West Camel Methodist Church, Last Sunday after Trinity (Proper 25), 25/10/2015
‘My teacher, let me see again.’
‘Go; your faith has made you well.’
We often hear the expression, seeing is believing. It’s something we all understand, but we people of faith resist it. Seeing is believing tends to be used to support a scientific, materialistic vision of life, in which the only things which are real to us are those things which are visible, or quantifiable, or provable. And it tends to exclude those vast areas of human experience which may be invisible but are just as real to us - the emotional, the mental, the spiritual.
Seeing is believing? The story of Jesus’ encounter with Bartimaeus turns that expression on its head and shows us another way. For Bartimaeus teaches us that believing is seeing.
Believing is seeing. Viewing life through the eyes of faith opens out a very different perspective.
Believing is seeing. The believer is one whose eyes are opened to the world in a whole new way.
Believing is seeing. You don’t even need the use of your eyes to know this.
For the blind beggar Bartimaeus, believing was seeing.
Even before the two men met, by faith, Bartimaeus ‘saw’ that Jesus would have mercy on him, he believed that Jesus would restore his vision, he believed he would be healed. He saw his future life in a whole new way.
As we contemplate this gospel story we appreciate that Bartimaeus wouldn’t have simply turned up out of the blue to encounter Jesus for the first time that day. Given what we know from Mark’s gospel accounts about the behaviour of the crowds who followed Jesus around, spreading the news of his healings and his teachings about the kingdom of God, we can be fairly certain that - as one of the crowd - Bartimaeus would have known a great deal about Jesus, by the time the teacher and his disciples came to Jericho.
Jericho was a tourist spot, the last pilgrimage stop before Jerusalem. And so as a beggar at the gate of a city on the pilgrimage trail, Bartimaeus would have, every day, heard the pilgrims talking about Jesus’ ministry, he would have often joined in their debates about Jesus’ identity, he would have regularly wondered out loud - with them all - whether Jesus’ authority to teach and heal came from God. Street people like Bartimaeus always have their ears to the ground, their deep insights are forged through a combination of hard experience and long conversations with all sorts of people. Bartimaeus may not have had the sense of sight that most others had, but his faith in Jesus was by no means blind faith.
We can imagine Bartimaeus’ faith being sparked into life by the excitement of hearing about Jesus’ explanations of the kingdom of God, the new way of life which Jesus was bringing into the world. We can perceive how Bartimaeus’ faith had grown in his heart as he realised just what good news the kingdom of God was to him.
We can understand how, believing in Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God, Bartimaeus had come to see himself differently. Others, quick to condemn him in his suffering, dubbed him ‘son of the unclean’. Unclean, untouchable, defiled - that’s how they saw him. But Bartimaeus embraced Jesus’ teaching where he said that what defiled a person was not their outward appearance but what came out of their hearts. [1] Believing this teaching, Bartimaeus could now see himself as undefiled, every bit as valued and loved by God as the next person.
Banished to the gate of the city - left outside, the lowest of the low - Bartimaeus came to understand the significance of Jesus’ teaching that in the kingdom of God, the ones considered first in their society would be last, and the ones considered last would be first [2]. Believing this teaching, Bartimaeus could now see himself as in line for greatness in this kingdom of God which had come into the world with Jesus, here and now.
The good news of Jesus never sounded better than to people like Bartimaeus - and at that Jericho gate that day, through the eyes of his heart, the blind beggar saw this.
Believing the kingdom of God had come, Bartimaeus now saw life differently. Society would keep him in his place - with the other beggars at Jericho. With just a cloak to warm his back at night and to spread out on the ground to collect the pennies the pilgrims might toss him in the day. But when Jesus called him, Bartimaeus threw off his cloak, sprang up and went to him. Any pennies he had collected rolled away into the dust. Even before he was given his sight Bartimaeus threw away all he had because - through all that he had heard about the healing and liberating kingdom of God - Bartimaeus envisaged that Jesus would transform him.
And that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well’. As his eyes opened Bartimaeus saw a different world, his view of himself, of God, of life, removed from all restrictions and bathed in the light of Christ.
Imagine if Bartimaeus had held to the implication in the view that ‘seeing is believing’ - that the way things appear are the way they must remain. Accept your status as a poor outcast, believing that God has put you there. Don’t fight it. Don’t allow yourself to dream of a different way. But no, Bartimaeus believed Jesus when he said, ‘The last will be first’. It gave him a vision of a different future for himself. And he followed towards that light.
By contrast to Bartimaeus, Mark’s gospel is full of blind men; that is, people whose eyes can see but whose inner vision is constrained by a lack of belief - or rather, by belief in something other than Jesus’ kingdom values.
For instance, the two encounters of Jesus which Mark places immediately prior to the account of his meeting Bartimaeus. First, an encounter with James and John, who wanted to sit at either side of Jesus in his glory. James and John held the same belief that most other people had, that their well-being in life (and even in death) depended on their social status.
Believing that they needed to be first, James and John saw Jesus - not primarily as a teacher of the kingdom, not as a prophet of God’s new order, not as a saviour - but most crucially as one who carried the power to invest them with the social status they craved. Jesus tried to open the eyes of James and John to see that he was bringing in a whole new way of relating, where ‘whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all’. [3]
The second encounter which illustrates this theme of blindness, was Jesus meeting the rich man who wanted assurance of his salvation. This rich man held the belief that has always been so seductive to religious people, that their eternal well-being depended solely on their following a narrowly defined set of rules, whilst carrying on endlessly consuming and storing up personal wealth just like the next person. The rich man must have begun to question this belief he had, perhaps feeling the tension between following moral commandments whilst feathering his own nest, because he came to ask Jesus about it. Jesus tried to open the eyes of this rich man to see that in his kingdom he was bringing in a whole new way of wealth creation, where one’s riches are gained through giving away. [4]
Believing is seeing. What we believe influences how we perceive the world. It’s important that we understand how this works.
Do we believe - as the pious people of Jericho believed - that people in our society in similar positions to Bartimaeus have only themselves to blame for their poverty? Believing this, then, do we perceive that we can treat them as untouchables, and leave them to sort out their problems alone, without our care or intervention?
Or do we believe - as Bartimaeus himself came to believe - the good news that ‘Blessed are the poor… for theirs is the kingdom of God’? [5] And so perceive that we should reach out to them, practically, financially, engage with their issues politically, to show them that they are indeed in God’s care and embrace?
In the kingdom of God our eyes are opened to a different view - not just of ourselves and of God, but of others also. Believing Jesus’ kingdom values means seeing others differently. So like James and John coming to see others not as pawns in their power games, as means to their self-promotion, but as people to be served, for the betterment of all. And like the rich man coming to see others not as people to tax and trade with, for personal gain, but as people to exercise a little caring restraint towards, as a fellowship to share possessions with, on the way towards living into eternal values.
Maybe even Bartimaeus could not foresee what Jesus would do with him, once healed with his sight restored. ‘Immediately he regained his sight,’ writes Mark,‘and followed him on the way.’ As Jesus left the last pilgrimage stop before Jerusalem and headed into the city for the final campaign of his world-changing mission, the one he called to his side to walk with him was not a man of wealth and influence; he was not one of the disciples aspiring to share the glory of their Lord. It was this ‘son of the unclean’.
Jesus could make no greater or clearer a statement to his detractors than what they saw that day - that the dawning of the kingdom of God was coming not in fire and armour and great works of power, it wasn’t even coming in a procession of religious enthusiasts, singing the hymns and carrying the symbols of their faith. No, at the gate of Jericho that day, for all to see, the kingdom of God was coming in a ragged pilgrimage procession of a teacher and an outcast, making their way towards the city to challenge all the social, economic, and political powers of the day, in love and healing. The last had become first, for all to see.
One last word on this passage of Mark’s gospel which is so pregnant with meaning and application for our day and time. In believing, Bartimaeus also saw Jesus differently. His belief in Jesus was absolutely radical - for Bartimaeus was the only person in the gospel of Mark to call Jesus the ‘Son of David’. The blind man was unique in proclaiming Jesus as a king in Israel’s messianic line. All those disciples, those scribes and pharisees and learned folk in the crowds couldn’t see it. But the blind man could.
The crowds who heard Bartimaeus call Jesus the ‘Son of David’ tried to censor him, to shut him up. To their ears he was uttering something close to a heresy, certainly something very explosive in that time and place. Jesus then called Bartimaeus - not to address the bold statement which the blind man had made, but to affirm his faith and to restore his sight. Jesus called the blind man, and didn’t reject what Bartimaeus had called him - but he clearly distanced himself from it, deflecting attention back to the blind man himself.
Jesus’ reluctance to admit his Godly nature - his determination to keep the ‘Messianic secret’ (as some call it) - is a theme which runs throughout Mark’s gospel, and it has exercised many minds over the centuries. Too little time here to survey every perspective which has been offered about the subject. But just one small suggestion from me for now: that maybe Jesus wanted to keep his Messianic status a secret at that time to allow space for his teaching about the kingdom of God to grow, unimpaired by false assumptions about his divine status.
Jesus seemed to want to show that the kingdom of God had come, not with great signs and wonders in the heavenly realms, but in a small act of healing at the city gate.
Jesus seemed to want to offer the perspective that the kingdom of God was shown, not through displays of divine power of the sort which so motivated the desires of James and John, but through teachings about servanthood backed up by acts of grace and kindness.
Jesus seemed to want to demonstrate that the kingdom of God was not a set of spiritualised promises from a divine body about a heavenly afterlife, but that it meant the activity of God in the here-and-now, activity which privileged the poorest in society, challenging other people’s perspectives towards them, activity which thus transformed human relationships economically, politically, physically.
Believing these things is seeing the Messiah in action. Strange, but - going back to my very opening remarks in this sermon - this roots the kingdom of God in our material, physical life. If not always visible, or quantifiable, or provable, it is nevertheless demonstrable - that when believers let the ways of Jesus influence the way we act out towards others, and particularly those at the roadside of life, then it becomes clear for all to see that ‘the kingdom of God is among us’.
Notes
A fairly substantial rewrite of Bartimaeus: Believing is seeing, preached in Devon in 2012. With a grateful nod towards Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus, p.281ff
[1] Mark 7.15
[2] Mark 10.31
[3] Mark 10.35-45
[4] Mark 10.17-27
[5] Matthew 5.3, Luke 6.20
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