The 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 25, 2015

     Mark’s gospel which we have been reading for most of the Sundays of this year, is full of surprises. You may not think so since you’ve heard it so many times and you know how everything turns out. Where’s the surprise in that?  But the truth is that Mark’s gospel, the first, shortest, and snappiest of all four gospels, has surprises lurking everywhere.

     Take today’s story of the blind Bartimaeus.  How many times have you heard that story? Poor blind beggar, annoyed crowd, persistent blind beggar, a moment with Jesus, a cry for sight, a healing, a following. All very beautiful! But where’s the surprise?

     Well, to get the surprise you’ve got to do a little sleuthing, a little digging.  And it helps if you fit the story of the blind Bartimaeus into the larger picture of Mark’s gospel. Bartimaeus is but one character on a broad canvas.  It helps to know, for instance, that blindness is a recurring theme throughout Mark’s gospel, and that Bartimaeus is not the first blind man to be cured by Jesus in this gospel. Only two chapters earlier there is that nameless blind man from Bethsaida who got his sight back.  Mark is a clever writer: he sets these two up -- the nameless blind man and Bartimaeus -- sets them up like bookends, and he then inserts between them other stories about blindness. I’ll get to those in a minute but, first let me jog your memory a bit about that other blind man.

     It’s kind of a curious story. Jesus cured him, not all at once, but in stages. He first smeared some of his own spittle on the man’s eyes and he began to see -- but not very well. He saw large forms moving about before his eyes: people – but they looked more like trees. Only when Jesus laid his hands on him did he begin to see 20/20.

     That’s the first bookend. The first blind man.  Between him and Bartimaeus, as I mentioned, are some other stories about blindness. Different kinds of blindness. There’s the story of Peter who was anything but blind when it came to seeing that Jesus was the longed-awaited Messiah. You remember how clear Peter’s sight was: how unhesitatingly he answered Jesus’ question, “who do you say I am?”  “You are the Messiah,” he exclaimed, “You are the Christ!”  But then, almost immediately, when Jesus began to talk openly about his approaching suffering and death - well, as you know, that didn’t sit well with Peter at all. He strenuously protested against such a preposterous idea and, in doing so, Peter revealed a big blind spot.

     Peter is a little like the blind man of Bethsaida whose vision was distorted. Except that the blind man was actually better off than Peter: his vision started out cloudy and got clear; Peter’s vision was clear to begin with but then got cloudy! The blind man saw people that looked like trees; Peter saw Jesus as the Messiah, but when Jesus told him the Messiah was going to suffer, Peter wouldn’t hear of it.  And Jesus sternly rebuked him. Why?  To use Jesus’ words, “for looking at things with human eyes, not with God’s.” Peter’s heart was big but his vision wasn’t very big at all.

     So now we have stories about three blind people. But we’re not finished yet. There are still two more people to fit between those bookends, people who have trouble seeing. We met them just last Sunday in the Gospel: they are our patron, James, and his brother, John. James and John were very short-sighted. Their eyes were fixed on one thing only: power - princely thrones, one at Jesus’ right, the other at his left, in glory. Jesus had to do some corrective surgery on those two, gently opening their eyes to things they weren’t much interested in: things like humble service and selflessness and suffering. Those, he told them, and only those, were the path to glory.

     Earlier I called Mark’s gospel surprising. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s surprising that Jesus’ own disciples, the ones who ought to see the best, turn out to have big blind spots…?

     Another surprising thing is how the greatest wonders Jesus works aren’t necessarily what we might think. To give sight to a blind person is a pretty great thing, we’d all agree, but the truth is that no matter how much Jesus cared about a physical disability like blindness, he had an even greater concern about spiritual blindness: the inability or even the refusal to believe. That’s because, for Jesus, believing is seeing.  It’s a way of seeing. In fact, believing is the deepest kind of seeing. The old saying, “seeing is believing”, couldn’t be more wrong. Seeing is not believing, but believing is the most profound kind of seeing – as anyone who has come to faith after a long struggle knows only too well.

     So, my friends, Mark’s gospel may be the shortest of the four, but we shouldn’t sell it short! There is always more there than meets the eye. And perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that these stories we’ve heard so many times are really our stories. The blindness of Peter, James, and John is our blindness, too. How many times have we, like them, been trapped by the subtle pull of power or personal gain? And the cry of the blind Bartimaeus, “Lord, I want to see!” –- isn’t that our cry? Isn’t it one of the deepest longings of our heart -- to see, to understand, to make sense of so much in life that seems senseless? And the powerful, healing word of Jesus, “Do not fear. Your faith can make you well” -– that’s the word he speaks to us over and over again. If you listen closely you’ll hear him saying it to you in just a few minutes when you come forward to receive the Eucharist!

     Father Michael G. Ryan