MARK 10:46-52

Marginally Mark…Pentecost + 23…2018

Forgive if you find this a more personal approach than usual to this passage. My records tell me I preach on our passage on my first Sunday ‘back on deck’, four months after highly successful (Laus Deo!) open heart surgery in 1985. Appropriate is it not to the day Bartimaeus has his physical & spiritual eyes opened by Jesus. My 1985 notes show I’ve not only had my physical heart opened, but my spiritual eyes have begun opening anew in the process! Jesus asks Bart, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bart says, “I want to see again”. I feel very akin to him; back then, my reply to God being, “Let me go on living!”

My notes from ’85 tell me I’m preaching too long! The Scriptures are the Word of God, & Jesus is the flesh & blood Word of God, but I’ve fallen into the trap of being wordy. From that day I turn over a new leaf! Really! I do! Point to ponder? 

I also find I’m sharing with the congregation things more personal than I remember doing before. Like: A few days before my surgery I’m in a department store. As I ride an escalator, our Lord’s words to Paul (2 COR 12:9) take possession of me: ‘My grace is sufficient for you; my grace works its purpose in weakness’ (my translation). God is revealing to me what Paul once heard in his time of need. Now when I need to hear it in my own time of crisis! (I assure you I don’t normally wander in shopping centres quoting Scripture to myself!) How are our spiritual ears to hear, & eyes to see, whatever the state of our physical faculties?

It becomes personal when we discern God knows the ‘thorns in our flesh’, physical & spiritual. In Paul, in Bart, in me, & in all our lives, better than we do ourselves. Recently we’ve heard Jesus telling a rich young chap he needs to give it all away before he can follow Him. Then James & John learn they need to give up seeking places at Jesus’ right & left hand before they’re ready to follow Him as He demands to be followed. Today, without being asked, Bart (symbolically?) - throws off his outer coat, likely the one more or less respectable possession he has, seeing he’s blind & a beggar. Without being asked! Are there ‘outer garments’ we need to discard before Jesus can do for us whatever it is He needs to do for us? By the way, let’s preach Bart as ‘Bart with his sight restored’, rather than as ‘a blind beggar’. Give him his dignity restored, too!

Like Bart & many others, my need at the time, & it being met by God’s grace, opens me up to a new experience of, a new dimension of, spiritual life as well as physical. Our calling is to preach about that, & in the context of today’s Gospel, let’s be open enough to God & each other to follow in Bart’s steps. And, less ‘wordily’!

Afterthought: Soon after my return to parish & pulpit I come across a copy of ‘Lazarus’, by Morris West. A tale of a Pope who also undergoes successful heart surgery & finds new spiritual life opening up in the process. Worth a read, even if we’re not aspiring to a papacy!  

Brian