Proper
25 :: Jeremiah 31: 7–9; Psalm 126; Hebrews 7: 23–28; Mark 10: 46-52
This is the homily given at St. John’s,
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, October 28, 2018.
“INSIGNIFICANT, A BOTHER,
AND PERHAPS A SINNER”
(Homily
text: Mark 10: 46-52)
As the Church Year begins to wind down,
we come at last to the final miracle which took place before Jesus’ triumphal
entry into Jerusalem, the healing of the blind beggar Bartimaeus.
As He passed through the city of
Jericho, Bartimaeus called out to Him, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy
on me.” Mark tells us that the crowd who were walking with Jesus told him to be
quiet. But the more they tried to shut him up, the more he cried out, “Son of
David, have mercy on me.”
Why would the crowd have wanted to
ignore Bartimaeus? Why would they have tried to have him remain out-of-sight
and out-of-mind?
We can only speculate about the exact
reasons, but our guesses might be fairly accurate ones. Perhaps the crowd
thought that Bartimaeus was a bother, Perhaps they thought that he was
insignificant in the overall scheme of things….after all, they were all on a
pilgrimage toward the holy city of Jerusalem so that they could keep the
Passover. (Bartimaeus, because he was blind, couldn’t enter the Temple, so he
could not participate in the festivities.) Or, perhaps the crowd thought that
Bartimaeus had lost his sight because of some grievous sin.
Society and the world, down through
the years, has had more than its share of outcasts, people who are a bothersome
sight, those who are insignificant (and disposable) in the overall, grand
scheme of things, people who are so unholy that nothing and no one could ever
clean them up.
It’s a sad commentary on the condition
of the human heart, absent God’s intervention to remake and reorient the
attitudes that can so easily shape our responses to those around us who are
less-than-whole physically, mentally or spiritually.
Jesus’ response to Bartimaeus cuts
through all of these attitudes and behaviors. As Bartimaeus cries out, Jesus
responds by saying, “Call him.”
To our Lord, Bartimaeus wasn’t a
bother. He wasn’t insignificant. He wasn’t someone to be ignored or silenced.
And, perhaps most importantly, he wasn’t a sinner whose misdeeds were so bad
that nothing and no one could forgive him.
Jesus’ healing action cuts right
through all of these notions. Bartimaeus was, to our Lord, a child of God,
someone who mattered to God, someone who should have mattered to others, as
well.
Our Lord’s action is an object lesson
for us to study, learn from, and emulate. For our Lord comes to us, seeking out
the least and the lost, the outcast, the poor, the sickly, and the sinner.
May we, like the Lord we claim to
follow, do likewise.
