I Want To See

Service on October 27, 2024
by First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor

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“I Want To See”

By Rick Mixon

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By Xan Morgan

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I WANT TO SEE
Texts: Job 42:5-6 (Alter); Mark 10:45-52 (The Message)
Let Me See (Steve Garnaas-Holmes)
Open the eyes of my heart
to see your grace in every moment,
to see with hope and gratitude,
with trust and humility.
Teach me to look with my mind as open
as my eyes; teach me in every gaze
to look and see as things really are,
not as I already think they are,
not as fear (mine or anyone’s) tells me to see,
but to see with grace as you see.
Let me see with the eyes of love.
Teacher, let me see anew. Amen.
Blind Bartimaeus spread his cloak in front of him as he settled into his usual spot by the Jericho Road. The steady stream of traffic, as the time of Passover approached and multitudes made their way up to the Holy City, gave him hope that his meager income as a beggar might be enhanced by the increased volume of the crowd passing by. A beggar’s prospects were poor in first century Judah. Bartimaeus barely subsisted on the coins that were thrown onto his outstretched cloak. People hurried by, trying not to look at this ragged, dirty pleader for alms, whose cries disturbed the relative comfort of their daily existence.
Occasionally some would catch themselves looking into his sightless eyes and, in guilt or shame, they would toss a small coin onto his cloak. Occasionally they remembered what they had heard in synagogue about their obligation to care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, and the needy. But more often than not, they scurried by, afraid they would somehow be rendered unclean, contaminated by straying too close to poor old Bartimaeus sitting sightless in his rags and filth.
Then, one fine spring day, everything changed. Even Bartimaeus could sense added excitement in the crowd along the road. He picked up a buzz that was more intense than usual. Something was stirring the crowd in a decidedly different way than what he experienced daily. The murmur of the crowd became clearer. “He’s coming. He’s coming. He’s just around the bend.” He could hear a voice from up in the branches of the sycamore tree under which he was sitting, “Yes, yes, I can see him with his band of followers. It is Jesus. He’s almost here.”
Bartimaeus couldn’t believe his ears. He had heard of Jesus, this remarkable teacher, this holy man from Galilee who was said to heal the sick, free the demented, feed the hungry. He had heard that he could even restore sight to the blind, but no one had told him Jesus was coming his way. No one had prepared him for the possibility that lay before him. Maybe Jesus could do something for him. Excitement gripped him; adrenalin flooded his veins. He heard himself crying out louder than ever, “Son of David, Jesus! Mercy, have mercy on me!” If only Jesus could hear him, he might come to him and heal him.
Ah, but the crowd around was mortified. “No, no, not Bartimaeus. We can’t let the teacher be bothered by a blind beggar. He has much more important work to do.” So, they crowded around Bartimaeus, trying to hide him from Jesus’ view and muffle his cries, but he yelled all the louder, “Son of David! Mercy, have mercy on me!”
Jesus stopped in his tracks, and he looked around to see where this cry of pain originated. The suddenly embarrassed crowd began to part so Jesus could get a good view of poor old Bartimaeus seated there on the dusty roadside. “Call him over,” he said, his eyes flashing with compassion for blind Bartimaeus and frustration with the unseeing crowd. Trying to save a little face and maybe with a tad of envy, some in the crowd called out to Bartimaeus, “Hey, Bart! It’s your lucky day! Get up! He’s calling you to come!”
Well, you didn’t need to invite Bartimaeus twice. He was on his feet, moving toward that magnetic voice, before the crowd had finished their echoed invitation. Again, that voice, so full of care and love, of possibility and promise. “What can I do for you, friend?”
“Oh, Rabbi,” came the trembling voice, as Bartimaeus fought to steady himself, hardly believing this could really be happening, “Oh, Rabbi, I want to see.” Well, what else was he going to say? This was his moment. Here he stood, in tatters, before the one he so clearly saw as the Messiah, the One who was to save God’s people, a poor, dirty beggar, emaciated, unclean, outcast, with certain death lurking on his horizon. “What do you want, Bartimaeus?” “I want to see.”
“Ah, dear, blind Bartimaeus. It shall be so. Your faith has saved and healed you.” And immediately, he could see.
Once more the writer of Mark’s gospel tells us about the crucial role faith plays in healing and wholeness, but Theodore Jennings warns us that “This faith is not right belief nor is it pious resignation to inscrutable providence.” He makes a different argument for faith in his commentary, “As we expect, it [in Mark, faith] is demonstrated as the refusal to be silenced, as the refusal to wait for a better time, as the refusal to wait for an appointment. It is the rude insistence that this calamity be attended to now…this faith and only this faith will cure their paralysis and their blindness” (Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., The Insurrection of the Crucified: The “Gospel of Mark” as Theological Manifesto, p. 175).
Bartimaeus cries out from the depths of life-sucking desperation. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose. His faith is deep-seated and raw, trusting Jesus might do for him what he has done for others. His sort of pain and suffering and the hope that attends it, somehow comes through to Jesus in a way that other longing doesn’t. At least that’s the way the writer of Mark sees it. It’s no cheap and easy faith that first reaches Jesus’ ears and stirs his compassionate heart. Remember, Jesus, chastising the self-righteous scribes of the Pharisees who are criticizing him for hanging out with the wrong kind of people, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mark 2:17). Welcome, Bartimaeus. There’s surely a place for you at the table. You fit right in.
So, how do we fit in? I would venture to guess that no one here is in the same position as poor old Bartimaeus. Then what does this ancient word say to us this morning? “Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?” Jesus asked his first followers. “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?” (Mark 8:17-18). Might those words speak to us?
Mark actually uses two stories of blind men to frame what Jennings calls, “Mission Training.” The elements of this training for Jesus’ first followers are found in Mark 8, 9 and 10. The writer cleverly begins this section with the story of the healing of the blind man in Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26.) In this story, some faithful friends bring the blind man to Jesus and the text says they literally beg Jesus to touch the man. You see, they believe in the power of Jesus’ touch to cure their friend even if it means Jesus must touch someone judged unclean who will render Jesus impure in the touching.
Jesus takes the man by the hand, leading him away from the village and the crowd. With a combination of healing saliva and tender touch, Jesus restores his sight. But what is uniquely important in this first story is that Jesus has to try twice before the man’s sight is fully restored. The man’s first response is that he sees people who look like trees walking. He doesn’t see immediately as Bartimaeus does. It takes him a while to see clearly, to get the whole picture, if you will.
Jennings argues that part of what the writer of Mark is trying to do here is portray what is going on with the disciples. In spite of all Jesus has shown them and taught them, they are slow to take it in. True, they have left everything to follow him, but, as we discovered with James and John looking for favor, they have not seen clearly. They do not understand fully the cost of discipleship. They are like the blind man of Bethsaida who saw the world in fuzzy focus. Jesus has to keep trying so they can see more clearly.
In contrast, at the end of this time of missionary training, Bartimaeus is healed right out in the open; his great and passionate faith ensures that he sees clearly. Then what does he do? Take off on a self-congratulatory bender to celebrate his new-found sight? Not a chance. The text says he “followed Jesus down the road.” As Eugene Peterson proclaims, “The life of faith isn’t meant for tourists. It’s meant for pilgrims.” So, Bartimaeus, as an exemplar, of faith starts out on his own pilgrimage with Jesus.
“I want to see,” we say, or we sing “Open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth you have for me,” but do we mean it? If so, how broadly and how deeply do we want to see? I will confess, when I am overwhelmed with vicious, dishonest political ads, I mute my television. I don’t want to hear. When I see images of cities and villages laid low in Gaza and Lebanon and Ukraine, when I see children maimed and killed, families barely surviving the ravages of war, when I see people starving in Sudan and struggling to survive in refugee camps everywhere, when I see the chaos in Haiti, when I observe the hatred in our own backyard, when I reflect on billions spent on political campaigns while we do not adequately care for our unhoused siblings in Ann Arbor, I begin to feel inured to it all. I don’t want to see. I turn my eyes to football or video games or whatever is on TV rather than look at the carnage and the suffering. But then I had to finish a sermon, which I had titled “I Want to See.” Well, do I?
Sometimes it’s so damned hard to see all that’s going on around us. In recent times it’s become overwhelming to take it all in, to see clearly. In this country we are immersed in political campaigns that threaten our representative democracy with the terrors of white Christian nationalism. The rights of women to live their own lives, the dignity of people of color, the hopes of refugees and immigrants, the lives and lifestyles of lgbtq+ people, especially trans people, are all under attack. Wars rage, supported by our weapons and money. Gun violence runs rampant. Antisemitism is common. We are deeply divided, really splintered as a people. One meme I posted this week asks, “Cities can be rebuilt. Economies can come back. But how does a nation regain its soul?” So much to consider!
I want to see, but do I? Because if I see, I might have to do something. Mark says Bartimaeus left his old cloak and whatever small change it contained lying by the side of the road and followed Jesus, even though Jesus was headed to Calvary. And me? I keep thinking of a song that a feminist songwriter wrote back in the 1970s. It had some popularity at the time, a kind of anthem for women of faith and their allies. What Carol Etzler wrote was this,
Sometimes I wish my eyes hadn’t been opened.
Sometimes I wish I could no longer see
All of the pain, the hurt and the longing
Of my sisters and I as we try to be free.

Sometimes I wish my eyes hadn’t been opened.
Just for an hour, how sweet it would be
Not to be struggling, not to be striving,
But just sleep securely in our slavery.
That’s sort of what I felt like yesterday morning. Let me pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep. Maybe when I wake up everything will be better, but isn’t that saying I don’t want to see? Not really see? What of the risk of slavery to some sort of soul-sucking denial that means I miss out on the beautiful promise of God’s Beloved Community?
Isn’t this what the story of blind Bartimaeus is trying to teach us. There is a better day a-coming if we would have it so, if we would just exercise a little more Bartimaeus-like faith. Or the truth is, as Carol’s song continues,
But now that I see with my eyes, I can’t close them,
Because deep inside me somewhere I’d still know
The road that my sisters and I have to travel.
My heart would say yes, and my feet would say go!
Well, isn’t that a Bartimaeus moment, when my heart says “yes” and my feet say “go”? Alan Culpepper suggests, “The story of Bartimaeus…should be the story that we read daily to remind ourselves never to be content to be spectators, simply watching others live, worship, or do ministry (R. Alan Culpepper, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Mark, p. 362). God, I do want to see, and I want my heart to say “yes” and my feet to say “go”. In your mercy, help me to make it so. Amen.