To See Again:  Proper 25, Year B

Job 42:1-6, 10-17; Jeremiah 31:7-9; Psalm 34:1-8, 19-22; Psalm 126; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52

The restoration of sight to “Blind Bartimaeus” is the last healing story told by Mark.  After this, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, and the end comes into sight.  We will skip that part, including Mark’s framing metaphor about the fig tree, which encloses the demonstration in the Temple; Jesus’s teaching on the power of prayer; challenges to his authority, including the subversive aphorism “give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, and to God what belongs to God”; the parable of the leased vineyard; and Jesus’s teaching on the resurrection.  If the Revised Common Lectionary is followed, these are never read from Mark’s gospel.  If they were read, the Christian liturgical year would demand they be considered during Lent, Holy Week, or Easter.  Instead, these stories are lifted out of Mark’s context and read at different times throughout Year A (the Year of Matthew).

Mark was undoubtedly very familiar with the prophet Jeremiah, and the story about the second exile to Babylon, the return and rebuilding of the Temple, and the restoration of the Covenant.  But the Elves do not appear to be making their connections for that reason.  The Elves would have us seize on the cherry-picked poetry that assures God will bring back the remnant “. . . among them the blind and the lame.”  Christian orthodoxy leaps to the conclusion that the “remnant” is the small number of Jews such as Blind Bartimaeus who accepted Jesus as the Messiah.  But as pointed out back on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, “Jeremiah’s task was to convince the people that what mattered to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was justice.  Under Jeremiah’s ‘new covenant,’ wherever they happened to be, and under whatever conditions, if the people lived in accordance with God’s justice, God would restore them to the land, and with it, the Temple.”

In Chapter 31, Jeremiah is in the midst of describing God’s promise.  God will bring back the remnant that has been exiled to Babylon, with no caveats on who will be allowed back:  “among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together . . . for the Lord has ransomed Israel.”  These words resonate with Orthodox Christianity as well.  But Jeremiah was not talking about a future Messiah who would die as the ransom for many, as Mark’s theology and Christian orthodoxy would later have it.  The people have paid the price, and God will restore their lives, their land, their temple, and their Covenant.  But this time the Covenant will not be written on stone tablets that can be easily destroyed.  The Covenant will be written on their hearts:  “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:33-34).

Jeremiah offered a great hope to the people, divided between the exiles in Babylon, and the remnant left behind in Jerusalem.  Later, after many more years of invasion, oppression, and exile, an apocalyptic hope for a non-violent restoration of the Covenant was described in the book of Daniel.  The Kingdom of God would be established on earth, once for all.  We have seen hints of this with Mark’s references to Jesus as the “son of Adam.”  The Elves will make sure we end the year with the apocalypse (violent or non-violent?) firmly in mind.

Mark’s story about Blind Bartimaeus is not about being “born again” or “coming to Jesus” in the sense hinted at by pairing this story with Job’s “repentance,” as the Elves do.  To “repent” means to turn around, to turn away from current behaviors or states of mind.  To “repent” is not to feel guilty or ashamed – although that may well be part of the process.  What is Job really “repenting”?  Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.”  Perhaps he means he really got it about who God is, and the nature of God’s power.  Like Bartimaeus, Job doesn’t just hear, he understands with two vital senses.  But the thought does not end there.  Job continues, “therefore” – or “because I now both hear and see the nature of God” – “I despise myself, and repent in [or of] dust and ashes.”  

Job is not engaging in self-loathing or regret.  He is expressing the realization that he is not God.  The power of the Universe is far greater than humanity can understand – even in the post-modern 21st Century.  Most important, Job has given up trying to hold God accountable.  Things are as they are.  The rain falls on the just and the unjust.  War, famine, disease, and death are not sent by some interventionist God to punish, nor are they withheld to reward.  Perhaps, as some scholars suggest, Job does not engage in an act of repentance as a sign of grief at his own audacity, dressing in sackcloth and pouring ashes on his head.  Instead, perhaps Job repents of the idea of not continuing to challenge God’s “justice.”

That Bartimaeus has his sight restored just in time to see the Way clearly into Jerusalem is a metaphor not possible when the purpose of Sunday morning readings is to prove orthodox belief.  Bartimaeus is not cured because he believes Jesus died to save him from Hell.  Bartimaeus is cured because he trusts the power he has heard about.  Perhaps he trusts in the Covenant he has heard will be regained by following Jesus’s Way.  

Mark’s Jesus says, “tell him to come over here!”  Not, “bring him to me.”  The blind man “threw off his cloak, and jumped to his feet, and went over to Jesus.”  The crucial meaning is found in the details:  No one led him there.  He came to Jesus on his own, without pretense or (perhaps) even clothing.  Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?”  He answers, “Rabbi, I want to see again!”  This is not the first time Mark’s Jesus has asked what someone wants him to do.  The Sons of Zebedee had the presumption to ask that Jesus do whatever they asked him to do.  When he asks them what it is, they say, “In your glory, let one of us sit at your right hand, and the other at your left” (Mark 10:35-39).  Unlike blind Bartimaeus, their demand is not met.  Instead, not only are they doomed to suffer the same fate Jesus will suffer.  They become examples for yet another lesson from Jesus that whoever wants to be number one must be everybody’s slave.  

But look closely at what Bartimaeus does ask.  He wants to see again.  We are referred back to Mark 8:22-26, which not surprisingly, was skipped by the Elves, along with Mark’s follow-up to Jesus’s feeding of the five thousand.

        “The . . . vignette continues Mark’s metaphors about radical sharing as well as the radical inclusiveness of the realm of God.  The story further demonstrates Mark ’s conviction that Jesus brought the realm of God to earth.  'The time is fulfilled,' Mark’s Jesus proclaims, 'and the kingdom of God has come near' (Mark 1:14).  Mark’s point is that . . . [o]nce the radicality of the conditions that prevail in the kingdom of God is realized – whether by encounters with Jesus himself, or by hearing the stories Mark told – the demons of injustice and exclusiveness leave. . . .
        
        “Mark follows this story with yet another healing.  This time the person is deaf and unable to speak.  But Jesus opens his ears, and he is then not only able to speak, he can’t stop telling the story.  Still, the followers are ‘dumfounded’. . . . Next, Mark once more puts the followers with Jesus in a boat.  After the feeding of the 5,000, and then again 4,000, they are still stumped.  This time they have ‘forgotten’ to bring any bread.  But maybe, as Mark has hinted before, they ‘forgot’ on purpose. . . . . [T]he disciples don’t realize that they themselves have just demonstrated the corruption of the sacrament.  Instead of experiencing liberation, they have fallen deeper into bondage.  They declined to bring bread to share.  They should not be surprised to discover that there is indeed no bread.
    
        “Finally, Mark gives it one last shot before turning to the beginning of the end of the journey to Jerusalem.  Jesus takes a blind man outside the village of Bethsaida.  The first time he spits into the man’s eyes and places his hands on him, the man can only see a distortion.  The second time, the man sees everything clearly – just as Peter at last . . . declares that “You are the Anointed!”  (Emphasis added.)

Bartimaeus and the first blind man are not the same person.  Mark’s Jesus is (as usual) hitting his befuddled disciples upside the head.  But this time, instead of telling the one who can now see that he should not go back to the village, Jesus tells him, “Be on your way, your trust has cured you.”  Bartimaeus stands up, throws off his cloak, walks over to Jesus on his own, and gets his heart’s desire.  He does not want “glory.”  He does not want “salvation.”  He wants to see again just as the first blind man saw clearly the second time Jesus touched his eyes.  Bartimaeus can now follow Jesus on the Road.  

For post-modern, 21st Century exiles from Christian orthodoxy, whenever anyone radically abandons self-interest in the service of distributive justice-compassion – as Bartimaeus had the courage to do – the “new covenant” is established; a kenotic spirit rules; God’s kingdom has come.  There is no need for a “high priest on the order of Melchizedek,” called for by the writer of Hebrews.

Mark’s story is about realizing our inability to see our own complicity in the systems of Empire, throwing off conventional piety that blinds us to that injustice, and joining the struggle, regardless of our total vulnerability to whatever consequences the Empire wants to subject us to – including, for example, crucifixion.

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