Thought for the week 27 October 2024

The Gospel today is pretty shocking, and typical of the grammatical style of Mark. The events and teachings recorded by Mark are meant to frighten us. True, the Gospels are Good News, and comfort; but nothing in them is meant to make us complacent. If there is a danger of that, we should work hard to let them make us uncomfortable, and so discover the ways in which they truly comfort us – remembering that, originally, “to comfort” meant “to strengthen” rather than “to soothe”.

Jesus leaves Jericho with his disciples and a crowd. These people have seen his miracles; no doubt some of them have personally benefited from his healing power. They have been delighted by what they have seen, and they want more. After fifteen miles or so, they are going to call out for wonders: “Hoshianna!” – “Please bring salvation!” – “Reveal your victory!” But before they have even gone one mile, they are faced with the possibility of a striking miracle: Bartimaeus wants Jesus to restore his sight. Whereupon a lot of these people who want more miracles, try to prevent a miracle! By some perverse instinct, they tell Bartimaeus to shut up. Do they begrudge Jesus’ generosity? Do they have their own plan for what the day is to bring, so that they are unwilling to let a small miracle delay the uphill journey to Jerusalem where a great victory is imminent?

This Gospel reading is about a beggar who was blind being instantly healed and he overturns the expectations of the crowd of king makers following – or maybe attempting to guide - Jesus. It was enough to lift him out of such total destitution as we can hardly imagine today. And Bartimaeus uses his healing to make a decision – to follow Jesus on His way to the cross, standing apart from the crowd around him. Bartimaeus hears the crowd passing by and is told that Jesus is at the centre of it, and his desperation made him bold, demanding, imaginative. He shouts aloud, so rudely that people try to hush him as we heard – although the crowd shouting for miracles are allowed to call out as they wish, but there is often one rule for the righteous is there not. He is also saying something — ‘Son of David!’ This might have been dangerous. It was almost like saying, ‘Your Majesty!’ Jesus was to die at the hands of the Romans for even allowing thinking and talking like this. ‘King of the Jews’ was hung accusingly and contemptuously as his title when he was executed. The fact that the crowd are about to say the same seems of no point to them – they want to be the Kingmakers and maybe sit at each side of the new King when He overthrows the Romans, not this blind man. So they tell him to shut up.

What is the significance of blindness, and Christ’s healing of it, in today’s Gospel. Clearly, there would be plenty to say about the particular miracle and its context, but the words of Our Lord spoken as he restores Bartimaeus’ sight suggest that this episode can be understood also as a image of his work of salvation. He does not say, ‘your faith has given you your sight,’ or something like that, but rather, ‘your faith has saved you.’

Blindness is not simply the inability to see. We do not say that rocks, or plants, are blind, although clearly they do not have a sense of sight. Rather, it is the lack of a sense of sight in the kind of being that, ordinarily, might be able to see. When Christ gives Bartimaeus his sight, he doesn’t endow him with a unique superpower, but restores to him something which belongs to his life as a human being. Similarly, to speak of our salvation in Christ is to say something about the restoration, not the unnatural enhancement, of our humanity: we were made in God’s image and likeness, made for friendship with him, and in saving us, Christ is restoring to us the possibility of enjoying that friendship.

For Bartimaeus, the restoration of his sight is a clear and urgent desire. He is able to come to the healing, the salvation, which Christ tells him his faith has wrought because he had a desire which, through faith, he believed Jesus could fulfil. Likewise, if we do not recognise that there is something we lack, if we do not desire for the wounds of sin to be healed, then we will not be able to recognise in Jesus the saviour in whom to place our trust, for the notion of salvation will be meaningless.

Bartimaeus saw the need to follow Jesus to Jerusalem, where Jesus was to bring salvation and reveal – indeed, enact – God’s victory over hatred and cruelty, over Satan and death. As we move from hearing the Gospel reading to celebrating the Holy Eucharist, we are called to “follow Jesus to Jerusalem” and witness his Sacrifice. The Consecration of the Eucharist brings home to us Jesus’ giving of his Body and Blood on the Cross, and charges us to imitate what we celebrate, to live sacrificially. We are asked to see what Bartimaeus saw, the need to enter into Jesus’ Sacrifice. And we who are nourished by his Body and Blood may be filled with the Holy Spirit, who can push, or prompt, or – most often – gently accompany us on The Way, even when people tell us to shut up. Indeed, maybe mostly then.