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Sermon at The Church of
the Holy Apostles, New York City,
October 29, 2006, The Twenty-First Sunday of Pentecost:
Year B
The
Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D., Rector
Isaiah 59: 1 - 4, 9 - 19
Psalm 13
Hebrews 5: 12 - 6: 1, 9 - 12
Mark 10: 46 - 52
The grand culmination of Jesus’ life and ministry was underway.
He was finally on the road to Jerusalem; at Jericho, he was only
fifteen miles from his destination. A great crowd was following
along in pilgrimage-fashion. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem
was nearly at hand. For some three years Jesus had proclaimed his
message—and now the final act was about to begin. The crowd, not
to mention Jesus’ disciples, was caught up in the prospect of
taking Jerusalem by storm. Even though Jesus has tried to prepare
his disciples about what might well lie ahead for him and even for
them, they scarcely understood. We cannot even know what Jesus
himself might have been imagining, for all our accounts were of
course written much later, well after the resurrection, well into
the life of the early church.
But this pilgrimage in interrupted, interrupted by this
blind beggar who is in the way, making a nuisance of
himself. The mayor of Jericho had not been very effective in his
sweeping away of beggars. Or, perhaps he was successful,
for Bartimaeus was sitting on the road just outside
Jericho. Whatever the case, there he was, and he was in the way,
full of impertinence, demanding to be heard.
This story of the blind man Bartimaeus is the last such
story recorded in Mark. It is brief and to the point. It is
past, and it is gone. And we may hardly take notice. The
incident could not possibly make much difference in what Jesus was
about right now. He had his mind on other, more important
things. Compared to the panorama of events, real or imagined,
about to unfold in Jerusalem, this story is a mere nothing. One
more blind man being healed just now would make no real difference
at all to the great story that is unfolding.
This blind man has heard about Jesus, however, and this
is his chance—and so he cries out for recognition and help. The
crowd, with their own agenda and sensing this man’s
insignificance, tries to stop him. But security was lax. Somehow
this man got close enough for Jesus to hear him.
Jesus does hear him. And Jesus stops. The
grand procession grinds to a halt. The great, unfolding chain of
events is broken, interrupted, and we will now have to deal with
this man who had the temerity to stop history in its tracks.
The resulting story is simple and brief. Jesus
acknowledges Bartimaeus. He calls him forward, asks him what he
would like him to do for him. Bartimaeus answers him, “My
teacher, let me see again,” and Bartimaeus is healed. He regains
his sight—and follows along the way. The larger drama can now
continue towards its culmination in Jerusalem.
This brief little story, this impertinent interruption,
has so many implications for us, it is difficult to know where to
begin. Perhaps the most obvious is that one solitary individual,
however lowly in station, matters, matters immensely for our Lord,
matters so much that even affairs of state need to be
interrupted. This blind beggar would seem to be that
important to Jesus.
I don’t need to tell any of you about the modern-day
Bartimaeuses of New York City. They are everywhere. Sometimes
they cry out at us. Sometimes they are silent. The various
campaigns to make them relatively invisible and shield us from
them has been only a partial success.
Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen is of course full of
Bartimaeuses. To volunteer for one day here is to discover that
every one of the eleven or twelve or thirteen hundred guests on
any given day has a personal story, personal tragedies and hurts
that cry out for attention. And in one of the greatest scandals
of our age, our society seems not to care, not to take notice, to
be moved more to scold and punish rather than truly to help on a
scale that could really make a difference.
Sometimes when it seems altogether too much, too
overwhelming, I try to remind myself that in simply reaching even
one modern day Bartimaeus, we are doing the Lord’s work.
Now lest any of us think the story of Bartimaeus
relates only to social outreach, to those poor Bartimaeuses “out
there,” I want to turn the tables rather drastically. For I
believe this simple story of Bartimaeus relates to each one of
us very directly in our own personal lives. For each of us at
some point in our own lives is in fact going to be in the position
of Bartimaeus—of crying out in our own anguish, “Jesus, Son of
David, have mercy on me!”
However well our lives may be going at one particular
moment, even this particular moment, we will reach
points where our lives seem to be falling apart. Our jobs may be
in jeopardy, or we may be unable to find a job, a relationship
with our significant other may be falling apart or under great
strain, we may be faced with a serious illness in ourselves or a
loved one, we may be struggling with an addiction that is about to
undo us. We may be facing the reality of our own impending
death—or the death of someone we love. And whether we literally
cry out or struggle to hold it in, keeping a stiff upper lip at
least outwardly, we nonetheless want cry out, even if we don’t
have the exact same words, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on
me!”
All too often, when we struggle with such issues, we
struggle alone. Just like Bartimaeus, it is so very easy to feel
insignificant, unimportant, unworthy—when so many other things
seem to be swirling about which seem to be so important, or at
least keep people in motion. Or, it may be our own pride.
Whatever the reason, all too often we are reluctant to ask for
help, even though we know God often works not just privately, but
through the ministrations of others as well.
It may be that we sometimes need a “Bartimaeus moment”
that makes it possible for us to ask for help, for someone to be
with us.
Now I want to say something that probably needs to be
reiterated periodically, so important is it: I know that it is
sometimes an issue of when to call, or even whether to call on the
clergy of this parish when things are rocky. I want to say this
as plainly and directly as I can. It is simply devastating to
your parish clergy, it is devastating to me, to learn of something
after the fact, belatedly, when one or more of us could
have been there in only we had known, if only we had been told.
The message of the gospel this morning is that Jesus
Christ is there when you need him, that God through the
Holy Spirit is present with us. And let me say it again as
plainly as I can: one of the most basic and fundamental claims
upon the time and energy and attention of the clergy of this
parish is to be present to any of you in time of need or crisis.
And there are numerous lay people in this parish who have
wonderful pastoral ministries as well .
It is a sobering thing to consider that sometimes
Christ speaks to us most powerfully not in our strength, but in
our weakness, not when we’ve got it together, but when things are
falling apart. Faith is confirmed and strengthened when we find
Christ at these times in our lives.
One of the ways this has happened again and again in my
own nearly thirty five years as a priest has been in the pastoral
offices of the church—perhaps especially to the sick and to the
dying. To bring the sacrament to the sick, to practice the laying
on of hands and anointing with oil, even the litany at the time of
death—in these we know that whatever else is going on in the
world, that Christ is present with his healing power then and
there, even here and now. He has time and room for us. We have
his attention. We sense his acceptance and his love for us in our
vulnerability and fragility and frailty. And that is a powerful
thing; it is a healing thing. And it is the promise of the gospel
of Christ, and of our gospel lesson this morning.
I want to share a story I have told before, but not for
a number of years. About twenty five years ago now, my father
learned that he had a terminal illness. He had spent the nearly
ten years of his retirement doing what he loved to do the
most—teaching immigrant children to speak English. When my father
learned that he had six months to a year to live, he chose to
hallow each day as a blessing from God. He and my mother did
something else they loved to do: they traveled, and they spent a
good bit of time with their children and grandchildren. And one
of the things my father wanted to do before he died was to figure
out his strange younger son—the one who left Southern California
for the mysterious and sometimes scary place of New York—and who
once here, left the Methodist Church to of all things, become an
Episcopal priest.
The fact that the first eucharist he saw me celebrate
some ten years before was a high mass—with smells and bells and
all the trimmings—in the highest church of this city didn’t help
matters one bit. Truth be told, it is not too much to say that I
took a bit of perverse delight in shocking my parents in those
days.
But something remarkable happened in the last years of
my father’s life. He found in the Episcopal Church something of
what I had found—the unbroken tradition of the holy, catholic, and
apostolic church, a sense of the eucharist as the very heart and
soul of Christian worship, of the beauty of the liturgy and the
wonderfully rich music of our tradition. In the last year of his
life, he found a parish near his home, and he decided to be
confirmed when the bishop was to visit, some six months hence.
But just as he was making those plans, my mother called
and said to Jane and me that we had better come to California
immediately, for suddenly the end was clearly approaching. We had
several house eucharists with the family gathered around my
father’s bedside where my father wanted to die—at home. Both of
the priests in his parish and I shared in celebrating, in the
laying on of hands, in the anointing with oil.
But there was something wrong, something that had my
father quite agitated. Finally, with tears in his eyes, my father
confessed what was burdening him so. He didn’t think he could
hold out the six months to the bishop’s visitation—and he wanted
to know if he could die a good Episcopalian without having been
confirmed. What he did not know was that I was urgently trying to
see if a bishop could be found who would be willing to come and do
a house confirmation, and I could surprise him with the news.
Now it is easy even for a priest at times to think of
bishops as ecclesiastical bureaucrats and dignitaries who would
have little time or interest for such things—who have their own
agendas and who don’t have time for unimportant people without
prior appointments. I wasn’t sure if I could deliver when my
father asked me that question. I tried to reassure him that his
baptism was what made him a member of the body of Christ—and not
to be anxious.
But the next day I found that the retired Bishop of
Olympia, Washington, lived nearby six months of the year, and
luckily, he was in the area—and he would be delighted to come.
When I told my father that the bishop was coming to
confirm him in his own bedroom, I don’t think I had ever seen such
indescribable joy on his face. My father would have leapt like
Bartimaeus had he the strength.
The night before his confirmation, we were not sure my
father was going to last through the night, but thank God, he
did. And on his 73rd birthday, I presented my father
to Bishop Curtis, acting on behalf of the Bishop of Los Angeles,
and he was confirmed in Christ’s holy catholic church.
That occasion was one of the most memorable and moving
experiences of my life. And Bishop Curtis was as true a chief
pastor as I could have imagined. My father was not cured from his
disease. But he got such a high from his confirmation that he
held on four more weeks. When he died, he died in the peace of
Christ and in the sure hope of the resurrection. And he knew who
his son was and just what it was he was about. And I had never
felt so close to him in all my life.
Because of the strength of my father’s faith, even in
my own halting weakness, I was able to do what I knew my father
most wanted me to do, and that was to be the celebrant at his
requiem eucharist in his new parish, St. George’s Church, Laguna
Hills. And that same Bishop Curtis, who had the time to stop, to
come to my father’s bedroom and to confirm him, that same bishop
came to that requiem—and he called on my mother in her grief and
loneliness a few weeks later.
The little story of the blind man Bartimaeus is
wondrously rich. In it we find the love of Christ expressed to
each one of us. In it we can find healing for ourselves and for
those we love. In it we find the pastoral ministry to which each
one of us is called whether we be ordained or lay. In it we find
peace and hope and joy as we follow along the pilgrims’ way.
Amen.
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