Between noon and three

This sermon was preached on Sunday, October 27, 2024, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25 of Year B).

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Jeremiah 31:7-9, Hebrews 7:23-28, Mark 10:46-52

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In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

As we approach the end of the church year, our march through the Gospel of Mark is beginning to come to an end. On the last Sunday before Advent, we’ll see Jesus before Pilate mere hours before his crucifixion and death. Today, Jesus has set his face to go to Jerusalem, and he is making his final approach to the holy city, up the road from Jericho. By now he is immensely popular, and crowds follow him everywhere. It’s lost on no one that this is a royal road, traveled by everyone from Joshua to David and many holy prophets.

A blind beggar, Bartimaeus, has taken up his regular station by the road. He hears a crowd, and when he learns that it’s Jesus of Nazareth, he shouts, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” People try to shut him up. The teacher is important, he is on his way to Jerusalem, he has much on his mind, he cannot be bothered. What they really mean is, they are embarrassed to be sharing space with someone so obviously disturbed. “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” And of course Jesus does: he heals Bartimaeus, and shames the crowd.

Then the last line makes a critical turn: “Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” Jesus says “Go,” but Bartimaeus doesn’t, he joins the crowd and follows. Where are they going? To Jerusalem. What will happen in Jerusalem? Jesus will be betrayed, arrested, tried, sentenced to death, crucified, buried, and after three days raised from the dead. What does Bartimaeus do with his restored sight? He follows Jesus to Jerusalem. The first sight Bartimaeus sees is the passion and death of the Son of God.

See the point Mark is making here: the crowd, full of their own importance at being near a figure like Jesus, has no room for a person like Bartimaeus. He is a distraction to them, an obstacle, that they need to remove. But Jesus stops for him. For Jesus, Bartimaeus isn’t in the way at all, he isn’t a distraction, he isn’t an obstacle. For all we know, Bartimaeus may have been the whole reason Jesus chose this road in the first place. Jesus heals him, restores his sight, and now Bartimaeus cannot bear to be parted from his healer.

I’m always moved by this, and I can’t help but wonder if you ever feel this way, extraneous to the purpose, that your presence is somehow a distraction to God or a bother to the church? I do sometimes, I’ll admit. God has a lot of things to be busy with, and here I am complaining about my lowly problems? Or maybe somebody told you that God only helps those who help themselves, or that you have to be good at your job to be worthy of love, or that the kingdom is only for the with-it and the well-adjusted.

Recently another survey came out, reporting why people feel uncomfortable in church. The most popular response? “I’m not really sure if I believe or not, oo it would be hypocritical of me to come to church.” One woman was quoted, saying, “I’d go to church more often, only everyone else always seems to know what they’re talking about, and most of the time I haven’t got a clue.” One way or another we convince ourselves we are a distraction to Jesus and therefore that we don’t belong anywhere near the way he is going or the people who follow him.

But here’s the thing. Just as for Jesus, blind Bartimaeus was not only, not in the way, but was the way Jesus was going, so it is for you and me. The human race, and not just the human race, but individual, messed up humans, are the way Jesus is going: the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: to know and love and call and heal and redeem John, and Peter, and Mary, and Martha, and Blake, and you too. Human beings are not in the way, not a distraction; human beings are the way Jesus is going.

So fully is this the case that we cannot truly understand the cross otherwise, or the resurrection, or anything else in the Gospels or the church’s great treasure-house of faith. Jesus comes to seek out every place – every place! – where we humans have managed to find ourselves: in sickness, in health; in prisons, on crosses — innocent or guilty — in palaces, in universities; in hospitals and psychiatric wards; under bridges, by the side of the road; in hell itself. These are all stops on Jesus’s way, because you and I are his destination, the subjects of his whole attention and love.

No matter how major or minor our concerns, how embarrassed or shameful we feel, how frustrating our aggravations or how full of longing our spirits, you and I are never a distraction to Jesus, never extraneous to his purpose. I hope that’s some comfort to you. It is to me. But if that’s the case, then we must not be a distraction to ourselves. We cannot let our many cares turn us away from Jesus’s approach. 

“Ah, Jesus, I see you coming, first let me take out the trash.” 

“No, now is the time for healing, for cure of souls.”

“Oh but I haven’t finished correcting the leaflets, there are people I have to take care of, I’m at odds with my sister, I’m addicted to painkillers, work is stressful. Jesus, I know what you want to do, but other people need you more than me; really, I’ll just be in the way, please come back another time.” 

“No, your heart is the Jerusalem I’m bound for, within you is the Calvary where I must die. Your life, messy and distracted though it be, is what I am here to offer my Father; and my resurrection shall be yours, too.”

“What? My heart, your Calvary? Is it really that bad?”

“It’s not a question of badness. I am here to shine light in every dark place. You can dimly guess where those places are. But I made them, I know them, I love them. I planted them to grow and bear fruit, and soon they shall. Watered with my blood, they shall no longer grow thorns but figs; lit by my face, they shall no longer wither in darkness but flourish as the garden of the Lord. They shall be his own temple, the place where his glory rests forever.”

We must not shrink from this touch. Though we recoil at the suggestion, we must not shut our hearts to their being the Calvary on which the Lord comes to die. Put aside fear and feelings of unworthiness, busy-ness and worry, and let Jesus offer himself to his Father within your heart. He will carry with him all your cares and loves, your life and your world, through hell to the very throne of heaven. When the stone is rolled away and you emerge into the garden of his delight, you yourself will be larger, with room for multitudes within.

So it is with all the redeemed: each person is a door to the kingdom of God. At the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, our heroes are surrounded by their enemies in a last battle they seem sure to lose. They retreat into a rickety stable at the center of the field. But instead of meeting their demise, they find the stable is bigger inside than it was outside, there is no roof but sky overhead, with green grass underfoot. A voice calls them further up and further in, to enter an ever-larger world, where even enemies become friends.

So it is with you and me. Like Bartimaeus, Jesus opens our eyes to see what is there to be seen. Bartimaeus found his vision immediately filled with the Lord’s road to Jerusalem, his passion and death. When our eyes are healed we will see no less. But the vision does not stop there, it grows: what Jesus begins in my heart, in yours, opens yet further, farther, to realms of light, of joy, beyond all telling: where crying and pain are no more, and all evil is made good; where all flesh shall see the salvation of our God.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.