See Again
Mark 10:46-52

October 26, 2003

Seeing is not believing, if you are a true Protestant. That may sound unscientific, but it is faithful.

It was Martin Luther who recognized that by seeing one could dispute and deny the reality of almost anything. God is notoriously invisible to the human faculty of sight. The scientists and skeptics who claim that they cannot perceive the presence of God in their empirical scientific experiments can authoritatively distrust the promises of God.

Luther emphasized that the Gospel is not a matter of the eye, but of the ear. You listen for the Gospel and when you hear its promises, it will generally run contrary to what the eye can assess and trust. Bartimaeus could not see anyway. Perhaps he would have been dissuaded by Jesus’ appearance if he were able to see. But he could hear and what he heard made all the difference.

The Protestant Reformation suffers the ignominy of falling on a more important secular holy day of Halloween. There was no apparent reason for Martin Luther to post his famous 95 Theses on his Wittenberg Castle Church door on that particular day. That’s when he got them done.

People were hearing something new all over Europe. What was new was a new way of listening to the Gospel, of hearing the Word. The political and social consequences of such listening were not gentle. Declaring that there was another way to be the Church in medieval society was heresy itself.

Yet people who think ahead of their time have always been doing that and there are some who dare to do this today. We just have to have the ears to hear. Most of the time they are either ignored or suppressed as traitors to the way things are supposed to be.

However, when people all over the place start thinking independently pretty much the same kind of thing, then it’s a movement, and it won’t be stopped. Nearly 500 years ago it was a reformation, though far from a perfect one. There have been other, not as noisy as Luther’s, and there may be one going on right now.

Being part of a crowd is something my mother always warned me against. A crowd is a large group of people gathered apparently for one reason, but really mobbed together for a less admirable reason. Jesus often attracted a crowd that wanted something else.

He entered Jericho and the evangelist makes no comment about what happened in the oldest inhabited, lowest below sea level city in the world. Nothing ever happens in a place like that. Except that Jesus attracted a lot of people and they all seemed to be willing to leave town with him. Jericho must have really been a dead place.

No one has ever really explained how Bartimaeus was able to filter out of the jumbled noise of a great crowd that it was Jesus moving towards him. Of course, his hearing had to be acute, and the name Jesus was probably popping all over the place. Bartimaeus could hear the Good News, even it weren’t seeing.

Bartimaeus did not hesitate to talk, to yell in the loudest and least acceptable manner possible. He called out to Jesus, “Son of David,” a title that nobody wanted to hear. Jesus had made the ears of his disciples burn for calling him things like that. Don’t let anyone know, don’t tell anyone. No one will understand properly and that will be worse than not at all. And for the Pharisees and Sadducees and Romans, this talk is the most obscure kind of blasphemy; and a seditious, rebellious political label meant to foment mayhem, violence, and revolution.

Nevertheless, Bartimaeus didn’t care, so he yelled it out twice, “Kyrie Eleison.” It stopped Jesus dead in his tracks. Jesus had to hear what this man wanted and asked others to bring him over. Bart’s friends knew this was the opportunity, for somehow Bart didn’t hear the invitation.

“I want to see again.” Your faith has healed you and disappear. He followed from within the Gospel crowd, part of the moment for eternity.

Bartimaeus was reformed and continued reforming. Reformation is a task for the ear. The Scriptures are meant not to be read, but heard in worship.

This year the United Church is celebrating the 300th anniversary of the John Wesley’s birth. On May 24, 1738, John attended an evening prayer meeting of the pietistic Moravian community in Aldersgate Street in London. He heard being read the commentary of Martin Luther on the Letter to the Romans, and found that he was overcome with grace and assurance. “I felt my heart strangely warmed.”

John had read everything in sight, had prayed until his knees were rubbed raw and hands and arms were numb. He could not attain this experience of the Holy Spirit until he had stopped talking and singing and was able to listen. He heard the Word that saved him. Then he went out and changed his part of the Christian Church and a significant part of the world as a result.

The evidence for our ears is that regrettably when you read the Gospels, there is no sound track. If you could hear Jesus’ tone of voice, the Gospel would be clear and penetratingly disturbing, one must add. It is when someone reads the Scriptures in a new voice and that strange voice strikes our ears that Reformation begins to take place. The Bible, after all, has been around in its roughly present shape for 1700 years or so.

Listen like Bartimaeus and sift out of the murmurings of the crowd the real sounds of the Gospel; then see again the way things are supposed to be; and don’t hesitate, jump in behind the Gospel song wherever it leads.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan