Jesus is Calling (Proper 25B)

“Jesus is Calling”

25 October 2015

Proper 25B

Homily preached by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

at Trinity Episcopal Parish

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

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

Jericho is an oasis set in a bone dry valley almost a thousand feet below sea level.  The air is oppressive:  hot and heavy, even when you sit beside a small intermittent stream in the shade.  There you see an ancient and immense sycamore fig tree, said to be where Zaccheus climbed to see Jesus.  In the distance, you see what is called the Mount of Temptation, said to be where the Devil confronted Jesus during his forty day fast.  And you see the ancient market place, now crowded with vendors of all sorts of modern goods, where the blind Beggar Bartimaeus accosted Jesus, the story told in today’s Gospel. 

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.

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.   Maybe by using it he will get Jesus’ attention. 

The disciples 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.” 

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 are as surprised as Bar-tame’.

Hearing their encouragement, he casts off his cloak and goes to Jesus.   The beggar’s tattered and filthy cloak was a chief way of appealing for aid, kind of like a cardboard sign saying “anything you can give helps.”  

Bar-tame’ throws off his cloak, and with it his sole means of support, the little bit of security he might feel he has, all to meet Jesus.    But he also casts away all his assumptions about himself, his belief that he really is a loser, all the dysfunctions and fears his disability has wrought.

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.

 

“Take heart—Jesus is calling you.”  This is the origin of a favorite evangelical hymn: 

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.
Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Sung as an altar call to people in a congregation who feel weighed down and trapped by their shortcomings and deliberate wrongdoings, the hymn addresses everyone’s need to feel pardon.  But by reducing the call of Jesus to one of pardon alone it misses a lot of the power of the story of Bartimaeus.    Jesus is calling to fix whatever is wrong with us.  And he is doing so by calling us to follow him.  The only right response is to follow him, and throw off anything that might get in the way of doing that.  

When we encounter Jesus, he transforms us.  He calls us to new ways of living, of feeling, or being.  If we haven’t been transformed, we just have not encountered him.  Whether sudden or gradual, transformation is a sign of having met Jesus.   

It’s not about how we feel, whether we think we’ve been changed, or can give a date of when it supposedly happened, or can work up a psychological state that some call “belief.”  Though it’s about real risk—it demands that we throw off our begging cloaks, for starters—it’s usually not all that dramatic.  Much of the transformation happens gradually as we learn to stop our old ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves and others, and bit by bit learn the Way Jesus calls us to.  It happens as we slowly earn to forget our old name of loser and child-of-shame and realize our true name has always been child of honor. 

Today, we usually encounter Jesus in his body, the Church.   We encounter him in the Church’s sacraments, teaching, worship and prayer.  Transformation is what the Church is all about.  If we are not being changed by our participation in Church, something is wrong.

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

“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 sacraments offered in the Church give 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 accept your unacceptable lot.

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.