Mark 10:45 - 52 Jesus and Bartimaeus

Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from god the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord,

Estafanos suggested a while ago that on one Sunday when he was taking time off I preach about the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, which takes place this year.  I dug through my papers and found an old sermon that I adapted for today. It’s based on Mark 10:46-52. which I’ll read now, and other gospel texts..

So we’ll continue in Jericho, It was a city about 15 miles northeast of Jerusalem, prosperous and fertile because two springs watered the soil. It was known for its palm trees  and sycamores, its balsam and cypress and flowering plants that yielded precious oils. Aside from being a garden spot, it was also on the trade route from Damascus in Syria to Arabia so it was an important commercial and military center. A member of the royal family built a handsome palace there, so it was a worldly city, like most others.

Because it was so close to Jerusalem, some of the 20,000 priests who served at the temple made their home in Jericho. When Jesus arrived there, he was on his way to Jerusalem for the Passover, where this year he would be tried and crucified. The Israelites had a rule that every male over 12 years old who lived near Jerusalem must attend the yearly celebration of the Passover, but this law wasn’t practical to enforce, so many stayed at home. It was the custom for these folks to line the roads and honor the ones who were making the trip to the capital city. There were as well, this time, people who wanted a glimpse of the famous rabbi around whom, a lot of controversy was swirling. The tax collector Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to see the Lord. Luke tells us he was among the crowds of bystanders in Jericho. He’s a new believer the Lord had dinner with.

Mark writes about another man in the crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, who was determined to ask the Lord for healing. Now, nearly everyone who tries to make his or her way in the world discovers that the world usually isn’t interested in our weaknesses. If we look for employment or wish to have a few friends or get the good things of life for ourselves, we reach out for them with strength and vitality. We don’t parade our shortcomings or our urgent needs. We speak up about what we’ve done and what we hope  to contribute, because we know what we need to do to please the world. Some folks will even tell us that God himself has a preference for strong and well-adjusted people. Bartimaeus knew better, however. His great need gave him a powerful insight – that the Lord would help him ig he could only get to him, and so he summoned up all his strength and shouted as loud as he could – some translations actually say that he yelled – for God to have mercy on him. It was his best chance for healing from the hands of the Lord, and so he cried out with a very specific request, “Rabbi, I want to see!!”

Jesus healed him, of course. Perhaps each one of us can tell about a time when the Lord has healed us, whether from a physical or spiritual infirmity. Perhaps he has rescued you from calamity or taken you out of a bad situation or slowly healed you from the pain of loss, a gradual coming back to life through which you gained immense and valuable wisdom.  Perhaps you’re hoping now for God to heal you or deliver you from a difficulty. The case of Bartimaeus should give us hope. When our own resources are limited and when the world around us, going its merry way, refuses to help us or simply can’t , we have a refuge, a strong hope in the Lord. The trick is, though, as we learn from Bartimaues, not to bring him a half-hearted, off-handed, tentative desire, so with his help we gather together all the stirrings of our hearts into one firm purpose and then set our requests before the King of Heaven as if our entire well-being depended on our request, and then see what happens.  James wrote in his letter that we are to ask in faith especially for wisdom, with no doubting, “for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord. “Lord, help me,” we cry with the concentration of a needy ;person, “Make me strong, give me wisdom, comfort sick folks I’m concerned about, give me faith and hope and the ability to love.”  We pray and wait on the Lord, who will show that he hears us.

We aren’t yet done with Bartimeaus, to whom the Lord granted sight and presumably the ability to earn his living, to take part in society’s activities, and to obtain a share of the good things he’d lacked. Oce he was healed, the Lord invited him to go his way, but instead of returning to the gardens and markets and balsam groves of Jericho, instead of taking up with well-to-do travellers who passed through the city, Bartimaeus decided to follow the Lord in hopes of receiving even greater blessings. If we’re going to disobey God, this is the way to do it: when he appears to let us go – which is likely a test of our staying power – to say instead, “”No, Lord, I prefer to follow you.”

This is what Bartimaeus did with a heart full of gratitude and a desire to serve. But how shocked he must have been when he got to Jerusalem, savoring the sights of God’s varied and wonderful world for the first time, only to discover that his benefactor was scorned, abused, brought to trial on false charges, and then crucified like a common criminal. What a surprise to find that following the Lord brought him up against the worst of life. The worst passed quickly, however, and if he continued to watch with the eyes of faith, he would have rejoiced at the news of the resurrection , and he would have understood the meaning of Christ’s priestly sacrifice – that his death meant that all sins, including his own, were forgiven and that no sacrifice would ever again be required except the sacrifice of repentance and thanksgiving and faith. It’s pleasant to think of Bartimaeus as one of the unknown disciples who spread the gospel of salvation throughout Israel after the first Christian Pentecost. We won’t know the real outcome till we get to heaven, but we do know that Jesus gave Bartimaeus the chance to lead a full life of discipleship, the same chance he gives to us.

Now we’ll switch our focus to the Reformation.  Without going into technical details, we can say that the Reformation was and is this – a movement to sweep dust away from the Christian faith so that frail, erring mortals like ourselves may follow the Lord with confidence and hope. We don’t depend on a bureaucracy of priests or elaborate church traditions. We meet the Lord directly. He enters into a personal relationship with each one of us, just as he did with Bartimaeus. Under God’s guidance, the reformers wished to restore for the church the vitality and openness before God that the believers of the first century enjoyed. We Lutheran Christians are the heirs of this heritage. Nothing but our own indifference can keep us from full lives in Christ, and he works even to overcome this disability, for his voice calls to us above the din of big city living in the 21^st century.

Now, in order to understand God’s call to us, we ought to review briefly the guidelines that the reformers gave to the church. First, Scripture alone. God is everywhere, but we don’t look for him from signs in the sky or the workings of coincidence or the learning of self-appointed wise people or the requirements of our minds. He speaks to us through the Bible, which not only gives us information about life with God but puts this new life into our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is our companion if we want to walk with God.

The second principle is grace alone. We receive life with God as a gift. It’s not something we earn through goo deeds. It’s the result of God’s gracious disposition toward us. He took on our flesh and passed through life just as we do. That’s whyn he deals gently with our ignorance and our straying. He holds out pardon and mercy to all and salvation to those who trust him and love him. We can’t possibly earn these blessings; we receive them by grace.

So we come to the third Reformation principle – faith. We perceive the actions of grace with the eyes of faith. Bartimaeus is an example. Faith told him that a man walking through the crowd was also God with the power to heal him. He understood the work of Christ through faith. The faith that saves isn’t simply knowledge of history or the Bible but the confident trust and assurance that God in Christ is for us.  Faith takes hold of God’s grace; it grasps his promises; it receives the blessing of forgiveness through Christ’s blood, together with the hope of happiness in eternity.

The three Reformation insights – Scripture, grace, and faith – prompt us to believe confidently in Jesus’ call to us. They help us understand what God does for us and what he expects in return. The wicked world loves to stand between us and God; the devil delights in weakening us so that we go back on ourselves and muffle our cries to the Lord, whether pleas for mercy of shouts of thanksgiving. But the Lord’s call comes to us with power through his Word, so we receive his grace no less than Bartimaeus did, and we can hope for a faith that’s every bit as sturdy and stable as his. In fact, since we know the outcome of Christ’s trip to Jerusalem, his death and resurrection, his ascension into heaven and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, we can claim a deeper and better informed faith than Bartimaeus had when he cried out tom the Lord. We ask God, then, to open our hearts to receive the blessings that he intends for us.     

The heritage of the Reformation is a vital, unshakable confidence. We Lutherans are known among Christians for our sturdy faith. It’s true that many minds nowadays are filled with doubts and questions; many folks claim to be satisfied with a watered-down version of Christianity; some boast that they can maintain life with God even though they don’t read the Bible or come near the church. God has better things than this in mind for the people of St. John’s. His will is to heal us through his Word, to lift us up by his grace, and to have us follow him in faith. He has wonderful things in store for us, and if we stick with him, as we presume Bartimaeus did, we’ll be like the faithful people the prophet Jeremiah wrote about, sturdy believers who sing with joy and make their praises heard, though as Lutheran Christians, we’ll no doubt find ways to make this holy rumpus quietly, while drawing attention to the Lord and not ourselves. In Jesus’ name we give thanks. AMEN.

Jesus, Our Teacher

Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,

            You probably know that our Sunday readings come to us on a three year cycle.  Many of our Gospel readings came from St. Matthew last year.  This is the year of St. Mark. For the next two Sundays, for example, the church brings us into the beginning of Mark’s Gospel.  We will see our Lord preaching and teaching and working miracles.  We watch him as he reveals himself to the people of his time.

            We join him this morning at the synagogue in Capernaum.  He is our teacher.  Teaching is a demanding profession.  Teachers master their material and how to present it.  Teachers can do us a lot of good, especially when they challenge us to use our brains in ways that are new to us.  If a teacher is good and we’re listening, he or she can also encourage us and lift us up.

            Jesus was this kind of teacher, only more so.  Can you imagine what it must be like to have God as your teacher face-to-face?  Mark says that the folks in the synagogue were amazed.  He wasn’t using the word in the everyday sense, as we might say we are amazed when the Maple Leafs or the Raptors do well.  He meant really and truly amazed, astonished, astounded, filled with wonder.  I have to be honest and say I don’t know when I’ve ever experienced that kind of amazement. 

            Jesus spoke with authority.  He didn’t rely on the opinions of experts or get bogged down in minor details.  He spoke from the heart of God about his listeners’ needs and heaven’s loving care in such a way that his hearers believed that what he said was true. 

            What did Jesus say to them?  Mark’s Gospel moves along rapidly; he doesn’t always include what we might want to know.  If we look at the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we find what Jesus said on a similar occasion.  He applied a passage from Isaiah to himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me.  He has appointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”  Imagine what the people must have felt.  He wasn’t an upstart or deluded; he didn’t make claims he couldn’t back up.  He may have told the people at Capernaum, as well, the words we heard last week: “The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe.”  Surely, he told them that they were saved not by their own diligent efforts to keep the law, but by God’s grace through faith in him.          

            Though it wasn’t really a new teaching, the people in Capernaum hadn’t heard it before, because experts at God’s law had buried his Word beneath a crust of regulations.  Instead of relieving burdens, they added to them and crushed spirits down. Jesus came to remove the human traditions and customs that weighed on people’s hearts and to bring them into direct contact with God, from whom salvation may be found.  John the Baptist foresaw that in Christ all flesh would see the salvation of God.  This salvation now appeared in Capernaum, the old prophesies were fulfilled in Jesus, and the people were amazed.

            As a teacher, Jesus was unique.  He taught with divine power. He didn’t just discuss salvation, he offered it to his listeners as a free gift from God’s gracious hand.  He didn’t only talk about hope and joy, he gave it through faith in himself.  He was God, inviting his hearers to come to him without conditions attached.  In this sense, he was new.  No one had ever met anyone like him before, so we aren’t surprised people were amazed.

            To demonstrate his authority, he gave the people in the synagogue a sample of what it means to teach with divine power.  He healed a man who was possessed by an evil spirit.  The Old Testament mentions the devil from time to time.  He appears in the Garden of Eden and the story of Job.  While he always acted against the interests of God’s people, he is not a dominant figure in the Old Testament. The situation was different at the time of Jesus’ ministry.  He came to defeat the devil, and so Satan was especially active in his attempts to attack the Savior.  He took possession of the souls of unsuspecting people.  He entered territory that Jesus claimed for himself – the hearts and minds of humanity, so he needed to be driven out.  Jesus accomplished this miracle in a public and unmistakable way.  The people who saw him drive out the evil spirit must have talked about it for days and days and brought other people to ask about Jesus. 

            Now, what does this incident from the first part of Jesus’ ministry have to do with us?

            For one thing, Jesus is still our teacher.  We receive his guidance in the gospels and the rest of the Bible, since he is the ultimate author of all our Scriptures.  Everything that exists has a spiritual aspect, since God created everything.  The world is filled with spiritual messages, but Jesus alone offers salvation through faith and deliverance from evil.  His love leads us through the tangle of messages that come our way to the truth.  He invites us through the Bible to rest in him; he brings us satisfaction and contentment that we belong to him and to no one else.  If we did our best to pay attention to his wisdom and instruction, we might find ourselves, like the people in Capernaum, truly amazed as his goodness to us.

            In the second place, this morning’s Gospel reminds us that there is a dimension to life that we can’t perceive with our ordinary minds.  Satan challenges God day in and day out; he uses the human race as the pawns in his game.  Paul wrote that we do not contend against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, the world rulers of this present darkness, and against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.  Jesus fought the battle before us; he equips us to fight alongside him.  He gives us his armor to wear: truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, together with faith, salvation, and his Word. The battle is ours to win, for Jesus promises to give us the victory.

            The incidents in this morning’s gospel point to another benefit – God’s intentions to restore.  My father used to say that he was born just before the start of the First World War, and the world hasn’t been right ever since.  The Bible teaches that the world hasn’t been right since the fall of Adam and Eve.  Thanks to God, the world keeps on going and there are many good things for you and me to take advantage of.  One of them is this: the expulsion of our first parents from the Garden of Eden prompted God to give them hope for a Messiah to come.  If the world were perfect day after day, we would have no need for a savior.  So in a sense, we are better off than Adam and Eve before the fall because the general human sinfulness has brought us to knowledge of Christ.  As a result, we live in certain, unshakeable hope of better days to come.  God promises that he will restore the conditions of the Garden of Eden in the next life, only the situation will be much better because we will reign with Christ as kings and queens of heaven, and we will sing wonderful anthems in the eternal heavenly chorus.  Jesus invites us to trust by faith that his invisible power is at work on our behalf.  He has put his brand on us and commands us to live in hope.

            The fourth benefit our Gospel text is that it invites us to think about our own lives.  What kind of people are we?  The complete revelation of Scripture is at our disposal.  Our savior has defeated the devil for us.  We are neither ignorant nor demon-possessed.  Our Savior’s blood washes us clean.  We live in faith and hope.  Jesus commands us – he gives us the opportunity to be like him.

            Generally speaking, imitation of Christ means two things – that we listen to his teachings so that we may live by faith day by day and also that we love God and our neighbors.  Our Lord doesn’t give us an easy path to follow, for Christian love can be difficult, especially if our neighbors make themselves unlovable.  But as our Lord carried on, so do we persist.  We bear our neighbors burdens; we offer Christian testimony; we learn the art of forgiveness, for this is the hallmark of every Christian.  Christian love means to want for others what the savior wants for them – salvation and life in the heavenly kingdom.

            When Jesus visited the synagogue in Capernaum, he had one thing in mind – the salvation of the worshipers there.  When he tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, he wants us to consider their eternal salvation.  We rejoice with them; we bring comfort; we speak the gospel.  We don’t whine or make unreasonable demands; we don’t indulge sinners in their folly or let them take the lead.  We don’t put our own salvation in danger.  Our task from God is to help him bring our neighbors into the kingdom.

            I don’t know what tests of Christian love you’ll face in the weeks ahead, but I do know that God will guide you.  When Jesus calls a person to represent him, he strengthens her or him.  He doesn’t call us to be doormats, who have no will of our own.  He protects us; he gives us a sense of detachment from the turmoil of the world.  He calls us to receive instruction and refreshment from his word, then he sends us out.

            It must have been a wonderful thing to hear the Lord in Capernaum.  The people there must have sensed that he knew them thoroughly and that he cared about them.  He knows us just as well; he cares about us no less.  Jesus’ love for us is truly amazing.  He is present with us as we hear his word this morning.  He will watch over us as we live with him in the days ahead.  And this is another benefit our Gospel text puts us in mind of: the presence of Jesus in our lives.  He chastens, he comforts; he guides and forgives.  He doesn’t put burdens on us but makes our days lighter.  We rejoice in his presence and ask him to be with us again and always.  In our Saviour’s Name we give thanks.    AMEN.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge of Christ Jesus.  AMEN.