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This morning wecontinue the series of messages titled Rebooting Life. Today’s message is I Once Was Blind, But Now I See. It is the third message in this series, and a continuation of a year of messages that have all shared the theme of the way our faith can carry us through times of difficulty, how we can find good even in the midst of great difficulty, and how God’s hand moves even in the midst of overwhelming challenge.
Today is one year since the pandemic closed our church to in-person worship. We were 12 weeks out of church from that date, although we were able to share the livestream. We began offering a livestream of our worship about a month before the pandemic struck, and having the ability to offer the livestream has indeed been a great blessing. So much has transpired in the past year, so much that we could have scarcely imagined on this day last March.
The title of this message is, obviously, a reference to that most beloved of hymns, Amazing Grace. When John Newton wrote those immortal words, he spoke of a type of blindness that is far more common than physical blindness – and much more difficult to heal – and that is spiritual blindness. All of us – either in the past, present, or future – will find spiritual blindness to be a reality in our lives.
In this morning’s Scripture text, Jesus is traveling through Jericho, on his way to Jerusalem, for the final week of his life. Jericho is one of the world’s oldest cities, rich in history. Even in the time of Jesus, Jericho was an ancient city. Situated about 12 or 15 miles from Jerusalem, Jericho saw many pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. On this day, the city of Jericho was abuzz with excitement as Jesus was passing through. People were jockeying for position in order to see, Jesus, of whom they had heard so much. On the edge of the crowd was a man, Bartimaeus, who was blind, and begging for alms. Jesus healed Bartimaeus from his blindness, and in doing so, revealed that many people, while having perfectly good eyesight, remain in spiritual blindness. The way Mark ties those two types of blindness – physical and spiritual – together in this story makes for a very interesting irony.
Follow along with me as I read that passage, Mark 10:46-52 –
46 Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means “son of Timaeus”), was sitting by the roadside begging.
47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
48 Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
49 Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.”
50 Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.
51 “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.
The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
52 “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.
As I have done the past few weeks, I want to walk through this passage and make some observations as we go. As always, there are some interesting – and odd – elements in this story. Odd, as in this – when Bartimaeus learns that Jesus is passing by, he begins to cry out to Jesus. When he did, Mark says that the crowd rebuked him and told him to be quiet. Does that seem odd to you? Why would the people in the crowd want to silence Bartimaeus? I’m sure the crowd was already loud and rowdy and more than a little bit raucous. Jesus was in town, and people were excited to see him. So why would they be worried about one person calling to Jesus, when so many were probably already calling his name? Telling Bartimaeus to stop shouting would be like attending a sold-out basketball game at Rupp Arena or the Yum Center and criticizing someone for cheering after a great play! What sense does it make to try and silence someone in the midst of an excited, and loud, crowd of people? And not only that, but who tells a blind man to be quiet? Who rebukes – to use Mark’s word – a guy who is blind? Isn’t that cold, and callous, to turn around to Bartimaeus and say, would you please be quiet? And almost by insinuation, would you please go back to your begging, be quiet, and stay out of the way? Who treats someone in that way? I have puzzled over this question for a long time, and I puzzled over it quite a bit in the last week, and I’ll share with you what I have come to believe as to why the crowd would treat Bartimaeus in such a way.
One reason, I believe, is because Bartimaeus was inconvenient to the crowd. Because he was blind, Bartimaeus could not work and was forced to beg for alms. His doing so was inconvenient to people. Need is always inconvenient to society. Need gets in the way of people who want to enjoy their prosperity and not be faced with the harsh realities of those who suffer. I was in Atlanta in the mid 80s for a large religious convention when I first became aware of a practice common in large cities. When cities have conventions, with large numbers of visitors, it is common for them to move the homeless population out of sight. I should add that this was not done at the request of the organizers of the convention; the city made that move on their own. Atlanta was certainly not the only city who did this routinely; Louisville, which is a city with a lot of conventions, made it a practice as well, and only backed away from the practice when they came under criticism several years ago. Cities do not want visitors to see problems when they came to visit; they wanted people to see the sights and to spend money and enjoy themselves. Need becomes inconvenient to those who visit in the cities.
Need can, and often does, make us uncomfortable. Need confronts us with the question of what we are doing to help, and whether or not we could be doing more to help others. Maybe the crowd felt it was easier to push Bartimaeus aside, silencing his voice, and in doing so freeing themselves from the burden of responsibility.
The crowd, after all, had turned out to see Jesus, and who wouldn’t? Jesus was a celebrity of his day, and here was the chance for people to see him. Even with the limited communication technologies of the day, the word about Jesus had spread far and wide. Jesus was, perhaps, the most famous person of his day, so certainly people wanted to turn out to see him. But who turns out for a blind person? Not only did they not turn out for him; they tried to quiet him. We’re not here for you – we’re here to see Jesus! Obviously, the crowd must not have known much about Jesus, or they would not have been so dismissive of Bartimaeus. If the crowd did know about Jesus, they would have understood that the people he took note of were the blind, those who could not walk, those who were on the edges of society, and all manner of those who struggle. The crowd, if they knew anything about Jesus, would have known that people like the woman who pressed through another crowd, hoping to touch the edge of Jesus’ cloak, was representative of the people who mattered to Jesus. It was such people that Jesus wanted to see. Jesus did not want people such as Bartimaeus pushed to the side and silenced; no, he wanted to see them, to reach out to them, and to heal them. And he wanted others to see them, to notice them, and to reach out to them as well. These are the people, he would say, I have come to reach out to. These are the people who matter to me, and if you want to acknowledge my Lordship and who I am, these people will matter to you as well. Do not overlook them, do not push them to the side, and do not seek to silence them.
While some may have wanted to silence Bartimaeus, he was not going to miss his chance. When you are blind, and you hear that Jesus is coming along, why would you miss out on such an opportunity? This was a cry of desperation on the part of Bartimaeus. I don’t know how long Bartimaeus had been blind, but it was long enough that he was very desperate. Have you been desperate before? I mean really desperate. When you see an opportunity to move out of your desperation, are you going to give a nice, polite cry? No! We would shout at the top of our lungs if we believed we had the opportunity to be healed, and that is exactly what Bartimaeus did.
Let’s stay with the crowd for a moment yet. One of the interesting aspects of the city of Jericho is this – there were thousands of priests who were connected to the temple in Jerusalem. There were far more than could serve at any one time, so they served in shifts. Because Jericho was close to Jerusalem – about 12 or 15 miles away – many of the priests lived there when they were not serving in the temple. Some probably lived in Jerusalem, but others opted for Jericho – the suburbs, the country life. Among the crowd watching for Jesus that day would most certainly have been a good many priests, and most were probably watching him with a very skeptical eye. They were the ones in the crowd with their arms crossed and scowls on their faces. It was their way of communicating to Jesus that they were displeased with him. They were displeased with Jesus because he did things like heal on the Sabbath, and his disciples did not wash their hands according to prescribed rituals. Jesus did not always meet the standard of orthodoxy of the priests, so they were watching him with disapproval and skepticism. They wanted to be sure Jesus knew they did not like what he did, they did not like how he did what he did, and that they did not approve of him.
There are always those who are watching, keeping an eye on us to approve or disapprove of whether or not we are acceptable, or orthodox, in their eyes. They want to serve as our theological judges and juries. Those criticsstood in opposition to Jesus because they did not believe he was orthodox enough in his actions. There are always those people who want to be our theological judge, as though they are qualified to do so. Who gave them that job? God didn’t. There are theological questions worth asking, such as, are there limits to what we should believe or not believe? Should we have a creed that we accept as the definition of our beliefs? Should there be a line we do not cross when it comes to our beliefs and our interpretations of the Bible? But here is the problem with those who want to enforce orthodoxy and impose a creed – it’s not only what should be required, but who gets to decide what is required, and where the limits are, and where the theological boundary lines are drawn? That’s why Disciples churches don’t use creeds, or enforce orthodoxy, because ultimately, it doesn’t work very well. Who decides? Do I? Well, that would be easy. I would require everyone to believe like me. I would be the one who gets to set the theological boundaries. But that would be a terrible idea, as much as it might appeal to me.
Speaking of theological judges, let’s talk about Beth Moore for a moment. Does everyone know who Beth Moore is? Beth Moore is the ultimate rock star of Bible teachers, if that’s the right way to put it. Millions of people use her Bible studies, go to her conferences, and read her books. She’s about as big as one gets in the religious world, when it comes to a teacher. If you haven’t kept up with the news about Beth Moore in recent days, she announced the other day that she was no longer a Southern Baptist. This is a really, really big deal. She has been a Southern Baptist all her life, which is a good while (she’s about two months older than me). To make an analogy with the sports world, it was a really big deal when Tom Brady left New England for Tampa Bay. Beth Moore leaving the SBC is that kind of move times twenty, at least. There are male leaders in the SBC who have done their best to make Beth Moore’s life miserable for a long time, and they finally pushed her away. They have been critical of her because, well, simply because she’s a woman and they don’t like that she teaches and preaches and that she has a huge following and they can’t control her. When I was writing my column for the Sentinel-News, I wrote a column about the mistreatment of Beth Moore, and of women in general by some churches. I sent a copy of the column to her office. Last year I sent her a book. I found out she liked a particular author, so I sent her one of the author’s books. Not long after that, I was reading some comments on her Twitter feed, and among the comments were a lot of criticisms, so I left a comment, encouraging her to keep going and to not be discouraged. And she responded! She has like, 900 billion Twitter followers and I was surprised she responded to my comment. I’ll never forget; she said – are you the creepy guy who keeps sending stuff to my office? Actually, she didn’t say that, but she did kindly respond. I understand a little of what Beth Moore went through – just a little bit – because I spent almost thirty years as a part of the SBC, and the theological litmus tests and dealing with the self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy finally wore me out. At the worst, I had someone come to the church I was serving at the time on a Sunday morning, upset with me because of my theology. About 20 minutes before the worship service started someone came to me and told me a young man was there to see me, and that he was very, very upset. I had no idea what he could possibly want, and why he was so upset. I had never met the person before, and I don’t know what he thought he knew about me, but I was quite taken back at his confrontational attitude. Quite honestly, it was a bit concerning, because he was so upset, so angry, and seemed so unpredictable in that moment that I didn’t know what he might be capable of doing. He confronted me in the sanctuary, so I asked him to step out on the porch to talk. Once outside, I told him that I had no idea why he had come to the church to confront me, but I felt it best that he should leave immediately. He protested a bit, but I insisted that he leave, which he did, eventually.
But my experiences pale in comparison in comparison to what Beth Moore has endured. The SBC was not my lifelong spiritual home, but it was hers, and she was treated horribly by a group of people – men – who thought it was their right to serve as the keepers of the keys to God’s kingdom and to approve who can and cannot serve God. The conflict and the narrowing of theological parameters became too much for her to continue, although, as she said, it wasn’t so much that she left them as they left her. I can guarantee you this, however – departing from the SBC will not be Beth Moore’s loss. She will be quite fine, but her leaving serves as a very pointed rejection of the self-righteous, self-appointed, guardians of orthodoxy who believe it is their right to stand in the place of judgment that belongs only to God. It is not only a shot across the bow – but through the bow – of the same kind of self-righteousness that was on display by some in the crowd as Jesus passed through Jericho. And if her departure doesn’t cause them to do some soul searching, they are more hard-hearted than I ever imagined.
Now, let’s talk about one more thing from this passage this morning. I want to talk for a few minutes about evidence. This passage, like those from the previous two weeks, raises an important question about evidence, as it presents a miracle of Jesus. Now, I want to mention that when you read John’s gospel you will not find the word miracle. Instead of the word miracle, John is alone among the gospel writers in using the word sign. John considers them miracles, but he uses the word signbecause they are evidences of who Jesus was. The miracles give witness to the divine nature of Jesus, so John uses the word signto underscore that the miraclesare for the purpose of demonstrating Jesus’ divine nature. The signspoint to the truth that Jesus is God incarnate, he is the Creator entering the creation, he is the one who not only created the laws of this universe but is also the one who can supersede those laws when he chooses to do so. The common thread of the stories we have studied for these three weeks is this – they are stories that bear testimony to the divine nature of Jesus. This is, then, the ironic way in which Mark presents the character of Bartimaeus, who was blind, but he was surrounded by so much spiritual blindness, as so many refused to recognize who Jesus was.
In the quest for evidence, we still see a great deal of spiritual blindness. I mean, how much evidence is needed for some people? We have all heard people say, if I could see some real evidence of God’s existence, I would believe. If I could just see some evidence that would convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt, I would believe. What, though, constitutes evidence? How obvious does the evidence need to be in order to be convincing? Personally, I’ve always been a bit skeptical that evidence can ever be sufficient for some people, although I believe in evidence and believe in using evidence in apologetics. To me, evidence is all around us. To look up at the night sky and see the countless stars, for instance, which constitute only a tiny, tiny fraction of those that fill the universe is very compelling evidence. The fine-tuning of our planet – and our universe – that is so precise that if even the slightest element of that fine tuning were to change, life could not exist and the universe would implode or explode, is also very compelling. But it is not enough for some people, as even the gospels tell us. Last week I referenced the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and John tells us in the latter part of the story – 47 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” 49 Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”Instead of convincing Caiaphas and others, the raising of Lazarus instead made them more determined to put Jesus to death. It’s not, then, that I am against using evidence as an argument for the existence of God; it’s just that I find that for many people, no amount of evidence will ever be enough to convince them of the reality of God. Luke 16:19-31 seems to affirm this, as it tells us the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man and Lazarus pass away. Lazarus goes to paradise, while the rich man goes to Hades. In Hades he lifts up his eyes and asks Abraham, 27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ 29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ 30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ 31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
How much evidence is enough? For some people, there will never be enough. But for those whose eyes are opened to faith, evidence is everywhere. Now there is such success with eye surgery. Now, there is Lasik surgery and so many types of eye surgery that is vastly improving vision for scores of people. But we can’t do spiritual eye surgery on anyone. As Jesus moved on to Jerusalem, and as he continued to offer signsof who he was, some people’s hearts remained closed and hardened to his truth.
John Newton said, so powerfully, I once was blind, but now I see. I’m sure there were plenty of people who believed nothing would change the heart of that cruel man, but God did. God opened his eyes. That’s our hope, for all. That’s our prayer, for all.
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