Sermon Oct 29
Oct 29, 2009
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge
A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Professor of New Testament, given on October 29, 2009, in Christ Chapel
Mark 10:46-52
A blind beggar sits at the edge of the road. No sight. No money. No options. But don't take him for granted. He's got a name, Bartimaeus. And so far in this gospel disability and disease have been no impediment for Jesus.
Bartimaeus was one of many, many poor peasants in Galilee whom Jesus preached to about a kingdom, the strange new reign, a world where oranges and pomegranates grow in the desert, where one loaf feeds thousands, and wild beasts are companion animals. God was coming, Jesus said... God was making a way in the wilderness, a highway for our God, a way for God and a way for us, a way out, a way out of no way.
When Mark told the story of Bartimaeus, and he was a model of no way; he represented the suffering this church still suffered.
We read this story today, this episode at the midpoint of the gospel of Mark, here at midterm. It may be a time of losing sight and of narrowing options, when our zeal is flagging, and when sin clings closely.
My mother called me... I'm worried about our President, she says. He's in trouble. She's worried about him accosted, attacked... no longer invincible... Our culture wars are violent, ugly, and blighted by dirty tricks of all kinds. The same goes for the church's wars. The Lutheran seminary program is hanging on for dear life. As Bishop Dena Harrison preached a few weeks ago, We, the seminary of the Southwest, have got 15 million dollars to raise and at the same time the Episcopal church is in deep trouble.
We are afflicted by grief. Those we love are at the point of death or have passed over. Some of us are a very long way from our families, and they are in danger or trouble from poverty or from war. In West Austin, East, North and South Austin, Sudan, Namibia, Pakistan, Egypt, the Philipines -
There are stones in the road - it's all stones. There's a nearly irresistible temptation to give up, disappear, or flee away naked. Or simply to let yourself be torn up by bitterness and resentment and grief as ferocious as demons rampaging through you.
Bartimaeus is in trouble, but he does have lungs and a mouth for shouting. There's lot of shouting in the gospel of Mark, the mad man in the tomb, the unclean spirits, but Bartimaeus yells for mercy.
"Jesus, Son of David, Have mercy on me!"
"Prayer of repentance" is too sophisticated a term for this cry.
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah. It is a loud and it's a desperate Lord have Mercy. It is a bellowed Kyrie Eleison.
Notice me, Fix my eyes, Deliver me. Change things for me, Change things for everybody.
Bartimaeus' cry pleads for help for the Christians in Mark's community, people who are preparing to sign on, or to stay in.
Bartimaeus cries for my need for God, he cries for our need for God's mercy. Even for us sighted, on top of it, in charge people. We too are, as my friend says, brought to our knees by stuff that controls us - by terror, by too much pressure to bear, by sin.
Every morning the alarm goes off on my Blackberry charging next to my bed.
I think the tone is Alarm-Antelope- Medium. I reach out to the little square screen illuminated. Right after I press "Dismiss," when I shake off sleep - whatever kind of night it was - sweet or tough, I say,"Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy."
It's "thank you" and "help me" and "God start off here right at point zero with me."
Brother Curtis Almquist at the monastery of Saint John the Evangelist in Cambridge advises - just start simply at the very lowest point of breathing, of gratitude for breathing, there is a reason today is today.
"Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me."
People told Bartimaeus to shut up. Maybe they grabbed his arms and pulled him down to subdue him. These were all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God. They possess the contempt of the sighted for the blind. Shut up. You haven't got a chance. Who are you to cry out? You're nobody. You are worthless. There is no hope.
So he yelled louder. This was a shouting match. Nothing polite about this. It's just as embarrassing as a sick woman pushing through the ... mob, reaching for, chasing hem of Jesus' garment or just as rude as a mother forcing her way into the house, to get Jesus to recognize her, to shame or to outwit him into tossing her some crumbs.
Bartimaeus cries out, not the crazed yell of a madman or the eerie shriek of the demons, but a shout of pain, "My God, My God...."
Could we ever get to this point, as a community, a country, a church, where we shout loudly, impolitely, embarrassingly to be noticed, to get help, to be changed... this is a leveling thing, a disarming stance, a spiritual state that God can do something with. "Lord have mercy."
And then suddenly, immediately, into this fray of agonized courageous crying and noisy rough silencing, come new voices, different voices... calling voices. The Greek word is phoneo and the noun, phone. It is repeated again and again.
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." Cheer up; he is calling you.
Remember that very first voice, at the beginning, the call of Isaiah the prophet, the voice/sound of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Then came the voice of John: repent, be baptized, turn around, look again to see something new happening. Then voice from heaven... "you are my Son... "Call him here. Call him here says Jesus. They called him, take heart, he is calling you. A sign of hope. Maybe it'snot so bleak. He's calling you.
This was the call that the fallible followers in Mark's community kept hearing - the voice of the risen Christ in their midst even after war had destroyed their holy place and they were running for their lives.
Where do we hear that voice calling? From what people in our lives? After you press "Daily Alarm Dismiss" what do you hear next?
Take heart, get up, he is calling you.
Sometimes when a person is disabled in one sense, we think they are disabled in others, so you might have thought Bartimaeus lame as well as blind, until you saw him spring up, leap up, throw off his cloak.... Don't you love that!
For that early Jesus community, Bartimaeus, the example of suffering transforms into a model of faith. He is eager and unafraid... he throws off his garment and comes bare before God.
We could try this too, if we dared, if we were desperate enough, if the voice encouraged us insistently and firmly and kindly.
Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
I had a wonderful bishop when I was preparing for ordination. John Coburn. He died this August. He was wise and kind and handsome and could be intimidating, especially when he was really listening to you, which was what he was amazingly good at, because at some particular point in the conversation, he would say, "What can I do for you at this juncture?" Well that clarified the mind for sure... he meant it, and immediately the unimportant stuff dropped away and you were left with the one most important thing you could ask him for.
So Jesus says to Bartimaeus, What do you what me to do for you?
Mary Oliver's poem: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do. With your one wild and precious life?"
When you answer, you have to decide.
Decide which way to turn, what path to take, what voice to listen to, what desire to put first.
Please God, Let me keep my money, give me a position sitting at the right and left hand with Jesus in his glory, keep me safe, take me down from the cross, - keep things the same. Don't let me lose my stuff, my kids, my spouse, my friends.... My job.... There are a million things we want.
"My Teacher, let me see again"
We figure out what it is that we want, and then we stake our precious life on just one thing. And so Jesus says, "Go." "Go your faith has made you well/made you whole/saved you."
And Jesus says Go!
We heard the voice, "get up, he is calling you."
Jesus has been raising people all throughout this gospel of Mark: Peter's wife's mother burning up with fever, and the daughter of Jairus, "little girl I say to you arise," and now here again, "rise up, he is calling you!"
And now we hear "go."
Being raised is the going. The going is the being saved, the seeing, the jumping up and throwing off the old jacket.
Bartimaeus goes. He says yes, to the donkey ride and the palms and Jerusalem and the cross, that's all ahead, but it's also behind us now too, because we, like the community of Mark, have lived beyond the end of fear and trembling. We have heard the voice of the man in the tomb, and he also has said, Go.
Go, tell his disciples and Peter... that he is going ahead of you to Galilee, there you will see him, just as he told you!
As long and winding was the road, how very large the stones, God has had mercy upon us, God has led us out.
We've got the kingdom so close you can feel the rain and smell the citrus trees.
Jesus assembled a rag tag bunch of followers - from the crowds of sick, maimed, paralyzed, and crazy people all over the countryside of Judea, who were exploited and ignored.
Jesus noticed them, gave them attention and made them whole. He called them and enlisted them in the reign of God, come very close. They were the older brothers and sisters of the struggling Jesus community of Mark, still scared, still hungry, but fed in eucharist and washed in baptism, given new identity in the risen Son of Man, spent as a ransom for many.
Whether it fits our current self-image or not, we are descended from this remnant, this raggedy bunch of bleeding, screaming, convulsing people, who were made whole, made well, saved by Jesus.
And there's nothing for us to wait for, next year, for someone else, for something to be fixed that's broken now.
No. We are way beyond the end. The rising is the going.
In this seminary, in the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Church, the Methodist, the Baptist, the Catholic Church, let's just do what Jesus says and Go. Make the way in no way. Go to Galilee and see what needs to be made whole.
Amen.
