The face at the center of history
Commentary
My friend is an agnostic. He grew up in a Christian family where church participation
was as common as air and mealtime prayers were daily ritual. He went to Sunday school
and gained familiarity with all the great Bible stories. During his high school years, he
had a charismatic conversion and became a rabid evangelist. Many were bit by his incisor
words and became children of eternity.
My friend read his Bible every day. He even bought an audio version on tape so that he could listen to it through earphones while he worked his third-shift factory job. At break time, in the wee hours of the morning, he convicted and convinced his fellow workers, and started a growing Bible study in the lunchroom.
By the time he finished high school, he wanted to get a degree in geology so that he could disprove those who were debunking Christianity through evolutionary teachings. He set out to become the world's foremost scientist who, as a Christian, would be able to write the final geological textbook on young earth theory and convincingly endorse what he believed to be the only valid creationist hypothesis. Meanwhile he brought scores to church and displayed a personal life of radical discipleship.
Along the way, he began to lose his faith. Pastors and his parents disappointed him first because they were not as committed to Christ as he thought ought to be natural. Their lives betrayed constant compromise and theological wishy-washiness. Then his converts let him down. They became Christians, but argued with him about life-style issues. Next, theology and church history turned against him. He devoured early apologists of the faith and found them contradicting one another, and often interpreting the Bible in simplistic ways that didn't square with obvious modern, scientific explanations of the way things were or worked.
Finally, his academic world conspired against him. Those who were most honest in the field of geology seemed to have ample reason to undermine flood theory geology and young earth cosmology. Meanwhile, those who seemed most adamant about faith were regularly playing mind games with scientific data until they appeared to bend it to their own ends.
Now my friend is lonely and lives in the rarified agnostic world between theism and atheism. If left to his jilted and scandalized church experiences, he would easily step across the line and capitulate to an existence without God, but he can't get past the face of Jesus. He respects Jesus, regardless of what the gospel writers or the church might have done to him. He wonders about Jesus -- so manly and yet so religious; how could he be brutally honest and still express trust in God?
Jesus is the hinge, the hook, the weft in the warp and woof of the fabric of the universe. Each of today's lectionary passages reminds us that we can't live in a world without God, and that only a messiah like Jesus can keep us connected.
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
This culmination to the drama of Job may seem at first glance to bring about a happy conclusion, but great care must be taken in its explication. First, God never gave a clear answer to Job's question as to why he suffers. Although Job confesses his finitude over against God's infinity, he does not jump up and down shouting "Eureka!"
Second, there is a hint of cause-and-effect judgment against Job's friends (the actual indictment falls in verses 7-9, which are not included in today's reading, but the outcome of that assessment clearly underlies v. 10, so it needs to be dealt with) that seems to go against the very heartbeat of the dramatic dialogues earlier in the book. Job's friends saw a direct and specific correlation between improper actions and divine judgment, but Job protested otherwise, and Elihu supported a more complex understanding of suffering. Here there is a kind of poetic justice which appears to demand a pound of flesh from those who are deemed wrong for their earlier actions.
Third, the tie-up of loose ends is too neat. In the opening of the drama, Job lost a bunch of stuff; now he gains back a whole lot more. At the beginning, Job offered sacrifices on behalf of his children who might have uttered an inappropriate word or considered a wrong thought; now he makes similar atonement for his friends who have spoken inappropriate words and considered wrong thoughts.
Fourth, Satan is not in the picture. Since the whole matter of Job's suffering was predicated on a wager between the unseen powers, it would stand to reason that there should be a divine declaration of a winner here at the end. It does not appear, and the scoreboard of heaven which clocked tragedy so mercilessly at the start, now stands dark, with no trophies awarded.
Fifth, while the entire dramatic dialogue of the book railed against a mechanical understanding of the universe, the final prose verses seem deftly to restore that perspective to prominence. So many things were taken from Job, therefore so many similar things must be added back to Job (with interest, of course).
To preach this text carelessly is to tell people, in the words of the classic Bobby McFerrin song, "Don't Worry! Be Happy!" since it is all going to turn out fine in the end. But such oversimplification directly opposes the complex theodicy woven through the inner chapters.
Job 42 should be approached as if it were the final scene of a morality play. The goal of the medieval morality plays was to summarize value systems broadly and apply them to specific daily behaviors. Here the primary value system put forward is that the creator God remains in charge, despite snippets of evidence to the contrary as touted by our newspapers. Evidence of this is seen in three things: Job, God's marvelous friend and the test-case for spiritual faithfulness, is vindicated in his refusal to give in either to Satan's challenges or to his own friends' simplistic theology; prayers and offerings overcome expected mechanistic outcomes; and evil is not co-terminus with good. When Job's fortunes are restored at the close of the book, it is an eschatological flag of hope waving for all who continue to live somewhere between Job 2 and 37.
The message must echo with mature hope which neither oversimplifies pain and suffering in heavy-handed judgments, nor wallows too long in the empathetic mire of the distressed. There is a God who will not allow evil to run wild forever. There is a right way of living, even in tough times. There will be a resolution to all these things that trouble us, although it might not come according to our schedules or bring the outcomes we might believe most appropriate from our limited vantage points.
Hebrews 7:23-28
The lectionary deftly steps around Melchizedek in picking these verses to explain Jesus' unique role as high priest. Combining rabbinic teaching and philosophic argumentation, Jesus is identified as a superior intercessor for the people of God. There are two reasons for this. First, Jesus offers the sacrifice of himself, which provides a more fitting in-kind substitutionary atonement than does even the best of unblemished lambs. Second, because Jesus came back to life after death, and now lives forever, he can reaffirm his single great offering in perpetuity.
What is not so obvious, at first, is the cosmological worldview informing this short passage within the whole of the work. Visually, all of the theology in Hebrews is based upon the architectural layout of the tabernacle. Created at the foot of Mount Sinai, the tabernacle was intended to provide a residence for Yahweh among the people of Israel, in a dwelling as portable as were their own. It was part of the Suzerain-Vassal covenant agreement -- in order for Israel to fulfill its destiny as the divinely appointed ambassador for blessing to the nations (see Genesis 12:1-2), the nation had to embody Yahweh's presence on earth (see Exodus 33).
The layout for the tabernacle, although much grander and elaborate, was essentially that found in any Israelite tent. A fire pit and utensils for washing sat in front. A common area included lamps for illumination, dishes for eating, and other household tools. At one side or end, hidden from public view by a cloth or skin, was a sleeping area. This was the place of most privacy and infinite intimacy between those who belonged to the household. The tabernacle duplicated these areas and equipment on a larger scale. The courtyard was more clearly defined by an outer perimeter of royal-colored hangings. It had a large altar for fire, and a super-sized washbasin called the laver or bronze sea. These symbolized processes of cleansing and reconciliation, just as the fire pit and washing utensils did in other tents. In the "common area" of the tabernacle, identified as "The Holy Place," were the lampstand (always lit), the table (always set), and the altar of incense (always smoldering). These represented the equipment of hospitality, and assured Israel that there was always a welcome for them in Yahweh's home. The place behind the screen, known in the tabernacle as "The Most Holy Place," was the intimate residence of God. It housed a portable throne (the Ark of the Covenant, which was topped by the "Mercy Seat" and guarded by two Cherubim), which visualized Yahweh's identity and relationship with the community.
All of the theology in Hebrews is designed to move us from external places (heathen conditions and unbelief), past the altar of burnt offering (the cross of Christ) and laver (baptism), into the church (the holy of holies) where prayers are offered (altar of incense) and insight is gained (lampstand) and the fellowship meal is celebrated (the Eucharist), finally to be received into the very presence of God (The Most Holy Place). For a brief summary of this see Hebrews 10:19-25.
Moreover, the image of the tabernacle is tipped on end in the book of Hebrews, so that the place behind the curtain or veil, The Most Holy Place, is actually heaven, and the rest is terrestrial. Jesus is the great high priest who comes from behind the curtain (heaven) to our world in order to bring us back through the barrier with him to the other side (see Hebrews 4:14-16).
The point of these descriptions is to remind Jewish believers (many of whom may well have been proselytes from among the Gentiles) to remain in the messianic fellowship of Jesus rather than slipping back into the old ways of the earthly tabernacle. That ancient expression of religion had been appropriate until now, but it has recently been superseded by the better expressions of intercession expressed in and by Jesus.
A contemporary application of this message might be to address forms of traditionalism in the church which often reduce it to ritualized acts of self-preservation. A focus on the person and mission of Jesus could re-energize a church's purpose for existence, even in the face of persecution.
Mark 10:46-52
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus only makes one trip to Jerusalem during his adult ministry, so the journey there is critical because it explains the reason for Jesus' existence (messianic death) and reactions to that purpose. As Jesus passes through Jericho, he gives sight to blind Bartimaeus. In so doing, Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah promised by the prophets. Throughout the Old Testament there is no incident recorded of a blind person having sight restored (there is a brief story in 2 Kings 6:8-23 of Elisha being instrumental in producing a temporary blindness to an army of Aram, but this is very different from having a congenitally blind person or a person who lost sight because of an accident suddenly receiving the ability); this healing gift is reserved for the Messiah (see Isaiah 42:7).
This is why Mark reminds us several times over that Jesus is the "Son of David." Family records had been kept through the years of exile and restoration, and there were many others who could trace family lines back to David's royal house. Jesus is not merely one of the shirttail relation that linger on in third-rate apartments and hope for some windfall patronage position and pension when their favorite rises to the throne. Jesus is in fact the true heir to David's kingly greatness. Bartimaeus, though blind, can see what sighted folks are ignorant about. He witnesses the character of Jesus' link to the family founder. He knows the power that flows through Jesus' veins. He understands who Jesus is and what Jesus is about as Jesus travels this last cruel leg of the journey to the cross. In order for Jesus to be the Messiah, he must have the healing graces of heaven at his disposal, and he must also walk the road of the suffering servant. Blind Bartimaeus sees both these things as he calls out to the one who is about to change the course of human history.
Preaching on this passage must explore both the level of the miracle as evidence of Jesus' divine character and also the underlying theme of faith as more than sight. Bartimaeus lived in a world where his senses had failed him; yet he is able to understand things that those who still exist in a world ruled by scientific empiricism are blind to.
Who among us can truly see? Who among us is able to get behind the limits of the senses and experience with the mind and the heart? Who today needs a miracle, and who is able to pray appropriately for it to take place? Only those who understand Jesus' true pedigree.
Application
We are nearing the end of the liturgical year. We have passed through Advent anticipations that God will act among us, Christmas carols announcing God's faithfulness in the incarnation, Epiphany reminders of the uniquely revelatory character of Jesus, Lenten journeys with Jesus through the valleys of anguish, Holy Week reminders of redemptive suffering on our behalf, Easter excitement and Pentecost empowering. Now we are getting ready to do it all over again.
What have we learned? What do we know each time around this cycle of the seasons? In the end, it comes down to this: it all depends on Jesus. Without Jesus, God remains hidden and we drift between agnosticism and superstition. Without Jesus, there is no solid revelatory hook on which to hang our faith. Without Jesus, suffering is never redemptive and there is no exit from the grave. Without Jesus, the warmth of the Spirit never comes and we are left to seek substitutionary thrills in experiential consumerism that kills us before we can satisfy our addictions.
Without Jesus, Job's story is merely a nice fairy-tale in which "they lived happily ever after" but we don't. Without Jesus, Gentile proselytes to the Jewish faith who embraced the Messiah are sent back to the rituals because they found that no one was really at home in the house of God. Without Jesus, Bartimaeus remains blind and unfortunately his sighted neighbors live in the only land of reality, and it isn't very pretty.
It all hinges on Jesus.
Alternative Application
Mark 10:46-52. It might be possible to deal with the Gospel Lesson in terms of Jesus' compassion. C. S. Lewis said that there are two ways to be impartial in our relationships with others. The first was by reducing each one we meet to the lowest common denominator and disdaining them all equally. In prison, for example, each inmate is the same and thus each is treated "impartially"; names are replaced with numbers; clothing for all is identical; living quarters are reduced to exactly the same size for each person; even the schedule of the day is harmonized until none is given special privileges over another. Impartiality rules.
The second way of impartiality, said Lewis, was that of individualized esteem. Here the goal is not to treat each person equally but to treat each person uniquely with a focus on caring. In illustrating his point, Lewis said that he was upset with the way that some of his friends invited their children to call them, as parents, by their first names. While he understood their motives, he feared the outcome. The result of such social conditioning, said Lewis, is far worse than its benefit. The beauty of family life is found precisely in the inequalities present. In a family, we learn that people are not to be loved "equally," but "uniquely." A wife does not love her husband because he is just one of the crowd that hangs about. Nor does a father treat one child completely the same as any other child. True love discriminates. Any parent who tries to love all the children in exactly the same way becomes frustrated to the point of incompetence. It is in the family that we learn to esteem each person greatly not because each is another cloned pea in a pod, but because each is unique and different.
In this lies the secret of Jesus' relationship with Bartimaeus. A person who cares with an impartial love does not look at all people the same. Rather, a person who cares impartially begins with the assumption that each person is different, and each person is worthy of individual love. Bartimaeus could see the uniqueness of Jesus and declared it in his shouting. Jesus, also, could see the uniqueness in Bartimaeus that required a special act of grace to bring him along the road to the kingdom. In such ways Jesus sees each of us. And when we are so seen, we begin to have the capacity to see others in turn.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 34:1-8 (19-22)
The most fervent of prayers we can offer up to God is the living out of our lives in faithfulness. This sentiment was echoed in the writings of Saint Clement of Alexandria, a philosopher/theologian who died around 216 A.D. Beyond the volumes of written prayers and liturgy that have piled up over the centuries, this simple dictum rings of authenticity. If our very lives are viewed as prayer, as an offering to God what lives would we lead? If every action, every word, and every thought were understood to be prayer, things would change dramatically.
Could it be that the development of worship into segmented and compartmentalized sixty-minute chunks could have been a mistake? As one who writes materials for just such times, the thought is a bit daunting, but worth considering. With people going to church on Sundays, church and the faith it is designed to nurture become relegated quite easily to the Sunday slot. Indeed, God help the pastor who strays much over the magic sixty-minute limit! We dare not, after all, let our faith interrupt the rest of our lives. What if church stopped being a location and reinvented itself as a way of being. In other words how is it that we can be the church together?
What if whole Christian communities could appropriate Paul's concept of being a "living offering"? (Romans 12:1). What if we abandoned worship as we know it and embarked upon lives that were a prayer being lifted up to God? What if we blessed the Lord "at all times," as the psalm suggests? What is suggested is really a seamless garment of faith. It is the ingestion of God's wonder into the body of Christ. What is hoped for is the rebirth of the church as each person begins to embrace the call to be praising God all the time, to be praying every day in every way with everything we do.
When we lift up the words, "O magnify the Lord with me," the question almost immediately arises. What will be used as a magnifier? The answer is simple to say, but will not be easy to do. The magnifier of God is to be our lives, lived in praise wonder and prayer. This way, it's easy to understand the notion of "tasting God," of experiencing God's wonder and goodness as we live out our lives as an act of prayer together. So it is these familiar and oft-said words could gain new life.
My friend read his Bible every day. He even bought an audio version on tape so that he could listen to it through earphones while he worked his third-shift factory job. At break time, in the wee hours of the morning, he convicted and convinced his fellow workers, and started a growing Bible study in the lunchroom.
By the time he finished high school, he wanted to get a degree in geology so that he could disprove those who were debunking Christianity through evolutionary teachings. He set out to become the world's foremost scientist who, as a Christian, would be able to write the final geological textbook on young earth theory and convincingly endorse what he believed to be the only valid creationist hypothesis. Meanwhile he brought scores to church and displayed a personal life of radical discipleship.
Along the way, he began to lose his faith. Pastors and his parents disappointed him first because they were not as committed to Christ as he thought ought to be natural. Their lives betrayed constant compromise and theological wishy-washiness. Then his converts let him down. They became Christians, but argued with him about life-style issues. Next, theology and church history turned against him. He devoured early apologists of the faith and found them contradicting one another, and often interpreting the Bible in simplistic ways that didn't square with obvious modern, scientific explanations of the way things were or worked.
Finally, his academic world conspired against him. Those who were most honest in the field of geology seemed to have ample reason to undermine flood theory geology and young earth cosmology. Meanwhile, those who seemed most adamant about faith were regularly playing mind games with scientific data until they appeared to bend it to their own ends.
Now my friend is lonely and lives in the rarified agnostic world between theism and atheism. If left to his jilted and scandalized church experiences, he would easily step across the line and capitulate to an existence without God, but he can't get past the face of Jesus. He respects Jesus, regardless of what the gospel writers or the church might have done to him. He wonders about Jesus -- so manly and yet so religious; how could he be brutally honest and still express trust in God?
Jesus is the hinge, the hook, the weft in the warp and woof of the fabric of the universe. Each of today's lectionary passages reminds us that we can't live in a world without God, and that only a messiah like Jesus can keep us connected.
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
This culmination to the drama of Job may seem at first glance to bring about a happy conclusion, but great care must be taken in its explication. First, God never gave a clear answer to Job's question as to why he suffers. Although Job confesses his finitude over against God's infinity, he does not jump up and down shouting "Eureka!"
Second, there is a hint of cause-and-effect judgment against Job's friends (the actual indictment falls in verses 7-9, which are not included in today's reading, but the outcome of that assessment clearly underlies v. 10, so it needs to be dealt with) that seems to go against the very heartbeat of the dramatic dialogues earlier in the book. Job's friends saw a direct and specific correlation between improper actions and divine judgment, but Job protested otherwise, and Elihu supported a more complex understanding of suffering. Here there is a kind of poetic justice which appears to demand a pound of flesh from those who are deemed wrong for their earlier actions.
Third, the tie-up of loose ends is too neat. In the opening of the drama, Job lost a bunch of stuff; now he gains back a whole lot more. At the beginning, Job offered sacrifices on behalf of his children who might have uttered an inappropriate word or considered a wrong thought; now he makes similar atonement for his friends who have spoken inappropriate words and considered wrong thoughts.
Fourth, Satan is not in the picture. Since the whole matter of Job's suffering was predicated on a wager between the unseen powers, it would stand to reason that there should be a divine declaration of a winner here at the end. It does not appear, and the scoreboard of heaven which clocked tragedy so mercilessly at the start, now stands dark, with no trophies awarded.
Fifth, while the entire dramatic dialogue of the book railed against a mechanical understanding of the universe, the final prose verses seem deftly to restore that perspective to prominence. So many things were taken from Job, therefore so many similar things must be added back to Job (with interest, of course).
To preach this text carelessly is to tell people, in the words of the classic Bobby McFerrin song, "Don't Worry! Be Happy!" since it is all going to turn out fine in the end. But such oversimplification directly opposes the complex theodicy woven through the inner chapters.
Job 42 should be approached as if it were the final scene of a morality play. The goal of the medieval morality plays was to summarize value systems broadly and apply them to specific daily behaviors. Here the primary value system put forward is that the creator God remains in charge, despite snippets of evidence to the contrary as touted by our newspapers. Evidence of this is seen in three things: Job, God's marvelous friend and the test-case for spiritual faithfulness, is vindicated in his refusal to give in either to Satan's challenges or to his own friends' simplistic theology; prayers and offerings overcome expected mechanistic outcomes; and evil is not co-terminus with good. When Job's fortunes are restored at the close of the book, it is an eschatological flag of hope waving for all who continue to live somewhere between Job 2 and 37.
The message must echo with mature hope which neither oversimplifies pain and suffering in heavy-handed judgments, nor wallows too long in the empathetic mire of the distressed. There is a God who will not allow evil to run wild forever. There is a right way of living, even in tough times. There will be a resolution to all these things that trouble us, although it might not come according to our schedules or bring the outcomes we might believe most appropriate from our limited vantage points.
Hebrews 7:23-28
The lectionary deftly steps around Melchizedek in picking these verses to explain Jesus' unique role as high priest. Combining rabbinic teaching and philosophic argumentation, Jesus is identified as a superior intercessor for the people of God. There are two reasons for this. First, Jesus offers the sacrifice of himself, which provides a more fitting in-kind substitutionary atonement than does even the best of unblemished lambs. Second, because Jesus came back to life after death, and now lives forever, he can reaffirm his single great offering in perpetuity.
What is not so obvious, at first, is the cosmological worldview informing this short passage within the whole of the work. Visually, all of the theology in Hebrews is based upon the architectural layout of the tabernacle. Created at the foot of Mount Sinai, the tabernacle was intended to provide a residence for Yahweh among the people of Israel, in a dwelling as portable as were their own. It was part of the Suzerain-Vassal covenant agreement -- in order for Israel to fulfill its destiny as the divinely appointed ambassador for blessing to the nations (see Genesis 12:1-2), the nation had to embody Yahweh's presence on earth (see Exodus 33).
The layout for the tabernacle, although much grander and elaborate, was essentially that found in any Israelite tent. A fire pit and utensils for washing sat in front. A common area included lamps for illumination, dishes for eating, and other household tools. At one side or end, hidden from public view by a cloth or skin, was a sleeping area. This was the place of most privacy and infinite intimacy between those who belonged to the household. The tabernacle duplicated these areas and equipment on a larger scale. The courtyard was more clearly defined by an outer perimeter of royal-colored hangings. It had a large altar for fire, and a super-sized washbasin called the laver or bronze sea. These symbolized processes of cleansing and reconciliation, just as the fire pit and washing utensils did in other tents. In the "common area" of the tabernacle, identified as "The Holy Place," were the lampstand (always lit), the table (always set), and the altar of incense (always smoldering). These represented the equipment of hospitality, and assured Israel that there was always a welcome for them in Yahweh's home. The place behind the screen, known in the tabernacle as "The Most Holy Place," was the intimate residence of God. It housed a portable throne (the Ark of the Covenant, which was topped by the "Mercy Seat" and guarded by two Cherubim), which visualized Yahweh's identity and relationship with the community.
All of the theology in Hebrews is designed to move us from external places (heathen conditions and unbelief), past the altar of burnt offering (the cross of Christ) and laver (baptism), into the church (the holy of holies) where prayers are offered (altar of incense) and insight is gained (lampstand) and the fellowship meal is celebrated (the Eucharist), finally to be received into the very presence of God (The Most Holy Place). For a brief summary of this see Hebrews 10:19-25.
Moreover, the image of the tabernacle is tipped on end in the book of Hebrews, so that the place behind the curtain or veil, The Most Holy Place, is actually heaven, and the rest is terrestrial. Jesus is the great high priest who comes from behind the curtain (heaven) to our world in order to bring us back through the barrier with him to the other side (see Hebrews 4:14-16).
The point of these descriptions is to remind Jewish believers (many of whom may well have been proselytes from among the Gentiles) to remain in the messianic fellowship of Jesus rather than slipping back into the old ways of the earthly tabernacle. That ancient expression of religion had been appropriate until now, but it has recently been superseded by the better expressions of intercession expressed in and by Jesus.
A contemporary application of this message might be to address forms of traditionalism in the church which often reduce it to ritualized acts of self-preservation. A focus on the person and mission of Jesus could re-energize a church's purpose for existence, even in the face of persecution.
Mark 10:46-52
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus only makes one trip to Jerusalem during his adult ministry, so the journey there is critical because it explains the reason for Jesus' existence (messianic death) and reactions to that purpose. As Jesus passes through Jericho, he gives sight to blind Bartimaeus. In so doing, Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah promised by the prophets. Throughout the Old Testament there is no incident recorded of a blind person having sight restored (there is a brief story in 2 Kings 6:8-23 of Elisha being instrumental in producing a temporary blindness to an army of Aram, but this is very different from having a congenitally blind person or a person who lost sight because of an accident suddenly receiving the ability); this healing gift is reserved for the Messiah (see Isaiah 42:7).
This is why Mark reminds us several times over that Jesus is the "Son of David." Family records had been kept through the years of exile and restoration, and there were many others who could trace family lines back to David's royal house. Jesus is not merely one of the shirttail relation that linger on in third-rate apartments and hope for some windfall patronage position and pension when their favorite rises to the throne. Jesus is in fact the true heir to David's kingly greatness. Bartimaeus, though blind, can see what sighted folks are ignorant about. He witnesses the character of Jesus' link to the family founder. He knows the power that flows through Jesus' veins. He understands who Jesus is and what Jesus is about as Jesus travels this last cruel leg of the journey to the cross. In order for Jesus to be the Messiah, he must have the healing graces of heaven at his disposal, and he must also walk the road of the suffering servant. Blind Bartimaeus sees both these things as he calls out to the one who is about to change the course of human history.
Preaching on this passage must explore both the level of the miracle as evidence of Jesus' divine character and also the underlying theme of faith as more than sight. Bartimaeus lived in a world where his senses had failed him; yet he is able to understand things that those who still exist in a world ruled by scientific empiricism are blind to.
Who among us can truly see? Who among us is able to get behind the limits of the senses and experience with the mind and the heart? Who today needs a miracle, and who is able to pray appropriately for it to take place? Only those who understand Jesus' true pedigree.
Application
We are nearing the end of the liturgical year. We have passed through Advent anticipations that God will act among us, Christmas carols announcing God's faithfulness in the incarnation, Epiphany reminders of the uniquely revelatory character of Jesus, Lenten journeys with Jesus through the valleys of anguish, Holy Week reminders of redemptive suffering on our behalf, Easter excitement and Pentecost empowering. Now we are getting ready to do it all over again.
What have we learned? What do we know each time around this cycle of the seasons? In the end, it comes down to this: it all depends on Jesus. Without Jesus, God remains hidden and we drift between agnosticism and superstition. Without Jesus, there is no solid revelatory hook on which to hang our faith. Without Jesus, suffering is never redemptive and there is no exit from the grave. Without Jesus, the warmth of the Spirit never comes and we are left to seek substitutionary thrills in experiential consumerism that kills us before we can satisfy our addictions.
Without Jesus, Job's story is merely a nice fairy-tale in which "they lived happily ever after" but we don't. Without Jesus, Gentile proselytes to the Jewish faith who embraced the Messiah are sent back to the rituals because they found that no one was really at home in the house of God. Without Jesus, Bartimaeus remains blind and unfortunately his sighted neighbors live in the only land of reality, and it isn't very pretty.
It all hinges on Jesus.
Alternative Application
Mark 10:46-52. It might be possible to deal with the Gospel Lesson in terms of Jesus' compassion. C. S. Lewis said that there are two ways to be impartial in our relationships with others. The first was by reducing each one we meet to the lowest common denominator and disdaining them all equally. In prison, for example, each inmate is the same and thus each is treated "impartially"; names are replaced with numbers; clothing for all is identical; living quarters are reduced to exactly the same size for each person; even the schedule of the day is harmonized until none is given special privileges over another. Impartiality rules.
The second way of impartiality, said Lewis, was that of individualized esteem. Here the goal is not to treat each person equally but to treat each person uniquely with a focus on caring. In illustrating his point, Lewis said that he was upset with the way that some of his friends invited their children to call them, as parents, by their first names. While he understood their motives, he feared the outcome. The result of such social conditioning, said Lewis, is far worse than its benefit. The beauty of family life is found precisely in the inequalities present. In a family, we learn that people are not to be loved "equally," but "uniquely." A wife does not love her husband because he is just one of the crowd that hangs about. Nor does a father treat one child completely the same as any other child. True love discriminates. Any parent who tries to love all the children in exactly the same way becomes frustrated to the point of incompetence. It is in the family that we learn to esteem each person greatly not because each is another cloned pea in a pod, but because each is unique and different.
In this lies the secret of Jesus' relationship with Bartimaeus. A person who cares with an impartial love does not look at all people the same. Rather, a person who cares impartially begins with the assumption that each person is different, and each person is worthy of individual love. Bartimaeus could see the uniqueness of Jesus and declared it in his shouting. Jesus, also, could see the uniqueness in Bartimaeus that required a special act of grace to bring him along the road to the kingdom. In such ways Jesus sees each of us. And when we are so seen, we begin to have the capacity to see others in turn.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 34:1-8 (19-22)
The most fervent of prayers we can offer up to God is the living out of our lives in faithfulness. This sentiment was echoed in the writings of Saint Clement of Alexandria, a philosopher/theologian who died around 216 A.D. Beyond the volumes of written prayers and liturgy that have piled up over the centuries, this simple dictum rings of authenticity. If our very lives are viewed as prayer, as an offering to God what lives would we lead? If every action, every word, and every thought were understood to be prayer, things would change dramatically.
Could it be that the development of worship into segmented and compartmentalized sixty-minute chunks could have been a mistake? As one who writes materials for just such times, the thought is a bit daunting, but worth considering. With people going to church on Sundays, church and the faith it is designed to nurture become relegated quite easily to the Sunday slot. Indeed, God help the pastor who strays much over the magic sixty-minute limit! We dare not, after all, let our faith interrupt the rest of our lives. What if church stopped being a location and reinvented itself as a way of being. In other words how is it that we can be the church together?
What if whole Christian communities could appropriate Paul's concept of being a "living offering"? (Romans 12:1). What if we abandoned worship as we know it and embarked upon lives that were a prayer being lifted up to God? What if we blessed the Lord "at all times," as the psalm suggests? What is suggested is really a seamless garment of faith. It is the ingestion of God's wonder into the body of Christ. What is hoped for is the rebirth of the church as each person begins to embrace the call to be praising God all the time, to be praying every day in every way with everything we do.
When we lift up the words, "O magnify the Lord with me," the question almost immediately arises. What will be used as a magnifier? The answer is simple to say, but will not be easy to do. The magnifier of God is to be our lives, lived in praise wonder and prayer. This way, it's easy to understand the notion of "tasting God," of experiencing God's wonder and goodness as we live out our lives as an act of prayer together. So it is these familiar and oft-said words could gain new life.
