Sermon for October 24, 2021 - The Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello

Click HERE to view The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello’s sermon from October 17, 2021

“Precious Lord, take my hand.  Lead me on, let me stand.  I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.  Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light.  Take my hand, Precious Lord, lead me on.”

Bartimaeus is a saint for our time.

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.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

And followed him on the way.

That’s where it gets tricky.  Be careful what you wish for, Bartimaeus.  

Following Jesus on the way, at this point in Mark’s Gospel, meant following Jesus into Jerusalem for his betrayal, his trial and his death on the cross. Things were about to get much worse before they get so much better.

I love the poetry in this story.  At the start, it places Bartimaeus on the side lines “along the road” where Jesus and his followers were walking.  At the end of the story, the same word for “way” is used to tell the listener that Bartimaeus now followed Jesus “on the way.”  

Bartimaeus begins as an outsider, on the margins.  He becomes a follower of Jesus.  And in between, there is a healing.

I wonder if the healing isn’t really about a restoration of physical sight as much as it is a healing of restoration to wholeness, a restoration to community, a restoration to understanding that following Jesus means understanding things, “seeing” things, that had remain unseen, either by choice or by chance.

And I love that Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants him to do for him.  Jesus does not assume what this person before needs, and make a decision for him.  He asks Bartimaeus what he wants Jesus to do for him.  

Bartimaeus does not ask Jesus for money, though he is a beggar.  Bartimaeus is not content to simply continue the status quo, keeping him where he has been, on the sidelines.  Alive, but not truly living.

Bartimaeus wants healing at his core. Though it would mean walking toward the cross, though it would mean watching Good Friday unfold before his newly healed eyes, Bartimaeus wants in, for it is better than remaining on the sidelines.

Be careful what you wish for Bartimaeus.  For following Jesus on the way also leads to the empty tomb, and the promise of new life.  In fact, through Good Friday is the only way to get there at all.

Bartimaeus is a saint for our time.

This time of pandemic, this time of racial reckoning, this time of awareness of the real danger that God’s creation is in — it has been a time when many who have had the privilege of not seeing, the privilege of sitting on the side of the road, the privilege of just maintaining the status quo day to day have had our eyes opened. We have had our sight restored without knowing we needed it. We have been healed. And it has been hard. 

It has been a time when many have seen what they could not, or would not see before.  It is a time when many have had their own “Come to Jesus” moment, whether they would call it that or not.

It is a time when, out of a longing for all the same things for which Bartimaeus longed, many have said “I want to see.”  Lord, how we want to be healed.

What we have seen in this time, or what we have seen more clearly,  it can feel a bit like walking with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, with the cross coming into view on the horizon, and no sight of an empty tomb.

We have seen the broken-ness of our political system, or seen it again.

We have seen the wealth gap widen and income disparity grow.

We have seen the iniquities of race in this country.

We have seen the precipice upon which so many families exist, and how fragile the balance they knew really was.

We have seen the power of fear to divide.

We are tired, we are weak, we are worn.

And so we hear longings for things to “go back to normal,” the current version of “the good ol’ days.”  But we know now, because we have seen, that the “normal” of before isn’t going to work, because it never did.  And the good ol’ days weren’t so good for everyone.

At some point during Jesus’ final week, Bartimaeus had to wonder if he wasn’t better off back there, on the outskirts of Jericho, sitting in his usual spot, hand outstretched.  And each day, each hour on his journey with Jesus, he had to make the decision to keep going.

He probably remembered his Jewish forebears who wondered in the desert if they weren’t better off as slaves back in Egypt.  And he probably kept hearing Jesus ask what he wanted.  And he kept choosing wholeness.  He kept choosing healing.  One step along the way at a time.

Wholeness and healing is everything God wants for us.  But it isn’t easy.  It is the only hope of new life, a life worthy of living, but it isn’t without hard struggle.

There are things I know now that I wish I didn’t have to know.  There is pain and evil in the world I wish I didn’t have to see. But it is only because I know the things I know and have seen the things I have seen that I am at all able to lift a finger to change them.  

It makes me think of people who hate going to the doctor, because they don’t want to know what the doctor might tell them.  Of  course not going doesn’t change what is happening in our bodies.  It only changes our ability to do anything about it.

It is knowing the things I wish I didn’t and seeing the things I wish I hadn’t that compels me to reach my hand out on the side of the road of my life and say, “Jesus I want to be healed.”  I want to be made whole.  I want to live the life to which you call me.  A full life, not an easy life.  I do not want to sit on the sidelines refusing to see. 

Jesus asks Bartimaeus “what do you want me to do for you?”

Can you imagine Jesus asking you the very same thing?

You, specifically.  You, on the side of the road of your life, wanting more, wanting healing, wanting wholeness, wanting to live the life to which you are called, no matter how hard, or scary, how unknown it may be or how uncomfortable it might make you.

Can you hear Jesus say to you, “What do you want me to do for you?”

Can you hear your answer?

Can you see Jesus meet your outstretched hand with his own and invite you to follow him? Follow him to the Jerusalem that awaits, yes, but to the abundant life that waits on the other side?

Precious Lord, take our hands.  Lead us on, let us stand.  We are tired, We are weak, We are worn.  Through the storm, through the night, lead us on to the light.  Take our hands, Precious Lord, lead us on.”

AMEN.  

© 2021 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello