Passages: Jeremiah 31.7-9 & Mark 10.46-52
Do you ever have menu paralysis? It’s a running joke in my family, or perhaps I should say that in this case, I’m the running joke in my family because when we’re sat around a table in a restaurant, I will boldly claim that I want pizza, and minutes later declare a burger, and seconds later probably the risotto, and then when the wait-staff comes over, I freeze, panic and order my standard, which is pasta. Always pasta. Probably carbonara pasta. Sometimes I’ve gone first to place my order, and by the time the ordering has gone the whole way around my rather large family, I’m asking to change mine, because my mind has shifted.
For me it's stressful enough when the wait-staff in a restaurant ask me what I want, but Jesus asking ‘what do you want me to do for you?’ brings me out in panic! However it doesn’t seem a stressful experience for Bartimaeus. He knows what he wants, and he pushes to be heard. Jesus is on a journey, headed to Jerusalem, and prior to getting to Jericho, he and his followers had been all over Galilee, teaching, guiding, healing, praying, entering the homes of the least and the lost. Word had spread, and Bartimaeus is sat on the side of one of the busiest roads in the area begging for his keep. His cloak is spread out on the ground before him to collect coins or pocket fluff, and he calls out to any that pass for help, for mercy. It’s not an unfamiliar picture for us today, how many people do we pass in our weeks sitting on the side of a road asking for help, for cash or a coffee.
He’s listening to the hustle and bustle, the people pouring past, the sound of hooves and carts, children running and playing alongside their parents heading to the market. He’s been waiting for this day, he heard about Jesus for the first time a few years ago, and since then people who come past tell him they’re not going to help him, they’re not going to give him their cash, because just wait, Jesus is coming. He’s picked up all sorts of information from these passers by, those who acknowledge him, and those who talk loudly as they walk on past him without even an mumbled apology about a lack of change – he’s heard some of them say he’s a prophet, some say he’s the Son of David, some say he’s a phoney, some say he’s a miraculous healer.
Today is the day that Bartimaeus has been waiting for. He heard that it was Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, and he shouts out saying ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’. He’s not gonna let Jesus pass, he’s done him out of all sorts of coins because people have told him to wait, and he doesn’t care for those telling him to be quiet. Louder and louder he gets, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’
He hears that shuffling and crunching and groaning that is associated with a crowd coming to a sudden and unexpected halt. Nobody in the party quite expected Jesus to stop for this man, to be honest, most of them didn’t notice him. Jesus calls him over into the middle of the crowd. Bartimaeus springs up, knocking his cloak out of the way, flinging the few coins he has managed to glean all over the road. There’s no way he’s finding those later.
Jesus speaks to him and he listens intently, ‘what do you want me to do for you?’ And he knows. ‘Let me see again.’ If anybody on this earth has ever been able to mind read, it is definitely Jesus, and so that makes Jesus’ words more extraordinary. Jesus honours him with these words – ‘what do you want me to do for you?’ Not, ‘I can see you are blind, let me just sort that’ or ‘you don’t have an income, I’ll bless you with all you need’ or ‘those clothes are raggedy, here’s some new ones’ but an honouring of who he is as a beloved child of God, not a problem to fix, someone to move on from outside that property or a nobody to ignore. Jesus speaks directly to him: ‘What do you want from me?’
What Bartimaeus receives is a physical miracle, but the most extraordinary change is the cultural and social restoration. Those who were injured, disabled, ill were the bottom of the pile. They were seen as punished by God, either for their sins or their parents sins. Bartimaeus was to be ignored, not spoken to. Bartimaeus was to be pitied sat on the side of the road, not invited to stand in the crowd. But stand in the crowd he did, and in front of everyone is treated as a beloved child of God. We tend to focus on the physical healing in this story but I don’t think I can over-emphasise enough the power of the social restoration for Bartimaeus. It’s only made stronger by comparing with last week’s Mark passage.
If you remember that passage had Jesus asked by James and John, who are in positions of privilege travelling with Jesus, they pull Jesus aside, and secretly ask for glory and honour, to sit on his left and his right hand side and they do not get it. In fact they get the riot act read to them by the other disciples, and quite forceful correction from Jesus. They are already the first, they get to spend time with Jesus, the son of God. They’ve misunderstood the topsy turvy gospel that places the first last and the last first. All Bartimaeus is doing is simply asking to no longer be last, for something that restores his cultural status as a human being, and he is blessed. The disciples really miss the point, but Bartimaeus, a man who has never met Jesus, let alone spent a lot of time with him, is absolutely spot on.
This passage reminds us that the last are first, and that we as Christians should be doing all we can to look out for those sat on the side of the highways of life. That said, this passage also carries a painful undercurrent. Why did he get healed? Why did he get restored? Why can’t I have the same help, and where is this Jesus, Son of David in my time of need? I know a lot of you are waiting on and petitioning God for physical, mental and emotional healing and restoration. I’ve been asking God for a long while for quite a few things, things that would bring healing and restoration to the lives of those around me and to my own life. I would have menu paralysis if Jesus stood in front of me asking me what I want, but that’s because I want everything on the menu, not because I can’t think of anything.
Our Jeremiah passage speaks to this – there is weeping and waiting, and the people who are proclaiming, giving praise and saying ‘save O Lord your people’ have been doing so for years. Jeremiah is actually receiving this message sat in prison himself. God tells Jeremiah that with weeping, people shall come, among them the blind and the lame, those who have waited, those whose time for waiting is over, those who still wait, God says ‘I will gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, and I will lead them to me with consolations’.
We can’t as Christians just proclaim those few verses of Mark and then leave, we have to hold them in tension with the years of waiting that Bartimaeus had, and at very least the time it took for Jesus to journey to him. The Christian hope means that we do believe in restoration and healing, we do believe in table-turning justice and God’s kingdom on this earth, but we also live in a broken world that has been crying out for longer than we can ever imagine. If we only proclaim healing, and ignore the unanswered prayers, the tears and the longing, we look foolish to the outside world presenting our faith as a bucket with holes all over and we’re also doing ourselves, our own communities a massive disservice.
It’s been so easy for so many using passages like Mark to tell those who have physical and mental disabilities that they just don’t have enough faith to rectify them. This passage does make it easy to follow that logic, and therefore so many people believe that it was their lack of faith that continues their suffering.
Jesus healed Bartimaeus, but then continued on in his journey, and was beaten, crucified and died. He cried out to God, asking for help, begging to know why he had been forsaken. Did Jesus lack faith? I’m not going to go into whether Jesus had to die, whether Jesus chose to die, whether Jesus could have got out of dying. That is something for a 20 hour lecture course from someone with a PhD. What we know is that Jesus, the creator of the world, who was there in the beginning and sits on the right hand of God didn’t see healing in his earthly life. He rose from the dead yes, but he still carries the scars of his suffering, of his humanity.
Long story short, I believe that our Mark passage shows us that we do have a God who heals miraculously, and sometimes today we see that. Our Jeremiah passage shows us that alongside God asking us what we want, we have a God who sees us, who comforts us, and protects us, and weeps with us, and who will gather us from the land of the north, from the farthest parts of the earth. Among us will be the hurting, and the lost, and the blind and the lame, those who have had children and those who have wept over the lost babies or opportunities, and we will be a great company and we will return to God.
So what can we do this week, this month, this year? Well, we can carry this story in the front of our minds as a reminder to come alongside those who can’t fight for their position in the crowds, who get pushed to the side, and spend their lives downtrodden whilst everyone else rushes past. We can offer those people the love of being one of God’s beloved children, created, known and welcomed.
And when God asks us ‘what do you want me to do for you?’, (which God is asking you every day) we can keep answering with faith, with stubborn hope, with praise, with yelling and tears (God can take it!) and we can know that we will return to God in the great company of each other. Part of being one of that great company is answering God’s question on behalf of our friends and our family who have asked us to pray, and we can offer their answer whilst proclaiming the name of our creator, giving praise and saying ‘save O Lord your people’.
I invite you to pray this prayer that I wrote to close this sermon.
Lord you are with us in the farthest parts of the land, you are with us in our weeping and waiting, and you are with us in healing and restoration. When we call out to you, Son of David, to have mercy on us, would you lead us to you and would you guide us by gentle brooks of water following you in your way.
In the name of Jesus,
Amen.