Text: Mark 10:46-52
Author’s Note: In preparation for this sermon, I asked the congregation to wear blindfolds for the first half of the service. Before they put them on, I asked them to take the most valuable object in their wallet, maybe a $100 bill, maybe a credit card, maybe a picture of their child, whatever in their wallet is most valuable to them. Take it out and set it somewhere within arms reach. They listened to the rest of the service not being able to see the thing they value most.
It's amazing how different a service sounds when you can't see
You’re probably getting tired of these blindfolds. Well, good. That’s the point. Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do, and I understand.” This is your chance to do something, to step inside the experience of someone whose life is radically different from your own. His name was Bartimaeus, and he was blind. It’s most likely that he was not born blind, but lost his sight to injury or sickness. I want you to walk a moment in his shoes. Actually, he probably didn’t have shoes, so I want you to imagine yourself sitting on a mat.
It’s the same mat you always sit on, in the same place you usually sit, begging for hand-outs from the passersby. The twisted rag over your eyes serves a double purpose. You learned long ago that people find your eyes disturbing, so you cover them. The frayed and dirty rag lets people see your need from far away and helps them get close enough to drop a few coins on the mat. You’ve begged from this spot for years, so it’s all familiar: the cool stone wall at your back that gives shade through the worst of the day, the taste of the dirt kicked up by the people, the smell of animals and sweat, the half-heard conversations.
It’s all familiar, until the crowd starts to close in. Their voices rise in pitch and volume. You pull your feet in close so that no one steps on you. You try to ask what’s going on, but no one answers. So you do what you do best. You listen. Suddenly, you hear a word that ties your stomach in knots. Jesus. Jesus is coming. Here! Right down this road. You try to catch your breath as your mind whirls.
You’ve been hearing about him for months now. People wondered about him as they walked home alone. They argued about him with their friends. It’s amazing what you overhear because no one notices you’re there. And you had begun to piece together something about this man, that he was a prophet, a man of God, a healer, perhaps even the messiah. You’ve heard so much about him, and now his name stirs hope within you, a hope so deep that you dared not even admit it to yourself.
Now the crowd is pressing close, and the hum increases again. He’s here. He’s close. So you do what you do best. You do what you’ve been trained to do by years of people trying desperately to ignore you. You grab their attention. You make them look you in the eye. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Son of David, have mercy on me!” Again and again you call out, and the people in front of you tell you to be quiet so they can hear, but you shout all the louder, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Have mercy on me! Have mercy. Mercy…”
But it’s too late. He’s gone. And you start to cry. Someone reaches down and touches your shoulder but you push them away. Then another hand grabs yours and now you hear their words, “Be happy. Stand up! He’s calling you.” You may be blind, but your legs work fine, so you jump to your feet, throw off your cloak, and push through the crowd as gentle hands guide you. Then two hands grab yours and don’t let go. The crowd goes silent.
“What do you want me to do for you?” What do you ask? How do you say it? “Do I ask for my sight? What if he says no? Is that all I really want? I don’t want to be a beggar any more. I want to follow him, to learn from him. But what if he laughs? What if they all laugh? Who do I think I am? Who do I think he is?”
It’s so quiet you can hear your own heart race. So you do what you do best. You swallow your pride and you ask. “Rabbi, I want to see.” A murmur runs through the crowd, and a few do laugh. They scoff at the presumption. Then they all go silent, listening for his reply. “Go,” he says, “Your faith has healed you.”
Your hand shakes as you reach up to pull the rag from your eyes. (Go ahead. Remove your blindfold.) And you see the colors: blue sky, yellow sand, brown wood, grey stone, green leaves, and those eyes. You see his smiling eyes for just a second, and then the crowd erupts. They want to touch you. They want to see you. They want to know if it’s true. “Were you really blind? Was it all a stunt? Did he really heal you? What did it feel like? What did he say to you?” They push and pull you and you lose sight of him in the crowd, but then you see him again and you push forward. The world is beautiful, but he is more. The attention is intoxicating, but he is more. You’re not going to lose him. He’s your teacher and you are going to follow. (pause)
Some folks hear that story, and say, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” And that’s true as far as it goes. Do you imagine Bartimaeus was the only person in that crowd who needed healing? Of course not. But he was the one who was healed because he made noise. So it is true, but there’s more to it than that. Bartimaeus didn’t let his limitations define him. Sure he was blind, but his voice worked. His legs worked. He didn’t let the years of people calling him a cripple trick him into thinking he was helpless. But it’s even more than that.
There were people in that crowd who needed healing, but they didn’t have what Bartemaeus had. They didn’t have his experience. He was blind, so he learned to listen. He was ignored, so he learned to grab people’s attention. Most people said no, so he learned to be relentless. He had to beg, so he learned to swallow his pride. So when that day finally came, everyone else stood by the side of the road and watched their messiah walk on by. They watched their healing walk on by. But he shouted. He would not be silenced. He jumped up. He stepped forward, and he asked. But there’s more.
There’s something here that can’t be explained by his experience. In fact, you would expect the exact opposite from someone who had been through what he had. Bartimaeus had hope. He lost his sight, forced to beg, mistreated and ignored. He had every reason to hate God. He had every reason to believe that there was no God. But when the day came, he heard people talking about Jesus, and something in their words gave him hope. He had faith enough to speak up and step out in front of all those people. He was brave enough to hope for help from someone he’d never met, on the chance that the words he’d heard about him might be true. You could say it was just desperation, but that doesn’t explain why he called Jesus Rabbi.
We have many other healing stories in the Bible, but normally, the person get’s healed and goes home. Sometimes they go shouting the news, sometimes they don’t even bother to say thanks. But Bartimaeus follows Jesus down the road. He had hope, he had faith, and in spite of everything he had gone through, he believed. Personally, I think that’s why Jesus draws attention to it. He says, “Go. Your faith has healed you.” Your faith has healed you.
It was a tiny faith, like an ember at the top of a candle. If he had bold faith, he would have stood in the middle of the road to meet Jesus. If he’d had great faith, he would have left his mat long before and gone to seek Jesus. It was just a little faith, but it was real. In spite of all he’d endured, that tiny flicker of hope still burned, and Jesus turned that tiny ember into a flame.
So Bartimaeus didn’t get a miracle because he made the most noise. He made the most noise because he didn’t let his handicap define him. He made the most noise because his limitations didn’t crush him. They sharpened him. He made the most noise because in spite of everything he had endured, a flicker of faith still stirred in his heart. He was blind, but that day he was the only one in the crowd who could see. All Jesus did was make his outside match his inside.
Author’s Note: If you’re wondering why I asked them to put their most valuable object somewhere within arms reach, trust me, so were they. They found out when we got to the offering, which I introduced as follows:
I’d like you to close your eyes again. Last time, I promise. As you close your eyes, I have a question for you. How much of your church can you still see? I bet most of you, without opening your eyes, could point your finger at the cross. (Many nodded.) If you have a friend who always sits in the same spot, I bet most of you could turn in your seat right now and point your nose at that person so that when you opened your eyes their face would be the very first thing you would see. (A few actually did, causing chuckles) But very few of you could reach out your hand right now and grab a pencil on your first try. (Grumbles. A couple frowns.) What I’d like you to do is this. Get your hand ready. Now grab that most important thing from your wallet. If you got it on your first try, hold it up in the air. (95% of the congregation raised their hands) Go ahead and open your eyes.
We are bombarded every day with a practically infinite amount of sensory information. The reason we are not overwhelmed by the humming in the lights or the feel of fabric on our skin is called a Reticular Activating System. It’s a filter that only passes information that’s relevant to us. Relevant means something close to us in time or space, carrying emotional content, or our intentional focus. This is why so few could grab the pencil, but everyone could grab their most valuable object. Was the pencil any further away? (No.) It just wasn’t relevant.
So back to our original question, how much of our church can you still see after you close your eyes? I can guarantee you there are a few here today who can see things you can’t because they were here yesterday for all church work day. Amy can see the top of the choir cabinets downstairs because she climbed on top of them to paint. Merlyn can see the bottom of that back pew because she climbed underneath it to clean. Bev can see that hymnal rack because she emptied it, cleaned it, and put everything back organized. There’s a spot right up here I can see that I bet no one else in this room can, because I spent five minutes trying to scrape the gunk off it.
If you want to see more, give. Give your time. Give your talent. Give your treasure. God doesn’t need our gifts. We need to give because in the words of our Moderator, Jon, “Involvement cements your faith.”
Was Blind but Now I See by Rev. R.J. Brink is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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