{"id":1652,"date":"2021-10-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salisburycathedral.org.uk\/blind-bartimeaus\/"},"modified":"2022-02-01T13:03:28","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T13:03:28","slug":"blind-bartimeaus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salisburycathedral.org.uk\/blind-bartimeaus\/","title":{"rendered":"Blind Bartimeaus"},"content":{"rendered":"
A Sermon preached by Canon Anna Macham, Precentor\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Sunday 24 October 2021, 10:30, The Last Sunday after Trinity\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Readings: Hebrews 7: 23-end and Mark 10: 46-end\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Please scroll to the bottom of this page to follow a video of this sermon.<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
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Around this time of year, I often remember a priest I once knew who I worked with earlier in my ministry and who died quite suddenly whilst still in post.\u00a0 This priest, who\u2019s been dead over a decade now, and whose anniversary falls in a few weeks\u2019 time, made a big impression on me when I was younger and still, perhaps, trying to find my own place as a priest in the Church. A big man and larger than life character, he used his position as a senior churchman to speak out fearlessly on social issues that then, as now, divide the Church, such as women priests and LGBT rights – something you don\u2019t often see in senior members of the Church today, and that probably cost him further preferment, or promotion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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He was also, if you spoke to him, or knew him personally, one of the most un-PC people I have ever met.\u00a0 \u00a0And, as an orthodox priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, he was just as insistent and forthright about matters of church to do with following proper form in prayer and dress as he was about justice.\u00a0 The singing of what he perceived to be the un-Christian hymn \u201cJerusalem\u201d in church, or clergy who didn\u2019t dress properly, he couldn\u2019t stand.\u00a0 “I insist the cathedral clergy wear black shirts because it is a statement of history and origin, a uniform deeply rooted in tradition and monastic antecedents … (not) the floral extravaganzas more symptomatic of a photocollage of the Chelsea Flower Show than the hard work of saving souls,\u201d he once wrote in a characteristically robust address.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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But more than all of that, one of the things I most remember about this priest is the quality of his faith in the face of death.\u00a0 He died of pancreatic cancer, which meant that he got ill very fast and his decline was quite dramatic.\u00a0 I remember feeling privileged, in his final days, to take communion to him at home, when, shrunken and in bed, he told me very clearly and calmly that he wasn\u2019t afraid to die, and that he knew where he was going.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to describe exactly, but this wasn\u2019t stoicism or pious words, it was something real. He believed that he would be held to account, and- without having much time to get used to the idea that he was dying- said his prayers and prepared himself to meet God.\u00a0 In all the trauma and pain of that death, for him and his family and in a public role, it\u2019s his faith that I\u2019ve always remembered and taken to heart as years have gone by, that has stayed with me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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When I read the story of blind Bartimaeus we\u2019ve just heard earlier this week, it made me think even more of this priest.\u00a0 Whatever we know about Bartimaeus, which isn\u2019t really much judging from the length of this story, one thing is clear: this is someone who was outspoken, who wasn\u2019t afraid of upsetting people and really didn\u2019t care what they thought of him.\u00a0 The crowds in the story who were with Jesus in Jericho that day must have been excited.\u00a0 They were with Jesus, going up with him to Jerusalem.\u00a0 So when someone starts shouting from the roadside, it\u2019s a pain, a nuisance.\u00a0 They try to tell Bartimaeus to be quiet.\u00a0 Yet he won\u2019t be silenced.\u00a0 Bartimaeus even manages to be a bit subversive in his outspokenness.\u00a0 \u201cJesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!\u201d he shouts- the first person in this Gospel to call Jesus by this messianic title, and to dare to do it loudly and in public, where presumably any passing Roman official could hear.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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As a blind person, Bartimaeus was lowly and reduced to begging; the cloak that he throws off on the roadside when Jesus speaks to him and he responds would have been a cloak not for wearing in that hot and dusty climate but for spreading on the ground to receive money.\u00a0 He\u2019s not the first person you\u2019d expect to behave properly or well, certainly not the first person you\u2019d expect to see Jesus for who he really is.\u00a0 Yet faith shines out of him, and, when Jesus asks him what he wants and he responds, he is healed.\u00a0 \u201cYour faith has made you well,\u201d Jesus tells him.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Perhaps it\u2019s desperation, perhaps he\u2019d already had heard of Jesus and the stories of him healing people.\u00a0 Either way, Bartimaeus doesn\u2019t have much to lose- either by upsetting people or drawing attention to himself through his lack of decorum.\u00a0 But his persistence in trying to attract Jesus\u2019 attention shows, above all, the strength of his faith.\u00a0 When Jesus says, \u201cYour faith has made you well,\u201d the words \u201cmade you well\u201d refer to physical healing.\u00a0 But for any early Christian reading or listening to this story, they would carry a wider and deeper meaning as well.\u00a0 Earlier in this section of the Gospel, Jesus asked his disciples the same question he asks Bartimaeus, \u201cWhat do you want me to do for you?\u201d They asked not for healing but that Jesus would grant them to sit by his side in glory.\u00a0 They wanted power and prestige.\u00a0 They failed to understand what kind of leader or king Jesus really is, that he has come to serve, not to laud it over people.\u00a0 While Bartimaeus literally receives his sight, the irony is that the spiritual healing he receives is a gift that not everyone, including the disciples, are open or willing to receive.\u00a0 The key to salvation, whether literal or spiritual, is faith.\u00a0 That\u2019s why anyone, even those excluded or overlooked from pure or polite society, can be saved.\u00a0 Faith is open to everyone, and often it\u2019s the unexpected people who seem to have it most strongly.\u00a0 And faith consists not least in recognising who Jesus is and trusting that he has the power to rescue.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Of course, that\u2019s not to say that faith always comes easily.\u00a0 There are times when it\u2019s hard to have faith.\u00a0 Faith doesn\u2019t guarantee long life, success or affluence- as the lives of the saints show.\u00a0 For the disciples, the journey towards faith is much slower and harder.\u00a0 The encounter between Bartimaeus and Jesus comes at a turning point in the story of Mark\u2019s Gospel.\u00a0 It happens at Jericho, the last town to be passed by the pilgrim on the way to Jerusalem.\u00a0 The second part of Mark\u2019s Gospel, which began with the healing of a blind man, now ends with the healing of Bartimaeus, another blind man, who also, crucially, receives spiritual sight.\u00a0 And now the story will move into its final section, where Peter finally recognises Jesus, and his idea of who he really is is turned upside down, as Jesus sets out on his journey towards the cross and the glory that is found there.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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In one sense, Bartimaeus\u2019s encounter with Jesus changes everything for him.\u00a0 He recognises who Jesus is, he clearly believes Jesus can help him, and, having been healed, he leaves his begging and he follows Jesus on the way, \u201cthe way\u201d being the early Christian\u2019s word for what we call \u201cChristianity.\u201d\u00a0 Bartimaeus, the blind and homeless beggar- in the upside-down logic of Mark\u2019s Gospel- becomes the true model of faith, courage and discipleship.\u00a0 Yet in another sense, it doesn\u2019t change him at all.\u00a0 Bartimaeus is still just as much himself, just as loud and outspoken, just as offensive to those who don\u2019t like him as before, in his proclamation of God\u2019s kingdom of peace, justice and joy.\u00a0 Following a call to serve doesn\u2019t entail losing his personality or learning to fit in with others, any pious stereotypes of what he should now be as a Christian, any more than he did before, or becoming any less of a challenge to those who would prefer to maintain the status quo.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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At this turning point in Mark\u2019s Gospel, we are also at a turning point in the Church\u2019s year.\u00a0 This Sunday is the last Sunday after Trinity.\u00a0 Having spent the Trinity season learning more of who Jesus is, we turn our thoughts now to the saints and to the kingdom and to the saints, all those countless followers of God, known and unknown, who have gone before us.\u00a0 We tend to think of the saints in a certain way, revering them on high, just as the Letter to the Hebrews sets Jesus on a pedestal, the High Priest who offered himself on Calvary and continually makes intercession for us in heaven.\u00a0 Yet not all of them were saintly and pious; many were awkward, difficult characters, outspoken in their concern for the dignity of all God\u2019s people, and for God\u2019s world.\u00a0 And just as Jesus\u2019 high priesthood was achieved through his human suffering on the cross, so the saints of God in light are those who have been called not to the heavenly heights, but to step down the ladder, to challenge the comfortable and to share the same fate and the poor and to stand alongside those who have been disenfranchised and marginalised.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u201cGo; your faith has made you well.\u201d\u00a0 When he sees the face of God in Jesus, Bartimaeus finds himself in a place of safety and of trust.\u00a0 He is no longer anxious but secure, confident that, whatever happens and wherever this journey of faith will take him, things will be alright.\u00a0 Faith isn\u2019t always easy.\u00a0 Things get in the way, and we don\u2019t have to be perfect.\u00a0 Like this Gospel, the whole of life is a journey of faith and getting to know Jesus better.\u00a0 Whether we find it easy or hard, whether we\u2019re outspoken or quiet, the gift of faith is open to all of us.\u00a0 All we have to do is ask.<\/span><\/div>\n
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