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Sunday, March 08, 2009
What Do You Want Me To Do For You?
10th in a series on Questions from the Bible
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Mark 10:46-52 New Revised Standard Version 46 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. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" 49 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." 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 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." 52 Jesus said to him, "Go; your faith has made you well." Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
The story we just heard from the gospel of Mark is the last encounter that occurs before Jesus enters Jerusalem for Holy Week for his crucifixion. Jesus and his friends are passing through the town of Jericho, one of the oldest cities on our planet. In Jericho we can see excavations that show us thousands of years of civilization. Jericho is an oasis in the middle of the Judean desert, a beautiful and lush place with trees and a spring. The town is featured in one other story in another gospel. It is the famous story that features a short man and a tree. It is the place where Jesus met an outcast named Zaccheus. He was an outcast because he was a Jew who worked for Rome as a shill, a tax collector for the hated occupying government. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus encounters another outcast who makes a request, perhaps a demand on him. Bartimaeus is an outcast because of his disability. He is blind. People with disabilities were shunned, were looked down on in ancient times. He had become a beggar sitting by the side of the road. But when he hears that it is Jesus who is walking on the road, he shouts to Jesus and asks for compassion. He is almost obnoxious in his pleas to Jesus, at least the people around him see him as being obnoxious because they tell him, sternly, to be quiet, to just shut up! Or, remember your place, don’t make a fool of yourself. Jesus is an important man and he does not have time for the likes of you!! But Jesus heard him and saw him and stopped and told the crowd to ask the man to come near. Bartimaeus called Jesus by the messianic title, Son of David, so Bartimaeus knows and believes that Jesus can help him. When the man with the disability is standing in front of Jesus, Jesus asks him what might seem to be a silly question: What do you want me to do for you? It seems obvious does it not? In the Gospel of Mark Jesus has been itinerating around the north end of the Sea of Galilee doing three things; teaching, preaching, and healing people. Shouldn’t Jesus know that this man who cannot see will want Jesus to let him see again? And still he asks, what do you want me to do for you? Perhaps one reason that Jesus asks this seemingly obvious question lies in what has just happened in the gospel of Mark right before this story. Jesus has been with twelve friends at least a year now, perhaps three years, and they have listened to him teach and seen him make people whole. They should understand him well. They should know what he is about, but do they? In the passage right before this one, two of his twelve friends have come with a very unusual request. James and John approach him as they are walking toward Jerusalem, toward Jesus’ place of execution, and they boldly tell Jesus that they want Jesus to do whatever they ask him to do. Jesus asks them the same question: What do you want me to do for you? They tell him that they are looking for status and power and prestige. They tell him that when he overthrows the Romans with violence and becomes an earthly king, they want to be his secretary of state and secretary of defense, to sit at his right and left. Jesus must have been extremely disappointed and even a bit astonished! After all this time with him, listening to him, traveling together and talking casually over each meal, they have missed the point!! He sees that they have a desire to be great, but the way to be great is to be a servant and not to get people to serve you. It should not surprise us because people misunderstand Jesus and what he stands for even in our time. I got an e mail from a church member asking about the Left Behind series of books. I wrote back and said they represent a horrible misunderstanding of the Bible, of the book of Revelation. They represent a misunderstanding of Jesus, a misperception that thinks a life of faith is all about the afterlife and about avoiding a painful destruction when the end of the world comes. It represents a kind of religious triumphalism that says that people not like them are going to be destroyed in the final judgment. That point of view can lead to arrogance and condescension, some of the qualities that bothered Jesus the most in the religious leaders of his time!! People still misunderstand Jesus, so he was wise to ask Bartimaeus that seemingly obvious question. I had hired someone a few years ago to replace some shingles on our house. I think I heard about him because he was doing some similar roof work in our neighborhood. When he gave me his business card, I noticed it had a fish symbol on it, a symbol that was used in the early Christian movement when people had to be cautious about telling that they were followers of Christ. I asked him what the symbol on his business card meant for him. He told me it meant that he was forgiven and was assured of going to heaven. I was fine with that but I was also looking for more of an answer that said he was trying to do his work with integrity and excellence and a commitment to be a servant in his professional life, to approach his work with the attitude in the book of Ecclesiastes: Whatever is before you, give it all you have got! (Ecclesiastes 9:10) I was looking for the kind of ethical commitment that is in the book, Cowboy Ethics; What Wall Street Can Learn from the Code of the West by James P. Owen, published by Stoecklein Publishing & Photography, Ketchum Idaho. The author says we need to return to the common sense ethical standards of the old west of a while back: Live each day with courage Take pride in your work Always finish what you start Do what has to be done Be tough, but fair When you make a promise, keep it Ride for the brand Talk less and say more Remember that some things aren’t for sale Know where to draw the line What do you want me to do for you? People today would give different answers if Christ were to ask us that question. Some people would say, I want Jesus to just guarantee me an afterlife when I die. My religion is all about getting to heaven and has nothing to do with how I might treat people here and now. Other people might say, I want Jesus to tell me and others that I have the true religion and everyone else is wrong, everyone else is just going to hell. That is a loose paraphrase of the theology in the Left Behind books. Others would say, I want Jesus to just bless me the way I am and not have any expectations for me to grow and change and think any differently than the way I do now. It is not an expectation that Jesus seems to fill in the Bible when he does challenge people’s behavior and their narrow ideas of who fits in the family of God. In fact the very fact that Jesus is willing to stop and give attention to Bartimaeus would have made the religious leaders uncomfortable because they saw this blind man as unimportant. What do you want me to do for you? Other people have answers that are more authentic. Some of us might say we want Christ to be our comforter, to be the Prince of Peace, to help us cope with the storms of life in a tough recession. We need Christ to see us through and to give us a peace that the troubles of the world cannot take away. That is one of the expectations that Christ is willing to fulfill. That is why in the gospels there are several stories about Jesus being in a boat in a storm and calming the storm and even walking on top of the violent waves. These stories tell us that he will not let the storms of life overwhelm us. Most of us can authentically look to Christ with that hope and to have our hope fulfilled. What do you want me to do for you? Bartimaeus is quick to give his answer: “I want to see again.” He has been able to see in the past but something happened and now he cannot. He even has become one of the unseen people, one of the invisible people, one of the nobodies, because of his disability. How well do you see? How well can you see? I am getting some new glasses in a few days because my brain surgery a few months ago had a slight effect on my optic nerve so I got a small prescription change. There are some risks in being able to see a little better. I might see the dust balls in some corners that I had not noticed. I might see some people I had not noticed. How well do you see? What do you notice and not notice? Who do you notice and not notice? Are there people like Bartimaeus who are on the fringes of your world whom you just have not seen? Do you know the story about the medical school professor who gave the final exam in a class for students who had been with their cadavers for a year? All the questions were very technical and anatomical except for the last question. The last question was: What is the name of the woman who cleans our room every day? A student who did not know the answer was very offended and troubled by the question. She had seen the cleaning lady very regularly at the end of each day but did not know her name. She had not noticed her enough to see her as a person. When she questioned the professor he told her that part of their medical education was that they should be trained to see carefully and to notice carefully and not to become so insensitive to people who might be on the margins that they lose their own humanity. He was right. Who do you notice? Who do you take time for? How is your vision? How well can you see? Are you taking time to see your family members, your co workers, to really see them? Let me tell you a story from last Monday’s New York Times. In every Monday’s Times there is a section that is devoted to human interest stories from New York City. Many folks have stereotypes of New Yorkers being uncaring and impersonal and the stories in this section give life to that stereotype. Last week a reader told this true New York story. “In Dunkin Donuts this morning an old lady wearing a tattered watch cap started speaking to no one in particular, “I can’t sleep at night. I have pains in my chest all the time. My leg hurts and my children do not love me.” People waiting in line hid in their cell phones, looked away, or stared straight ahead. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to turn. My husband died two years ago on the 27th.” Everyone pretended she wasn’t there. The girls behind the counter took the next customers. The line inched forward. At a side table, a beautiful young lady with a matching purple scarf and hat looked at the old woman and said simply, “Honey please sit down with me and tell me your story.” Who do you see and not see? Who do you overlook and pretend is not there? How is your vision? Let’s close by looking at the question Christ asks blind Bartimaeus as he is standing before Christ. Christ is asking you, what do you want me to do for you? Can you see that--Christ standing in front of you? How will you answer his question this morning?