The Value of being blind

 

Is 59.1-4, 9-19; Ps 13; Heb 5.12-6.1, 9-12; Mk 10.46-52

 

How many of you here watch WWF wrestling?  The first time you watch it, you probably think: this is incredible! How do their bodies put up with all of that punishment?  Then you realize that most of it is show. These are really good athletes who are able to fake punches and body throws.

 

If you tune in early or late you also get a chance to hear and see all the bravado of one wrestler or his manager to another. They dare. They challenge. They defy. Sometimes they almost come to blows in their daring and their challenging and their defying.

 

---

 

Now, you may say to yourself: what does this have to do with the Scripture reading from Mark, the story that Mark tells of Jesus’ encounter with a blind beggar named Bartimaeus?  Before, I tell you what connection it has, let me fill you in on some of the details that will give you a better picture of what happened that day.

 

What was it like to be blind in Jesus’ day?

 

First of all, imagine what it means to be blind period. Just close your eyes for a minute and think. Now, keeping your eyes closed, what if I were to ask you to get up and walk around? Some of you would be able to do so, because you know the church well. But, if I were to ask you to get up and walk into town, it would be a lot more difficult. Now, imagine how difficult it would be in Jesus’ day: poor roads, no straight streets, lots of rocks, ….

 

Furthermore, today when you see a blind person, passers-by are often ready to go and help that person. Not everyone, true; but many people will help out. Not in Jesus’ day. In Jesus’ day, the blind are people that society is better off without. In Jesus’ day, when there was no welfare, no social system of support for those who cannot fend for themselves, the blind were among the most destitute of all people, since they had no way of earning an income. Unless you had a family to take care of you, the only thing that was possible for you to do to survive was to beg.  (Even stealing wasn’t possible for a blind person!)  So, people often thought that they would be better off without the blind, as well without lepers, or orphans, or widows, or anyone else who was an economic drain. The blind were like a “black hole”: taking without ever having anything to give back.  They have no value.

 

And then along comes Jesus. Now, with the background that I have given you, you can see that this story, like other stories of how Jesus regularly encountered the sick or the homeless or the widow or anyone else in his society who had no one to care for them, is a story of amazing social significance. When everyone else around scorns and shuns the blind, or the sick, Jesus, in God’s name, not only cared for them but gave them wholeness, value.

 

Over the noise of the crowd, Jesus hears blind Bartimaeus crying out to him. He hears him even over the noise of those who are trying to shut him up so that Jesus, like others in society, will not be so upset with him and the people of the town that in anger he will curse them and leave for a better place.

 

But, of course, we who know Jesus know that he would never have done that. No, Jesus stops and says to the crowd that is trying to silence Bartimaeus: “Call him”. Mark writes that, as quick as the crowd was to try and silence Bartimaeus, they are now as quick to encourage him to go to Jesus. So, Bartimaeus gets up and starts to grope his way toward Jesus, who says to him: “What do you want me to do for you?” Simply and naturally, Bartimaeus responds: “Good teacher, I want to see again.”

 

Now, it’s hard to know what Bartimaeus expected at this point. He has called out for Jesus to have mercy on him. Perhaps he expected Jesus to heal him, though the number of miracles of the blind being healed in the literature of antiquity are very, very few. Perhaps he wanted Jesus, as God’s man, to set things right between Bartimaeus and God, so that God would heal him. Remember: Jews of this day thought that sickness was caused primarily by sin or by some other disruption of their relationship with God.

 

But, whatever it was that Bartimaeus expected, I don’t think that anyone expected Jesus to say what he then said: “Go on your way, your own faith has saved you”.

      Jesus doesn’t touch him, as he had the blind man that he healed in chapter 8.

      Jesus doesn’t say any words that would suggest that Jesus is responsible for the man’s healing.

      Rather Jesus commends the confidence that Bartimaeus has shown in Jesus and sends him away to become a fully functioning member of society, now able to live and contribute and not be the butt of jokes and even abuse.  Truly, Bartimaeus’s confidence in Jesus has saved him, in the true sense of that Greek word: has delivered him from his enemies and death.  Where there was once no value, Bartimaeus now has value. And it is his confidence, his own self-enabling that has saved him.

 

So, one could conclude that this story is about someone who has no value and gains value through an encounter with Jesus. That would be true and it would be a great conclusion. But, it is not the whole story. In fact, it is not even the most significant part of the story.

 

No, there is more to this story than that. And it is where the WWF story that I began with comes in and where the title of this sermon comes back: not so much the value of being healed but the value of being blind.

 

There are a couple of things that should alert any careful reader of the Bible that there is more to this story than what we have already said.

 

First, a careful reader of Mark’s Gospel knows that the cry of Bartimaeus is unusual. How often do you read the words “Son of David” in Mark’s Gospel? Only 3 times: once when Jesus is speaking to the scribes in the Temple about who the Messiah is (Mk 12.35) and the only, two other times the phrase is found in the whole Gospel is here, both times in the cry of Bartimaeus. Why?

 

Perhaps another element of the story will help clarify why. The story of the healing of Bartimaeus is the last story in Jesus’ journey that has brought him from Galilee in the north to Jericho in Judaea. The next story will be about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, which is also called “the city of David”.

 

“Son of David”, “Jerusalem”, “city of David”, the blind?

 

You know: the stories of Jesus were written for people who had a very good knowledge of the stories of Jewish history, especially those written down in the Old Testament.  Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, does not just do things against a flat background of possibilities, but against a rich tapestry of the whole history of Israel. This is why the Gospels so often weave the characters and events of the Old Testament into the telling of the stories of Jesus: Abraham, Moses, the Exodus, the wandering in the wilderness, the taking of the land, David.

 

“Taking of the land”, “David”.

 

If you were a Jewish reader of Mark’s Gospel, and you got to this story of blind Bartimaeus, healed by Jesus just before Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, your mind would necessarily hearken back to another occasion on which not the “son of David” but David himself entered Jerusalem, and that for the first time. And, oh yes, the blind are there too.

 

In 2 Samuel 5 David becomes king over all Israel.  The tribes of Israel gather together at Hebron and acclaim David king. They say: ¹"We are your own flesh and blood. ² In the past, while Saul was king over us, you were the one who led Israel on their military campaigns. And the LORD said to you, 'You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler.'"  And then they anoint him, that is, they “Christen” him, since that is what the word “Christ” means, “anointed”.

 

David was about the age of our Lord when he becomes king, “thirty years old” and David reigned in Hebron for 7 and a half years. And then, as part of God’s command to Israel to take the land and expel the Canaanite tribes who lived there in gross immorality and idolatry, David marched to one of the Canaanite cities, the Jebusite city of Jerusalem, a strategic, hill city that he wants to make his capital. But, though not large, it is very well defended. It will probably take years of siege to conquer this city. Is it worth it? The great Chinese military theorist, Sun-Tzu argued that sieges are the worst kind of warfare: they are hard to maintain and rarely successful.  A siege of Jerusalem would have been, for Sun-Tzu, the worst kind of military strategy.

 

In fact, even the Jebusite defenders of the city taunt David, knowing that this is true. Dressed in their WWF garb, the Jebusite defenders of the hill city of Jerusalem, like the giant, Philistine Goliath on the plains of the Mediterranean, taunt David.  With their heroic, loud, abrasive voices that shout insults: it’s part of war in the ancient world, when enemies stood only a hundred metres from each other, at one end of the football field, and jeered, and laughed and attempted to make their enemies retreat by boasting. 

 

They jeer at David: ⁶ …"You will not get in here; even the blind and the lame can ward you off." They thought, "David cannot get in here."  Ha, ha, ha!  David: go home. You are so weak that even the useless among us could defeat you!  Ha, ha, ha! The blind will shame you, you dog. Even our blind have more value than you and your soldiers. Ha, ha, ha!

 

We know the end of the story, just as the Jews of Jesus’ day did: ⁷ Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion, the City of David.  He did so by finding a secret entrance to the city via a water and sewer system. He took Jerusalem much the same way that yet another great king, Cyrus of the Medes and Persians, took Babylon: through the sewer system. And Cyrus, too, is called “Christ” by Isaiah!

And so David took Jerusalem. The text says: ⁸ On that day, David said, "Anyone who conquers the Jebusites will have to use the water shaft to reach those 'lame and blind' who are David's enemies [or better translated: “whom David hates”]." That is why they say, "The 'blind and lame' will not enter the palace." ⁹ David then took up residence in the fortress and called it the City of David. …

As in WWF, and in other sports, enemies make boasts in order to cause fear and terror in their opponents. The boasts of the enemies of David included that the very least among them was better than the very best among the troops of David. The value of being blind was that as the weakest, they would shame the strongest. Obviously it was just a boast. But, when David takes the city and makes it his capital, he inverts the boast: “I am the very best, the greatest, and here none of those whom the Canaanites said would defeat me can enter, no blind, no lame. Ever.”

 

This is the story that is playing in the background of the mind of Mark’s original readers when they hear what Jesus did on his way up to “take” Jerusalem, the city of David. Of course, Jesus’ followers thought that he was going to take Jerusalem, like a King, riding into the city of David, ready to take back from powerful, and corrupt leaders, what truly belonged to the people. The Romans would be defeated, and the righteous of Israel would once again reign. No wonder that shortly after this story they greet him along the way as a triumphant king, ready to take his throne. No wonder that when he enters the city and goes into the Temple and makes a whip and begins to drive out the money changers, the people begin to say: it’s starting! The reign of the true king.

 

How right they were, and how wrong they were. If only they had known what you and I know happened at the edge of Jericho that day, to blind Bartimaeus. If only they had known that the reign of this king was not going to be that of the strongest ruling for the strong, but rather that of the compassionate restoring the weak!

 

For you see: unlike David – and the crowd in Jericho – who treated the blind and the lame as those who might bring shame upon them, Jesus sees and hears the cry of a blind man who indeed could be someone who brings shame upon him but who sees himself as dependent upon Jesus for mercy. It is not the crowd that really sees Jesus; it is the blind man who truly sees Jesus: Bartimaeus sees Jesus as the one to whom he needs to go to have mercy on him. The value of being blind is no longer to be a pawn in the hands of the powerful but as one who sees how great his need is. The value of being blind is to see what is truly needed and who can offer help.  These are the “soldiers” in the army of the Messiah Jesus. This is how he will seize fortresses.

 

What a contrast with the powerful, with the religious leaders who will ultimately hand Jesus over to the Roman forces of occupation. What a contrast even to Jesus’ own close circle of friends, men like James and John, who in the verses immediately prior to the story of Bartimaeus ask Jesus to make them his princes when he enters into his kingly power, probably in Jerusalem. What a value to be blind and to know that you have nothing to offer if not through Jesus who is compassionate beyond measure and loving in infinite ways.

 

Where are you today in relation to the son of David? How do you see yourself today? As someone who is in full control, who has all the answers? Or do you see yourself as someone in tremendous need? You cannot even make it into town without the son of David having mercy on you? Are you among the WWE boasters who withstood David, or even those in the army of that first David himself, or are you in the band of followers of the true king, the son of David, Jesus, the compassionate Messiah?