Readings: Job
42:1-6 Mark
10:46-52
Let us pray
May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of our hearts open not just our mind and heart but also our eyes
and ears to your way for us Jesus Christ.
Amen.
‘I have heard of
you by the hearing of the ear – now my eye sees you.’ So says Job in this moment of spiritual
clarity, acknowledging that his experience of God in his life had been limited;
that it was primarily formed by that which he had been instructed in, learned
from family and community - and now he is in the thick of a huge storm in his
life – he’s been to hell and back – and it is the midst of this suffering that
he has this new experience of God, There is this moment or awakening – of
realisation that what you might call his theological arrogance has blinkered
him to the truth that God transcends Job’s knowledge, his theology, his
experiences. For it is in the midst of
his suffering he knows God’s transforming grace –has found a new way of
speaking with God. And it changes his
life.
‘I
want to see’ says blind Bartimaeus when asked by Jesus ‘what is it that you
want me to do for you?’ Despite the
attempts of the disciples to shush him up he yelled louder and louder until Jesus
heard the commotion and invited him to come and be healed. It has to be noted that the disciples still
had their blinkers on too – not yet convinced that the lowly and the
disreputable were just the ones Jesus wanted to see. Bartimaeus leaps to his feet, the scripture
fair pulsates with his determination to encounter this man Jesus – for his eyes
have been opened to the truth of Jesus well before his physical blindness has
been cured.
I’ve always been fascinated by how we see
things, the way in which familiarity can shrink our understanding and
preconception can make our eyes slide over things we really need to see. On my frequent trips home to Balclutha as a
student in Dunedin, I used to look at the familiar landscape around me and
re-imagine it through the eyes of one who was seeing it for the first
time. It was interesting how many new
things I spotted using that perspective, how stunning the views and vibrant the
life in it.
What we think we see is so often just a
part of what there is to see – and its worth reminding ourselves that while we
don’t always have the luxury of video rewind or observation mode or re-imaging
to enable us to see the bigger picture, we also have a tendency to think that
what we see is the whole and complete picture. Job came to that realisation the hard way –he
acknowledged before God that his faith was limited by his inability to see, to
imagine if you like, the wholeness of God.
His theological stance did not allow for God to be more than Job
perceived him to be, hence his anger and bewilderment at suffering for such a
righteous man. The understanding that he would never see or know all of God was
a moment of brilliant clarity, of deeply meaningful insight for him.
Bartimeus, for all his physical blindness,
was also a person who leads us into much needed clarity about the way of
faith. It is worth noting that the
Gospel of Mark sandwiches the two stories of the healing of physical blindness
around the three accounts of the blindness of the disciples and their inability
to see the truth when Jesus predicts his suffering and death. Their response is blindness personified:
rebuke by Peter for saying it, ashamed and fearful silence, and a request to
have a position of power when they came into the kingdom. They didn’t get it – at all. But Bartimeus did! The blind man did.
Lets tease out some of the action in this
story of the healing of the blind man and then think about how we might sit
respond to it.
First of all the blind man was
marginalised, on the side of the road, spoken to as of no worth, told to shut
up – but Jesus heard and responded.
Jesus asked Bartimeus a question,
interestingly exactly the same question that he had posed to the disciples in
the reading last week: ‘What do you want me to do for you?
The disciples, still with their blinkers
on, had responded with the request for ‘favourite status’, Bartimeus with a
plea to be able to see.
Jesus said: tell him to come to me and
Bartimeus got up and ran towards him – there was action, eagerness in his
response to Jesus call.
And immediately he regained his sight,
Bartimeus followed Jesus on the way – to Jerusalem and the cross.
I wonder what blinkers we wear – often very
comfortably.
There are certainly people within the
Christian church who believe their experience of God is the only one. Immediately they have limited God, distrusted
Jesus teachings of the immensity of God’s love.
Not just in the Christian faith too.
I came across a
quote the other day that made me bristle.
And it is about spiritual blinkers.
It was from Sinead O’Connor who has recently converted to Islam and she
said: ‘"This is to announce that I am proud to have become a Muslim. (That
didn’t get me going – quite the opposite – but this did.) This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian's journey.
All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant.
How profoundly arrogant I thought. Not in her conversion but
in the barrier of conceit that she stands behind. A conceit that intelligent
thinking belongs only to one faith, that in order to celebrate a new
relationship you need to stomp on others.
I hope that in time she learns that the love of God permeates this world
in ways we cannot even imagine. I hope
she has a Job moment.
How much do we, who think we see the whole
picture, get stuck in our own narrow perspective finding it hard to reimagine
our God experience.? That is why we need
to embrace God and community with our eyes open to new things – so that we can
hear other stories, see other ways, be made wiser through animated conversation
with God and the insight of others, building together a picture of the kingdom
as God knows it to be.
How do we respond to Jesus’ question “What
is it that you want me to do for you?”
Only you can answer that question but it is one worth spending some
serious time on and it is one we should answer from the very depths of our
souls. If our answer is to be that of
Bartimeus – Lord let me see – then what is it that we each need to see more clearly?
Whatever the answer, it has to do with how
we can better serve God, community and ourselves in the way of Christ. For surely this is the core of the reading we
heard today – immediately he regained his sight, he followed him on the
way.
Show us, here in this place, O Christ, your
way that we might follow it faithfully, generously and lovingly, opening not
just our eyes but the eyes and ears of all whom we meet, in Jesus name. Amen
Margaret Garland
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