I find it strange that, in a time when we are becoming more and more sensitive toward persons with handicapping conditions, our nation’s State Department would adopt a policy which effectively eliminates blind persons from foreign service positions.  As the editorial in the Ann Arbor News put it, “It’s probably a good thing Helen Keller isn’t alive today to apply for a job with the U.S. foreign services, They’d turn her down, flat.” (Thursday, December 1, 1988) I can understand that blindness would certainly put some limitations upon a person’s ability to perceive some things in some situations, but my experience tells me that blind people often “see” the reality of things in ways that sighted persons do not.  Sometimes the blind have more insight than the sighted. 

I.  THAT IS CERTAINLY THE CASE IN OUR SCRIPTURE OF THE MORNING.  Twice in the tenth chapter of St. Mark Jesus asks the same question: “What do you want me to do for you?” But He gets vastly different answers.  James and John, when asked the question, request front row seats, positions of power, in Jesus’ coming kingdom.  They want prime cabinet positions in Jesus’ new administration.  Blind Bartimaeus has only one request: “Master, let me receive my sight.” I think it is no accident that Mark includes these two stories in the same chapter.  He wants to point out the contrast between what this man (an outsider) “saw” in Jesus: (a Savior), and what James and John (insiders) saw: only a ticket to power and glory!  James and John had four good eyes between them, but they did not really “see.” This man did not even have two good eyes; but he “saw” better than those closest to their Lord. 

This is the last healing miracle recorded in Mark’s Gospel.  I have an idea that he put it in for more than one purpose.  Yes, throughout the Gospel Mark proclaims the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord over nature, that He gives sight to the blind.  But there is probably a deeper meaning here.  He was proclaiming Jesus as God’s Messiah, as the One who brings light to those who sit in darkness. 

Blind people were no unusual sight in the ancient Middle East.  Cataracts and trachoma and various other eye diseases were rampant.  It was no wonder that people developed the idea that when the Messiah would come, one of His many duties would be that of bringing sight to the blind.  Remember how Jesus began His first sermon in His hometown of Nazareth?  He was the “lay reader” of the day, and when they gave Him a Bible, he opened it immediately to a passage in Isaiah 61 which proclaimed the Messiah’s task: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind.” (Luke 4:18) And certainly, Mark would have in mind the prophecy of Isaiah that there would come a day when “in the latter time (God) will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has the light shined.” (Isaiah 9:1a-2)

You see, there is more than one way of being blind.  It is entirely possible to have both of our eyes functioning perfectly, and still not see what God is doing in the world.  So, Mark included this touching story, I think, not only to proclaim Jesus as the wonder-worker who would give sight to the blind, but also to proclaim Him as the Light of the World.  In the words of an old hymn: “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘I am this dark world’s light; Look unto me, thy morn shall rise, And all thy day be bright.’” (Number 117)

Bartimaeus was a blind man, and he heard the commotion of a crowd.  What was happening?  “That radical rabbi Jesus from Nazareth is coming!  And it is said that he has done many wondrous things,” they said.  Suddenly a bright hope was born in Bartimaeus’ soul.  “Perhaps he can help me!” In the words of another old Gospel song, this man prayed, “Pass me not, O gentle Savior, Hear my humble cry; While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by.”(Number 145)

II.”AND HE BEGAN TO CRY OUT AND SAY, ‘JESUS, SON OF DAVID, HAVE MERCY ON ME!’ AND MANY REBUKED HIM, TELLING HIM TO BE SILENT.” (10:47-48) “Shut up you, in the back row, there, you’re causing too much fuss.  We want to see and hear for ourselves what’s going on,” said the crowd.  How often the crowd gets in the way so that we cannot see Jesus.  A lot of that happens about this time of year, doesn’t it?  The poet who said that “life is a long headache on a busy street,” wasn’t talking about Christmas shopping, but he might have been.  Contrast the fourth-century Saint Nicholas of Myra in Turkey with our Americanization of him as Santa Claus.  The persecuted saint has become an international industry!  A few years ago the Japanese borrowed our commercial Christmas and ended up with Santa holding the Christ Child in one hand and a new bowling ball in the other.  And a Japanese strip-tease dancer did her act to the music of “Silent Night.” Incredible!  One wonders what the frantic rush to buy things, the crowded aisles in department stores and all that, really have to do with the coming of Jesus Christ into the world?  It is said that at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, merchants gather around their cash registers to sing, “What a Friend We Have In Jesus.” It isn’t all bad, of course.  The giving of gifts to others in remembrance of God’s great gift to us in Christ has a certain validity to it.  But the crowd often obscures Jesus for us.  The crowd all around us keeps us from seeing Jesus. 

Back there, the crowd wanted to see and hear what was going on, and so they said to Bartimaeus, “Stay back there in your place!” They wanted front-row seats for the spectacle, and here was this blind beggar, causing a fuss, trying to elbow his way through the crowd to come to Jesus.  But the blind man would not be put off.  “...he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” (10:47b) “Son of David?” Now, that was a dangerous thing to say.  It was a Messianic title, and it has within it the thought of a conquering Messiah, a king of David’s royal lineage who would lead Israel to national greatness.  Bartimaeus was uttering seditious thoughts.  Here is exactly what Herod the Paranoid (I refuse to call him “Herod the Great,”) feared the most: a popular rabbi who would be a true “son of David” and therefore be a king by right and not (as he was), a king by might.  Bartimaeus was uttering revolutionary words.  And he was probably saying far more than he realized.  Just last Sunday we began our worship by singing the words: “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed, Great David’s Greater Son!” (Hymn 359) But to utter such words in Jericho, within fifteen miles of the Temple in Jerusalem was to speak sedition, and cause the authorities to quake in their boots.  For to “nobodies” like Bartimaeus, and other nobodies like shepherds tending their flocks by night, the angelic chorus came: “ ...unto you is born this day, in the City of David, a Saviour...” In the rush and push and hustle of the crowds, it is so easy to get lost and not hear the message.  Bartimaeus almost did.  But he resisted the crowd and raised his voice above it.  “Jesus is in this mess somewhere—take me to Him!” I have a hunch that that is the cry of millions of people during this Advent season, all around the world.  That is why this season strikes such a deep note of nostalgia in people’s hearts.  We are yearning for something without, perhaps, even knowing what we seek.  The Christian faith teaches us that what we seek is Jesus.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  As St. Augustine put it: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

One can only wonder where the disciples were in all of this - they who had been given the task of bringing others to Jesus.  They are not heard from in this account, except as seekers after their own positions of power.  Perhaps this is a parable of the church, so preoccupied with its own life sometimes, that it is reluctant to seek out others.  It certainly is characteristic of most of us who call ourselves present-day disciples.  We feel that we are consumers of God’s love rather than purveyors of it.  We somehow have the notion that Christ exists to do something for us (like James and John), not that we are here to do something for others in Christ’s name.  Have you ever thought of this: we are the only group of people on earth who are specifically charged with the responsibility of bringing others to Jesus?  How many folks have we brought to Christ recently?  An even more serious question is: how many times have we been part of the crowd who get in the way of others coming to Him? 

Give this fellow credit for persistence.  Here was a man whose spirit simply could not be broken.  Jesus did not give everybody everything they asked for.  He refused James’ and John’s arrogant request.  But He was always a pushover for humility.  So when the blind beggar said, simply, “Lord, let me receive my sight,” no sooner were the words uttered than the deed was done.  And this man Bartimaeus did a little better than most folks whom Jesus helped.  The record says that “immediately he received his sight and he followed him on the way.” (10:52) One gets the impression that this was the real message which Mark meant to convey.  The following.  That’s what it is all about.  Following Jesus “on the way.” This man may have been physically blind, but his spiritual sight was keen.  And so he had the right answer when Jesus asked, for the second time in the tenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus asked for his sight.  And then he followed Jesus. 

III.  MY OBSERVATION IS THAT CHRIST WANTS TO DO SO MUCH FOR US, AND WE ALLOW HIM TO DO SO LITTLE.  He wants to cure our spiritual blindness, that’s for sure.  He wants to bring light into our sin-darkened lives.  He wants to bring peace into our and hearts and into our troubled world.  He wants to bring us into right relationship with God. 

Blaise Pascal (1623-62) was one of the greatest scientists who ever lived.  He was a genius of the first rank, at eleven writing a treatise on sound, at sixteen one on conic sections that astounded the world’s mathematicians.  (Makes you feel sorta inadequate, doesn’t it?) His major scientific discovery was the principle of fluid pressure known as Pascal’s Law.  However, Pascal is known to posterity as much for his religious understanding as for his scientific ability.  As he meditated upon God’s ways with the world, he developed his famous “wager”, which goes something like this: if we must gamble, (and it seems as though we must; for life, at best, is a gamble), then let us gamble upon the fact of God and eternal life, for we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.  As a comparatively young man while meditating upon the 17th chapter of John a great mystical experience came to Blaise Pascal.  He considered it such a famous discovery that he wrote it down and sewed it up in his jacket, so that it might be with him always.  There it was discovered, after his death.  “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars.  God of Jesus Christ.  Thy God shall be my God...Let me never be separated from him.” (Quoted in Hawthorne Straton, PREACHING THE MIRACLES OF JESUS, New York and Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950, p.158) The most astounding discovery that any of us can make is that Jesus is truly “Immanuel,” i.e., “God with us.” And, discovering that God has come to us in Jesus, we can therefore unreservedly come to Him, and commit ourselves to Him. 

There is a significant variant reading of this text in an old Gospel translation called the Sinaitic Syriac.  When Jesus asked the man what he wished.  Our common version says, “Master, let me receive my sight.” That is the answer we might expect.  It would certainly be our answer, for I can imagine that of all the terrible afflictions of humankind, blindness must surely be one of the worst.  But the Sinaitic Syriac version has it: “That I might see Thee!” Religiously, that is by far the most significant statement.  Either way, recovery of sight for this man was seeing Jesus!  An old Black preacher was once asked what he intended to do when he got to heaven.  He bowed his head for a moment, then raised his dark face, wrinkled with the years, and replied, “I’m gonna sit down for a thousand years and LOOK AT JESUS!”

If there is anything that our troubled old world needs more than this, I do not know what it is.  “Lord, that we might see Jesus!” Even during this season which is set aside to celebrate His birth, we need to hear those words loud and clear: “Lord, that we might see Jesus!” The world needs a clear vision of Jesus so that it might recover its sight and its sanity.  There are different kinds of blindness, and, of them all, spiritual blindness is by far the worst. 

The last sentence of chapter ten sums up all that has gone before.  It says, simply, “And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the way.” (10:52) When the shepherds heard the Christmas message, they rose up and went to Bethlehem.  When Peter, James, and John heard Jesus’ call at the Sea of Galilee, they left their nets and went off to follow Him.  When Bartimaeus heard Jesus’ call, he rose up to to follow Him “on the way.” When we hear Jesus’ call...