Sermon preached at the Church of All Saints, New Eltham
on Sunday, 28th October 2012
_______________________________________________
‘Let
hearts rejoice who search for the Lord.
Seek
the Lord and his strength,
seek
always the face of the Lord.’ (Ps.105:3-4)
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INTRODUCTION
Those
words come from the Introit for today’s Eucharist and remind me of a popular
chorus:
Open our
eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus,
To reach out
and touch Him,
And say that
we love Him.
They
reflect the story of blind Bartimaeus we heard in the gospel reading, the
beggar who regained his sight as he cried to the Lord: ‘have mercy on me!’
HEALING OF
THE BLIND
The
recovery of sight is one of the signs of the coming of the Messiah and
heralding of a new age that Isaiah had prophesied. In all there are five accounts of such
healings in the gospels. The synoptics
(that is Matthew, Mark and Luke) all record a similar story of the healing of a
blind man near Jericho. John recounts
the healing of a man at the Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem and Mark records a
third, earlier healing at Beit Saida close to the Sea of Galilee (8:22).
When you come to think of it, that’s not many, given that Jesus is
regarded as the promised Messiah.
There
are, of course, many churches these days that put a huge emphasis on miraculous
external healings, but it would appear
that the gospel writers didn’t have quite the same interest. So let’s look a little more deeply at this
story and see if might say more than simply Jesus is a miraculous healer.
CONTEXT OF
THE STORY
Firstly
it’s important to note that this is the last miraculous healing recorded by
Mark and occurs immediately before his final entry into Jerusalem on Palm
Sunday. For the past few weeks we have
been travelling with Jesus and his disciples as they moved south from the
Galilee region towards the Holy City.
We’ve
heard a lot about the confusion of the disciples and their inability to grasp
just what Jesus was about, despite all the teaching that Mark writes of during
this period. The earlier chapters of his
gospel are full of miraculous healings culminating in that curing of the blind
man at Beit Saida. The account is
immediately followed by Peter’s great declaration of faith at Caesarea Philippi:
‘You are the Messiah.’ (8:29) From that point onwards things go downhill to
the point when, as last Sunday’s gospel recorded, Jesus asks James and John
what they want from him and they get into a squabble about places of honour in
the Kingdom of God. It’s clear that the
disciples simply couldn’t understand – couldn’t see – what being Messiah, God’s
anointed One, meant to Jesus. Perhaps
they should have gone to Specsavers… And
it will take a blind beggar to remind them.
THE MAN WHO
SAW
The
disciples might see Jesus on a daily basis but it was this blind man who really
saw Jesus and identifies him in that
great, constantly repeated cry, ‘Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me!’
Now that title, Son of David, might not strike us as very important but
it is one of the titles of the Messiah and is the first time since Peter’s
declaration that Mark shows someone acknowledging that Jesus is the Messiah,
the Christ. So more than simply the
account of a miraculous healing, this story concerns being able to see who
Jesus is. And that is a question for all
of us: who is Jesus for me?
CONTENT OF
THE STORY
As
we look more deeply into the story I want us to focus into that pivotal
exchange between Jesus and Bartimaeus: ‘What do you want me to do for you? … My
teacher, let me see again’ and Jesus’ interesting response ‘Go, you faith has made you well’ (10:51) At
one level it would appear fairly simple.
Someone who is blind wants to see and is granted their desire because of
their faith. But there is a problem;
Bartimaeus has not, actually, expressed faith, he has simply made a heart-felt
request, much as we might say to a doctor, ‘for
goodness sake, do something!’
What
is of real interest is that question of Jesus, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Again it might seem an obvious question, but
there’s something about it that speaks at a deeper level. If Jesus said that to me that question, how would I respond?
We
need to recall that Mark only records that question on one other occasion when,
immediately before this encounter, he addresses it to those leading disciples,
James and John. And they had asked for
places in glory. But the blind man asks
the Messiah for sight.
THE DESIRE TO
SEE GOD
Now
this request can be read in two ways: as one for physical healing or as one for
what we might call ‘insight’. The early
Church Fathers speak a lot about inner, spiritual sight: the ability to see
beneath the outer form into inner realities.
This aspect of sight is associated with something within us called the
‘eye of the soul’ found in the heart, the centre of our being. It is here that we encounter God, in the
depth of our being. That oft neglected
place which Jesus declared the source of blessing: “Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God.”
Now,
whilst Mark doesn't record the Beatitudes, we have here the account of a blind
man given sight and are shown that this gift comes when the heart is purified
of all that prevents such seeing. The
blind man’s cry, ‘have mercy on me’
should remind us of the way we are invited to cry Kyrie elision – Lord have mercy during the confession. It connects with that cry of the
psalmist:
Create in me
a clean heart, O God,
and renew a
right spirit within me.
Cast me not
from your presence
And take not
your holy Spirit from me. (51:11,12)
Without
that ‘clean heart’ our souls become clouded and we no longer see the world
through God’s eyes. We only have to consider the stories that constantly
bombard us in the News that show how people react when their hearts no longer
see clearly. The unfolding story of
Jimmy Savile is just one example of what happened when people don’t pay attention
to what is going on. Or the horrors
inflicted on patients with learning difficulties caused when their nurses no
longer saw them as people but as objects to be used at whim. Unfortunately such stories are legion and,
whilst we might distance ourselves from them, how often are we blind to the
world around us?
CONCLUSION
As
we come, week by week, to this celebration of the Eucharist we need to recall
that question Jesus asked, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Like the disciples, we may want something for
ourselves. But we need to remember that
when the eye of our heart only wants to fulfil self-centred desires, it becomes
clouded, unable to see and is in danger of being corrupted. Rather, as we come to the Eucharist:
‘Let hearts
rejoice who search for the Lord.
Seek the Lord
and his strength,
seek always
the face of the Lord.’ (Ps.105:3-4)
When
Jesus asked James and John what they wanted Him to do for them their first
thought was – what can I get out of
this? That didn’t stop them being
disciples; they continued to follow Jesus.
But it took a blind man to ask for that most important gift –
sight.
As
we come to the Eucharist, what do we see?
A celebration in which we receive bread and wine that helps us on our
way? Or do we see, present beneath those
outward signs, Jesus? Is the eye of our
heart fixed on Him? Do we want to our
soul to be awakened and walk more closely with Him?
When
Jesus opened the eyes of the blind man at Beit Saida He told him to go home:
today, Jesus allows a man with new sight to follow Him to Jerusalem – to his
death and resurrection. Let us keep
calling to Jesus to have mercy on us and open the eye of our soul so that, in
the words of the great bishop, St. Richard of Chichester, we might see Him more
clearly, love him more dearly and follow Him more nearly, day by day.
Amen.
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