Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, 25B, October 24, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of our wildest dreams, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Dan Hazen had a vision of how he wanted his completed life acknowledged at Emmanuel Church and it did not include a sermon being preached about him. (I’ll honor his wish.) But I want to share one of the things Dan frequently mentioned in the seven short years that I knew him. It was that he didn’t like worship services that tied things up in a neat bow. So instead of eulogizing him from this pulpit, I’ll do my best to offer a sermon that is long on questions and short on answers, one that doesn’t even try to make sense of the incongruities and ambiguities!

Right out of the gate this morning, we heard the conclusion of the tale of Job. The Book of Job was probably written in the midst of the Babylonian exile – a time of great calamity for the ancient Israelites. (The Psalm appointed for today, quoted in our cantata, is Psalm 126, was probably written about the same time. The Psalmist writes of restoration as if it has already happened: when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” But when Job and this Psalm were written, the restoration hasn’t happened yet. The writer of Job imagines that Job’s eyes are finally opened, and at last, he sees what he was previously unable to perceive –that Divine works of beauty are all around him the whole time. Did it really happen? Were his eyes ever opened?

“Now my eyes see you,” Job says to the Holy One. “Now my eyes see your beautiful handiwork all around me, in me and through me. Now my suffering is no longer all I can think about!” In the verses that are unfortunately omitted from our lectionary, God accepts the prayers of Job on behalf of his three friends who had completely misunderstood suffering or exile as divine justice. Then the book concludes with how Job and his family live happily ever after. (Well, as happy as one could be with 6,000 camels. Camels are nasty!) The fairy tale ending is a later addition to the older story and is not the point of being faithful. The oldest ending of this story did not tie things up in a neat bow at all. To read this as a lesson on how to get rich is also to completely misunderstand divine justice. The moral of this unsettling story is about maintaining one’s integrity in the midst of profound suffering, and about the nature of the Holy One as a merciful, generous, and a capricious gambler.

In the portion of the Letter to the Hebrews, we hear that the priesthood of Jesus does not end with his death, which prevented the continuation in office of other priests. (That line in the beginning of the reading grabbed my attention: “the former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office.”) The peace and justice work of Jesus, by comparison, is for evermore, eternal. As I mentioned last week, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews is asserting that the delivery of bread and wine and blessing of the priesthood of Jesus are ongoing. I guess that’s true enough, isn’t it? Because here we are – receiving bread and wine and blessing week after week in front of a gesture of welcome and invitation carved in stone. (We’d keep doing it even without the statue of Jesus bidding us to come to the table.)

In our Gospel lesson from Mark we have the last scene before Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. According to Mark, the folks following Jesus were amazed and afraid. If our schedule of sequential readings coincided with our liturgical year, next week we would be observing Palm Sunday instead of All Saints’ Day, so why not throw in a Christmas cantata? The story of Bartimaeus is the concluding piece in Mark before Jesus’ passion begins. That’s a signal to us that it was a very important story to Mark. The text says, they came to Jericho and right away Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho. We might miss the significance of that, the emphasis on Jericho, but Mark’s audience knew that Jericho was best known as the site that Israel first conquered in their entrance into the promised land. The last time someone was shouting outside the walls of Jericho, the walls came tumbling down! [1] Then, during the time of Elijah, there was a school of prophets (seers) in Jericho. And finally, when the Babylonians captured the city of Jericho, the last reigning king of Judah, Zedekiah, tried to escape. He was captured and his eyes were put out – he was blinded. Jericho is a place heavy with symbolic significance in the history of Israel. [2]

The contemporary context of this story in Jesus’ time also seems significant to me. Jericho was where Herod the Great had built a resort to take a break from the cold and wet Jerusalem winter weather. Jericho, the city of palms, built near a large spring of fresh water, had become a luxury oasis for the Jerusalem aristocracy, with swimming pools, villas, parks, palaces, music halls, theaters, a race track, you name it. And with that kind of luxury, there is often a certain cultivated blindness to others who are suffering. So. Bartimaeus (son of Timaeus) was sitting by the roadside just outside a resort on the road that went up to Jerusalem, his cloak spread out for receiving whatever his begging might bring in and he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was going by. He began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David have mercy on me!”

This blind man seems to be able see something about Jesus as a healer. Often when we want to signal that we understand something, we say, “I see.” That means, “I get it. I understand.” That’s true in English and it was true in ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew. “Seeing” in ancient times meant both the physical ability to distinguish light and dark and recognize people and objects using ones eyes; but it also meant understanding, comprehending, and being able to discern the truth about a situation. Remember Job’s blindness before he proclaimed, “now I see God.” Bartimaeus might have had eyes that didn’t function properly, but when Jesus passed by, he, in fact, could see very well. His vision was very clear in a figurative sense.

The first blind person I ever knew well was the father of my best friend in junior high. Brad Burson had lost his eyesight in an accident that happened when he was 15. He and a friend were playing with a gun that they were sure wasn’t loaded. The friend put the gun up to Brad’s temple and pulled the trigger and a bullet went through his head, severing both of his optic nerves. He miraculously survived the gunshot wound to the head, but lost his eyesight. By the time I met him, he was a Ph.D. nuclear physicist with a law degree. He used to explain that no-one can see atoms – so it doesn’t matter whether a nuclear physicist’s eyes work or not. No-one can see the law, so it doesn’t matter whether a lawyer’s eyes work or not. He went on to found the American Council of the Blind. This was a man who had suffered a tragic loss. And this was a man who had great vision even though he did not have eyesight. In fact, his vision was so clear that I had a hard time believing he was really blind.

Sometimes we think that, in ancient times, if people were blind, they automatically were beggars, but there are plenty of references in ancient literature to people who were blind and very accomplished. Bartimaeus was blind and a beggar, but one did not necessarily cause the other. Bartimaeus started shouting out that he wants Jesus to have mercy on him and everyone told him to be quiet. And we don’t get the sense that they tell him nicely. A more literal translation of the Greek would say, “And many kept yelling at him to shut up.” [3] They rebuked him. (One biblical commentary notices the similarity of the Greek word for rebuke and the name Bartimaeus and suggests that his name might literally be, Son of Rebuke.) [4]

I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time speaking up, especially to beg for mercy, even when it’s just the voices in my own head telling me to shut up. It’s very rare that I get loud enough for other people to tell me to shut up. In the few cases where someone else has indicated that they wish I would be quiet, I get so mad or ashamed or whatever, that I often don’t say another word. So Bartimaeus is one of my Bible heroes. Bartimaeus reminds me to to shout out, when I need mercy, that is, when I need compassion, kindness, benevolence, sympathy, understanding for myself or for others. The word mercy here often how the Hebrew word chesed is translated – chesed is the steadfast love of God experienced and expressed in the covenantal community. Bartimaeus is begging for welcome and restoration to and of the beloved community. [5]

When Jesus stood still and then said, “Call him here,” the crowd called Bartimaeus and said, (in a more literal translation) “Be brave, get up, he’s calling you!” [6] That’s an ironic and surprising thing for the crowd to say, I think, because Bartimaeus has actually already been quite brave. It’s the crowd who has been afraid. So there’s a way in which the crowd is really talking to themselves when they tell Bartimaeus to be brave, projecting, as crowds often do, their own fear onto the guy begging on the side of the road.

Did Bartimaeus’ sight get restored immediately? Did his trust make him well? Are we to understand this metaphorically or literally? (My answer to those questions are both Yes and I don’t know.) The question I’m always more interested in is not, “did this really happen?” but “is this really happening?” Where in our lives are we in situations in which we could be calling for full restoration in God’s beloved community over the yelling voices (inside or outside of our own heads) that want to shut us up? In what situations are we in the crowd, wanting someone to shut up because their demands for attention, for mercy, for compassion, for full inclusion are bothering us? What might it mean for each of us to “Be brave, get up, because Jesus is calling,” to throw off our cloaks and spring up! When Jesus says, “Go,” the word is more like “Go lead! Your trust has restored you.” Where might trust lead us into greater wellness, restored vision, so that we can spring up as leaders to encourage others to follow Jesus on the way?

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