Take Heart, He is Calling You (Proper 25B)

“Take Heart, He is Calling You”

28 October 2012

Proper 25B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Jer 31:7-9; Ps 126 ; Heb 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52

Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus stood still and said, "Call him here." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart; get up, he is calling you." So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man said to him, "My teacher, let me see again." Jesus said to him, "Go; your faith has made you well." Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

In the Pixar movie Finding Nemo, a little clownfish named Nemo living near the Great Barrier Reef is netted by a scuba-diving dentist to adorn a tank in his Sydney office.  Nemo’s father, Marlin, is devastated, and he sets out to find his only child with no idea where to go. He meets a blue Tang, Dory, who helps him discover the address of the dentist, despite her own very limited smarts.  Overcoming multiple setbacks and dangers, they are told to find the East Australian Current, which will take them to Sydney harbor.  Gathering their courage, Marlin and Dory risk everything by swimming through a swarm of stinging jellyfish to get into the current.  Suddenly they find themselves carried along in the surge of a great parade of happy sea creatures.  Effortlessly floating in the current, they no longer have to struggle to make their way in the vast, lonely ocean.  A wise sea turtle, Crush, tells them things they need to know to continue their journey.  By the time Dory and Marlin jump out of the current in Sydney, they are very different fish.  Their bewildered fears are now joyful hope.

Transformation!  Change!  From broken to whole, or at least not-so-broken.  From confusion to purpose.  From self-loathing recrimination to confidence and hope.   At one time or another, we all want it, we all need it. 

But our experience and “common” wisdom tells us not to expect it.  So accepting the unacceptable becomes the norm in our lives, or worse, not accepting it, but having to live with it all the same.

Today’s Gospel story says that Jesus can transform the untransformable.   Bartimaeus begins the story blind, rejected, begging on the roadside, and ends up seeing, confident, and walking along with Jesus and the disciples. 

This story in Mark is the only one in the Synoptic Gospels where the name of the healed person is given.  Some take this as evidence of its link to an actual historical event.  Importantly, Mark gives the name twice:  “Bartimaeus, or son of Timaeus.”  Though Mark is writing in Greek, Aramaic was the language Jesus and his followers would have been speaking with each other.   In Aramaic, the word bar means son, and so clearly Bar-Timaeus means “son of Timaeus.”  But Timaeus was a Greek name.  It means “honored one.”  It was not an Aramaic name.  If indeed the blind man was called this, the word in Aramaic would have been bar-tame’ or “son of shame.”  It is not a real name, but an insulting nickname:  “Loser.”  People thought God had punished him for some shameful sin by striking him blind (cf. John 9:34). 

So “Mr. Loser” is not just suffering from the disability of visual impairment.  He is loathed, outcast.  He can get enough food to eat only by begging.  He either believes or suspects that what the others say about him is right.

Caught up in the excitement at news that the healer from Nazareth is passing by, Bar-tame’ begins to shout, as loud as he can, to get Jesus’ attention.  “Have mercy on me, Jesus, son of David!”  This is the most extravagant and dangerous way of talking about Jesus Bar-tame’ has heard on the street, Jesus as the ideal David of the future, the Messiah, who would be a healer.   

The disciples, concerned that their opponents may report them to the Romans’ and get them all arrested, try to shoosh the crazy beggar up.  “Jesus is ministering here!  How dare you interrupt him with your begging! Can’t you get money from any passerby? Leave us alone.” 

Their reaction is understandable.  A strategy of street begging, one I saw often in China and which one encounters occasionally even here in polite, genteel Ashland, is this:  when simple appeals to compassion fail, make yourself so disruptive or obnoxious that people will give you money just to get rid of you.  A meal’s a meal, whether you got it from stirring compassion or provoking disgust and aggravation!

But Mr. Loser just gets louder.  Jesus finally asks what’s going on.  At this, Bar-tame’ balks.  He hadn’t really thought Jesus would stop.

“Take heart! Go, Jesus is calling you!”  The disciples realize that perhaps there is more to this beggar than they thought.  Bar-tame’ casts off his cloak and goes to Jesus. 

In the days before cardboard signs that read “Anything you can do will help,” the beggar’s tattered and filthy cloak was a chief way of appealing for aid.  Bar-tame’ throws off his cloak, and with it all his assumptions about himself, his belief that he really is a loser, all the dysfunctions and fears his disability has wrought.  He casts aside the little bit of security he might feel he has, all to meet Jesus. 

So when Jesus asks him “what do you want,” this one-time son of shame does not say “money” or “bread.”  He asks to be healed.  He asks for his sight.  He asks not to be broken any more. 

And Jesus tells him his faith has already healed him.   Sight is restored.  And Bartimaeus—now a son of honor—starts to walk the Way with Jesus and the other disciples.   

Van Morrison, in his song on hope of recovery from addiction, sings:  

Whenever God, shines his light on me
Opens up my eyes, so I can see
When I look up, in the darkest night
I know everything's gonna be alright.
In deep confusion, in great despair
I reach out for him, he is there.

When I am lonely as I can be,
I know that God shines his light on me.

 
Reach out for him, he'll be there
With him your troubles you can share.

You can use his higher power
In every day and any hour.

Jesus saves and heals the lame

Says you can do it too in Jesus’ name 

He'll lift you up and turn you around. 

He’ll put your feet back on higher ground.

When Dory and Marlin jump into that current, they have to risk all by swimming through the jellyfish.  They have to cast off fear, discouragement, and pessimism.   They have to let themselves be carried away by that stream, part of the joyous parade. 

This is what happens to Bartimaeus in this story. 

It is what happens to us. 

When we encounter Jesus, he transforms us.  If we haven’t been transformed, we just have not encountered him.  Whether sudden or gradual, transformation is a sign of having met Jesus. 

And it’s not about how we feel, whether we think we’ve been changed, or whether we can work up a psychological state that some call “belief.”  Though it’s about real risk, it’s usually not all that dramatic.  Today, we usually encounter Jesus in his body, the Church.   We encounter him in the Church’s sacraments, teaching, worship and prayer.  We meet him in our service to the stranger and one in need.

Writing about our Prayer Book tradition of faith in worship, author Vicki Black says:

“For many new Episcopalians, Marlin’s experience of the East Australian Current echoes their experience of entering the liturgical life of prayer and worship in the Church.  Many of us have searched for God on our own for years, praying by ourselves, perhaps sharing our yearnings with a few faithful friends or perhaps being completely alone.  And yet when we make the leap into the Church’s ongoing liturgical life, it is like suddenly discovering that a vibrant, powerful stream of worship and praise to God has been going on centuries upon centuries.  We are at first swept off our feet, perhaps a bit confused and uncertain.  But soon we catch the rhythm; we begin to understand what is happening at each celebration of the Eucharist, at every baptism, at each service of Morning Prayer.  We grow from the wisdom of the learned and saintly among us.  And we discover we have been welcomed into an enormous, eternal, diverse community of human beings who are likewise seeking to worship God who created all things, who’s beyond all things, and yet who lives among us.  We discover we are not alone, and that this liturgical current of worship, prayer, and praise will indeed take us where we want to go—to union with the God we seek to love”  (from Welcome to the Book of Common Prayer.) 

The worship, prayers, and sacramental life of the Church gives us the strength, the will, and empathy to reach out to others: to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sick, stand with the downtrodden, and give shelter to the homeless.    To be sure, one can do this without the Church and without prayer.  But a great curiosity in our history has been that the more active the sacramental prayer life of a congregation is, generally the greater its corporeal acts of mercy and social justice. 

Like Bartimaeus by the wayside, do we undervalue ourselves?  Do we feel wholly constrained by our disabilities and failings?  Do we have a vague sense that there must be more to life than this?  

Jesus is passing by. He can heal and take away whatever weakness or handicap that holds us down.   

God’s kingdom is here, in our midst.  Things once cast down are being raised up; things once old are being made new; all things are being brought to their perfection by Jesus.  Take heart, child of shame, Jesus is calling you.

Don’t heed those who think you are a loser, unable to change, who say you are daydreaming if you think Jesus is calling you.   Don’t listen even to Jesus’ disciples when they tell you, like they told Bar-tame’, to shut up, be quiet, and don’t approach him.   

Jesus is here to heal our blindness.  We often are unable to see things clearly because we are so beaten down by experience.  Fear immobilizes us, and hardens our hearts. Jesus is here to turn our hearts of stone to flesh again, to empower and transform us from passive bystanders to his active and compassionate fellows, ministering and healing, and bringing interest and flavor to the lives of others.  He wants us to be yeast to leaven the whole loaf around us.  Salt, to give flavor to the pitiful bland fare we see offered right and left.   

Let him in.  Let worship, prayer, and the sacraments wash over you and carry you away in that great stream driven by the beauty of God’s holiness.  Say the prayers and sing the psalms.  Eat the bread, drink the wine; feed on Jesus.   Then feed others, and give them what they want and need.  Don’t just come to Church.  BE the Church.   Go forth and heal others.  Go forth and feed them.   

 In the name of Christ, Amen.