Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle B)

 

Lectionary: 149
Reading 1 - Jer 31:7-9
Responsorial Psalm - Ps 126:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6
Reading 2 - Heb 5:1-6
Alleluia - Cf. 2 Tm 1:10
Gospel - Mk 10:46-52

“Master, I want to see …” 

You would think this would be obvious right? What else would a blind man ask for? Well … as you might expect, there is more to this story than that. To begin with, that was not the First thing that Bartimaeus asked for … that would be for mercy … just like what we heard in our first reading from the prophet Jeremiah …

The LORD has saved his people, the remnant of Israel … I will gather them from the ends of the earth, the blind and the lame in their midst … I will console them and guide them … so that none shall stumble.

It is because a promise such as this that a blind outcast could Expect God to hear him in his distress … so it should not be that surprising for Bartimaeus to have this in mind when he First cried out …

Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.

If we look more closely at his cry, we see two things… In calling Jesus the son of David, Bartimaeus is making a public declaration of faith, acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah with the power to heal and save … and in asking for pity, he has recognized his own need for redemption and was looking to restore his relationship with God through His Son. There is something so fundamental about this cry that we can find it today in the prayer traditionally known as the Jesus prayer …

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Of course, we can go even deeper into the context of this story … for example …Bartimaeus is the only recipient of healing whose name is recorded by St Mark … so we can presume the name has some significance, although we do not find the name Bartimaeus anywhere else. The name itself is a combination of Aramaic and Greek … and the fact the St Mark felt the need to tells is the Aramaic part means “son of” would suggest that the audience for this story primarily spoke Greek and were probably very familiar with the Greek worldview and customs … which makes the relatively common Greek name of Timaeus even more interesting … because it is also the name of one of the famous dialogues of Plato that talks about creation and nature … making Bartimaeus a son of creation … a man of the world so to speak. In other words … he is us.

We can find additional support for this idea in last week’s Gospel, where the brothers James and John, whom St Mark also calls the Sons of Thunder, ask to sit on the left and right of Jesus when He comes into His glory …. this echoes a Greek tradition about Castor and Pollux, who are commonly depicted on the left and right of Zeus … this apparent connection makes the rebuke by Jesus a stark reminder that the Kingdom of God does not work the way the “world” expects. There is more to that as well, but that is a rabbit hole for another day.

Okay … if Bartimaeus is us … that means that St Mark is suggesting that we are unable to see something. What is it that we are not able to see? To answer that, we need to come to an understanding of what is meant by seeing … because we have a number of idioms about seeing that have little to do with ability …

• I didn’t see that coming
• They can’t see the forest for the trees
• We need to see eye to eye

It is enough to show that there are at least two parts to seeing … being Able to see and Actually seeing … what do I mean by that …

Some time ago, I was headed to my brother’s house. It was in an area of Virginia that I had not been to before, so I was depending on my GPS to get me there. Unfortunately by the time I recognized the left hand turn off the highway, it was too late to get into the proper turn lane, so I drove past it to the next light where the GPS told be to make a U-turn. The only problem was … there was a sign indicating that U-turns were not permitted. The fact that I did not see the sign because I was focused on something else, did not save me from a ticket.

In the Gospel of Luke (17:20-21), Jesus tells a healed leper to “stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” … keeping in mind that the greek can be translated as either saved and healed, this should sounds familiar to us … regardless, after this miraculous healing, Jesus tell the Pharisees that the coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be seen … because it is already among us … and yet the Pharisees could not see it. I think it is a reasonable deduction to say that we are often like the Pharisees … unable to see the Kingdom of God. The next question then is … why? To answer that question … we need to look at where we are …

Jericho was the first city the Israelites encountered when they entered the promised land. It was a city known to be full and idolatry and accursed objects (Joshua 6:18), where the walls were a symbols of rejecting God and closing itself off from the Chosen People (Joshua 6:1). It is from this sinful City of Man that Jesus begins His journey toward His passion in Jerusalem, the Holy City of God,… but it is under the shadow of the Walls of Jericho that we find the blind Bartimaeus … crying out for mercy.

Upon hearing his cry, Jesus stopped and told those following Him to “Call him” … and that brings us to our next little detour into the original greek. The greek word for church, ekklesia, comes from the verb which means to call out … so the Church becomes an assembly of persons called out of the world by God for a purpose. In this case, that purpose was to extend the call to Bartimaeus and then bring him to Jesus. And when Bartimaeus heard that call, he threw aside his cloak and sprang up, coming to Jesus to tell him that he wants to see …

This may seem like an insignificant detail, but the cloak had an important role in ancient Palestine … protecting its wearer from the harsh Judean elements during the day while doubling as a blanket at night. The early Church Fathers regarded the cloak as a symbol of self-sufficiency and of all those worldly things upon which we sometimes depend on for happiness. When Bartimaeus cast off the protection of his cloak, he was showing his trust in the providential love of Christ instead of in more worldly things. His faith in Christ is further illustrated when he addressed Jesus as Rabbouni or Master … which can also be translated to as My Teacher. Regardless … Jesus tells Bartimaeus that his Faith has saved him (again, remember that the greek means saved Or healed) and immediately he could see … and he followed Jesus on The Way … (which is another ancient term to describe the Church)

So where does that leave us? Are we still blind like Bartimaeus? It is unrealistic to believe that we are not influenced by our own experience, fears and anxieties … but do these realities of these things prevent us from seeing the Kingdom of God in our midst? Are we blinded by our secular worldview? It takes a lot of humility to recognize that we can be wrong … that our eyes are more focused on worldly things instead of spiritual goals. If we pay attention over the next week or so to what is influencing our thinking and action, maybe we can become more aware of our shortcoming and … like Bartimaeus, receiving the healing hand of Christ and see The Way into the Kingdom of God.

Today we are blessed with an opportunity to celebrate the baptism of a child … a sacrament for which the story of Bartimaeus is remarkably appropriate. We begin with the Church calling the child out of the world and into the mystical body of Christ along with our own promise to walk with her on her journey of faith. After the child has been baptized, she is anointed with the sacred chrism on the crown of her head, helping the Holy Spirit to fill the heart and mind with the light of revealed truth and to enable the response of faith. In other words, it helps us see the Kingdom of God. This is why one of the traditional names for Baptism is “Illumination.”

Next the child is giving a new, white garment to replace the cloak of the world that has been thrown off and as a sign of the new creation in Christ the child has become. After that comes a candle, representing the light of faith carried by the baptized into the world so that others may see … and respond to the call of Christ.