| Sermon for Sunday, September 25, 2005
WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO FOR YOU? PART
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Scripture: Mark 10:46-52
I want to talk with you about seeing and not seeing, being blind and having our eyes open to all that is around us, about what we look at but are not able to perceive. Let me start with some stories about that. Phil Yancey tells in his new book, “Finding God In Unexpected Places” about a group of early Spanish sailors hundreds of years ago who were exploring the continent of South America and had reached the headwaters of the Amazon River. They were sailing their ships into that expanse of water so wide that they presumed the river was a continuation of the Atlantic Ocean. It never occurred to them that they could drink the river water because they thought it was salty, and when they ran out of fresh water on their ships, some of them died of thirst even though they were right in the midst of largest source of freshwater in the world. Yancey says that we too are often blind to what is really around us for our spiritual nourishment and we starve to death spiritually because of our blindness. A second story: there was a recent news article about the large numbers of people in hospital delivery rooms invited there by the mom to witness birth. The article told about people being distracted during the labor and delivery and even bringing their takeout food into the room while they watched and being all engrossed in the process of videotaping. A nurse midwife wrote a letter to the newspaper about her thirty years of experience with delivering babies and seeing more and more family members present, but here is what she said about blindness and seeing: she has seen people become focused on the video camera and discussing the camera itself when she has wanted to toss the video camera out and tell those present to refocus on the miracle of birth unfolding right before their eyes. The miracle of birth. When we ask our new members to tell about a time when we have felt close to God, people always talk about two experiences-at the end of life, in the presence of death when we remember how temporary each life is, and at birth, at the beginning of life when we are face to face with something that happens thousands of times a day but is still, when we open our eyes to it, still a miracle. One more story about vision and how people see and how we each are blind to different things and have different ways of seeing: in the beginning of painter Pablo Picasso’s extraordinary career as an artist, his exploration of cubism was very controversial and was hated by many. Picasso was on a train when a man recognized him and accosted him and argued with Picasso about his style of painting portraits of people. The man asked Picasso why the artist didn’t paint people the way they really are, the way they really look. Picasso asked what he meant. The man took a picture out of his wallet and pointed at the picture and said, “Like this. This is my wife.” Picasso looked and said, “This is your wife? She’s sort of small and flat isn’t she?” The story from Mark for today is about how we see and don’t see, about how Christ still opens the eyes of the blind. We are looking at the last part of chapter 10 of the gospel of Mark and we are taking a break for a few weeks after this and taking up the next few chapters during Lent in February because the last third of this gospel is devoted to one week in Jesus' life-his last week of life which starts with Palm Sunday and ends with Easter. That week is called Holy Week and he is teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem every day and hiding outside the city at night so he cannot be arrested at night by the authorities. I have wanted to take these eleven Sundays together in Mark to reacquaint us with the teacher and Lord whom we say we follow but whom most of you do not truly know much about. I hope you have gotten some new insights and I still encourage each of you, if you have not yet, to read these chapters on your own particularly from a modern translation like the Good News Bible. Have you seen anything new about Jesus over the last eleven weeks? What have we seen? In Jesus’ first public appearance after the arrest of his cousin John, Jesus invites people to change their direction in life, to turn toward God because the reign of God is right here. He calls people to come with him and to follow him-not to worship him or to admire him but to follow. He spends his time teaching, preaching and healing mostly in villages around the north end of the Sea of Galilee. He talks about being a servant and not being self-centered. He reaches out to the wrong kinds of folks, lepers, sick people, children, Gentiles, and he even eats with those outcasts and binds himself to them. He is controversial and revolutionary and almost immediately gets into trouble with religious leaders who see him as a troublemaker and too unorthodox. He surprises his closest friends by telling them he will suffer and die and that he is a suffering servant. He was skeptical of people who trusted only in their wealth because he saw how our possessions can come between us and God. What Jesus stood for and stands for is countercultural, it is subversive, it is dangerous for a culture that worships power and status and possessions and position. To follow him-that is what he invites us to do-will mean that we will be resident aliens in a sea of materialism and consumerism and conventional thinking. It means that we will be unconventional. And it also means that we will realize the life of love and compassion and meaning that God has created us for. The story for today fits into all those themes. Jesus and his friends are on the way to Jerusalem where he will be tried and executed for treason. They are in Jericho which today is the oldest continually inhabited city on planet earth; we have excavations there dating back 10,000 years as we see in the picture of this tower. Jericho is an oasis in the Judean desert and is famous not only for this encounter with a blind man but for some other Bible stories as well. This was the place that Joshua surrounded and had his men blow trumpets and the walls came down; this was part of the journey of conquest that the Israelites were making as they moved into the promised land from wandering in the wilderness. And Jericho is the home of a famous person in the Bible who came to see Jesus but was so short he could not see and climbed into a sycamore tree and then was told by Jesus that they would dine together that day. His name was Zaccheus. In today’s verses Jesus has passed through the town and a blind beggar hears him and yells at him! “Hey Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy on me!” Why does he address Jesus as the son of David? Because that was a term for the messiah who would be a descendant of David. How do the people around Bartimaeus react when he asks Jesus to heal him? Are they happy for him that his blindness might be cured and he will be able to see? NO! They tell him to shut up, that he is making a fool of himself! Does he give up when they chastise him? NO! He just shouts louder! He calls out to Jesus again. He is assertive. Perhaps he is even obnoxious. Jesus stops and calls Bartimaeus over to him. Then Jesus asks him the same question that Jesus just asked James and John a few verses earlier. “What do you want me to do for you?” They wanted to be vice president and sec’y of state in the new regime. This man just wants to be able to see. It is a dangerous request. It is a common request in the stories about Jesus. Jesus has already healed another blind man in chapter 8. It took Jesus two attempts to make him well because the first time he could only see people who looked like they were trees and Jesus then helps him see people as people and not as things. It is a healing that some preachers today in the past few weeks are saying we still need. Bishop T D Jakes, pastor of a 30,000 member African American church in Dallas was one of the featured speakers ten days ago at a national day of prayer service attended by President Bush. Some of his words are on the front of the bulletin. He said we have been able for a while to turn a blind eye to the poor and needy in our country but not any more. He said, we can no longer be a nation that overlooks the poor and the suffering and continues on past the ghetto on our way to the Mardi Gras. The Rev James Wallis of the sojourners organization said two weeks ago that it is time finally to ask why we continue our blindness to the increasing number of poor people in our midst-the numbers have increased from 6.4 million families living in poverty in 2000 now to almost 8 million in 2004-that is families, not persons. Dr. Abraham Verghese a physician who lives in San Antonio tells about his volunteer time helping with people displaced by hurricane Katrina and tells of his treating a man in his 70's who had finally been rescued after waiting five days and needed blood pressure medication and insulin but also just needed Dr. Verghese to listen to his story of pain and to notice him, to see him, to be willing to feel with him because he had felt unheard and unnoticed and invisible/unseen. People had been blind to his suffering. The large number of stories in the Bible about blind people having their sight restored might mean that we are those who are blind and who need Christ to help us see what is around us that we have been missing. Have you ever had that experience-seeing life, seeing family, seeing friends in a new way because your eyes have been opened? The writer of one of our all time favorite hymns had that experience when he was transformed from his former life of being the captain of a slave trading ship in the 1700’s to seeing the disaster he had made of life and doing what Jesus invites us to-turn in a new direction, turn toward God, leave that old path behind us. His name was John Newton. Here are the familiar words he wrote:
Some of the people who joined our church last month and who will be joining us today have talked about seeing life differently now and making a decision to affirm Christ as Lord and do what Bartimaeus did also after his healing-follow Christ on the way. People have said last month and this month in new member sessions: I see a real need for community and fellowship with other pilgrims in my life and that is why I want to be part of this congregation. I see that now, they said, in a way I had not seen its importance before. Jesus wants us to have that fellowship with each other and Jesus wants us to SEE! To see life as God sees life, to see what is truly important in life and to focus on that. What have you been blind to? Who have you been blind to? How do you need Christ to give you new eyes today? Jesus asks Bartimaeus a very important question that he asks us today also? What do you want me to do for you? What do you want me to do for you? |
