MARK 10:46-End
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher, let me see again.’Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
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A few years ago I was praying with a friend of mine about a chronic health condition I have. And I really, really wanted healing, or at least I felt and thought that I wanted it anyway. So, this person prayed with me as many have before and at the end of it, it seemed that nothing happened. Or at least, I hadn’t received the healing that I wanted. On a different occasion I was speaking to another friend about this, and he asked me;;
‘Do you actually want to be healed?’
Now as you can imagine, I didn’t take this so well. I remember getting really angry, how dare he question my motives! How dare he assume that I didn’t want to be healed! But now that I look back with the benefit of hindsight I see what happened in a different light. I don’t think that his question was wrong as such, and I think I was angry because his question hit me at the fundamental level of my being. His question is valid, did I want to be healed, did I want to live life without my ailment, really really deep down? Who would I be without this thing that I have? How would I think different and act different if I didn’t have it? What could I become if I didn’t have it? Now I am not meaning this to be a cheap attempt at Freudian psycho analysis; I think this is a question that we all ask; what do we want? Who do we want to be? How do we want to be? And if we asked God to change something in our lives, do we really want that?
This is my story and by no means am I saying it is true of everybody. I know people who are desperate for healing and really want it and are still waiting on the Lord, as am I. But this story from the gospel today got me thinking back to my own thoughts and feelings when it comes to the subject of healing and change. This story, is one where Bartimaeus, a beggar and a blind man goes to Jesus for healing. No doubt he had heard of the wonderful things that Jesus had done; and, unsatisfied with his own condition, was desperate for change.
But there is much more going on here than a simple miracle story of Jesus. What’s happening here is a reflection on what it means to be a true disciple, and what one must give up in order to follow Jesus. When Bartimaeus said to him ‘My Teacher, let me see again,’ he wasn’t just asking for Jesus to heal his eyes, his was asking Jesus to change him completely from top to bottom. He knew that if he received healing that he wouldn’t be able to keep living as he had done. He would have to rely on himself, find employment and support himself rather than relying on the alms of others. But when you spend so long being a certain way, it can be so hard to change. And Bartimaeus rises to the challenge beautifully, he is the model disciple that Jesus’ own disciples consistently failed to be as we have seen over the past few weeks. He didn’t identify himself with his condition, he saw what he could be through Jesus and grasped the opportunity with both hands and did not let those around him who were discouraging him stop him from what he wanted to be. He persists in faith that Jesus can, truly can, change him. His identity became not himself and his limitations, his identity became a follower of Jesus Christ.
When Jesus asks the question ‘what do you want me to do for you? What Jesus is saying is, ‘do you want to be more than you are?’ ‘Do you want to go beyond your own assumptions and your own limitations and become something new, a new, renewed creation. That is the question that Jesus is asking.
In the passage Jesus directs the question to blind Bartimaeus, but he is also asking the question to us, the reader and listener; ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ This is God himself who is asking this question. And so we need to think, what do we actually want? And that can be hard; we go through life, our routines, our jobs, our hobbies or our trials or indeed our ailments and they can all become our identity. Many of us go through life not knowing what we want to do with ourselves or don’t find it for many years. A friend of mine has a doctorate and a great job in the biological sciences, yet when I asked her what she wants to do with her life she replied ‘I don’t know.’
Bartimaeus was blind and he was a beggar. It’s all he would have known, that was his way of life. If Jesus granted him his wish then his life would have changed entirely. He knows that he was asking for more than the healing of his eyes! He is asking for everything to be different. Bartimaeus is a man to imitate, not the disciples whom we have seen for weeks never get it right. He knows what it means to follow Jesus; in the narrative he flings his cloak to the side. That is the cloak that would have been spread out on the ground to receive the alms from passers by. He left that behind because he is leaving his old way of being behind to embrace his new life and follow the Lord
When we ask God for things, we are asking for much more than we think, we are asking for our lives to be changed; for our lives to be taken out of our hands, to go beyond what we know and enter into the endless possibility that only God could ever bring to us. It’s a kind of death, dying to an old way of being and embracing a new way of being where we are no longer in control, but we allow God to control the direction of our lives. To receive from Jesus is not just to receive healing, but a new way of living, living for him and living for others, and not for ourselves.
And as for me, I am still praying for healing, but in those quiet moments of the day when there are no other distractions and I’m praying to God. I hear this still small voice that says ‘I could heal you right now Adam, but if I did that, you wouldn’t be the person that I want to you to be.’ And when I hear that I think ‘well you’d best not heal me then, not yet anyway.’ Sometimes God doesn’t give us what we want, but he always gives us what we need, he gives us his presence with us, helping and supporting us and getting us through. But ultimately, he wants us to do as Bartimaeus did and follow him to wherever he leads. May we all have the courage to follow his example.
Amen.
