Readings:
Job 42.1-6, 10-17; Ps 34.1-8; Heb 7.21-28; Mark 10.46-52
May I speak in the name of God, always creating redeeming and sanctifying. Amen.
Please be comfortable.
There are a number of parallels within Mark for this story:
One is the parallel of the healing of a blind man in chapter 8. In this story the people brought Jesus to the man, rather than try to stop him. The two stories bookend the chapters we’ve just been working through over the past few weeks where we learned what it takes to follow Christ (everything); the way in which we are to receive the kingdom of God (dependent and vulnerable like a child); and where Jesus predicts his death again and the disciples just don’t get it. They remain blind.
Being shushed when crying out for Jesus. Parallels with the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman where the disciples were shushing her and then asked Jesus to shut her up. But she just cries out all the more.
Leaving one’s former life. In this story, Bartimaeus “casts off his cloak” as a symbol of leaving behind his life. A few weeks ago, we heard of the rich young man who went away grieving because he’d been asked to sell his possessions and follow Jesus, to “cast of his cloak” as it were. We don’t know how his story ends.
And finally, the question Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” We heard Jesus ask this last week after James and John told him they want him to do whatever they as of him. “What do you want me to do for you?” James and John ask for positions of power. Bartimaeus (the Son of Honour) asks, “Let me see again.”
Rev’d Dr Michael Trainor is a Catholic priest and theologian from Adelaide (not Melbourne or Sydney as I guessed this morning). He believes that Timaeus was known to the Markan community, and that Bartimaeus once was a member of the house-church and broke ranks, possibly putting the community in danger. Bartimaeus is on the side of the road… he was once on The Way, but now he sits beside it. How would you welcome a betrayer?
Bartimaeus protests. Let’s thinks about protest for a minute.
How do we feel about it?
What difference does it make when it’s just one person protesting, as opposed to tens, or hundreds, or thousands?
What difference does it make when the protest interrupts? Your work? The traffic? An event? The king?
Senator Lidia Thorpe – stay with me – had requested an audience with King Charles which was refused. I wonder what other opportunity she would ever have to speak to the King?
Imagine the scene: if you have seen the footage, recall that footage to mind and I want you to imagine the scene that the monarch had said, “Call her to me.”
She approaches… “What do you want me to do for you?”
In Bartimaeus’s story the first miracle was the conversion of the crowd. The went from telling him to be quiet, to “Cheer up! He is calling you,” and facilitating his access to Jesus. (I wonder whether the crowd around King Charles would have been converted?)
When people protest, when they call out from the side of the road (or from the midst of us), are we willing to engage?
Imagine you are King Charles in this story… put yourself on that stage.
How are you feeling?
How would you respond?
Imagine you are Jesus in this story… either imagine Jesus/you on the stage, or Jesus/you on the roadside…
How are you feeling?
How would you respond?
People protest when they’ve not had their needs met and when they have not been heard. If we take Michael Trainor’s commentary and understand that Bartimaeus was once part of the community, may have put them in danger, and now wants to come home, it sounds likely that the community would have been telling him to be quiet because they don’t want him back!
But he doesn’t stay quiet, he calls out even louder.
Silencing people has never made the problems go away, they simply go underground to reemerge later with more intensity.
Jesus listened.
Jesus, our king, is listening… to you, to me, to Bartimaeus, to Lidia Thorpe.
Can we listen, then cast off our cloaks, and walk The Way?
Amen.