A Sermon from July 9th, 2017
Mark
10:46-52
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.
On March 4th, 1917 Karl
Barth preached on the text that we just heard. To give that moment a bit of
context, it was set in the middle of a World War – Germany was starving and
Russia was undergoing Revolution.[1] And it is at this moment that Barth anticipated the
pessimism that would sweep postwar Europe. Like many great preachers, Barth had
a tendency to turn single sentences into sermons and his sermon on this text is
no different. When Barth looked at this text and at his own world he was struck
by the phrase, “Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the
roadside.” Today I hope to take a step in this direction. If you follow me,
we’ll scope out the nature of our world just as Barth surveyed his. Then we’ll
delve into what this scripture has to say to us both as moderns and as humans
in general.
Earlier this week I read an
interesting book review in The New Yorker.[2]
The review focused in on a new and fairly popular book within literary circles
that addresses the rise and origins of the Early Church. Emmanuel Carrère’s The Kingdom is a sweeping fictional take
on the lives of Paul and Luke and is, in many respects, a bit of an autobiographical
reflection. But it wasn’t the contents of the new book that led me to connect
it to today’s scripture.[3] It was, rather, some of the reflections from the
reviewer that caught my eye.
The New Yorker’s review of this book provides
several themes that are useful for us as scriptural interpreters. As it notes,
Christianity was novel precisely because it went beyond the “the intimate, familial struggle of the Jews and their God”.
In its place, Christianity brought us a “strict theology of sin and salvation”
– both in the writings of Paul and in the Christian approach to modernity that
we can find in Søren Kierkegaard. As the review
states, “Christianity’s singularity lies in its understanding of sin.” Both the
book review and Carrère argue
that Christianity was unique because it went beyond the Golden Rule of both
Classical and Jewish thought.
It’s
easy to forget that it was the Jewish scholar Hillel (50 B.C. - 10 A.D.) who
popularized the idea that the Golden Rule was the essence of the Torah a
generation before Jesus. But Jesus was unique precisely because he went beyond
this kind of statement; and, indeed, I think that we could surmise
that he wouldn’t have been unique if he hadn’t done so. Jesus didn’t just say,
“Do to others what you want them to do to you” (Matt 7:12)
he went further and said that we must love our enemies and be perfect as our
heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:44 and 5:48). This is both the power and
the scandal inherent to Christianity – the inversion of our humanity that so
appalled Nietzsche and attracted both Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky.
To a normal mind, it is as though “everything natural and human is turned
upside down.” And it is this point that inspired me to bring in another video
clip for us to watch together this morning. I want us to listen to this
narrative from a popular TV series and see how it might reflect something from
Christianity.
I
chose this particular clip because I believe that this character, the High
Sparrow, can teach us something about Christianity. When George R.R. Martin
created the fictional word in which that story is set, he had Catholicism in
mind. The High Sparrow could be said to be reminiscent of many of
Christianity’s reformers. His statement that, “The poor disgust us because they
are us, shorn of our illusions. They show us what we’d look like without our
fine clothes. How we’d smell without perfume” is powerful and reminiscent of
much that can be found within the Christian tradition, particularly the failed
reforms in the few hundred years preceding the Reformation. I do not believe
that his insight is far from the truth, but it this insight along with those I
already mentioned like the call to love our enemies and be perfect as our
heavenly Father is perfect that turn the fallen state of our humanity on its
head. These are the tenants that revolutionized the world and appalled those
who wanted a more natural order.
As most of us know, Christians were
not heavily persecuted by the Romans at first. Cities with large Jewish
populations certainly saw appeals to the Roman authorities for the persecution
of the early followers of Christ, but the Empire itself was largely ambivalent
until the reign of the Emperor Nero between 54 and 68 A.D. The Roman historian:
“Tacitus suggests that Nero used them as
scapegoats for the great fire of Rome, in 64. But Tacitus adds that the
Christians, devotees of what he calls ‘a most mischievous superstition,’ were
likely convicted not because they started the fire but because of their
otherworldly beliefs and practices—their ‘hatred of humanity.’”[4]
Most
of us would probably stay far away from any claim that we hate humanity. I know
that I would never want anyone to say that I hated humanity or that I was a bit
of a masochist. However, I think it can be helpful to realize how truly
revolutionary Christianity actually is.
Perhaps we can see this by taking up a
comparison that Carrère makes in The Kingdom. Many of us probably read the Homer’s Odyssey in High School. It was required
reading at both of the High Schools I attended. In the story, Odysseus comes to
a point where he has to decide:
“between
staying on Calypso’s paradisal island… or returning home to Ithaca. Calypso’s
charms are intense: she offers eternal pleasures, and she reminds our hero that
Penelope, his wife back home, cannot possibly rival the beauty of an immortal
goddess. Odysseus concedes as much, but still he chooses to go home; he chooses
the mortal and the mutable over the deathless and the eternal.”[5]
The point of this, and of most ancient
wisdom, is that an authentic life is better than the life of a god because it
is real. As Carrère says, “Authentic suffering is better than deceptive bliss.
Eternity is not desirable because it’s not part of our common lot.”[6]
Christianity
offers a very different vision. It is, essentially, utopian.[7] We
wait for and proclaim and Christ who will help us escape our current
sufferings, even when we hedge that argument by saying that he also empowers us
to heal and create in the present world we now occupy. If we take the
opposition of Paul and Odysseus seriously then we might conclude that:
“Each
one calls the only true good what the other condemns as baneful illusion.
Odysseus says that wisdom always consists in turning your attention to the
human condition and life on earth, Paul says it consists in tearing yourself
away. Odysseus says that, regardless of how beautiful it is, paradise is a
fiction, and Paul says that’s the only reality.” [8]
That’s where Carrère
ended up at least. He paints Christianity’s rejection of the natural order as
enticing, but also utopian. And perhaps he’s right to degree. In my mind, there
is some truth to this. I think there are some parallels between the utopian
themes of Christianity and those found in even some of the more recent utopian
works of people like Herbert Marcuse whose thought influenced much of the
radical movements of the 1960’s.[9] Perhaps there’s some reason for that. I might be
stretching things a bit, but maybe there’s as much of a connection between this
kind of hope and Christianity as there is between Christianity and the origins
of human rights and ethical standards that protect the vulnerable – be they
minorities or scapegoats.[10]
So, let’s come back to the phrase I
wanted to bring our attention to from today’s scripture – “A blind beggar was
sitting by the roadside.” What should we think about his? Here, we have a few
words about the sad state of a man, but perhaps we can also see this as the
state of humanity itself. In this passage, we have what life can make of us. It
describes what it can make of me today and what it can make of you tomorrow. We
tend to think that life is a friend to the strong, the healthy, the rich, and
the intelligent. Life can seemingly reassure us of our importance, how much we
are needed, and how much we can enjoy the sunshine of knowing that we are
alive. Life gladly:
“plays
with us in the sunshine as long as it likes to do so. But life is a treacherous
and false friend: you never know
when, in a moment, it might strike you to the ground and roll you around in the
mud, if this so happens to suit its mood.”[11]
Likewise, we also know that the fate which
stands as a cheerful companion of the strong also untiringly plagues the weak. Why
should any of us not think that our strengths could not disappear?
If
a blind beggar is sitting by the roadside we inevitably ask why he is blind –
“why is the light that shines on us absent for him?” And yet, life pays little
attention to this question. In today’s story, as in life, most people disregard
that which is thrown to the curb. We can imagine the people passing by. There’s
something strikingly similar between this story and the story of the Good
Samaritan. The beggar is helpless. All he, or perhaps we, can do is beg. That’s the way of the shadow side of life. It
is ruled by Mammon – the almost divine forces that compel us to consume,
destroy, and take without regard for others or our environment. It is bitter
thing when we are thrown from one side of life to the other and forced to look
into the face of the Mammon that had formerly blessed us. Perhaps it is a curse
that takes everything at once; or, perhaps, it is a curse that consumes a
little at a time until it no longer has a use for that which it cannot use.
The world looks
different from the eyes of the blind. It looks different from the windows of
the hospital, the asylum, and the prison. The world looks different in the gaze
of the widow and the orphan. It looks different from the many dark alleyways, underpasses,
and hovels that serve as the resting places for the world’s poor and
dispossessed. A blind beggar sits by the roadside not only then but now.
This
blind man had no choice but to be thrown to the side of the road. He is blind!
How can we imagine him being anything but bitter and despairing? How can we
imagine him not seeing the world as a place of great suffering and injustice –
an injustice? Barth asks us to consider who is right: “he [the beggar], as he sees the world; or we – we secure, happy, healthy people – as we see the world?”[12]
It’s a question that sounds shockingly similar to the narrative we heard from
the High Sparrow in the clip we just saw. We are the beggar. Yet, we ignore
that which is thrown to the roadside precisely because it is us shorn of the narratives
we tell ourselves – the theatre of performance we enact day in and day out ever
struggling to create a sense of ourselves apart from that which is cast aside.
Yet, we are not entirely unfamiliar with the beggar. There is something about
our lives that might stir us and make us uncomfortable enough to agree with
Barth who says that the beggar:
“sees the world
as it is; he, with his blind eyes,
understands the world better than we do with our seeing eyes; he no longer allows himself to be
deceived. Life at bottom is suffering, injustice, outrage! And he knows it, but we not yet – and that
is the difference!”[13]
We are the beggar even when we hide from
that fact. Shades and shadows slip through the light of our own comforts even
when things are going well.
Each one of us
asks what it means to be human, both individually and collectively. Often
times, we are led to this question by the concern that life might be making
fools of us all. Life is like a game of cat and mouse. And yet it is not an
episode of Tom and Jerry. In the real world, the cat catches the mouse, even if
only after an extended chase. We, the blind beggar, can just as easily lift our
accusations against the fates of life, the evils of Mammon, and the insanities
of war. But even in this moment of chorus it can feel the wind usually carries
our voices away – to be lost in the distance and mocked by silence.
And
yet there is now another who passes the blind beggar of Jericho. He too is a
human being and a victim. He is about to be pushed to the side of the road and
tormented – to be thrown among the dead. “He belongs neither to ‘good society’
nor to those who climb up the social ladder with agility and guile.”[14]
He chose a path with no prospect of success. In the story, he has already suffered
and will continue to until the end. He has no illusions about what lies ahead. He
is headed to Jerusalem – the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent
to it (Matt. 23:37). “But this man is in a different relationship to life than
the blind beggar. In fact, a whole world lies between them.”[15]
The beggar was thrown into nothingness and the Son of Man took life into his
own hands and made something miraculous out of it. These are two sufferers,
yes, but one is subjected to the sigh of futility and anguish (Rom. 8:20) and
the other is the Lamb of God, who bears the sin of the world (John 1:29).
This
man, the Son of God, came down the road to us blind beggars because we needed
God. The course of events was set because God both moves and acts. God is a
cause:
“in the singular
sense that God cannot be with human beings because human beings make their life
without God. With God, they could rule over life, but now they are subjected to
it. With God, truth would be their existence, but now life swindles and
disappoints them. […] God is the key to life, but human beings have lost the
key: what wonder that they now stand angrily before the many dark secrets of
their existence.”[16]
And yet this is why Jesus came. He was not
surprised to see suffering, nor was he surprised about what happened to him,
because he saw through both.
Jesus
did not come to say to the blind beggar, “Resign to reality as it is. It’s your
tough luck.” He was kept from doing that by his deep respect for God, who will
never leave humanity to itself nor let it wither in the shadows. Jesus pitted
the powers of this life against the powers of God. He not only shows us the
keys to being human, but returns those to us again as well. He asks us not to
just accept things as they are, but to accept God, who accepts us and empowers
us in so doing. The passion of Christ is the ultimate moment of humanity. It is
not a moment of resignation or defeat but a moment of defiance. It is a moment
where Christ, the preeminent human, advanced with the banner of God. As Barth
stated, “Jesus suffered not stupidly and not in anger, but as the soldier of
God standing at the most difficult and most exposed post and doing his duty
against the evil enemy!”[17] I
think that we can understand that this is something different from what we see
in the blind beggar and from what we see in ourselves. It is easy to not see
things the way Christ sees them.
And yet, Jesus
let the blind man see again just as he offers us the chance to see again. Jesus
conquered death and despair and he offers us the chance to do that too. We need
not resign to fate, suffering, or any type of despair because we can call out
in faith and have God heal us with the words, “Go, your faith has made you
well.” Christ reaches into our lives with those words. Our lives and world can
be affected by them if we come to Christ with the same kind of determination
and faith that Bartimaeus expressed. May God grant us the wisdom and strength
to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” For it is in this moment,
where we embrace the very thing that appalled Nietzsche and the Classical
world, that we draw near to the words that we ever so desperately need to hear,
“Go, your faith has made you well.”
[1] Karl Barth, Mark 10:46-52 [March 4th, 1917], trans. William H. Willimon,
The Early Preaching of Karl Barth: Fourteen
Sermons with Commentary by William H. Willimon (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2009), pp. 1-8.
[2] James Wood, “The Radical Origins
of Christianity: Emmanuel Carrère’s ‘The Kingdom’ explores how a tiny sect became a
global religion”, The New Yorker, July 10th & 17th
2017: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/the-radical-origins-of-christianity?mbid=social_facebook
[4] Wood, “The Radical Origins of
Christianity”.
[5] Ibid.
[7] Perhaps even dialectic utopianism,
particularly if we take the ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ into account.
[8] Wood, “The Radical Origins of
Christianity”.
[9] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (1964) and; An Essay on Liberation (1969).
[10] René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 2001)
[11] Karl Barth, Mark 10:46-52, p. 1.
[12] Ibid, p. 3.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid, p. 4.
[15] Ibid, p. 5.
[16] Ibid, p. 6.
[17] Ibid, p. 7.