Proper 25, Year B 2018

Trinity Episcopal Church, Galveston
Gospel: Mark 10:46-52
28 October 2018

 In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus shows God’s compassion with an act of healing. Jesus’ responds to a blind person begging from the side of the road, and this is contrasted with the hardness of heart demonstrated by many of the followers accompanying him.

This story is just “dust and ashes” unless we use it as a mirror to see ourselves. In some ways, I see myself in the crowd wanting to bypass the beggar. I’ve been in too many situations where I’ve looked the other way, walked to the other side of the street, or otherwise chosen to keep my distance when a stranger is asking for help on the street. Typically, I am suspicious; I find it difficult to trust folks soliciting at the street corners or in the parking lot at the grocery. On the other hand, there have been times in life when I related more to Bartimaeus. I remember feeling desperate after Hurricane Ike when payroll was coming due for the teachers and staff before we had re-established any kind of office at our devastated campus. The Diocese of Texas in Houston had a lot to deal with in those days, and they also found temporary office space for an anxiety-ridden head of school from Galveston. As it turned out, the Diocese agreed to front money and process the printed checks for the September payroll. Those checks going out when they did were an early sign of hope that Trinity Episcopal School had support and was going to come back!

Jesus did not meet every blind person in Palestine; that was not his agenda. Jesus' agenda on the way to the Cross was to teach those who followed him that God’s Kingdom begins in mercy. God’s compassion is real, Jesus made it known in word and deed... and ultimately, on the Cross.

There are only two basic choices in life, two ways of seeing the world, two paradigms….and these are love and fear. When we choose fear, the focus is on scarcity. When fear is in play, we are rendered blind to the abundance with which we have been blessed, and we worry about not having enough time, running out of resources, or coming up short of what we will need for self and family. When we choose love, the focus is on joy. The blessings we have received come readily to mind, and we want to pay them forward. Giving of self is a spiritual practice; it helps us connect to something greater than self. In our appointed Collect today, we pray for an increase in charity. Even though our acts of compassion, how we give of ourselves to others, may often be incomplete, distorted, misinformed, even self-serving to some extent, there is always grace in trying to follow God’s example in Jesus.

If you have watched any news lately, you have heard of the migrant caravan on route from Central America. The people are real and number in the thousands. Unicef says there are 2,300 children in this caravan. Does this modern day Exodus seem like an invasion? Do you feel that these folks are coming to take our jobs, to strain our social services, to change our way of life? Are they pawns of a political movement, on the right or on the left? The more interviews I hear, the more these people are given human faces, the greater my awareness is that they are not left or right, they just want to survive.

People in this caravan decided to leave their homeland, figuring that the danger of leaving and making the journey (even with no assurance at the end) was outstripped by the danger at home of facing gang death threats and no help from a corrupt government…. and the continuing threat of being unable to feed their families. I found it helpful to read some of the interviews of people in the migrant caravan, to see things from their perspective...to put human faces on them. These are folks who are desperate...that means, if you tell them not to come, they are still coming.

Bartimaeus believed that Jesus was God’s chosen leader and trusted that Jesus would show compassion for him. Bartimaeus cried out the words, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” At some point in the past he had lost his eyesight, but in his spirit he could still see. He trusted that Jesus was the one sent by God to save the lost. For people who are desperate, faith is not a luxury to take or leave. For people like Bartimaeus, life had to be lived one day at a time. His very existence was dependent on the gifts of others...faith was required just to make it from one day to the next.

Perhaps, Bartimaeus knew enough from the scriptures to know that the promised Son of David would be a servant of all. Jeremiah’s vision of a restored Israel included the blind and the lame, as we heard in our Old Testament reading today….Perhaps, Mark’s Bartimaeus knew this passage. Many in the crowd berated him, telling him sternly to keep his mouth shut... But he was desperate, and he believed that Jesus would show compassion to him. So, this beggar cried out even more loudly. When someone is desperate, they don’t have a choice….no matter what others say or what kind of abuse they shell out….they will keep on.

Jesus had left Jericho, and the next stop was Jerusalem...the “train had left the station,” so to speak….but, Jesus stood still when he heard a cry for mercy. The crowd did not know this, but Jesus’ work in Jerusalem, his death on the Cross, would show God’s unqualified mercy for all humanity.

Now here is an even more remarkable thing in the story. The beggar cries out, Jesus hears him and stops, and then…. he directs the crowd to call the man. Jesus asks the very people who had been hushing Bartimaeus to now deliver good news and to bring him before Jesus. Notice, he does not wait for the perfect, blameless people to assist. Jesus needs the ones who are with him to be his hands and feet. Jesus needs us to be his hands and feet in our own time and in our own community. He is not waiting for the perfect, blameless people because, truth be told, those people do not exist. Folks, it’s just us.

The story of Bartimaeus serves as a warning that fear can lead good people to show contempt. Fear tells us that the stranger is the enemy; that the needy will overwhelm us with their needs; that time cannot be spared to depart from the agenda we already have going. The story is a reminder that Jesus calls us to choose love over fear, to show compassion, and to respond as best we can to those, who in their desperation, cry out for mercy. We are followers of Jesus; we are not perfect, we struggle with hardness of heart, but we are loved, we are blessed with abundance….and we are called to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world today.  AMEN.