2018-10-29
Brooke Strong
Scripture: Mark 10:46-52
As many of you know, my wife Mary works in hospice care. Formerly she was a nurse, and now she’s a provider of pastoral care. In both roles, but maybe most especially in her current role of offering spiritual sustenance, one of the hopes she has always had is to attend to what it is dying people and their families most need. The question she asks with family after family is, “What’s most important to you now?”
The answers vary tremendously, of course. Sometimes it’s a simple request like, “I’m craving a shake from Steak and Shake.” Or “Could you take me outside in my wheelchair so I can feel the sun on my face?” And sometimes the tears will suddenly start, and something much more difficult and heart-rending comes out. “I wish I could see my sister in Florida one last time.” Or “I’d love to make peace with my children.”
What’s most important to you now? It’s a question that goes to the very core of our lives. All the trivialities get sorted out and the focus zooms in on what matters most: what’s most important to you now?
Just before Jesus enters Jerusalem to begin the last week of his life, he leaves Jericho, and a blind man named Bartimaeus is sitting by the side of the road begging. Evidently none too popular with his neighbors, when he asks for Jesus’ help, they all try to hush him up. “Be quiet, will you! Shut up!” Bartimaeus doesn’t pay them the slightest bit of attention, though. He knows why he’s there. He knows what he most needs. He shouts at Jesus: “Son of David! Jesus! Mercy, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47, The Message). And then, just to make sure Jesus gets it, he yells it again louder: “Son of David! Mercy, have mercy on me!” (10:48).
This is a man who knows what he wants. He wants mercy. He wants what the Bible sometimes calls “lovingkindness.” He hopes for a heart to reach out to him. He craves kindness, compassion. And then he gets even more specific. When Jesus asks him, “What can I do for you?” the blind man says, “Rabbi, I want to see” (10:51).
I imagine there’s an intensity to that request. The richness of the fields, the colors of the fabrics in the streets, the variety of faces he knows and doesn’t know—all these have escaped him. He has been sightless, unable to see the vivid world in which he lives.
So of course he wants to see. He aches for what he’s been missing. Think of the vivid blue and brown and shades of white you’ll see in the sanctuary in a few weeks. Think of how fun it is to watch the Browns and Cavaliers win—if you can remember it! Call to mind the beauty in the face of your parent or spouse or child or grandchild or friend. And then imagine missing all that. “Rabbi, I want to see.”
There’s likely something deeper to these words, though. Bartimaeus doesn’t want to see just colors and shapes and faces. He wants to grasp something beneath that surface. He wants to really understand his life and its core. Remember what he first asks of Jesus. Before he asks for sight, he loudly begs for mercy. Mercy and deep sight—maybe we’d call it insight: this is what Bartimaeus’ most craves.
After her husband Fred died, the poet Lucille Clifton wrote a little gem, a poem sent to me this week by a great friend of mine. Clifton writes the poem in the voice of her now-gone husband: “I seemed to be drawn/ to the center of myself/ leaving the edges of me/ in the hands of my wife/ and I saw with the most amazing clarity/ so that I had not eyes but sight/ and, rising and turning,/ through my skin, there was all around not the/ shapes of things/ but oh, at last, the things themselves” (“The Death of Fred Clifton, 11/10/84, Age 49”). “I had not eyes but sight, and . . . there was all around not the shapes of things but oh, at last, the things themselves.” In the wake of his death, Clifton imagines her husband seeing what matters most. Not the surfaces. Not the accidents of life. Not its tangents. But its core. Its heart. It’s a personal question. And in this world in which bombs are sent and Jews are slaughtered in their synagogue, it’s a cultural question, as well. What do you and I, what does the world, most need now?
At the core of what we most need, of course, is God. Bartimaeus models for us how to really focus. He tunes out the naysayers all around him, and turns to the only one who can ground us and give us what’s life-giving. You’re confused about your direction in life? Turn to God, the One who points us toward what’s both personally fulfilling and, at the same time, what’s generous to the world. You’re in grief over the loss of someone incredibly dear to you? Turn to God, the One who can ease your pain and lift your spirits. You’re exhausted from non-stop child care, or care of a parent? Turn to the God we know in Jesus, the One who calls to us, “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
This is indeed what we most need, to come again and again to God. But for countless reasons, we neglect to cultivate that relationship. Eugene Peterson, who wrote the wildly popular paraphrase of the Bible known as The Message, and who died this week, once wrote about what he considered to be the core of his own ministry. And the first thing he mentioned was that he wanted to be “a pastor who prays. I want to cultivate my relationship with God. I want all of life to be intimate—sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously—with the God who made [me, the God who], directs [me, the God who] loves me. . ..
“I know it takes time to develop a life of prayer: set-aside, disciplined, deliberate time. It isn’t accomplished on the run . . . I know I can’t be busy and pray at the same time. . .. In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; [more attention] to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day” (The Contemplative Pastor, pp. 19-20). Bartimaeus goes first to God. This is our true home, as well. Daily, let go of the busyness. Bask in grace.
So what we most need is to ground ourselves again and again in God. And as we do, we are changed, much as Bartimaeus is changed. He is transformed from unseeing to seeing. And then, in response to the command of Jesus, he goes. The story doesn’t say where he goes. It just says he follows Jesus “on the way” (NRSV), or “down the road” (The Message).
Not long ago, a man I know suggested I check out the work of David Platt, a young evangelical preacher in Alabama. And while stylistically and theologically, he’s very different from me and from many of us, I was struck by one thing he said. He asked his congregation essentially, ‘Would other people know we are followers of Jesus just by observing the way we live our lives?’ Could they tell that we were “on the road” with Jesus, or would our allegiance to God not be the slightest bit evident in our daily habits?
Platt says most of us Christians have softened Jesus’ edges, that we have missed out on the radical commitment asked of us by Jesus. We have, instead, taken on the ways of the culture in which we live. We get immersed in the same materialistic, acquisitive habits as our neighbors. As parents, we tend to prioritize athletics and entertainment over faith and love. And when it comes to our financial gifts to God, our pledging, few people offer a tithe—ten percent of their income—to God.
Today is Reformation Sunday. Today, in honor of our Protestant roots, we remember that, at our best, we are a church that is both reformed and, at the same time, always reforming. As is David Platt, we are looking for how we might be made new. We are searching for how to be more deeply faithful. And while some parts of Platt’s theology may make us wince, on this score, he hits the nail on the head. Are we, in our daily lives, recognizably disciples of Christ? Are we “on the way” with Jesus?
In gratitude for what we might call both is sight and his insight, Bartimaeus “reforms” his life. He aligns his priorities so that he’s “on the way” with Jesus.
This, too, is what we’re invited to: to reform our lives, and to be “on the way” with Jesus. And while changes like that can sometimes feel unnerving, they can also be exhilarating and freeing. Bartimaeus has a long history of not seeing. We can imagine him as full of discouragement and doubt. And yet when Jesus comes along and he casts his lot there, what does the crowd say to him? “This is your lucky day!” (10:49, The Message). Or in the words of the NRSV, “Take heart!”
Take heart, because in whatever personal confusion you may have, this way of Jesus can and does make you whole. Take heart, because in a world of bomb threats and murderous assaults on Jews, this way of Jesus can and does change the world. This word comes to Bartimaeus, and it comes to us, as well: take heart! Even in what can be dismal and frightening times, signs of hope and promise abound, signs of what a difference it can make to be “on the way” with Jesus.
It was striking, for example, to see the ashes of Matthew Shepard interred Friday in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Shepard, you may remember, was a young man from Wyoming who was beaten and killed in 1998. His crime? He was punished by his attackers just for being gay. His ashes were never interred because his family feared that the place where they were buried would be vandalized, which would simply have reopened old wounds.
Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, presided at Friday’s interment, which some 2000 people attended. “In his homily, Robinson shared an anecdote from the first police officer who arrived at the site of Shepard’s attack, a remote fence to which his battered body was lashed and left out in cold night. The policewoman recalled encountering a deer lying beside Shepard’s body. When she approached, Robinson said, the animal looked straight into her eyes before bounding up and running away.
“What she said was, ‘That was the good Lord, no doubt in my mind.’ And there’s no doubt in my mind either [said Robinson]. God has always loved Matt.” And Robinson finished his homily with these words: “There are three things I’d say to Matt: ‘Gently rest in this place. You are safe now. And Matt, welcome home’” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2018/10/26/hundreds-expected-matthew-shepard-symbol-gay-rights-is-interred-washington-national-cathedral/?utm_term=.bb85e927096f). Take heart.
In this divided and strained world in which we live, this world of such violence and terror, we sometimes think there is nothing that binds us together, that the two sides are so far apart that never shall the twain meet. Nonetheless, as Christians following Jesus on the way, we are beckoned to keep at it, to keep trying to build bridges and make peace. And by grace, there are times when we see that happening.
A couple of months ago, Senator John McCain was eulogized in that same National Cathedral in Washington. There was something exhilarating about the breaking down of barriers we saw in that service. Former President Obama got one of the biggest laughs of the service when he talked about McCain’s mischievous streak. “After all, what better way to get a last laugh than to make George [Bush] and [me] say nice things about him to a national audience.” Take heart.
During that service, the camera happened at one point to pan to the front row, where the Obamas sat next to former President George W. and Laura Bush. The camera caught President Bush passing Ms. Obama what looked like a cough drop. In a world as politically divided as ours, that sight alone was endearing—Republican and Democrat, man and woman, white and black engaging in this winning connection.
Later on, Ms. Obama revealed that it was indeed a cough drop, and said this about that tender moment: “‘And I will add that they were old cough drops.’ They were in an official White House box, she said, ‘And I was like, “How long have you had these?” [He] said, “A long time. We got a lot of these.”’ What Obama then added to the story is what lifts the spirits: ‘He [Bush] is my partner in crime at every major thing where all of the formers gather. I love him to death. He’s a wonderful man. A funny man. Party doesn’t separate us. Color, gender, those sort of things don’t separate us’” (The Plain Dealer, Oct. 14, 2018, p. E02).
What’s most important to you and me, and to this culture, now? It’s to walk in the way of Jesus. And it’s to take heart. All around us are inspirations, moving us to walk that road of Jesus in a more exemplary way. We can see that way. And we have the opportunity to walk it. And what we dare never forget is that, with every step, at every point along the way, God is walking with us, pointing us to the goal, lifting us when we’re down, and reminding us that, at every moment, God is working to make us whole. Take heart. Do justice. Love kindness. And walk humbly with the God who never lets us go (cf. Micah 6:8).