Blind Bartimaeus

by Chris Chivers

[Ed. Note: This sermon was originally preached at Westminster Abbey on October 26, 2003, centered on the gospel reading Mark 10:46-52.]

Amid the lightening pace of Mark's narrative, today's gospel reading — with its restoration of sight to Blind Bartimaeus — is a story of dazzling vitality and significance, a passage pregnant with insight for all of us. But to get to the grace and subtlety it offers, we have, in William Blake's words, to surrender ourselves to ‘minute particulars'. We begin with placement and with place.

"Can he now see?" Jesus asks. Yes he can. But everything looks strange. "People are walking trees," he says. Like the disciples he almost gets to a moment of real sight and insight. But the truth must, as Emily Dickinson reminds us, "Dazzle gradually, or everyone be blind." It takes time to adjust yourself to the radiant light of the divine presence.

Back a few of chapters in the tale, you may recall that a whole section of the narrative focussed on the symbolic significance of bread. But feedings of five and of four thousand people end, inconclusively, with the disciples' failure to get their meaning. "Do you not yet understand?" Jesus asks. The disciples don't. So we begin again, this time with a miracle of a different kind. A blind man is encountered at Bethsaida and he is healed. It is, you'll remember, a healing in several stages. Jesus places saliva on the man's eyes. "Can he now see?" Jesus asks. Yes he can. But everything looks strange. "People are walking trees," he says. Like the disciples he almost gets to a moment of real sight and insight. But the truth must, as Emily Dickinson reminds us, "Dazzle gradually, or everyone be blind." It takes time to adjust yourself to the radiant light of the divine presence. It's only when you're prepared to follow that light — blessed, as is this blind man, by the laying on of hands — that the process can one day reach its fulfilment.

For a little while, those on whom Jesus has laid hands — the chosen ones, the disciples — move on to Caesarea Phillipi with renewed confidence and vigour. Like the blind man whose sight has been restored, they begin to adjust to life at this deeper level. They get the point of the healing. So when Jesus asks them, "Who am I?" they can rightly reply, "You are the Messiah." But Jesus knows that whilst they might have got the message into their heads it hasn't really rooted itself in their hearts. Hence the further healings — the unblocking of a deaf man's ears, the calming of an epileptic boy — which bring them to Jericho. They are now but fifteen miles from Jerusalem where they know that something awful will happen — they’ve picked up this much from what Jesus has said. But as they leave Jericho, do they realize that they are standing precisely where their forbears stood, outside its walls, waiting for them to collapse in a supreme moment of liberation and grace?

Placement and place have already pointed up the significance of the reading we heard today which happens at a pivotal moment in the Gospel as the drama turns towards Jerusalem. But now, one by one, each detail adds weight and depth to what happens, and to what it means.

They encounter a blind beggar. And this time — unusually — we know his name. Perhaps he is already well known to Jesus's followers — or at least to the crowd who have gathered around — one of those people whose presence often irritates the professionally religious. A hanger-on whom insiders wish to treat firmly as an outsider. A beggar in rags who shouts out things that are embarrassingly uncomfortable, so far as respectably pious folk are concerned, because they are the truth. The kind of person who invariably turns up just at the wrong moment to shatter the calm of religious serenity and to make unwelcome demands. Which is why the crowd — the disciples among them — try to shut Bartimaeus up as he calls out. "Oh, not that tiresome man again," they think.

But the true believers are often to be found precisely among the tiresome, the irritants, the poor, the disenfranchised, the demanding. Religious folk may disdain them. They may want to exclude them, to remind them that they don't belong. But it is actually these outsiders who invariably know what real belief is, or should be, all about. And this one, Bartimaeus, has real insight. He might be physically blind — and vocal with it. But he can see, all right. He knows that this Jesus of Nazareth, this carpenter from that no-hope place, is much more than those bare biographical details might suggest. He is Son of David, Messiah, the one to whom one cries out for mercy, for he is God. The disciples don't like it of course, because they're being shown up by someone who knows the truth they've only ever half perceived, if they've got it at all. But it's at this point that the central character intervenes to give us one of those extraordinary — and rare — moments of repose in Mark's breathless account. A moment of grace when the drama — when the whole world — stops absolutely still. For prompted by this blind man's real insight, and calling him forward, Jesus begins to unravel the crowd's spiritual blindness, as their Jericho walls come tumbling down about them. Dare they shush Bartimaeus, now? No, they daren't. Instead, they encourage him on his way. For their blindness and hardness of heart is already softening as recognition and truth begin to dazzle in their own eyes. And with three of the strongest verbs in Mark's vocabulary we are there. The man throws off his coat, springs up and comes to Jesus.

He throws caution to the wind. He dispenses with the only material possession he owns. He doesn't cast aside his clothing as will the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane to flee from Jesus and to save their own skins. Rather, he surrenders worldly comforts, as must all true disciples, to follow in his way.

[James and John] had wanted power and status. To sit on Jesus's right and left hand in his glory, when he achieved the short-term political ascendancy they supposed to be the climax of his journey to the centre of power and influence in Jerusalem. Their short-termism is, however, countered and conquered by Bartimaeus. All he wants is to be able to see.

So Bartimaeus stands facing Jesus and his question. "What do you want me to do for you?" Moments earlier, James and John had been asked this too. But how different is Bartimaeus' reply. They had wanted power and status. To sit on Jesus's right and left hand in his glory, when he achieved the short-term political ascendancy they supposed to be the climax of his journey to the centre of power and influence in Jerusalem. Their short-termism is, however, countered and conquered by Bartimaeus. All he wants is to be able to see. But he's already of course got a measure of the insight he needs. He's on the way, like the other blind man before him. The restoration of physical sight merely confirms the metaphysical truth that dazzles within. So Jesus affirms his faith and tells him to go. But, as Bartimaeus knows, this isn't an invitation to go home, or to go away, or to stay on the outside. It's an invitation to follow in 'the way', to join the universal pilgrimage that will lead through the agonies of Calvary to an empty tomb with all its possibilities. Because he has been recognized as one who both believes and belongs.

And if ever we needed to attend to all Mark's minute particulars, to the telling depth and significance of each detail, it is surely at this present time in the life of our Anglican Communion.

For whilst in our day many in the church seem content to cast people to the outside, to exclude and to shut the door on the Bartimaeus's of this world, as they foster prejudice and grasp at the power and status — all of course illusory — they believe their turf war will confer on them; whilst many are busy trying to turn the church into a self-imploding reality — a thing of blindness and darkness — the kingdom of God — which begins to dazzle in Bartimaeus's eyes and heart — is so different. It reaches out. It accepts. It embraces. It sees that truth is more verb than noun, and is to be found in many places — as much, if not more so, on the outside as among insiders. Because God's kingdom is a thoroughly self-transcending, not a self-imploding, reality. It begins from the Christ-like premise that all human beings in the profoundest sense belong on the inside already, since the image of God burns brightly within them all. And this means that the church's calling is to cherish this divine spark of insight wherever it breaks into the world. Patiently, to narrow the ever-widening gap between those who believe and those who belong; painstakingly to gather together diverse shafts of experience and wisdom; and lovingly to make of them saliva for eyes and balm for the souls of all God's children.

It's not the Bartimaeus's on the outside but all of us on the inside who need to… allow Jesus to restore our sight. For it's simply against the whole spirit of the Gospel that those now being cast by some as outsiders should be ordered to give up practicing and expressing the God-given love and fidelity by which they, like most of the rest of us, would wish to pattern their relationships.

For as Bartimaeus recognised, the truth which holds us is always greater than the truth to which we hold. And in this sense it's not the Bartimaeus's on the outside but all of us on the inside who need to shush ourselves, realize the disastrous impression we’ve been giving of ourselves to the world beyond our walls, and allow Jesus to restore our sight. For it's simply against the whole spirit of the Gospel that those now being cast by some as outsiders should be ordered to give up practicing and expressing the God-given love and fidelity by which they, like most of the rest of us, would wish to pattern their relationships. What we actually need is more non-practicing fundamentalists — fewer biblical literalists — on the inside. Since, over-against what they say, the truth of the gospel requires of us all a willingness to follow, to venture in faith way beyond our prejudice, our culture, our limited understanding and insight, towards the deepest truth which is too bright for any of us ever fully to comprehend, because it is the dazzling truth of God's love for each one of us.

But if Mark's minute particulars don't do it for you, then perhaps the poem of Emily Dickinson's to which I alluded earlier will prompt us all to take the next step along the way, determined to respect the light and insight which God has already kindled in every human soul:

Tell all the truth

But tell it slant.

Success in circuit lies.

Too bright for our infirm delight

The truth's superb surprise

As lightening to the children eased

With explanation kind:

The truth must dazzle gradually

Or everyone be blind.

The Rev. Chris Chivers is Minor Canon and Precentor at Westminster Abbey. His regular column on "A Globe of Witnesses" is Tell It Slant. Chris may be reached by email at Chris.Chivers@westminster-abbey.org