Sermon for the Twentieth-Third Sunday after Pentecost, October 27, 2024
Job 42:1-6, 10-17+Psalm 34:1-8+Hebrews 7:23-28+Mark 10:46-52
The word "pilgrim" conjures a variety of images. Maybe it's the black-clothed, white-bonneted people who landed at Plymouth on the Mayflower back in 1620. If you're of a certain age, perhaps you hear the voice of John Wayne saying the word "pilgrim" 25 times in the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. If you're of a religious persuasion, maybe you envision a pious person walking barefoot or crawling on her knees toward a holy shrine. If to be a pilgrim means to journey to a faraway place or travel to a shrine or simply to be a wayfarer, then I have certainly been a pilgrim these past few months.
As I have reflected on my travels and the quiet of time detached from my usual responsibilities, I recognize that my pilgrimage was not just walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain or the Via Francigena in Tuscany. My pilgrimage continued in the peace of the Jersey Shore (thank you, Bud & Lisa), in travels around South Africa with Tim, in the series (plural) of novels that I uncharacteristically read with abandon, and my current pilgrimage through the Divine Comedy of Dante. Suspended outside of time and place, being the human being fully alive that so glorifies God. There are many ways to be a pilgrim.
This congregation - each of you - has been on a pilgrimage in my absence. Different clergy stood here in this place and at this table, your neighbors here picked up responsibilities for things they might not normally have done, summer came to an end and school began, new jobs were started. So many journeys large and small. I think the most important part of recognizing that we are pilgrims is in paying attention to things we might usually ignore, sights and sounds and smells, the speeding up of the heart at a new and unfamiliar experience.
You have also been a pilgrim with Jesus as he traveled around Galilee, into the region of Tyre and the Decapolis, and now on the road to Jerusalem. This "on the road" section of Mark is bookended - sandwiched - between healings of two blind men. While it was not part of the Sunday readings, just before Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah, there is the healing of a blind man in Bethsaida. Now we are fewer than twenty miles from Jerusalem, and we have an altogether different scene with an altogether different kind of confession of Jesus as the Son of David. It's almost as if this blind man can see what Peter could not: Jesus is not just a messiah but the Messiah in the line of Israel's greatest king, the one who will inaugurate God's reign.
And he is noisy about it. Embarrassingly so. Then as now, there is a culture of politeness, and as anyone who has watched how protests have unfolded especially over the past few years, the idea that politeness will get you what you want is overrated. As Frederick Douglas once said, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."[1]
Bartimaeus is making a demand. People are shushing him, but he won't be silenced. He will not quietly submit.
“Son of David, have mercy on me!” (10:48)
The onlookers must have been shocked to hear Jesus tell them to bring the man to him, and maybe they expected Jesus to wave his hand, take care of business, and be on his way. But Jesus asks a question.
“What do you want me to do for you?” (10:51)
It seems a silly question, but this is what these days we call giving people agency, not just assuming that we - the whole, the stable, the privileged ones - we know what the poor, the blind, the lame need. Surely, though, Jesus knew.
“What do you want me to do for you?”
“My teacher, let me see again.” (10:51)
And at this moment, a healing story became a calling story, because Bartimaeus began to follow Jesus from that moment on.
Imagine that Jesus is asking you, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Jesus, help be successful in my career.
Jesus, help All Saints to grow.
Jesus, take care of my kid in college.
Jesus, help my retirement fund last until I don't need it anymore.
I'm sure Jesus hears these prayers and many more besides. But I wonder if we are missing the one thing that we need.
“My teacher, let me see again.”
Let me see how beloved I am, how beloved all my neighbors are and this planet we call home. Let me see that there is enough to go around, that I have enough to throw off that cloak and follow where you lead.
“My teacher, let me see again.”
Between Jesus having him come and Bartimaeus arriving, the blind man dropped his cloak and came to Jesus. This cloak was not just a cloak. It was, for a poor beggar, shelter from the wind and rain, warmth from the cold, a pillow for a weary head, a hiding place. A couple of weeks ago, we heard about the rich young man who went away from Jesus because he could not give up his possessions, and here we have Bartimaeus literally giving up all that he had for the life-giving healing Jesus offered.
We hold on so tightly to what we have. Bartimaeus was given the gift of knowing that in letting go, we have all we need. In Greek, the word for healing and the word for saving are the same thing. When you come to this table today, ask Jesus for whatever healing it is you need, and know that you have been saved.
Maybe that's what it means to be a pilgrim.
[1] West India Emancipation Speech, Canandaigua, NY, 1857