Gracious God open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in Jesus name. Amen.
Have mercy on me.
On the side of the road outside of Jericho is Bartimaeus, son of Timeaus. He is a blind beggar. He has heard of Jesus, the miracles he has done. And now as this crowd goes in front of him, he hears that Jesus is among them. "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me."
Although blind, Bartimaeus understands who it is that is before him.
Many ordered him to be quiet, to shut up, to stop bothering Jesus. But he would not give up, he had hope... "Son of David, have mercy on me!"
Many didn’t want to have such a commotion. They couldn’t look beyond the privilege they had walking with Jesus. The forgotten Bartimaeus on the side of the road.
I wonder who we forget about on the side of our roads?
“A nobody in the world’s eyes, a sidelined person, a blind beggar, becomes the hero of faith. Jesus did not sideline people. Jesus responded to what were seen as the ‘hopeless cases’ of his day.” (William Loader)
Call him here says Jesus. When Bartimeaus hears that Jesus is calling to him, he springs up, throws off his cloak, and comes to Jesus. Just think of someone sitting near the entrance to Jericho, giving up what he had, his few meager possessions, but he leaves those behind to see Jesus. What do you want me to do for you? asks Jesus. Rabbouni (my teacher) let me see again. He asks.
Go your faith has made you well. Immediately his sight is regained, and he follows Jesus to Jerusalem. (I wonder if that is why we remember his name.)
Bartimaeus gets what the rich man was looking for a few weeks back, he gets peace in his heart, for Bartimaeus was willing to give up everything, and he follows Jesus after his healing, it his faith that sets him free, a willingness to ask and to follow where it leads.
“The rich man is rich precisely because he does not know how to give, because he does not know how to share. If he had known how to share he wouldn’t be rich any longer. He who has shut himself into a world of defensiveness and pride cannot enter into the kingdom of sharing. The key to the kingdom, the only is key, is openness.” (Jean Vanier)
The crowd that shouts him down, fails to see the faith in another person, wanting their own time with Jesus not to be bothered by the blind beggar. Sometimes we are blind to our own needs, and sometimes we are the crowd failing to see the needs around us. Yet we must always ask God to help "open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us."
A professor of ministry and spirituality asks her students to take part in a little experiment:
She directs them to look around the classroom and focus on one particular color: for example, take note of everything that is red, she says. After a few moments, she asks them to close their eyes and quietly recall all the red items they saw. Then comes the unexpected: With their eyes still closed, the professor asks them to name all the blue things they had seen. Most often, because they were so focused on the color red, they missed all the blue and any other color.
The professor explains that this is similar to what we focus on in everyday life:
"We focus on the negative and tend to notice all that is going wrong in our world, and we miss God's grace and presence before us. What we focus on is what we give power to! In focusing on the negative we miss God's grace."
[C. Vanessa White, Assistant Professor of Spirituality and Ministry at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, writing in the August 2018 issue Give Us This Day www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2018). Used with permission.]
In today's Gospel, Jesus restores the sight of the blind Bartimaeus - but not just the vision of his eyes, but the vision of his soul. Jesus redirects his sight to perceive the presence of God in his life, to see and embrace the many signs of God's grace in the world around him. Our own vision can use a similar re-focus: we can be so attuned to one "color" - the color of disappointment, the color of self-centeredness, the color of cynicism - that we are blind to the colors of God: compassion, mercy, forgiveness, peace that are already there.
Bartimaeus receives his sight - but Jesus also affirms the vision that he already possesses: the ability to "see" God's love in his midst, to "see" the possibilities for God's transforming hope and re-creating love to heal the brokenness in his life, to "see" his own ability to be the means for God's justice and reconciliation. To see our lives and our world with the eyes of faith is to recognize the many colors of God's grace radiant in every human being, in every place, in every moment before us.
May our eyes be opened to God's work and may we follow in faith where Jesus is leading us. Let us remember Bartimaeus and remember his faith and his hope in Jesus and in turn remember the faith that is inside us, for with a little help from Jesus, our eyes will be opened to the works of our God in the world today.
O Lord have mercy on me.
Amen.
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