6. Do We Want To See?

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. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 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.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 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.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

The healing of blind Bartimaeus is the last miracle Jesus performs in the Gospel of Mark and it is the climax of Mark’s story up to this point. What happens next is the final week of Jesus’ ministry culminating in crucifixion and resurrection. So far in these Lenten sermons we’ve seen how frequently Jesus’ disciples didn’t see what he was really doing. But old Bartimaeus who was blind did see. That’s all he asked of Jesus: “My teacher, let me see again.” And with the eyes of faith he followed Jesus on the way to the cross and beyond it to life.

The healing of Bartimaeus took place in Jericho, in New Testament times a popular vacation spot for the rich and famous. It also took place at Passover time when many pilgrims were streaming through Jericho on their way to Jerusalem. Like other Passover pilgrims Jesus was also headed to the holy city but for a much different purpose. For in Jerusalem he would accomplish his greatest miracle, the sacrifice of his own body and blood for the sins of the whole world. When we are told that Bartimaeus followed him on the way, this is the way that is meant. And all disciples from Bartimaeus down to you and me are called to follow Jesus on this same way, a way that, as we have seen, often lies hidden in plain sight.

With the Board of Deacons I have begun a little study of the Presbyterian Book of Confessions. When deacons, elders, or ministers are ordained and installed, they are asked if they will be instructed and led by the Confessions as they lead the people of God. So the Deacons and I are spending a little time at each monthly meeting talking about what the Confessions actually say.

In a couple of months we’ll get to the Heidelberg Catechism, a Reformation-era creed completed in Germany in 1563. Here’s the first question asked by the Heidelberg Catechism: “What is your only comfort, in life and in death?”

The answer? “That I belong — body and soul, in life and in death — not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

According to the catechism, in other words, because we belong to God — body and soul, in life and in death — we can wholeheartedly from now on live for God. Seeing Jesus clearly — he died that we might have life — lets us follow him truly. So let’s reflect for a moment more what that looks like by asking two questions today. The first is what is our deepest desire?

Bartimaeus had a an obvious desire: somehow he had become blind and he wanted to see again. So physical sight was his desire. But the story is told in a way that the healing of his blindness becomes a metaphor for a desire even greater than physical sight, namely seeing the truth about Jesus Christ. In other words, the greater desire is for the eyes of faith and in this sense Bartimaeus could already see before he was healed. When Jesus asked him what he wanted, he replied, “My teacher, let me see again.” He already trusted Jesus; he could already see with the eyes of faith.

Of course, Mark intentionally contrasts the response of Bartimaeus with that of James and John. In the paragraphs just before today’s text, Jesus asked James and John the same question he asked blind Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10.36) The disciples didn’t ask for sight, that is, for faith, but for power. They wanted to sit at Jesus’ left and right hands in the kingdom of heaven. We need to be clear about what we really desire.

C. S. Lewis put it this way in a wonderful sermon called “The Weight of Glory.” “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[1]

In other words, the deepest desires of our hearts are really spiritual things but too often we settle for material or tangible desires and we struggle with this mightily. We know the spiritual is most important but often we most want the material. What we want from God is often just a plain old, sorely needed, healing. A preacher tells how on one Sunday in his parish, through an unlikely turn of events, the one blind church member in that congregation had signed up to be the scripture reader on the very Sunday that John 9 materialized in the lectionary. (John 9 is a long chapter about Jesus healing a blind man.) So from his Braille Bible that blind man read how Jesus spat on the ground, made clay of the spittle, and touched a blind man’s eyes. After bathing in the pool of Siloam, the man could see.

When the service was over, the minister thanked the man who had read the scripture. He said, “You’re welcome. But I just wonder why God won’t let me see.”[2]

When we face cancer, or job loss, or the dissolution of a marriage, a miracle is what we want. And we do struggle with this. We want God to do what we ask and often we want to ask and do ask for supernatural events. And if you look for them you can find lots of Christian preachers who will say this is right. “Claim it in faith and it’s yours,” they say. But this is false teaching. Friends, all the scriptures really say is that in faith we can claim the way of Jesus. That way always leads to the cross and only beyond the cross to resurrection.

“That I belong — body and soul, in life and in death — not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” That’s what we really need and when this is our truest desire, we have begun see Jesus clearly and follow him truly.

So having asked what is our deepest desire, let’s ask a second question “what difference does seeing make?” If we do see Jesus clearly like Bartimaeus did, what difference does it make?

The best answer is to ask what we think about the baptisms we participate in here from time to time, especially the infant baptisms. Have you ever wondered why parents bother with baptism or why the church bothers with baptism? Of course it is an ancient tradition. But why fuss over something so old-fashioned and intangible? We say it is a sign of grace. But it is, after all, an invisible sign. We see the water but for a moment and then no one can see the sign, the ceremony itself lasts but a few minutes, and a cynical person could make a case that it doesn’t make any difference. Why bother?

The answer lies in the difference seeing makes. I read once about a man who lived in Maine. He described what happened to his hometown after learning that it would be flooded. The Army Corp of Engineers was constructing a large dam further down stream on the river which flowed through his town. When the dam was completed and the lake behind it formed, the town would be under water. The man said the most painful part of the experience, besides the relocation, was watching his hometown die. All improvements and repairs ceased. Why paint a house that will soon be covered with water? Why repair a building when the whole village would soon be wiped out?

Of course, it only makes sense not to do long-range projects in such a situation. But even the immediate things suffered. Rubbish collected in the streets. Week by week deterioration set in, not just deterioration of physical things but deterioration of the spirit of the town. No one cared any more and the town died. The man concluded by saying, “When there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present.”

Cynics could say that is the way life is, life is a deteriorating hometown. The floods will come. Illness will catch up with us. We will all die someday. The problems of human society will overwhelm us. Why bother? Why baptize babies?

The answer is the difference seeing makes. When there is no faith, there is no meaning in the present. But when there is faith, then we know that God is with us and this makes us “wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for [God].” So we baptize. And for those with the eyes to see, it is an invisible but amazing sign of the loving presence of God. We do our duty and like Bartimaeus we follow the way of Jesus in obedience. See the world and you will say nothing makes any difference. See Jesus clearly and follow him truly like the blind man did, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Famous for Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan, the American essayist E. B. White who died in 1985 once described his thoughts as he watched his wife Katherine planting bulbs in her garden in the last autumn of her life. I may have shared this story with you before. White wrote, “There was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance … the small hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.”[3]

Katherine White was one of those souls who plants seeds of hope under dark skies of grief or oppression, one of those who goes about their living and dying until — no one knows when or how or where — God will bring his creation to full bloom and all the seeds of hope will blossom into a splendiferous beauty of which the human heart can now only dream. Do we want to see? Then let us have the faith of Katherine White. Have the faith of old, blind Bartimaeus. For this is the faith that sees Jesus clearly and follows him truly.

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1949) 1-2.

[2] James Howell, “Things Not Seen,” Pulpit Resource 28.4 (2000): 21.

[3] Michael Hodgin, ed., The Pastor’s Story File 4.11 (1988): 3.