Open Your Mouth to See

Text:  Mark 10: 46-52

Today’s Gospel reading may seem to be a story about a man receiving his sight. 

We might come to realize it’s also a story about a man using his voice.   

Let’s begin by using our powers of observation to place the story of Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, in the context of Mark’s entire Gospel.  Unfortunately, reading just a few verses from Mark each Sunday as we progress through this Gospel over many months can prevent us from observing the overall sweep of a well-crafted work of literature. Like Jesus’s clueless disciples, we might miss the point.  So let’s spend a moment seeing how the various parts of the larger narrative have been intentionally arranged by the writer of Mark.  

It’s helpful to know, for instance, that key ideas in scripture are sometimes highlighted by placing them in between parallel points.  Different cultures have different ways of arranging and underscoring main ideas in writings.  In modern Western writings, for instance, the main idea is usually presented first. Journalists put the most important point in an article’s first sentence, and the least important details at the end of the article with other details in between in descending order of importance. Essayists usually start paragraphs with topic sentences that signal the main idea of that paragraph and place supporting points after.  But other cultures employ others conventions to help the reader follow the main ideas. 

For instance, Biblical writers often used what is called a chiastic structure.  Chi is the Greek letter that looks like our letter X.  A careful writer from Jesus’s world might organize a story by placing the central idea in the center of a story.  In a sense, X does mark the spot, or highlight the point, in some writings. On either side of a core statement would be parallel ideas that frame that main idea.  And sometimes there would be, surrounding those two parallel statements, two other pairs of ideas that offer another level of framing, creating sometimes several layers of frames, all constructed to point the reader to the main idea. This literary device was common in the ancient world.  The Iliad and the Odyssey, for instance, as well as Hebrew and New Testament scriptures, sometimes used chiastic structure. 

I mention this literary device because students of the Bible can see what it’s saying more clearly when we understand these devices.  I mention this particular technique because over the last few months you and I have journeyed halfway through the book of Mark to its center, so we should expect something very important here.  Chapters 8-10 are considered to be the core of Mark. Chapter 8, the literal center of this 16-chapter Gospel, includes the first of two accounts of Jesus healing a blind man.  In between these two healings, Jesus predicts he will soon suffer, be rejected, killed, and raised from the dead.  Over the next 2 chapters, Jesus makes this passion prediction a total of three times, the last prediction occurring in last Sunday’s passage when Jesus tells James and John, fighting over who’s his right hand man, that he will soon face suffering and death.  Though Jesus continues to talk about serving others and suffering, James and John continue dreaming of their privileged roles in his coming kingdom they’ve misunderstood.   

Today’s passage from Mark near the end of chapter 10 bookends this set of three passion predictions with a second story of the healing of another blind man, Bartimaeus. This event occurs just before Jesus enters Jerusalem, the seat of power where Jesus will indeed, as he predicted, draw the anger of the powers that be.  The stories of Jesus healing two blind men—one in Bethsaida and one in Jericho near Jerusalem—frame the heart of Mark’s Gospel.  (See last page of bulletin.)  If we realize how the original readers or hearers of Mark would have noticed the arrangement of this story, we can better see the writer’s main point, which is the point that the disciples did not see, the point the original readers surely did see.

Mark’s thesis, made most explicit in the meat sandwiched between the two stories of blind men, is this: Jesus’s way was one of service and, when necessary, suffering, not of self-advancement. Ironically, in this final story of healing and teaching just before Jesus enters Jerusalem to challenge the political and religious establishmen, blind beggar Bartimaeus sees Jesus’s purpose more clearly than the disciples can. 

And we, as readers of this carefully constructed story, have the chance to see, with Bartimaeus, that the Jesus Way is not (as James and John thought) about gaining power. Nor is the Jesus Way about acquiring wealth (which the rich young ruler would not give up). Instead, the Jesus Way is a life of serving and being willing to give up one’s life for others.  The Jesus Way is not a militant march against Rome but an even more daring if peaceful march into Jerusalem.  It’s not about jockeying for status, as blind disciples James and John were doing according to last Sunday’s reading.  Jesus’s way is about risking everything to raise a hue and cry on behalf of folks like Bartimaeus. That way takes us to the cross, where Jesus will at last cry, “It is finished.”

So this is a story not only about restored sight but also about a raised voice.  Bartimaeus may be blind, but he’s not mute. This is a tale that urges us to speak up, especially when the crowds would try to silence an inconvenient or unpopular voice. 

Look at verses 47 and 48 again. Bartimaeus, a blind beggar stationed along the road leading out of Jericho, learns that the commotion he’s hearing comes from a crowd jostling to see Jesus.  Desperate for healing, he shouts, “Have mercy on me, Jesus!”  But the crowd tries to silence him.  The text says, “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet.” Think about the desperate ones in our culture:  the family who has lost their home and is living on the streets; the single mother trying to raise her children in a violent neighborhood with substandard schools; the taunted teenager who knows he’s gay and believes, as his church has taught him, that he’s going to hell.  Think about the way culture tries to silence them.  But some in our world do dare to raise their voices.  Think about 14-year-old Malala of Pakistan who dared to shout, in effect: “Have mercy on me and on other girls who deserve an education!” Even the Taliban’s bullets did not silence her.  Blind beggars and young girls speak up.  We can help amplify their voices. And the powers that terrorize then lose a little bit of their control.  We as individuals and as a congregation are challenged by the Gospel to speak up on behalf of “the least of these.”

Notice that to speak up, we must be able to name what we need.  Common both to today’s story and last Sunday’s Gospel narrative is a question posed by Jesus.  To James and John, who brashly tell Jesus they want him to do whatever they ask, Jesus responds, “What is it you want me to do for you?”  Jesus uses those identical words in today’s response to Bartimaeus’s cry for mercy: “What is it you want me to do for you?”

In our own individual journeys, this seemingly simple question may be key to our ongoing spiritual growth.  What is it exactly that you want Jesus to do for you?  Answering this question is not as easy we might assume.  But the Gospel of Mark suggests that our very salvation may hinge on our ability to name our need. Jesus does not ask for our bucket list.  Or our Christmas list.  He’s not asking for your personal mission statement or your 5-year plan or your 10-year goals.  He’s not asking what you think will make your life a little easier or will distract you from your real needs or numb your from real pain.  What is your deep down need?  Do you even know? If you think you know, are you certain?

James and John said what they needed was to be at Jesus’s side.  What they really meant was that they wanted status, to be first.  But what being beside Jesus turned out to mean—was to be crucified with him, and indeed two men were crucified with Jesus, one on the right side and one on the left, but they were two thieves. All the disciples by then had fled in fear. What it means to stand with Jesus is perhaps to die . . . die to the false self that needs status or wealth or external means of defining the self or ways of avoiding the tough stuff.

In contrast to the disciples, Bartimaeus sees what he needs.  He needs to see.  In contrast with the rich man who refused to sell all his possessions and give his wealth to the poor, beggar Bartimaeus tosses aside his cloak, his only possession, and follows Jesus.  As the original hearers of Mark understood, Bartimaeus would be following Jesus to his death and not his coronation. Bartimaeus sees with a clarity the disciples lack.  He sees with the eyes of faith that allow him to discard his last earthly possession, the beggar’s cloak, to follow Jesus into dangerous territory.  Mark presents blind beggar Bart as the true disciple.  He knew what he needed: the ability to see a way toward the really real.  

The sons of Zebedee ask Jesus for status.
The son of Timaeus asks Jesus for sight.

And so, my friends, I encourage you to shout, shriek, call, cry out, and scream.  But say what you need.  Which means know what you need.

About this time every year my wonderful mother-in-law starts her Christmas shopping by asking me for gift ideas for my family and for myself.  I want to help make her Christmas shopping easier.  But it’s hard to come up with ideas for my husband and daughter and son-in-law.  Even harder to suggest something for myself.  Harder still when someone’s asking us about a life list rather than a gift list.

What do I really want?  There may be many things on your secret wish list/envy list:  Wealth.  Talent.  Recognition.  Beauty. Popularity. Ease.  Even noble desires.

But what is it we really need?  Underneath those desires are the true needs of our hearts and of our world.

Some of us think we know what we need, but we’ve not been honest with ourselves.  We think that the answer is the right job, the right relationship, the perfect home, the end to emotional or physical pain.   But will any of that put us, like blind Bartimaeus, on the path to God? What is it that Jesus might be able to give to us?

Jesus never coerced a single person he met.  Always it was up to the rich young ruler or the clueless disciples or the blind man to name the need—which in itself was saving.  

What is it that we need to shed like a cloak that we think is our only protection but really is no longer essential if we’re to follow the path of service and love?  What keeps us from speaking out on behalf of others or keeps us from naming our own needs before God?  To continue in the spiritual journey, we must open our mouths to name these social and spiritual needs.  

Today’s Gospel reading may seem to be a story about a man receiving his sight.

Maybe by now we see it’s also a story about a man using his voice.   

And it’s a story for us about finding and using our voices to cry out for justice for others and name the needs in our own lives.

“What is it you want me to do for you?” we can almost hear Jesus asking us, through this story.  Our challenge is to find a way to answer that question. Then, like Bartimaeus who at last can see, we, too, can follow Jesus on his way.  We can follow Jesus to the cross where a false self dies and a new and truer self is born.

PRAYER:   Week after week, O God, we name needs.  We pray for health and plead for friends.  And that is good and right to do.  But how often do we pray for the insight to know what is our deepest need?  In this stillness, we simply speak in our hearts to you of the need to encounter you, Divine Guide, on the way to our destinations of love and service. Amen.