.  She convinced me it was high time I call the midwife again, and that’s all I needed to hear.  In my magical way of thinking, calling the midwife might be the answer to my problems, at least the uncertianty.  

My mother dialed (yes, dialed!) the phone and talked to her first.  In a tone about as decisive as mine (the apple fell not far from the tree), she pleads, “Frau Heidorn, we don’t know what to do.”

Already I’m shaking my head, knowing what she’s going to say.

“What do you mean ‘we’ don’t know what to do?’” Let me talk to the Mother,”

(yeah right) So I get on the phone.  The words crackled on the other end of the receiver (yes, “receiver!”) because in those days I was still tethered to a landline.

“Frau Thomas, what do you want me to do for you?”

Not exactly the most comforting words a woman in labor wants to hear.  I wanted her to tell me what to do, to bail me out of my discomfort!  At first her words irked me, but then I understood. It really put matters into my OWN hands, and in a strange way empowered me, because I had to be the one to decide whether or not ir was time to go to the hospital.  She said, “Call me again when you’re ready.”  She didn’t want to take that power away from me. I ended up having no choice but to run with it and trust my own ability to make decisions, and ended up having a drug-free birth with no complications.  

Even if we don’t realize it at the time, this kind of empowerment can be a gift that leads to wholeness and healing.  Please pray with me.

Loving God, we thank You for your presence here with us.  We thank you for your power in both the stillness and the storm.  Thank you for loving us enough to call us, and trusting us enough to let us act so that we in turn can cast all our cares upon you.  May your Spirit speak to and through us now.  In the Name of Jesus, Amen.

• “They came to Jericho.”  Jericho, that city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank, as volatile a city now as it was in the time of Jesus and before.  It’s a disputed fact, but Jericho may well be the oldest continuously occupied city in the world.  The springs in and around the city attracted human habitation dating as far back as 11,000 years. It was the city which Joshua and his army circled for seven days, until they blew their trumpets and, as the song says, the walls came tumbling down.  Even the city they are coming from holds implications for what we’re going to talk about today. 

Jesus is traveling with his disciples and a large entourage.  And then he encounters Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, the blind man.  Wait a minute.  Didn’t Jesus just heal a blind man a couple of chapters earlier?  How is this different?

• The blind man back in Mark 8 is pretty passive, but Bartimaeus is not.  He takes the initiative and makes himself known.   In a literal “shout-out:’ “Jesus. Son of David, have mercy on me!”  we notice that perhaps Bart is not as blind as we make him out to be.  Could it be that here in this story, he functions as the one who truly “sees” Jesus for who he is and what He is capable of doing?  

I don’t  know about you, but if you heard Dr. Wiseman in Chapel yesterday, you may have learned a thing or two about countercultural shouting.  (song?) According to this text, there were many folks around trying to shush Bartimaeus — and for a number of reasons.  It was a pretty monumental thing to refer to Jesus as the Son of David, implying that he was in the royal line of the great kings of Israel.  In fact, this is the very first time in the Bible in real time, if you will, that Jesus is actually  referred to as the Son of David.  Many in that crowd must have feared a major scandal.

• Monumental, countercultural, and dangerous.  They are probably embarrassed by this motely, blind dude, and trying to protect Jesus as well. Remember, he hadn’t yet made that triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  That happens right after this, in the next chapter.  And so they did more than shush him.  The Greek uses the word epitimao, which means “rebuke,”  the same verb Jesus used to cast out demons. So it was probably more like “Shut up!”  

Jesus stops and stands still.  “Call him,” he says.  He doesn’t single out Bartimaeus, but calls on the disciples to bring him over.  (God doesn’t call the equipped, but equips the called).  What follows is a sort of commotion as he throws off his mantle and comes to Jesus, actively insistently, empowered. 

Everyone is waiting for Jesus to zap Bartimaeus to witness yet another amazing miracle, but what happens?

• Jesus’ words are very specific.  His answer here really jumped out at me from this passage, so I walked around for a while trying to remember it, and I’d always mistakenly paraphrase it to myself as “What do you want me to do?”  

But that’s the human version.  It’s a phrase we hear a thousand times per day — at least I do (with four kids , whenever I try to get any one of them to do anything!).  We often say it in frustration, in desperation — its subtext being the equivalent of shrugging one’s shoulders, or basically giving up, saying “I can’t, that’s all I’ve got.  What can I do?”

What Jesus says is different. He adds just two words, and asks,  “What can I do FOR YOU?” 

• Now, I’m pretty sure Jesus would have healed Bartimaeus even if he didn’t respond to his question, but here he puts the ball into Bartimaeus’ court, and he replies, “Teacher, let me receive my sight.” And IMMEDIATELY he received his sight and followed him on the way.

FOR YOU.  That’s huge.  It not only sums up the Gospel message, the Good News that Christ gave His very life in order to save us from the even-Steven game of sin and sacrifice.  God loved us enough to send His only Son to atone for us — bring us back, restoring us to live as one with the Creator ’s purpose and Promise, through Jesus Christ.

• Jesus Christ, our great High Priest — our second reading, from Hebrews  — “the former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever…the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.”  Jesus did it once for all.  

For you.  For me.  For that homeless family in Love Park last weekend, whose 2-year old was found wandering around in the middle of the night.  For that person you might see across the street and don’t even know.  But we are all still growing, and we can all echo that first blind man’s words from Matthew 8, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.” 

• My friends, God IS faithful, and does so much more than help those who help themselves.  God is in the transformation business!  We move from being conformed (which can include being curved into ourselves) to being transformed, as we read in Romans.  And that transformation leads us to reformation as individuals as well as the entire body of Christ. God’s Holy Spirit helps us come to Christ so that all of the Healer’s abundance can come to us.  That’s how our weeping turns into joy, as the Psalmist tells us this week.

It’s in moments like these that the Holy Spirit grabs hold of us. God knows precisely how each and every one of us is wired, and at the Spirit’s prompting, we may feel like crying, we may feel a warmth, we may feel the wind knocked out of us…but whatever it is, the Spirit calls us out of those everyday ordinary moments to stop, stand still, and in that stillness we are called to act, using the very words that Jesus said to blind Bart.  

• Stop, stand still, ask, and go.  “ GO, for your faith has healed you.”  In asking this question, Jesus gave Bartimaeus permission to excercise the faith that led to his healing, and Jesus question now becomes our own:   —  “What do you want me to do FOR YOU?” AMEN.