Mark’s
gospel is full of surprises. We may not think so since we’ve heard it so
many times and we know how everything turns out. Where’s the surprise in
that? But the truth is that Mark’s gospel, the first and shortest
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, and a following. 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 - that 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 in today’s gospel 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: 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 - as you know,
that didn’t sit well with Peter at all. He vigorously protested against
such a preposterous idea and, in doing so, Peter revealed a big blind
spot. 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 always so big!
So now we have stories about three blind
people. But we’re not finished yet. There are still two more 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 have seen 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. Believing is 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
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