Blind Bartimaeus

Proper 25, Year B

October 25, 2009

With today’s readings from Job and Mark, we are coming to the end of a series. We heard today the very end of the book of Job, and the gospel story of blind Bartimaeus brings this section of the gospel of Mark to a close. As we have heard for several weeks, Jesus and his disciples have been wandering around the countryside. Sometimes their journey has seemed aimless. Occasionally Mark gives us geographical details that seem absurd. But as they go along the way, Jesus seems to be ever clearer on the fate that will ultimately await him in Jerusalem.

As they go, Jesus predicts his suffering and death, and says a great deal about what it means to follow him, to a group of people who have no idea why they are following him. And now, at the very end of this section of the gospel, comes the story of blind Bartimaeus. In fact, this brings us to the end of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, because the very next story in the gospel is the story of Jesus entering into Jerusalem, which we remember each year at Palm Sunday. So this story of blind Bartimaeus has enormous significance.

But before exploring that, I want to go back to the very beginning of this crucial section of the gospel of Mark because Mark has done something very interesting here. He bookends this section having to do with Jesus’ death and discipleship with two stories of Jesus healing a blind man.

The first took place near Bethsaida at the beginning of this section. It is a very odd story because it involves a two stage healing process. A blind man is brought to Jesus; Jesus leads him by the hand out of the village. First Jesus put saliva on the man’s eyes and laid his hands on him. After that, Jesus asked if he could see and the man’s response was “I can see people, but they are like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on him again, and the man’s sight was fully restored. Jesus sent home, instructing him to tell no one.

In the second healing, all is different. It takes place near Jericho, only 13 miles from Jerusalem. One important difference is that this man has a name, the only one of all of those healed in all four gospels to be named. Second, in the first healing, the blind man was brought to Jesus, and it was those who brought him who pleaded with Jesus to heal him. Here, Bartimaeus speaks on his own behalf, calling Jesus “Son of David” a messianic title. Then, when he continues to cry out for help from Jesus while onlookers tell him to shut up, Jesus calls to him. Bartimaeus throws off his cloak, runs to Jesus.

Jesus asks him a rather odd question, given that Bartimaeus is a blind beggar. “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus asks to be healed, and Jesus responds, “Go, your faith has made you well.” In response, Bartimaeus follows Jesus “along the way.”

Mark uses these stories to emphasize everything he has stressed in these chapters of his gospel. In the first story, a blind man slowly comes to see, he needs extraordinary effort from Jesus, and when he’s healed, he goes back home; he doesn’t proclaim the good news. It’s as if nothing had happened. In fact, Jesus orders him to tell no one.

Bartimaeus is just the opposite. He takes the initiative, first crying out to Jesus, then abandoning everything, even his cloak, in order to have an encounter with Jesus. He asks Jesus for help, and when he’s healed, instead of returning to his home and family, he follows Jesus on the way—to Jerusalem.

Between these two stories of Jesus healing blind men, one who goes back home and one who calls him the Son of David, and follows him on the way, Mark puts much of Jesus’ teachings on discipleship, on what it means to follow Jesus. In fact, Bartimaeus stands as something of a contrast to the disciples, who weren’t really, or didn’t know how, to follow Jesus.

But I don’t want you to think that these stories or only symbolic, that they lack concrete, literal meaning. One of the things that may be the hardest for us to get our heads around in the twenty-first century is that Jesus healed people. The gospels are quite clear on that. He gave sight to the blind, restored the hearing of deaf people, made the lame to walk. He also cast out demons.

Now what precisely these healings consisted in I don’t know, I do know that such healings were relatively commonplace in the ancient Mediterranean—Greek and Roman sources, as well as Jewish materials give evidence that there were miracle workers around. I also know that health meant something quite different in the ancient world than it does to day. Indeed, the Greek word that is most often translated as “salvation” could also be rendered as health or wholeness. In the ancient world, health involved body and soul, not just body. Part of our problem in understanding Jesus’ miracles lies there, we are thinking in terms of modern medicine and science, when the people in the ancient world thought in very different terms.

We are often very uncomfortable with the notion of Jesus healing people of their illnesses and maladies, and yet when we find ourselves struggling with our health, or the health of loved ones, we pray to God for deliverance. Few of us would be comfortable with what seems to be the message of Mark’s gospel in this instance, that Bartimaeus’ faith healed him. To make such a clear link is deeply problematic.

As I was thinking about this story this week, a song came to mind that has been going through my head repeatedly. Perhaps some of you know it. “Old Blind Barnabas” I know from a version the Blind Boys of Alabama sang on an album a few years ago. From the lyrics that I recall, I’m pretty sure it’s based on this story. The name Bartimaeus was changed to Barnabas to fit the meter. The Blind Boys of Alabama came together as a group in 1936 at the Alabama School for the Blind; and the core group sang together until a couple of the members retired in 2006, but Clarence Fountain kept on, and the group continues to sing. I wonder how many times over the decades they sang that song. I wonder how they thought about it, their faith and their blindness.

We know that God doesn’t take away all of our pain and suffering. But many of us may sometimes wonder whether it’s because we don’t have enough faith, or perhaps God is punishing us for something. That of course brings us back to the book of Job, and finally, today, we’ve reached the end of it. I must say, of all the works of literature I’ve ever read, this may be the least satisfactory conclusion to any. It’s as bad as a typical “Hollywood ending” of a movie, where the boy gets the girl, or everything works out ok. Job has gone through all of this pain, all of this intense suffering. His children have died, his flocks and his herds, he’s lost his property, and finally he is plagued with a wretched ailment of the skin. After all of his complaints and challenges to God, after God in the end tells him, “Shut up.” Now this. After all of his trials and tribulations, after all of his suffering, after all of that profound poetry, Job is rewarded with twice as much stuff as he had in the beginning. It makes me sick.

Now let me be clear. The book of Job is not a history book or a biography. It is a morality tale. There was no historical figure named Job. Even though his story seems to be set in the time of the patriarchs, the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, on close reading it clearly comes from a much later period. Job is a sort of everyman, he is one of us; and the whole story is intended to help us think about the problem of suffering—theodicy, as the philosophers call it.

Those middle chapters of the book, where Job rails against God for his plight, are meant to be words we might say in a similar situation—Job is speaking for us, and for every human throughout the existence of the human race, who has tried to make sense of why they are suffering. The problem is, the book of Job raises the question of human suffering with eloquence and profundity, but it does not provide an answer.

As we saw last week, when God finally responds to Job, when God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, the answer God gives is, in a nutshell, “Shut up.” Or to put it in the Book of Job’s terms, “where were you when I created the universe?”

Now, I don’t think there is an adequate answer to the question of theodicy, of why bad things happen to good people. I don’t think it’s God punishing us, I don’t think it’s intended to teach us something. Sometimes suffering simply lacks meaning. And when we struggle with our pain, misfortune, or suffering, one of the things we as humans want to do is to make sense of it, to put it in a framework that helps us comprehend it. That’s what the book of Job is trying to do, but in the end, it fails to give an adequate response to Job’s suffering.

And in the end, the story of Bartimaeus, as important as his healing is, is not an object lesson on the power of faith, or miracle, or the nature of Jesus Christ. It, like the chapters that come before it, is a lesson about discipleship. Bartimaeus healed of his blindness, follows Jesus. All of Jesus’ teaching in these chapters was intended to open the eyes of the disciples to Jesus and to the cost of following him. As we have seen these last weeks, the disciples could not, would not open their eyes to Jesus. Like them, we are often blind to what following Jesus really means, to the commitment it requires, to the life that beckons us. With Bartimaeus, let us cry out to Jesus, “Teacher, help us see!”