FINDINGS II
Proper
25- B - October 25, 2009
Mark 10: 46-52
(Jeremiah
31: 7-19; Psalm 126; Hebrews 7: 23-28)
 By Harry T. Cook
10/19/09
RUBRIC
"I can't see," can mean a lot of different things. To a
patron in a theater it can mean that a tall person or some one wearing a large
hat has taken the seat just ahead and the view of the stage or screen has been
blocked. To a person in a room in which all the lights have just gone out, it
means that he or she is temporarily blinded as the pupils adjust. To one who
cannot find his glasses when asked to read a document, it means that until he
finds them he will be unable to see enough to read. When you add "it" to the
end of "I can't see," it can mean that a person, asked to confirm or agree with
another's observation or conclusion, says "I can't see it," meaning that
whatever the other sees is not plain to him. "I turn a blind eye to it," says a
person who prefers not to admit cognizance of one thing or another.
Sight is one of the five senses that make up a human being's
sensory equipment. Being deprived of it at birth or later due to accident or
disease is a serious disability only partly compensated for, and then only by
courage and diligence.
The ability to perceive an image, a sound, a taste, a smell,
a touch is part of what it means to be fully human. Those who cannot perceive
in one or more of those ways are markedly disadvantaged, though such heroic
figures as Helen Keller and Ludwig van Beethoven found impressive and noble
ways around their disabilities.
A real difficulty is that many people with all five senses
intact even so cannot "see" or "hear" or otherwise perceive a truth that is as
close to them as their own skin. At Mark 4:12 we encounter this paradox:
"Seeing they may see and not perceive; hearing they may hear and not understand"
(see also Isaiah 6: 9-10).
It will be helpful to have all that in mind as the reading
from Mark is considered.
WORKSHOP
By 10:46, Jesus and disciples have been placed by Mark's
narrative in Jericho and are depicted as leaving it. (Matthew agrees with this
itinerary [see Matthew 20:29ff], but Luke [see Luke 18: 35-43] has the incident
happening as Jesus is approaching Jericho.) In any case, the apostolic company was
placed about 12 miles northeast of Jerusalem and drawing ever closer. On the way
out of Jericho, Mark's narrative says, there was an encounter between Jesus and
a "blind mendicant" or beggar. Mark gave him a name: "the son of Timaeus" or
Bar-Timaeus. C.S. Mann and other commentators would like us to take the naming
as a sign of the story's authenticity, that such a man as named here represents
an actual person in an actual historical event.
What is to be made of the name and the naming? Remembering
that Mark was compiling his narrative in a community of Jesus Judaism post-70
C.E., what would have been the point of giving the blind mendicant a Greek
name: Timaeus, and then to use the Semitism "bar" (son)? Is it to indicate that
he was a Gentile convert to a transitional Judaism? That may be the significance of the words given Bartimaeus
to speak: "Jesus Son of David."
The more important point is that the blind mendicant is
depicted as having known in some way about Jesus and that Jesus might have been
able to help him. Not a bad way to witness to the egalitarian impulse not only
of Jesus as he may have been (and as his ethical teachings reveal him to have
been), but of what Mark may have hoped his community would become. A blind
beggar would have been pretty far down the first century C.E. Palestinian ranks
of society. His affliction would have marked him as a sinner, and his poverty
would have further marginalized him in a vicious social cycle. That helps us
understand why Mark had Jesus ignore the "many" who told Bartimaeus to be quiet
(10:48).
Mark's Jesus was on his way when he allowed himself to be deterred.
He forthwith dealt with the person who had called after him. The upshot is
well-known. The son of Timaeus, whoever he was, received his sight because of
his audacity. If sight is synonymous with life, then perhaps the restoration of
Bartimaeus' sight represented for Mark what the "raising of Lazarus"
represented for Jesus (see John 11: 1-44). In each case, it was the last act of
a powerful agent before he confronted an establishment that feared that power.
Help is at hand with the Jeremiah reading and its promise
that in the great reunion of Yahweh's people ("from the farthest parts of the
earth") the "blind and lame" will be included, not necessarily because they are
blind and lame, but because they are human just as those who are not blind and
lame. Likewise the Hebrews reading has a line that will appeal to those who
want to connect the accessible Jesus of Mark to the incarnated Christ of (the
Gospel of) John: "He is able for all time to save those who approach God through
him (Christ)."
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
"Restraint" is the word that should immediately come to mind
as the homilist sits down to prepare his or her pulpit commentary on this
passage. It and its placement in the narrative are so rich with possibilities that
it is possible to overreach.
One point often overlooked by homileticians is that the
so-called "healing" was the result of a serendipitous conjunction of need and
resource. In Mark's imagination, Bartimaeus "saw" his one chance to change his
life and forced a meeting with one he somehow thought could effect that change.
He was audacious and believed that such a change was possible. (Sound
familiar?) Any way you look at it, the story is one of a huge, last-gasp bet on
the remote possibility of a huge transformation -- a bet that paid off.
When the story is told that way, it suggests that Bartimaeus
was the agent of his own healing. If that proposition can be considered, then a
homily on this text could explore what Mark meant by depicting Jesus as a more
or less passive player in the drama. He is said to have done nothing but have
Bartimaeus come front-and-center and then tell him that by doing so he was able
to "see." -- What was there about that encounter that was so powerful, and how
can it be replicated so that those who see but do not perceive might after all
perceive? What kind of strategies does that suggest to churches whose members
want to stop doing what they've always done and being what they've always been
so they might do and be something that will actually attract people who want
and need a Bartimaeus-like transformation of their lives?
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