Mark 10:46-52
Jesus’ frequent words to those He healed, “Your faith has made you well,” is very curious. We might expect him to attribute it to God which certainly ultimately it is.
But that's not the thought Jesus wants the person to leave with. He is teaching them and us that each one of us has a part to play by participating with God's work to reshape the world so that it might more clearly reflect the Kingdom of God.
Each of us has an innate idea of what this Kingdom of God is to look like by what we feel is absent, by what is wrong or off with the world and in our own lives. Thus, Jesus’ statement to Bartimaeus was an affirmation of his initiative, of his taking a chance to seek the truth. Becausesight, while it is a literal need and a literal gift, ultimately, for the Gospel, it is a metaphor for truth, for seeing things as they are.
Mary Ann Tolbert, in Sowing the Gospel: Mark's World in Literary-Historical Perspective, makes a fascinating observation about Bartimaeus. He is one of the very few people whose name we actually learn that Jesus healed. Some suggest this means that he is clearly an historical person, but Dr. Tolbert suggests the name itself makes a grand statement. It is an unusual Semitic-Greek hybrid the literal translation is the “son of Timaeus.” And for those who remember their Philosophy 101 course, Plato’s cosmological and theological treatise involving sight as the foundation of knowledge is entitled Timaeus!
So even though Bar-Timaeus cannot see, he has wisdom that the disciples, who can see, fail to grasp what is right before them. And so, Bartimaeus is given two gifts: one, eyes that now function, but even more, the ability to see and identify the presence of God.
God often uses people not at the center of learning, nor the center of power, nor the center of religion. God enlightens the minds of those on the margins to bring sight to the rest of us.
This is the great gift of the Scots, who ultimately brought us the gift of this Presbyterian Church. We are here today because, like Bartimaeus, their eyes were opened. They saw fundamental truths of a God-shaped kingdom as described in scripture—truths that shattered the tyrannical power of the church and the state that told them the King ruled by absolute divine right and that the church, rather than God, determined their eternal fate.
And that truth is still fundamental to our society today: all are equal before God. And so, like Bartimaeus, we each have the ability
—to go to God in prayer,
—to seek God's forgiveness.
We, each of us, have the right
—to read scripture,
—to determine who has power and authority over us through our voting,
—to exercise the conscience that God gave us.
And nobody—
—not the government,
—not the church,
—not the Pope,
—not your pastor,
—not your parents—
has the right to tell your conscience what it should or should not do!
And so, upon discovering this, Scottish philosophy proclaimed that the people have a God-given right to rise up against unjust rulers. And ultimately, that is because there is no priestly class; there is no preferred status in the eyes of God. This was a radical obliteration of the hierarchies (at least notionally, if sadly not in its practice), that God plays no favorites.
And so, Presbyterians fervently and tenaciously seek the truth: the truth about ourselves, the truth about our world. And we read that through the lens of scripture, which truly can bring sight to those blinded to their God-given rights.
To do this, the Bible needs to be put in the hands of people. And it was people like Patrick Hamilton, the first Scottish martyr of the Reformation, who lost his life for teaching the Bible to the people. But the need to continually share with people their infinite worth and value in the eyes of God did not end with the Reformation.
Another person of Scottish descent, of the Maxwell Clan, centuries later went to a tiny town in the jungles of Brazil, where the state and the church still held the grip of power over the people. So, this man jumped on a horse named Habbakuckie and rode through the jungles of Brazil to towns like Xanxerê. He and his wife empowered them by putting the Bible in the hands of everyday people and letting them gain dignity and respect. And today, that church they started is stronger than it has ever been.
And if there’s anything that I remember about my father, it’s that he carried this love and respect for people from every walk of life. He so radically believed in the principle that everyone is a blessed child of God.
The lesson he taught me is not one that he so much spoke. It was much more powerful than words, and it was on the golf course.
Golf sounds like a hobby for the more well-to-do, and in many ways, it is—I’ll grant you that—but not for my father. His favorite playing partners were prison guards from Trenton State Maximum Security Prison, Keith and Brah. Brah, who never had a golf lesson, played cross-handed, and a little flick of his wrist would send the ball 300 yards down the fairway. To this day, I don't know how my father ever met these two guys (maybe there was a stint in prison that I never learned about).
But perhaps even more to the point, it was the way my father spoke to the people who cut the grass or the man you paid the ticket to behind the counter. There were no privileged people to my father; he offered his friendship and goodwill to anybody he met—and to me.
This is what the Scots have given us as a society: a dogged, rabid belief in the equality of all people. And this is the center and heart of Jesus’ message: everyone has a place at the table.
This is our calling as a church—to shine the light of this truth in our community and beyond. We know that Brick is not the font of all truth, but I do think that God has given us a vision to bring sight to the world.
By being a convener—to convene voices to engage in important topics of our time; to hopefully, God willing, set a pattern for our town and country in a time of polarization, in a time of complete failure to listen, in a time to realize that others who don’t think like us also have a measure of God’s wisdom within them. So, we convene wise voices and leaders in areas of science, theology, government, nonprofit work, and more to address the critical problems of our society, so that everyone will know that they are a precious child of God.
Music has an incredible power to break through our rationalizations, to take what we know in our head straight down into our soul. It has an incredible power to break through even when our minds are no longer what they used to be.
When my father’s dementia had advanced to the place that he could no longer live on his own, he came for a time to live with Wendy, Matthew, Liz, Liam, and me. Listening to music helped bring my father back to his truer self. There was one particular piece that lit up his spirit more than any other: Alle menschen werden Brüder from the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It is a crescendo of glorious music with a chorus, as far as I’m concerned, like no other, and it has given the tune to a favorite hymn, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.”
So, we would fire up the CD, and he would sing along in the German, because he knew seven languages, even though he barely knew my name at the time.
“That’s it! That’s it! The greatest piece of music ever made.”
“Pops, what’s it mean?”
“All are brothers! All are one!”
He meant it when he said it. He meant it more than anything he ever said in his life.
May each of us, like Bartimaeus, have our eyes opened by Christ’s healing presence, so that we may see the truth as we gaze into the eyes of everyone—that they are my brother, that they are our sister, that they are our sibling. Amen.
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