Homily for 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the 
30th Sunday of Ordinary TimeOct. 25, 2009
Mark 10: 46-52
Christian Brothers, Iona College

“On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, Bartimaeus began to cry out and say, ‘Jesus, son of David, have pity on me’” (Mark 10: 47).

Jesus has come to the last 15 miles of his journey up to Jerusalem, passing thru Jericho and starting the ascent toward the holy city. He’s a pilgrim going up for Passover. He’s the Son of David en route to David’s city. He’s the Son of Man “on the way” to his destiny (10:38,45,52).

The blind man, the son of Timaeus, interrupts his begging for alms from the crowds of pilgrims following this age-old road to beg for something better than alms. Evidently he knows Jesus is a healer. No pressure from the people around him—including the disciples, probably—will deter him from calling out to Jesus to have pity on him, to be allowed to come close to Jesus and be saved.

When Jesus has summoned Bartimaeus, he asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” (10:51). This is exactly the same question that he asked the sons of Zebedee in the immediately preceding passage (10:36), which was our gospel last Sunday. Mark starkly contrasts the 2 favored disciples and this stranger, this beggar. James and John also are convinced that Jesus is the Son of David, the Messiah, and see him as a means to personal power and glory. The blind beggar sees Jesus as a teacher and personal savior: “Master”—Mark uses the Aramaic emphatic form of “rabbi,” rabbouni, meaning “my teacher”—“My teacher, I want to see” (10:51).

In calling Jesus the Son of David, Bartimaeus implicitly sees him as the fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah that was our 1st reading: “The Lord has delivered his people, the remnant of Israel. I will gather…the blind and the lame in their midst. I will console them and guide them. I am a father to Israel.” (31:7-9) The Son of David will restore Israel in joy, will gather the lost, will care for the weak, the ill, the helpless. Leadership and salvation aren’t about power but about service: “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45). As we saw last week, James and John haven’t grasped that yet; none of the apostles have.

This isn’t to say that Bartimaeus has grasped it. But his ambition is noble: “Master, I want to see.” In Mark’s gospel there’s a lot of blindness—very little of the physical kind, mostly of the spiritual kind. James and John and the rest of the 12 are blind. Jesus’ own family are blind (3:20-21). The Pharisees, the scribes, and the Sanhedrin are blind. The soldiers who will arrest Jesus and torture him, and Pontius Pilate, who will try him, are blind. The only ones who see are people like the woman with the hemorrhage, maybe (5:25-34), the Syro-Phoenician woman (7:24-30), the woman who anoints Jesus with “costly genuine spikenard” at Bethany (14:3-9), and most obviously the centurion at the crucifixion (15:39). All of these, incidentally, are outsiders, pariahs, as far as the chosen people, the elite, and the disciples are concerned. Mark is telling us something thereby. Asking to be able to see means knowing that Jesus enables us to see the created world and our relationships with other people in their true light. Asking to be able to see means seeing our own need, our own helplessness (“For human beings salvation is impossible, but all things are possible for God”—10:27). Asking to be able to see is akin to the prayer of the man who wanted Jesus to cure his possessed son: “I do believe; help my unbelief!” (9:24), having enuf faith to know that we still need a lot of healing, a lot of help on our way to salvation. Bartimaeus wants to see whatever this master, this teacher, has to show him.

You’ll recall that 2 weeks ago, linked to the gospel of the rich man who couldn’t part with possessions and follow Jesus—part of this same 10th chapter of Mark (vv. 17-22)—Peter said to Jesus, “We’ve given up everything and followed you” (10:28). It’s evident of course from the disciples’ earthly ambitions and their fears that they haven’t given up everything to follow Jesus. The blind man, however, does give up the last remnant he has as he responds to Jesus’ invitation to come to him: “He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus” (10:50). He comes to Jesus with nothing, in utter need, even in desperation.

When Jesus summons the son of Timaeus to him, the people in the crowd tell the blind man, “Take courage. Get up; Jesus is calling you” (10:49). That sounds like what John Paul II used to tell us so often, doesn’t it? “Take courage” or “Do not be afraid” to answer the call of Jesus—the call to be his follower, even the call of a vocation to consecrated life. It takes courage to follow Jesus, to be sure, but what could be more encouraging than knowing that we are going to him, are going to be with him?—whether as a Christian disciple of this rabbouni or as a person totally consecrated to him by vow or ordination.

The insight that Bartimaeus has gained does something for him, again implied by our reading of Mark’s words. When Jesus came along, the beggar was sitting “by the road” (10:46). He’s not part of the disciples gathered around Jesus “on the road, on the way” but is apart from them. Once given his sight, tho “immediately he followed Jesus on the way” (10:52). Note this: Jesus told him, “Go your way” (10:52), he followed Jesus. He made the way of Jesus his own way. Bartimaeus willingly and with courage follows Jesus on this road.

The true disciples of Jesus, unlike the 12, know what following him on the way to Jerusalem means; they know what it means to be the Son of David who has pity upon all the wretched of the earth: not power and glory but death and resurrection. Now it’s up to us to have similar courage, to come to Jesus as he summons us, and to follow him to Jerusalem: the place of earthly passion and death, also the city of resurrection and eternal splendor (Rev 21:2).