October 25, 2015

Susan Adams

Ordinary Sunday 30     Mark 10:46-52

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

So, what do you feel when you hear this story?

Do experience a sense of euphoria – yeah! miracles happen, Jesus can fix physical imperfections, Jesus can fix me!

Or do you experience despair – what am I doing wrong, Jesus hasn't fixed me!

Or do you experience a sense of emptiness, sadness even – nothing like that can possibly happen, ever, miracles don't actually happen.

Well, I thought I would 'bring' Jesus to church today, so to speak, to see if he could shed some light on the matter – help us to see what is this story might be about.

I know it is a bit unusual to bring Jesus into church, and in fact it is a bit risky. If we could hear Jesus speak about this 'incident report' we might not recognise what he says as being him at all! I'm a bit nervous because we are not always welcoming to people we do not know well, and, we actually don't know Jesus very well. And, we are often cautious about people who turn out to be different from what we expect – the Jesus of history is likely very different from the Jesus of the Church's stories about him.

You know I am not actually going to bring a physical man called Jesus to church, but I do want to consider the story we have just heard from the perspective of an earthy human Jesus – someone with 'wisdom' to share about life and community – rather than from the perspective of the more 'traditionally church' 'risen Christ Jesus', the divine one who can 'change the course of nature'.

It seems to me that in church we most readily abandon the man Jesus on the Golgotha hillside and look back at the 30 or so years of his life from a place of 'virtual reality'. It is as if 'Christ' is the avatar we 'play' with, that we have built on the historic person of Jesus. We have become such good 'gamers' in the virtual story that we find it very hard to identify the difference between history and metaphor, the individual and the collective, miracles and healing, even between Jesus and 'the Christ'. And, it is the 'Christ' that has come to dominate our interpretative perspectives when we hear the stories drawn from Jesus life such as this one about Bartimaeus. This is not surprising really, thanks to Paul, the Christ obsessed convert and spin doctor, who offered the hearers of his own day (and those of us who followed) an emphasis on protest against structural injustice, redistribution of wealth, the possibility of peace, the celebration of diversity...

We owe Paul a heap of thanks, because it was him and his obsession that was instrumental in creating the myths that embrace the man Jesus – those big stories about life, and healing: creation and salvation – that still have the power to change lives today (and which are at the heart of 'church at its best).

So let's join the story where blind Bartimaeus is sitting on his cloak at the Jericho gate midst a crowd and meets Jesus. Scholars say there is no evidence of historicity in this story but that doesn't matter because it is pointing us toward a significant 'truth'; the kernel of the myth that surrounds Jesus and makes claims he can change lives.

To help us understand the 'truth' contained in what is often discussed as a 'miracle story' let us note a few interesting features of the story:

• Bartimaeus – is a curious name meaning 'son of poverty'

• Bartimaeus asks to 'see again'

• The Greek translates literally as "he looked up" rather than 'received his sight'

• The crowd was trying to double his disability by making him mute.

• Jesus tells Bartimaeus to 'go' not to 'follow'

This story told by Mark, with all its interesting allusions, comes at the end of a long journey through towns and villages where Jesus has, once more, been teaching crowds as well as his disciples.

Sometimes interpreters locate it in the genre of allegory rather than 'miracle' story. Then we assign ourselves places within the story amongst the many allegorical features so we can ponder our behaviour.

This is not un-useful, but what if we take another tack?

What if we consider it as a parable, a piece of wisdom teaching from Jesus such as we are invited to do by contemporary 'Jesus scholars' (Borg, Galston).

Then we come to Jericho, where we find Bartimaeus yelling at Jesus. Jesus says to him 'what do you want from me now?' or words to that effect. "Let me see again" Bartimaeus replies. The earthy, human Jesus replies to his apparent loss of vision with "Go, you know all you need to know: the vision you want to rediscover is out there amongst the people".

As with all good teachers, Jesus tells Bartimaeus to go, to get on with his own stuff. He – Jesus – doesn't want just followers and perpetual students hanging around, he wants people with vision of what can be done to make the world a better place and the courage to act on that vision.

It seems to me, many of us need to rediscover our vision of a more kind and generous world, to recapture our courage to get on with the work of building relationships, giving a voice to those we all o frequently silence, and generally to start living in ways that demonstrate we believe the world can be a better place.

'Go', says Jesus the wisdom teacher 'you know what needs to be done – get on with it! He might say to us today "Stop being perpetual students who hang about attending this lecture and that, this workshop and that, accumulating more and more information. Rather go and ensure the structures of society are not racist or promoting racial discrimination, insist on a fair distribution the wealth we have, do all you can to support efforts to manage climate change"...

I want to say – if you need a miracle, and we all need one from time to time, then let it be this:

 Jesus, the wisdom teacher, encouraged his followers, ordinary people, to have faith

• that ordinary people (like us) have enough insight into our own social situations to know what needs to be done to make them places of respect, compassion and wellbeing

• that we can find enough courage to bring necessary change about, if we support each other rather than silence each other

• that the vision of a creative future is to be found in the diversity of our community as we learn to live and work together

• that in all these ways we see the 'face of God'