Help Us to See

 Mark 10:45-52

October 24, 2021

Commitment Sunday

 

Stewardship is about how we use

Jesus Heals the Blind Man
Brian Jenkel

the gifts we have been given.

Yes, we often talk about money,

when we talk about stewardship, but it’s other things too.

It’s spiritual gifts and talents,

it’s the environment and natural world.

It’s everything that is in front of us how do we use it,

understand it, and share it?

 

I’ll get back to this, but onto today’s story

 

Today’s story is about Jesus healing a blind man.

There is another story about Jesus healing a blind man

in chapter 8. So Mark’s gospel has two stories about

literal blindness within two short chapters.

 

And between those two stories are stories about other kinds of blindness.

The people in them might be able to see literally,

but they cannot see in the many different, metaphorical ways

 

So Mark has two stories of literal blindness

flanking many stories of metaphorical blindness.

Mark uses this technique a lot in his gospel.

Until relatively recently, scholars just thought that Mark

was just a bad writer, but now they see he’s done it on purpose.

If you’re into that stuff, it’s called “interpolations”.

Sometimes referred to as “Markan Sandwiches”

 

The stories of metaphorical blindness are the ones

we’ve been talking about the last few weeks.

It starts with Peter rebuking Jesus for

saying that he will be rejected, tortured, and killed.

 

Peter, James and John see Jesus transfigured

up on the mountain top, but Peter just wants  to stay

there and worship that instead of doing

the ministry that vision is calling them to.

 

 It goes on with the disciples arguing about who

is the greatest among them.

Then the disciples try to stop someone who is

expelling demons in Jesus name.

Then they try to keep little children from Jesus,

 

Then the rich man is blind to his problem of wealth.

And then James and John, his other closest

disciples, try to get a place of honor at

Jesus right and left hand.

 

All through this time Jesus tells them again about

his impending rejection by the religious elders,

suffering, crucifixion and resurrection.

 

The disciples and others around them

might be able to see literally.

But they don’t see metaphorically.

They don’t see Jesus for who he really is.

They don’t understand. They don’t see the

people who Jesus is sent to serve, they try and brush them away.

They have blindness to Jesus mission, to who Jesus is,

to what he is about, they can’t see God’s abundance

they only see what they want to see and they

barely understand what their role in Jesus ministry is.

 

They might have finally come to realize that Jesus

is the Messiah, but they don’t see what that means.

They are spiritually blind to the truth

that Jesus is trying to show them.

 

They all might be able to see literally,

but they can’t see in any other meaning of the word.

Now Bartimaeus is another story.

Bartimaeus is blind, it says it in the story.

And it says he’s a beggar too.

To be blind or almost any kind of disability

at the time was often a sure path to

living on the streets and begging for sustenance.

And like today, beggars made people feel uncomfortable,

they were harassed, and looked down on Bartimaeus

and ushered off and told to go away a lot.

No one wanted to see them.

But Bartimaeus is bold and will not be brushed off

He yells out to Jesus, and everyone tells him to be quiet.

But that doesn’t stop him, he knows he has to take this opportunity.

He will be seen by Jesus.

And Mark wants to notice Bartimaeus.

He’s one of only two named people who ask for  Jesus healing

(Jairus, the prominent religious leader is the other one)

Mark wants to make sure that we SEE

Bartimaeus and not just brush him off like the others.

 

When he hears that Jesus is coming, he calls out

to him, “Jesus, Son of David.”

This is the first time this title is used in Mark.

Jesus has spent a lot of time telling people

not to reveal his identity as the Messiah.

But blind Bartimaeus knows.

 

And Jesus doesn’t just go to Bartimaeus.

He tells the crowd go get him.

So now, they have to see this man too,

this one that they’ve brushed off so often and didn’t notice.

Jesus tells them that they should bring Bartimaeus to him.

 

And when he’s called, Bartimaeus throws off his cloak.

For a person who was begging on the streets

as it says Bartimaeus was, a cloak would be all he had.

It would keep them warm at night, it could be a pillow,

it was laid out in the street in front of them

to catch the coins that people threw at them.

It is familiar, a security blanket, it’s surely all that he has.

But to go meet Jesus, he throws this one item he owns.

as opposed to the rich man who

came to Jesus with all his possessions still intact.

And after Jesus calls Bartimaeus over

and the crowd see him for the first time

and get him over to Jesus, Jesus asks him,

“What is it that you want me to do for you?”

Jesus wants to see Bartimaeus too.

He doesn’t want to assume he knows what

he wants or what he’s requesting.

 

This question, by the way, is the same exact question Jesus asked

James and John, the sons of Thunder last week.

 

And the man answers:

he didn’t want status or to be

the best, he didn’t want safety or security.

He wanted to see again. He wanted to be healed.

 

Which maybe is what the disciples should

have been asking for the whole time.

For Jesus to cure their spiritual blindness.

 

And Bartimaeus he is healed

meaning now he could see in the literal sense,

because he could always see in the spiritual sense.

and after that, he follows Jesus on the way.

And the way that Jesus is going

is to Jerusalem and to the cross

 

This is the last healing story of Mark’s gospel

and the last of the travels of Jesus around

the Northern part of Israel that he’s been on.

The next stop for Jesus is Jerusalem,

to confront the religious leaders and

face his suffering and death for the life of the world.

Mark packs a lot in just a little story.

And all the way, this gospel is challenging us.

Stewardship is about how we use the gifts we have been given.

This is not just a healing story, this story challenges us.

We have been given the gift of sight. Not  literal sight.

But we can see Jesus for who he is:

The Messiah, the son of the living God.

If we’re here now, we can see Jesus.

We are in the presence of Christ.

Jesus is in front of us.

How do we use that gift that we have been given?

 

Can we see really see Jesus?

Can we see what Jesus’ mission really is?

Not just what we want to see,

not just what fits into our political or personal agenda?

But can we see who is really is and

what that really means for us and our lives?

Is he a vending machine just put in a prayer

and get what we want?

Is he just a path to our own personal power and glory?

 

And how do we approach Jesus?

With pride, boastfulness, without

acknowledging our own brokenness

and sickness, wanting to keep everything we have

and just brush off those that are less

fortunate than us and ignore those

that society says to ignore.

 

And how do we use this gift we have been given

to be in Christ’s presence?

Do we follow Jesus path of self-sacrifice

for the sake of others or do we

use Jesus as an excuse or a path

to get and do what we want?

 

What do we do with this gift that we’ve been

given, the presence of Jesus in our lives?

Do we see just what we want to see or do we see Jesus?

  

Or are we like Bartimaeus?

Seizing this moment of Christ’s presence.

Seeing Jesus for who he really is

Casting off our cloaks of security,

and coming before Jesus asking for mercy and healing.

And following him on his way, wherever that leads us.

 

Jesus is here to heal.

To heal us and this whole world.

From our arrogance and pride,

from our sin and from our fear.

From a life of metaphorical blindness

and our self-centered lives.

 

Jesus sees us. Really sees us. And loves us still.

Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.

 

Get Power and Give it Away

 Mark 10:35-45 Stewardship October 17, 2021

 

Henri Nouwen who was a wonderful

priest and author wrote a very wise thing

"The long painful history of the church

is the history of people ever and again tempted

to choose power over love, control over the cross,

being the leader over being led by God."

 

This has been the churches temptation

and the people of Christ have given into it:

the Spanish Inquisition,

Early Calvinism, burning people at the stake,  

even Luther gave into this temptation:

when he was asked what to do about the peasant uprising

he told the governors that they had the right 

and even the obligation to kill those peasants outright, and they did.

 
Lots of Christians today are in power in the US

and many of them use it to advance their ideologies

or for their own gain or for the benefit of other rich people.

We often chose control over the cross.

Power over love.

There are endless examples of Christians giving into this temptation.

And this was James and John’s temptation too.

 

Jesus has just told the disciples that he’s going to be

arrested, tortured and killed by the authorities

like he does a few times in Mark’s gospel.

And James and John, the Sons of Thunder,

come up to Jesus and ask him

if Jesus can promise them the corner

office and the best parking spaces in heaven.

 

They hear about Jesus great sacrifice death and resurrection

and they don’t think about the implications for the world,

or the implications for Jesus, or how they need to carry their

own cross (like Jesus told them they did.)

They only thought about their own position and claiming

the power for themselves in the afterlife.

 

It might seem like a small, harmless request,

but that’s how these temptations work.

Small harmless gains, that eventually lead to bigger ones.

 

The greatest temptation for every leader,

especially leaders who work for the public good

and for the oppressed is the temptation to only

work for their own success and comfort.

 

At some point in any great leader’s life,

The establishment always offers something that is hard to refuse.

Just like Jesus was tempted in the wilderness

good are offered that high paying job,

the safety of them and their family,

the promise of temporary riches.

And many of them take it and the public looses them.

 

In Martin Luther King’s biography it recounts

that in 1962, at a particularly stressful

and hopeless time early in the civil rights movement,

Martin Luther King was offered a job as

“Chief Impresario and Around the World Lecturer“

for the Sol Hurok agency,

a kind of world-wide talent agency.

He was guaranteed a salary of $100,000 a year

Which was a ton of money in 1962.

  

After threats to his family, time in jail

and the long road ahead, this was very tempting to him.

The biographer said he thought for a long time

about it, but he obviously refused and

recommitted to the movement he was called to.

That would lead to the break down of legal segregation

and would eventually lead to his murder in April 1968.

 

The devil would love it if he had taken the secure path.

Others who have been called to do good for others

have given in to that path.

 

The devil would love nothing more

than if we hoarded every bit of money, success, and power

for ourselves and only used it for our own comfort.

But Jesus says today that’s not the way to life.

That’s not the way to greatness in God’s kingdom.

The way to real greatness is to be a servant to others.

The real path to power is to share the power we have.

 

When we think of Mother Theresa,

we mostly think of her in the streets and slums

working with the poorest people in India.

But her work made her famous and her fame made her powerful.

 

Later on in life, when she needed more funding for her causes,

she would get on a plane, fly first class,

assemble a meeting of high-powered CEO’s

and executives and sit down in a chair in their conference room

look them in the eye and tell them,

“I need your money to do my work.“

And when they would offer her some

she would say, “No, that’s not enough. I’ll wait.“

That’s power. But it’s power for the sake of others

 

It’s stewardship month.

Stewardship is about how we care for what we’ve been given.

And these Gospel readings are about sharing.

Sharing what we’ve been given.

 

Last week, the rich man was told to let go of

his possessions and give them away,

and this week Jesus tells us to

give away our power for the good of others

 

Now some of us will probably say that we don’t feel

particularly powerful.

We’re not politicians, we don’t hold offices.

We’re not Mother Theresa, we’re not Martin Luther King.

We don’t have fame or notoriety. But each of us has power.

 

Most of us in here are white, that comes with

some automatic power in this country.

Many of us have accumulated some wealth.

We know how to get around many of the bureaucracies

and systems in this country, and that gives us power.

We have some free time. That gives us power.

We have options we’re not stuck in our situation.

That gives us power.

We can gather with other people

to work for change, and people will listen to us.

All these things give us power.

 

Power is a gift to us, it is an opportunity.

Power is a useful thing.

We’re not asked to shirk it off or refuse it.

We’re asked to take it and use it – for the good of others.

As Christians, we don’t need to under-achieve.

We don’t need to be door-mats.

There is no shame in being strong and powerful.

But for followers of Jesus, this power

comes with a responsibility and a call.

 

Christians can be business owners and bosses.

But our greatness is found when we use

that power to make sure the employees

who work for us are being treated respectfully

and clients are being treated fairly.

Christians can be elected officials

But their greatness is found when they

use their power for the good of

all people, even those who can’t or don’t vote for them

and those who are not wealthy and don’t have power.

like homeless people or people who have been in prison.

 

And churches can be big and powerful

and full of people and have lots of power and influence

But our greatness as a church is only found when

we use that power and influence for others

to speak up against injustice, violence, war, economic imparity,

and all those things that oppress the least among us.

 

In God’s kingdom, real power is found in giving our power away.

 

The more we give away, the more we have.

The more power we give away,

the stronger we grow.

  

We follow someone who could have had

all the power in the world,

who could have lived in palaces,

who could have lived a pleasant life

with riches, and comfort, and personal, inner peace.

 

But instead he used his power for the good of others,

he used his power to heal, to forgive,

to set captives, like us,

free from our own prisons we make for ourselves.

Jesus could have had anything in the world,

but he gave his whole life for us.

 

The more he gave, the more powerful he was.

And Jesus used that power for the life of the world.

Diagnosis: Wealth

 Mark 10:17-31  October 10, 2021

 
When my Aunt was about 24

Camel
Ryan Fox

years old she went to the

doctor for a routine physical.

 

Like any 24 year old, she thought that she

was perfectly healthy.

She suspected that doctor would merely 

suggest that she lose the extra 15 pounds that she

gained in college and let her go.

 

But in that visit, the doctor had

found a suspicious number in

one of the blood tests.

After a couple of follow ups

She was diagnosed with breast cancer.

 

At 24, she had a mastectomy

and was told that she should not

ever attempt to have children.

 

Because she was 24 years old,

I’m sure that my aunt went in believing that she was perfectly healthy.

She entered into that office secure in her health

but she ended up getting some very bad news

that would change her life entirely.

I’m sure some of you have been there.

  

The same thing happens

in the gospel story today.

It begins with a man running up to Jesus.

Usually when we see someone

running up to Jesus in the gospels,

they want to be healed.

and Jesus heals most people very quickly.

 

But in this case, it will take a little longer,

because this man does not even realize that he is sick.

 

In fact, it is just the opposite.

This man feels perfectly healthy.

This man is secure.

His life in this world is so secure in fact,

that he has checked it off his list.

He has moved onto eternal life

and he wants to know what he

needs to do to secure that part as well.

 

When he is asked about the commandments,

he answers Jesus with a cocky confidence.

Yes, all that is taken care of.

He believes that he is in great shape

And it is obvious that he is well

because God has rewarded him

with wealth and possessions.

 

Like my aunt, the rich man

came to Jesus for a routine physical.

But he received a terrible diagnosis.

His wealth and security had made him awfully sick.

 

The man interpreted his riches to be an asset,

but Jesus thought that they were a detriment.

 

Jesus tells the man that if he were really well,

that he should be willing to give away everything that he owns.

Give everything away.  Not just some. That will cure you.

 

When posed with this proposition,

the man understands that maybe

everything is not as ship shape as

he thought it was in his life.

 

Jesus words cut this man to the bone

and sent him away grieving and no longer proud.

 

Jesus words sometimes do that to us.

It’s been said that the gospel words of Jesus

“comfort the afflicted and

afflict the comfortable.”

 

When we become too complacent and comfortable

with our own accomplishments,

too sure of our own well-being,

then Jesus words come in to

remind us that all is not as it appears.

 

Like this man,

our possessions and accomplishments

can make us feel like we have achieved so much.

And we accumulate more and more

security, land, savings, investments

to stave off the feeling of reliance on any one.

 

But actually, our own accomplishments and our own

possessions and security can lie to us.

They tell us that we are fine and everyone else

that’s not in our position has the problem.

We’re sick and we don’t even know it.

 

The world, especially this world in the US

forces us to grasp for whatever we can get.

We call it independence and self-sufficiency,

but it’s really forced us to  be self-centered.

It’s isolated us into these independent kingdoms of personal wealth.

 

Some of us have been fortunate enough

to get what we need to live comfortably,

and some of us even have more

But many other people have not been so lucky.

 

And what happens is when we use the world’s

standards, we diagnose ourselves as healthy,

and we diagnose those others as sick.

The world has drilled this into our heads

so much that it is hard to see any other reality.

 

But those aren’t God’s standards.

God doesn’t look at the rich person and say,

“Great job, you have done well”

any more than God looks at the poor

and says, “Well, you’ve really made some

bad choices in your life.”

That’s the world talking.

  

The man saw those who were

flocked around Jesus who were

ill and possessed by demons

and the rich man assumed that

he was not like those people.

 

But Jesus is not fooled by this man’s

wealth or his confidence.

When Jesus looks at him,

he doesn’t see his outside trappings.

Jesus sees right through his wealth.

 

Jesus could see that this man

was addicted to the security

that his riches had given him.

This man was possessed by demons just like the others.

He was possessed by his possessions.

 

The bottom line is, all of our assets mean nothing to God.

They are not God’s blessing,

And their absence isn’t God’s curse.

Our wealth can actually be a detriment because

those assets can fool us into thinking all is well.

 

Our money, security, self-sufficiency mean nothing to God.

 

- Unless it is shared with others.

That’s the only way that money is an asset in God’s eyes.

That’s what can cure this illness.

Take what you have and give it away.

  

Now it’s stewardship month,

And yes, it would be easy now to say

“Share it with the church” – problem solved, the end.

The church is one way to share and it’s

one way that I choose to share

and I of course I hope you do too.

But it’s not the only way.

 

We can share with agencies and organizations

with people we know in need,

with people we don’t know and just met.

We know many of the ways we can share.

 

That’s not the important thing though,

the important thing for us to remember,

is that what we share is the only thing

that counts in God’s Kingdom.

What we give away is our only asset.

 

My aunt lived well into her 70’s.

The cancer returned in her 50’s,

but she survived that round too.

And although she was just a public school

teacher and my uncle was disabled,

And they didn’t have much money,

they gave most of it away.

They paid for my apartment all through college

which I am forever grateful for.

She learned early on that what she had

was not her own and everything was a gift.

  

I read that in Jerusalem

there was a city gate.

called the eye of the needle.

That might have been what Jesus was talking about in this gospel.

It was built narrow and small to keep

out hostile outsiders.

 

The space is just enough to get a camel through,

but it is too small to get it through with any of the baggage

that they would carry on the camel.

To get through it, the driver has to

remove all of the stuff from the camel.

 

Coming before God is like that too.

We will be divested of our things.

We will be stripped of our own abilities

and all of the façades, and confidence we have.

We will not have the wealth and power and privilege

we have in this world.

We will be stripped of the lies that we tell ourselves

to make us believe that everything is okay.

 

When we come before God,

we will be without all the things that we

have so long relied on.

When our baggage has been taken off

we come to God the same as those

who came to Jesus with demons and leprosy,

the same as prisoners and those with no home.

  

We come to God the same as the ones

that we have looked down on with pity.

We all come before God as beggars.

 

And God will see right through us.

Just like Jesus looked through the rich man.

God will see us for exactly who we really are.

And like Jesus, God will look on us with love.

 

So what do we need to do get eternal life?

If it was up to us, it would be impossible.

But nothing is impossible for God.