Sermon-Proper 25B/ Pentecost 22 October 25, 2015 Mark 10:46-52 46 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. The Cloud of Unknowing, "O God, our great companion, lead us ever more deeply into the mystery of your life and ours, that we may be faithful interpreters of [that] Life to each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Come, O thou Traveller unknown, Whom still I hold, but cannot see! My company before is gone, And I am left alone with Thee; With Thee all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day. Amen. (Charles Wesley) There were weeks when I first came here where it felt like the harder I tried to follow Jesus, the faster people were going out the back door. It was discouraging. There are many days that I confessed to God, I have failed, I have failed I have failed. You just want to run away. I have felt that at every church that I have ever served at-moments, sometimes whole weeks of frustration, discouragement, and defeat. When you are a pastor, it is inevitable. To serve Jesus is to face the truth that there are more than a few times that you will believe that you are a disaster. I am convinced, whether it be relationships, careers, whatever we believe we are truly called to in our lives, at times we will be utterly convicted that we are failures. Hold on to that. This is a great gospel story. You may write it off as just another Jesus-healing-the blind-guy story. But believe it or not the gospel of Mark has been building all 10 chapters to this story, this miracle. Alyce Mackenzie, a professor of preaching at SMU, liked it so much, that when she taught her Introduction to Preaching class one year to a
group of experienced preachers, she assigned this gospel to be the one everyone preached on. One of the things I keep telling you about Mark, the gospel writer, is that everything that happens is connected to something that happened before. For instance, the name of the beggar in this story is Bartimaeus. What does bar mean in Aramaic? Son of, And what does Bartimaeus call Jesus? Son of David. It s like he s saying, you re a son, I m a son, we re both children of someone, we re both sons, we re both just kids. Secondly, do you remember what the gospel was for last week? James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" Sound familiar? This week s gospel, a blind man is yelling as Jesus walks by: Jesus turns to him and says, What do you want me to do for you? Ring any bells? 2 weeks ago in Mark s gospel, a rich young man comes to Jesus and says I have followed all the commandments, what else do I have to do? And Jesus says, give away all that you have and follow me-but instead the rich young man goes away grieving. His possessions have him, and he cannot let them go. The young man had much but was unable to let it go. In today s gospel. Jesus hears the blind Bartimaeus calling out to him, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! twice. And Jesus says, Call him here. And the blind man throws away his one possession, his cloak, the one thing he has in life and goes to Jesus. And Jesus heals him. Do you start to get the impression that this is more than just another Jesus-healingthe blind-guy story? It gets better. Everything in the gospel of Mark, has been building up to this story! There are about 30 healing stories in all four gospels. And only in two of them is the person who is healed actually named. Can you remember the other one? It s the raising of Lazarus. And then there is today s-the healing of Bartimaeus. That should be a clue of the importance of this story.
This is the last healing story in the gospel of Mark. After this Jesus goes on to Jerusalem to his death. But one more thing happens here, the only time in Mark s gospel. After Jesus heals Bartimaeus, he tells him (look at the last verse of this reading) Go; your faith has made you well. Every other time Jesus has said this, the person leaves, goes away. But this time, this final time, (what does the gospel say???) it says that Bartimaeus, followed him on the way. Throughout the 10 th chapter disciples, close friends of Jesus are trying to follow Jesus-and failing. And failing. And leaving. And grieving. And and and And failing. Here is the sad blind beggar Bartimaeus, who becomes the epitome of discipleship-the one true disciple in the whole chapter. The saddest emptiest guy Jesus will meet. After all the teaching, all the signs and wonders, all the great miracle stories in Jesus ministry, here his journey ends- not with his disciples finally going aha now we understand what it is to follow, now we get it, now we know the way -but with a disabled pathetic beggar becoming the great example of discipleship. Not the strongest, not the richest, not the smartest, not any of the people we would expect to be The Great Disciple. Jesus journey to Jerusalem ends with this poor wretch of a man as the example, the model of what it was to be a true follower. The people of Mark the gospel writer s church, hearing this story, would have been thunderstruck by the irony and the paradox. Of all the people who Jesus called to follow him-this blind beggar beside the road would be the one true follower. It took us 10 chapters and dozens of stories to get to Bartimaeus. All of us will know failure in our lives. All of us will look around us at one point and think to ourselves, everything I touch turns to ashes. Martin Luther, the man who started the Protestant reformation, died in Eisleben, the place of his birth in 1546. He was doing a preaching tour there at the end of his life and the last sermon he ever preached there were 5 people in attendance. Lutheran Scholar David Lose writes, that Luther wrote a friend about the event, despairing over what he feared was his "failed" reformation. Throughout the gospel we hear that those who follow Jesus aren t the winners, the successful, the best-the true followers of Jesus are us when we realize that we are
blind beggars sitting beside the road-we see ourselves for who we are-people who know failure, who know disappointment, people who may only have only one possession-and yet we follow. Will Willimon, the famous chaplain at Duke University once told this story: When I was in campus ministry, a fellow campus minister asked me to participate in a baptism of a graduate student. The grad student was from China. He had been attracted to the Christian faith while a student at Duke. I had met him once or twice before. Well, I joyfully participated in the baptism of the student. And I thought it a bright idea to bring my camera and take a few pictures after the baptism. "You can send these pictures to your family back in China," I said. "You can share your baptism day with your friends at home," I said as I maneuvered everyone into place for the snapshots. I noticed that the group looked a little shy and awkward, but they all stood together as I took my pictures. After the baptism the campus minister said to me, "Oh, that was embarrassing, you with your camera and all." "Embarrassing? Why?" I asked. "Well, because now that he's baptized, his life has been ruined. His parents say that they will disinherit him. The government will probably take away his scholarship. He can't show those pictures to anybody back home. His life as he knew it is over; he's been baptized into Jesus." Our strength as a parish doesn t come from being great in numbers. It obviously doesn t come from having a great preacher. Our power doesn t come from being the best, or the biggest or the brightest. Our strength can come from seeing that we are merely blind beggars beside the road-who frequently fail, who know disappointment, and defeat, and yet when we hear the call, we have the courage to stand up, and follow. Our strength as a parish will come because we realize that things do not possess us, that we are called to be true disciples and because when we hear the voice ask What do you want me to do for you? We answer by throwing away our cloak and following. Amen.
Healing MIRACLE MATTHEW MARK LUKE JOHN Healing the possessed man in Capernaum 1:23-28 4:33-37 Healing of Peter's Mother-in-law 8:14-15 1:29-31 4:38-39 Cleansing of a Leper 8:1-4 1:40-45 5:12-16 Healing of a Paralytic 9:1-8 2:1-12 5:18-26 Cure of the Man with a Withered Hand 12:9-14 3:1-6 6:6-10 Healing of Official's Son in Capernaum 4:43-54 Healing of Centurion's Servant 8:5-13 7:2-10 Raising of Widow's Son at Nain 7:11-17 Cure of the Gerasene Demoniac 8:28-34 5:1-20 8:26-39 Healing of a Paralytic in Bethesda 5:1-17 Cure of Woman afflicted with Hemorrhage 9:20-22 5:25-34 8:43-48 Raising of Jairus' daughter 9:23-26 5:35-43 8:49-56 Healing Two Blind Men in Nazareth 9:27-31 Healing A Possessed Mute 9:32-34 Healings at Gennesaret 14:34-36 6:53-56 Cure of Syro-Phoenician's Daughter 15:21-28 7:24-30 Healing of Deaf-Mute 7:31-37 Restores Sight to the Blind Man of Bethsaida 8:22-26 Healing of a Man Born Blind in Jerusalem 9:1-41 Casting Out of a Dumb Demon 17:14-21 9:14-29 9:37-43 Healing a Possessed Crippled Woman 13:11-17 Healing of A Man with Dropsy 14:1-6 Cleansing of Ten Lepers 17:11-19 Healing the Blind Bartimaeus at Jericho 20:29-34 10:46-52 18:35-43 Healing of Servant's Ear during Arrest 22:50-51 The Raising of Lazarus 11:1-44 Oct. 11 gospel Mark 10:17-31 As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible." Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age--houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions--and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."
Oct. 18 gospel Mark 10:35-45 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They replied, "We are able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared." When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."