A Healing Analyzed (Mark 10:46-52, Proper 25B, October 28, 2012)

A Healing Analyzed

Mark 10:46-52
Proper 25B
October 28, 2012

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

He was a nameless nobody, really, the blind beggar of Jericho.  Bar-Timaeus the townspeople called him, but that wasn’t his name.  Bar-Timaeus only means “son of Timaeus.”  He had his father’s name, but no one knew his name, it seemed, and it had been so long since he had heard it that he had almost forgotten it himself.

He had had a name when he was young, when he was a boy.  He had had his sight then, too.  It was a long time ago, but he remembered.  The sky was sometimes azure, sometimes cerulean.  Sometimes it shimmered in the summer heat.  The sunsets were scarlet sometimes.  During the festival seasons the colors of the pilgrims’ clothing danced in his memories.  The pilgrim’s feet were always a little lighter their pilgrim songs sung a little stronger as they passed on the main road through the village, just a few miles from Jerusalem.

He remembered his parents’ faces, his father’s stern features when he had gotten into some mischief with his friends and the concern in his mother’s eyes whenever he was sick.  He had been sick a lot when he was a child.  He remembered the mahogany and amber eyes of the girl who lived next door and how they sparkled when she teased him.  Sometimes his mother’s eyes looked like that when she gazed at his father and he wondered if perhaps that meant that he and—what was her name?  Rebecca?—had a future together. 

But all of that changed in the winter of his ninth year when he was sick with a fever.  He lay for days, his parents and brothers and sisters hovering around him, anxiety thick in the air.  On the sixth day he woke up hungry, the fever broken.  The fever had returned to him his life, but the price that it had exacted was his sight. 

What future did a nine year old blind boy have in the centuries before the Judeans with Disabilities Act, before sheltered workplaces, before Braille, before Seeing Eye dogs?  What sort of a trade could he learn?  His father was a shepherd and that was simply out of the question.  Perhaps he could have been a potter, but what potter would have taken him as an apprentice when there were plenty of sighted nine year olds?

While his parents lived, they did their best to feed him, but when they had aged he had no choice but to take to the streets and beg his living.  And so he came to be simply Bar-Timaeus, Timaeus’ son, a nameless nobody, a blind beggar of Jericho. 

If he had to beg for his living, there were certainly worse places than Jericho.  On the pilgrim road there were always people going up to the Temple in Jerusalem, or going back down to their homes.  It was an act of righteousness to give alms.  Of course, that was true anytime and anywhere, but it was easy for people to forget when the demands of daily living pressed in on them and however much money they had it was never quite as much as they needed.

But when they were going to or coming from the Temple it was different.  They walked differently.  They sang pilgrimage songs.  And they remembered that it was an act of righteousness to give alms. 

So Bar-Timeaus spent his days sitting cross-legged on his cloak beside the road crying, “Have mercy on me!  Pilgrim, have mercy!”  And the coins fell on his cloak: copper mostly, very rarely silver, and not as many as he would have liked.  But it was enough to keep body and soul together, so it was a win-win for him and for the alms-givers.  When he heard the coins, he would call out, “May the Lord show mercy to you as you have shown mercy to me!”

As the pilgrims passed he overheard their conversations.  Why is it that when people see someone who is blind, they think that they must be deaf as well?  He didn’t know the answer to that question, but he was as well-informed about life in Judea and Galilee as any sighted person in Roman Palestine.

He had heard that there was yet another healer wandering among the Jewish towns and villages, a teacher from Nazareth named Jesus.  It was unusual for a Galilean to be in that line of work.  What was the expression?—Can anything good come out of Galilee?  Unusual or not, he had heard the talk about Jesus.  Some were saying that this Jesus was the Son of David.  It was dangerous talk, but he wasn’t talking, only overhearing.

He had never forgotten, though while plying his trade in his dark world, crying for mercy, blessing his benefactors, and overhearing the gossip and news.  He had never forgotten that there was a world of colors and shapes, a world he had once lived in a long time ago, a world open to him only in his memories and in his dreams.

In the spring as the Passover pilgrim traffic was nearly at its peak, Bar-Timaeus was at his post and the coins were falling onto his cloak and he began to hear the rumors.  This Jesus of Nazareth, the one about whom there was so much talk, this Jesus was himself among the pilgrims!  He had already passed through the center of the village with his followers and was drawing near.  Jesus the healer was approaching!

It was a long shot at very best.  Quite possibly this Jesus would not live up to his reputation.  Quite possibly he would turn out to be a fraud.  God knows there were enough of those.  And even if he were able, would he be willing to heal a nameless nobody, the blind beggar of Jericho?  Who knew?  If he could attract Jesus’ attention and if Jesus was willing and if Jesus was able to heal his blindness—three very large “if’s” indeed!—then maybe, just maybe, that world of shape and color would be open to him once more!  It might have been a long shot, but it was a chance worth taking. 

So the nameless nobody, blind beggar of Jericho, began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Son of David, have mercy on me!”  The people around him began to feel uncomfortable.  It was all right for the blind man to beg every other day, but why today?  Why today with a celebrity in town?  They squirmed at the scene that he was making.  So they said to him, “Be still, you worthless beggar!  Can’t you tell that someone important is coming by, someone who has made a name for himself?  Be silent, you nameless nobody!” 

But his voice was all that he had.  He had no skills that he could sell.  He had long since lost his parents and his brothers and sisters had long since distanced themselves from him.  He had no money, except what he needed to buy the day-old bread that kept him alive.  All he had was his voice.  All he could do was cry out, “Mercy!”

He was a nameless nobody, this blind beggar of Jericho, but he was also an Israelite, a Jew, a son of the Torah.  Somewhere in him there was a memory.  It might not have been fully formed.  It might have been nothing more than a vague recollection.  But it was there.  This child of the Torah knew that there is a God who hears those who have nothing but their voices.  There is a God who answers those who cry out.  He knew that long ago, when his people were slaves in Egypt and were mistreated, they had cried out to the universe at large, not really even knowing to whom they should direct their cry.  When they had cried out, improbably, impossibly, and against all expectation, they were answered.  God came to Moses and said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings,  and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.  So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

Would God do for him in the present what God had done for his ancestors so long ago?  For the sake of that question and its possible answer, the blind beggar of Jericho refused to be silent, refused to stop making a scene, and kept crying out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

And then the impossible and unexpected thing happened.  Just as God had heard the cry of the Israelites in the distant past, so Jesus heard the cry of the nameless nobody.  Jesus stopped and told the crowd to call the noisy beggar to him.  The crowd that had so recently been yelling at him to tell him to be quiet now began to tell him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”  It was almost as if it were their idea.

Well, he got up.  He sprang up.  Leaving his cloak behind, he came to Jesus.  Was he nervous, so nervous that he forgot his cloak?  Or in his own mind was he so certain of being healed by Jesus that he knew that he could find his way back to it?  We don’t know.

We do know that when he came to Jesus, Jesus did something truly remarkable.  He asked the nameless nobody, “What do you want me to do for you?”  How long had it been since anyone had asked him what he wanted?  “Have mercy,” he cried all day, every day.  People tossed him their alms money, their pocket change, and walked away feeling pretty good about themselves.  But when had anyone stopped to ask, “And what exactly would mercy look like, in your case?”  But Jesus stopped and asked, “What do you want?”

I want to see again!  I want the world back.  I want colors and shapes and the beauty and even the ugliness.  I want sight to be more than a dream or a memory.  I want to see it all again!

And in less time than it takes to tell it, he could see it all again.  And, even though told he could go his way, he decided to go Jesus’ way instead.  And so he did that.

He went from being blind to being able to see once again.  He also went from being a nameless nobody to being one of Jesus’ disciples.  Which of the two transformations do you suppose was for him the more marvelous, the more amazing, and the more splendid?

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