I preached on this story at Crossroads Presbyterian Church in Monroeville on October 27, 2024. Mike preached on the same story at The Commonwealth. Check out his post to see how our different personalities filter the same text!
First of all, let’s get two things out of the way. The healing stories of the Bible have a complicated history and can have repercussions on real people. They’re complicated already because it’s hard for us to believe that someone’s ailment was healed with a single touch, even if that touch was from someone who was just as much God as they were human. It’s still hard for us to fathom, it’s still not something we see on a daily basis or even ever in our lives. And that’s okay. Being a little skeptical about the healing stories doesn’t mean that we’re any less faithful, friends. I don’t want you to get down on yourselves about that. It simply means we’re using the investigative brains that God made us with. Humans are naturally curious and want to know how things work, how things came to be the way they are. So if you’re feeling a little skeptical today remember that you’re following in the great tradition of the disciple Thomas– remember him? He was the disciple who missed Jesus’ first appearance after the resurrection, and couldn’t believe that Jesus had returned for real until he felt the wound in his side himself. I preached a sermon once about Thomas that highlighted how Thomas was just like someone who had a differing learning style than the rest of the class– like someone who learns best through pictures or through experiencing the concept or through just hearing about it. Not everyone learns well by simply reading something in a book. Most humans are the same way when it comes to the healing stories. Part of us really needs to experience the healing of Christ to believe it. And that’s totally okay… it doesn’t make us bad or worse than anyone else!
Further, the healing stories are complicated because they pose people with abilities as less than others. A lot of times when folks preach the healing stories, like this one about Bartimaeus, they will liken his blindness to some kind of moral shortcoming of his. They will make some kind of analogy about Bartimaeus being spiritually lost or misguided, and so then Jesus’s healing of his blindness would be like restoring new faith and a return to grace. Does that seem a little harsh? Or maybe you’re not too sure about that? Just listen to the lyrics of one of Christendom’s very favorite hymns, “Amazing Grace”:
Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch; like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
Friends, why are those lines there? Why have Christians for so long placed moral judgment on those who have different abilities than others? Just because someone is blind or deaf, or because they have an autoimmune disorder or cancer, does not mean that they did something bad to deserve it, or didn’t believe in God strongly enough to ward it off. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right, and it will not be the subject of this sermon necessarily but this was another thing I wanted to get out of the way before embarking on this story with you. These things have been said by preachers for generations. It’s important for a preacher now, when they have that opportunity, to undo some of that work.
Undoing the wrongful work of the Church is much of what my congregation Commonwealth has felt called to do. It’s work that I have felt called alongside, so you can kind of see why I begin this way. Much of what we do at Commonwealth is taking harm that the Church has caused, by Presbyterians and non-Presbyterians, purposefully or unknowingly, and we give those wounds space to heal. For anyone here who has ever dressed a wound or done wound care professionally, you know that this can be careful and sometimes unpleasant work. But, we’re committed to seeing people come wholly back to themselves and come into more easy relationships with God; we desire for folks in our community to experience spiritual wholeness. A lot of the time this includes a process called deconstruction– have any of you heard of that? Deconstruction is the process of picking apart the beliefs we’re taught as a young person to see which ones we want to take with us into our adult lives. Deconstruction can be complicated because while these theologies that you might decide to leave behind might be harmful, they still hold tender memories for you somehow. In reality, every young person goes through a kind of deconstruction, usually late in high school and on into our college age years. You may describe that period of time as when you left the church for a while or maybe had more conflict with your family. Deconstruction often coincides with that part of our maturing process when we start to take on values of our choosing apart from the ones instilled by our parents, when we start choosing the kind of life we want to live. Of course deconstruction can happen much later in life, too, and maybe you’re familiar with that.
We’re going to be doing a little deconstruction on behalf of the disciples today. We’re going to be challenging some beliefs they clearly had in this little vignette with Bartimaeus, that though he doesn’t explicitly explain them in this scene I think they are still things Jesus was probably working on with them. We’re going to pick apart their actions and reframe them with new theology.
First, I want to talk about the disciple’s initial reaction to Bartimaeus calling for healing from Jesus. It says that as he was calling out, many (or, the disciples, or the crowd) told the man to be quiet. Now, how many of you expected that? How many of you were surprised by it? Let me reframe it this way: when you’ve been in a playground, maybe watching your children or grandchildren play, have you ever seen someone else’s child get hurt? Or even the one that you were looking after? And for how many of us, how would we react if we saw someone tell that child who had gotten hurt get told by their parent or a stranger to stop crying? Like, yelled at them to stop crying? That’s not what we deem as respectful, tender, or even a helpful way to react, is it? Actually, if we saw someone do that to a child we’d be pretty disturbed. If it was us, we would be pretty disappointed in ourselves. Friends, it’s not different for Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus was crying out for God and the disciples tried to hush him up. Why? This behavior stems from a specific belief by the disciples about how someone like Jesus should be treated, and that as something precious that you keep up on a pedestal, away from the grit and realness of actual human life. The disciple’s Jesus is for just anyone to behold. The disciple’s Jesus should never be touched or interfered with or disturbed in any way, and it most definitely shouldn’t be something we let children play around. The disciple’s Jesus at this point in time is so precious he’s almost fragile. But is that the Jesus we know? No. The Jesus we know, just a few chapters beforehand, had said let all the little children come to me! And he blessed them. Probably little children with snotty noses and dirty feet, with toys in hand too! What we say is just children being children of course, is exactly who Jesus welcomed. So why don’t we say, when Bartimaeus called out for Jesus in the crowd, why don’t we say that he was just being human? He just wanted to be healed.
The disciples in this passage are making a theological statement about who they believe God is according to how they believe that God should be interacted with. It was the worldview they knew. But friends, we have deconstructed that theology here today. And we’ve given them a new way of approaching God: as humans, full of flaws and in need of love. Asking to be loved. The God we know and the God we preach about loves our messiness, loves our need of God.
The next little bit of theology that I want to deconstruct for the disciples involves their behavior towards Bartimaeus yet again, but this time after Jesus calls him to Him. Now, how do the disciples treat him? Jesus hears Bartimaeus calling to him, stops, and listens. And he says, bring that man to me! So what do the disciples do? They say get up and get to Jesus! But there’s one more detail: they say get up, TAKE HEART, and come to Jesus. Take heart. This can also be translated as something like “cheer up” “put a smile on” or something like that in today’s language. Which is a little ironic because they had just been yelling at him to be quiet– the disciples themselves are a good reason for Bartimaeus to feel not exactly cheery. But the expectation is still that Bartimaeus will approach God with a smile on his face. Friends, this is another theological statement we can deconstruct on behalf of these people.
In actuality, we can approach God with whatever feelings we have at any time, whether they’re positive or negative in some way. It would have been perfectly acceptable to God for Bartimaeus to come before Jesus feeling forgotten and dismissed, and for Bartimaeus to express that to Jesus. After all, we know from our scriptures that what God desires most from us is a relationship with us, and a truly healthy relationship doesn’t ignore when one party or another is not feeling heard. Friends, I think this way of approaching God, as if everything is fine all the time and like we aren’t upset with God, is something we still practice to this day. The theological beliefs that can undergird this are complex: maybe we don’t feel like we have a right to be angry with God; maybe we don’t think our feelings matter that much in the grand scheme of the universe. Maybe in the past we’ve felt punished for expressing our negative feelings, particularly to other humans. Or even further, perhaps deep down we believe our hard feelings are sinful, and we believe that nothing sinful can come into contact with God. But I want to assure you that God can handle your anger and sadness without lashing out or shunning you. God is big enough for every negative emotion that we might encounter because God has experienced them through the life of Jesus Christ. And not being happy or satisfied all the time is not a sin! It’s simply part of being a human being. Just like being born blind, like Bartimaeus may have been, is not a sign of sinfulness.
Friends, I hope that talking about the disciples’ actions and their motivations in this way has been helpful to you, both in terms of understanding and metabolizing what it is to deconstruct a belief, and just for the sake of your own gentleness with yourself. It’s easy for a lot of us to talk to ourselves the way the disciples talked to Bartimaeus, or regard the pain that Bartimaeus may have felt with a harsh heart. So often though the heart we have for ourselves is not the same as the heart God has for us, thanks be to God. There is more available to us in the Kingdom of God than what mortal hearts can imagine. There is room in the world that God has created for us to re-think and re-imagine our relationship with God and with each other. In the tender name of Christ, may it be so– amen.
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