The Walls of Jericho Stood While the Walls of Darkness Fell

              a sermon based on: Mark 10:46-52

           given at Palm Bay, FL October 25, 2009

                     by Rev. Scott Elliott

A pastor and a barber were once walking through the city slums. The barber said, “This is why I cannot believe in a God of love. If God was love and all powerful, He would not permit all this poverty and despair. He would not allow these poor people to be left on the streets to suffer. I simply cannot believe in a God who permits these things.”

The pastor was silent until they got back to the barber’s neighborhood and walked past a couple of men who were especially unkempt. Hair was hanging down their neck and they had stubble on their chins. “You cannot be a very good barber or you would not permit men like that to continue living in this neighborhood without a haircut or a shave,” the pastor said.

Indignantly the barber answered, "Why blame me for those men’s condition? I cannot help it that they are like that. They have never come in my shop."

“Well, then do not blame God for allowing people to continue in their ways of ignoring the poor and leaving them to suffer in the streets. God has been calling humanity to help the poor and eliminate oppression since the beginning. So don’t blame God for humanity’s failure to see this problem and heed God’s call to fix it. People, not God, turn a blind eye toward poverty and oppression.”

Today’s reading from Mark is the last healing story in Mark. It can be, and has been heard as a story about Jesus’ amazing miracle work in the world. A blind beggar tenaciously overcomes those who try to stop him and he gets Jesus’ attention.

With the only means available to him – his voice – Bartimaeus yells out over the din of those who would prevent him from getting Jesus’ attention. Because of his efforts Jesus hears him, calls him forward, and then the crowd finally helps him get to Jesus.

When he gets to Jesus, did you notice Bartimaeus says, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus does not reach out and touch him and heal him instead Jesus says, “Go your faith has made you well.”

And sure enough Bartimaeus regains his sight and follows Jesus.

It’s a wonderful story just as it is on the surface. Jesus helps another man see when those around him would rather he just shut up. One man’s tenaciousness got him to Jesus and a miracle occurred.

The story is typically heard this way. But it can also be heard as more than Jesus did a miracle, the story can be heard to have symbolic meaning and metaphor.

The story begins with Jesus and the disciples coming to Jericho and quickly passing through it. Jericho is a city on the way to Jerusalem from Galilee. It is a place of transition as Jesus leaves behind his ministry outside Jerusalem. This is just before he goes to Jerusalem to endure hardship and death and resurrection.

Up to this point in Mark Jesus’ followers, in a manner of speaking, have been blind to what Jesus has been about.

They don’t get that he must die, they don’t get that the Messiah is not a super hero who will come to the rescue with violence that BOFFS! and POWS! a way to peace.

Everyone at this point thinks Jesus is Superman-like and they want to depend on him for a rescue operation that ousts Rome and reestablishes a mighty Jewish King and kingdom. They think this despite Jesus telling them otherwise. Earlier in Mark (31-32) Jesus said:

       "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." 32 But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

The disciples up to this point have been turning a blind eye to the reality Jesus is preaching.

Only a blind beggar can see it.

Bartimaeus is the blind beggar’s name.

Bartimaeus is Aramaic, the language Jesus actually spoke, and it means “son of Timaeus.” Timaeus means “honor.”

So this man whose name means son of honor above the din approaches the man whom he calls “Jesus, Son of David.”

One moral in the metaphor version of this story is that while Jesus’ fully sighted followers don’t get it, it is in fact something that anyone with faith – even the physically blind – even an outcast with nothing can see and get.

Names mean a lot in this story.  This is the first time in Mark that Jesus is connected to David. Since he is on his way to Jerusalem to become the “king” this is rightly so. Since he is about to become known as the Messiah it is fitting that he be linked to David. But no one else in Mark saw it until this blind beggar with faith saw it. The son of honor honors Jesus with the faithful title, son of David.

Jesus is also, of course, called Jesus.

The name Jesus is interesting. We know Jesus as Jesus but he would never have known that name in his life time. If his mom had called out “Jesus time for dinner,” he would not have come home. Jesus is derived from the Latin version of the Greek word for the Hebrew-Aramaic name that Jesus really had. Jesus’ name was actually Yeshua. “Yeshua time for dinner!” would’ve worked. Oddly enough this Hebrew name is known in English as Joshua. Literally Yeshu”, Joshua, means “Yahweh saves.”

Joshua of course, is that guy in the Old Testament who takes over as leader of the Hebrews after Moses dies and actually leads the people of God over the Jordan River and into the Promised Land. Most of us remember Joshua from that song. “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho, Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down.” That’s how the song goes.

Remember that story? Joshua has God’s people march around the walls of Jericho for six days and then, on the final 7th day, the priests blow their horns and the people shout out and the walls come tumbling down so the Israelites can attack and defeat those who had been hiding behind the fortress walls.

By the time Joshua leaves Jericho everyone in the town is killed – everyone but a lowly female spy, Rahab, the prostitute who saved Joshua’s spies by seeing them out of the city safely.

Joshua was, you see, a super hero like guy who came to the rescue with violence and BOFFed! and POWed! his way to peace. Everyone at this point thinks Jesus is Superman-like and they are depending on that, despite what he has been telling them.

But unlike Joshua Jesus came through town in peace and he is leaving in peace, leaving the physical walls intact killing no one.

Jesus, Yeshua, the new Joshua, is proclaimed son of David, no less a hero than Joshua. This proclamation is not made by the disciples or the throngs with sight who follow him. As he is leaving he encounters Bartimaeus, the lowly nobody blind beggar. This societal cast-off who is both poor and disabled, that blind fellow, is the only one who sees Jesus for what he is at the conclusion of his ministry outside of Jerusalem.

It is meant, on one hand, as supreme irony that the blind man no one gives a fig about is the one who has the faith to see.

On the other hand it is meant to show that it does not matter where you are on life’s journey, what natural ailments or societal impediments are in the way, with faith – something available to all – anyone can come to Jesus.

And when we get there, Jesus will hear us above the din of those who would deny us access.

When we get to him and honor him our faith in turn will be honored and it will serve to heal us. Our faith will heal.  

“Faith” some think means belief in the unbelievable. It can also mean conviction in something, a set of values and beliefs in the way to live and be and interact with God and others in the world. Faith at its heart is how we decide to be in relationship with God. The God that is transcendent (out there) and the God than is immanent (in all creation). Faith is, in a word, trust. It is for us trust in Christ.

Jesus, in our lesson, knows that he will not be physically with his followers forever; indeed he knows at Jericho that he is to be killed in the days to follow. He is going to leave them and he has been trying to hammer home that they can do this when he is gone with faith, with trust.

It is up to us to heal our blindness to the wrong ways of humanity, with faith. We are to relate with God above and God within and God all around. Relate with love.

Jesus’ ministry outside of Jerusalem was complete. He was trying to pass it on to his followers.

Bartimaeus is the first to get it. His faith healed his blindness and he was able to follow Jesus. Like the people of God of yore he shouts outside the walls of Jericho. The walls of Jericho don’t come tumbling down, but the walls that kept Bartimaeus from Jesus do and so too the walls that kept him from seeing come tumbling down.

Our faith can heal whatever blindness keeps us from getting up, leaving our stuff behind and following Jesus. So another moral in the metaphor version of this story is that tenacious efforts to get to Jesus pay off. With faith, trust in Christ, even the blind can see.

And it is no small thing that Bartimaeus leaves behind everything. He gives up being blind and a beggar, but also his one worldly possession of any worth, his cloak. When Jesus called him Bartimaeus sprang up, threw off his cloak without hesitation and went to Jesus, and then he is healed by his own faith. And once he can see, he follows Jesus without hesitation as well. This is the end of Mark 10.

At the start of Mark 10 (17-22) there is another man who came to Jesus, a rich man.

Remember the story?

Unlike Bartimaeus whose name we remember, this other fellow is usually only remembered as “The Rich Man.”

Jesus is setting out on a journey in that story as well when, “a man ran up to him and asked him “Good teacher what must I do to inherit the eternal life?” The rich man indicated he had followed the commandments all his life, then Jesus, whom we are told loved the man, said, “‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give your money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me.’”

But “[w]hen the fellow heard this he was shocked and went away grieving for he had many possessions.”

Bartimaeus, the man without sight sees Jesus for what he is the son of David, teacher. He has but one real possession a cloak and without even being asked, he leaves it behind. The rich man has everything, everything, except the one thing money cannot buy and mere compliance with the law cannot grant, faith – trust in Christ.

Jesus is going about first-century Palestine giving away love in a culture where love was ignored, undernourished and devalued. Wealth and power are what was valued. Love is not. It takes a lot of faith to trust that love is what we should value, most everything in Jesus’ culture, and our culture today, claims wealth and power are what matter.

Jesus’ ministry flips the value system upside down. Wealth and might are devalued. Love is supposed to be valued above all else. Jesus figures out that once you value love, love abounds. Unlike gold and might, there is an unlimited supply of love and anyone can access it, and the more you access it the more of it there is.

Jesus has bags and bags and bags of love and like Johnny Appleseed he runs around the country-side planting love seeds. Jesus gives love to everyone.

We are told in no uncertain terms that the rich man is loved.

You don’t have to have what the world values to follow Jesus; not riches, not power, not a job, not what the world thinks is an unblemished body. You can be a beggar, blind, lame, sinful, adulterer, leper, oppressed even demon possessed and follow Jesus. You only need two things faith and a willingness to act on that faith.

Retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong puts it like this: we prepare for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring now to be all that each of us has the capacity to be. (Why Christianity Must Change or Die, p. 218.)

The difference between the rich man and Bartimaeus is that Bartimaeus trusted Jesus and was unreservedly willing to live fully, loving wastefully and daring in the moment to be all that he had the capacity to be. That is what faith in Christ and willing to act on that faith causes to happen.

It is what Christianity at its heart is all about! AMEN.

COPYRIGHT  Scott Elliott © 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.