Mark 10.46-52- Scream out for attention, be undignified, your need for God matters
So here we are at the end of Trinity Season, the growing season where we are putting into ourselves the fodder of gospel goodness to build ourselves up in strength, are coming to an end. For the next few weeks ahead the focus begins to change as the readings begin to anticipate the turn of the church year with the beginning of Advent. The flow of the story goes from building ourselves up, to asking: “So, what are you going to do with all this, then?” As it isn’t for laying down fat stores for winter that we have been feeding hard on the gospels this summer.
This goodness we have been taking in over Trinity is for the use of enacting that gospel hope today. This fatty goodness is for us to feed others upon. And our reading from the gospel today hints at such a thing with a cross-over where we can either read ourselves into the person of the blind man, or any neighbour, and the meaning would be the same.
Jesus went to Jericho, it says.
Jesus left Jericho, it says.
Nothing happened in Jericho! Have a look at the first 2 sentences of the reading: you will see nothing happened in Jericho!
Jericho is a big town. It is one of the most strategic places in all the Jordan valley, known as the city of Palm Trees, it was pleasant and well to do, a very nice corner of Western Palestine if ever there was and the biggest city of the region too. AND nothing happened there!! So uneventful was this trip through the town that Jesus and his disciples were at the point of leaving before anything of significance and grace was to occur.
There, outside the gate, beside the road sat Bartimaeus, and finally something gospelly enough was going to happen that mark the gospel writer, dusted off his pencil and started to scribe.
Bartimaeus was someone who was blind, but had at one time been able to see. So he may have had a trade, that he lost. He may have had family, that without income, he would have lost. He may have been someone; only, to be imperfect in the law, put you on the edge of almost everything. He was in effect, totally lost. A lost cause. Begging by the roadside.
He needed something. Something of the goodness of grace, the likes of which we have been fattening ourselves up with over the summer gospel stories. He knows he needs something, so he reaches out and dares to, not just ask, but call out, holler, make a hullabaloo, until the residents of ‘keep-everything-nice-ville’... sorry I mean Jericho were telling him to basically shut up.
And he in response shouted out even more. I want you to imagine it. The beggar beside the road screaming until his voice is hoarse wanting Jesus to stop for him. Jesus was fully intent on stopping of course, but he was watching and waiting to see how the town’s folk were going to respond.
As soon as Jesus said a thing. The towns people changed their tone as if they were pandering to the authority of a celebrity star: “Look! See, didn’t we tell you, his calling you over, we told you he would, tsk!”
There is so much in this story that we could take away as analogies to our own life. The way the town was walled and bordered, and kept ever so nice. The way that the only thing of concern to God would occur outside that nice place. The way old Barty screamed himself hoarse in such an undignified manner, and how he was told to shut up for the common good. The way that was all undermined by Jesus responding. The way in which being able to see again, is a hunger within all our own journeys of faith, if we dare to really own the fact.
So much. So much to have from this story. I could stop there and let you take one of those analogous moments home with yourself to chew upon.
....
But I am not going to stop. I have something else to say, and I want draw out one thing with an anecdote of mine that occurred late last year about how good it is that Bartimaeus chose to reach out and ask for help, because let’s face it- if you’re British, as I am, chances are the idea of asking for help is a bit, pffft, you know.
So, I was trying to get to someone’s house to do a funeral visit. They had said, call ahead and I shall guide you in. I thought, it’s no problem, I have my satnav, I can find them.
They were in one of those places where the post code and even the address won’t make any satnav know where to go. And after a good while of searching the local vicinity and learning the village there in more detail than I anticipated, I realised I still couldn’t find where I needed to go and I had to call and be guided in.
The house I needed was in a really tricky place: a drive way half like a farm track that ran parallel to the road and then butted onto to it with what effectively looked like just a gate leading to a farmers field full of winter cabbages. No wonder I had missed it! In fact I had actually ended up in what looked to be the forecourt of a farm, only the farmhouse was all boarded up and in the gathering gloom I couldn’t make out where on earth I was meant to go.
Modern life these days means that we have such things as google in our pockets, email on hand, phone, uber eats, maps and the encyclopaedia Brittany Spears so that we go through life almost not feeling a need to reach out for a helping hand for anything.
This way of thinking spills out into the story of life.
‘No, I don’t need religion, and I don’t need no god neither’ (I’ll let you figure what the double negatives in that statement actually end up meaning). We all too often feel self sufficient for everything. We don’t need God, we know where we are going.
Do we? Really?
I mean when all is said and done, do you know where you are travelling to? Or rather better put, do you know where you can get to under your own steam?
Often if I preach like this we might well be sitting here thinking of someone who might not associate with the world of faith, and consider ourselves a different kettle of fish that can listen to these things feeling a certain satisfaction that we have chosen God, we have chosen the path of faith, we’re ok.
But here’s the thing: we also have google in our pockets, access to information online and at our beck and call at any moment, so that we also are quite affected by our modern world, and Christians are sometimes even more in need of stepping back and taking a clear look at ourselves than many others.
The certainty of being able to go it alone, is endemic to our our modern world, it hits double for our country because the attitude of going it alone is endemic to our culture too.
And in our churches we might often feel frustrated that we don’t get people to come along who are new and who will stay and be part of the family. It is hard, but sometimes we have to realise that we are not on the App Store.
Sometimes we have to let people make their choices, take their paths, make mistakes even and allow them to come to realise that the information they have for themselves isn’t enough to get them to where they need to go.
We might watch with knowing eyes, thinking: “sometime soon will come the call: ‘so er, this God thing, how do you get it to work again?’”
Take the lesson from Bartimaeus. He knew when he was in need. He called out, and even against the grain of his culture, he knew when his resources were not enough and he had need of a hand to guide him to the master.
If you have resources enough, you will now know how to use them for the benefit of the gospel. If you feel you are in lack, call out, and ignore those nay-sayers. Get yourself noticed, you deserve the master’s compassion.
