Last week, we read how Jesus healed a man who had been born blind. We saw how his life immediately changed and how he grew from that place of utter cluelessness to one of witness and worship. Today, we have the story of Jesus healing another blind man, but one who was once sighted and then became blind. His prayer is not one for original vision, but for the return of sight that had been lost.
Since these stories of physical blindness all carry meaning for spirituality and faith, what are we to say about this prayer for sight to be returned? What if someone once believed, then ceased to believe, but wanted to believe again? Is it possible for one who has fallen away to be restored? When it comes to faith and believing, what choices are we responsible for and what is God’s responsibility?
We make real choices, but those choices tend to come only after God has in some way turned the lights on. As we look at today’s story, let’s consider how it speaks to faith—real faith, fake faith, and how our choices interface with the free choices of God.
TEXT: MARK 10: 46-52 NRSV
46 They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.. †
BLIND BARTIMAEUS
Jesus and his disciples are passing through Jericho on their way to Jerusalem where Jesus will complete His ministry in the temple and on Golgotha. The text says “as they were leaving,” the blind man named Bartimaeus cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The crowd tells him to pipe down. Why? We can imagine several reasons.
As a blind beggar, Bartimaeus was a real downer. It amounts to a crowd keeping a homeless man away from a visiting dignitary. “Come on—keep the beggars away from the Rabbi!”
Perhaps the crowd was moving with a certain quiet dignity, and the people considered it undignified for Bartimaeus to shout out as he did. A bit like yelling “Fire!” in a public place.
It was a real attention-getter, for sure. Bartimaeus was perhaps “being a problem” in order to get attention and bystanders saw it as such.
Perhaps they told him to be quiet because they all wanted Jesus’ attention. This was their way of saying, “Dude—get to the back of the line!”
Worse, those in the crowd were thinking, “He doesn’t have time for you, sinner!”
Which amounts to: “You are undeserving of His hearing.”
What does Bartimaeus do? He cries out all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” That Bartimaeus calls Jesus “Son of David” is especially significant. Nowhere else in Mark is Jesus addressed as Son of David. What did it mean? That Jesus is the promised one—the Messiah of God. “Son of David” was a strong testimony about who Jesus was. This, too, may account for why the crowd sought to silence him—it was a bit too much.
There may be another dimension in this, because this man recognized something in Jesus that the Jewish leadership—and even the Disciples—did not see. Though blind, Bartimaeus calls the shot correctly. He proclaims the truth in calling Jesus “Son of David,” because Jesus is God’s promised Messiah.
How did he know this? We can’t know from the text, but I’d like to suggest a possible angle (one I can’t prove), that may throw some light on our discussion.
The name Bartimaeus means “Son of Honor.” I’d like to imagine that he was a scribe—one who knew the Law and Prophets but lost his vision, and with it his livelihood. Can we imagine that Bartimaeus was one who longed for the coming Messiah and expected him? He once saw and believed, but now his sight was gone, but he—unlike the others—knows—really knows—who Jesus is!
THE HEALING
Jesus says, “Call him.” Jesus could have called Bartimaeus himself, couldn’t He? Of course, but we have here an object lesson of how Jesus includes others in sending out his call. This is evangelism—that you and I may be the means by which Jesus calls others to Himself.
So they tell Bartimaeus: “Buck up! He’ll see you!” Bartimaeus tosses his cloak aside and springs up. Not, “Someone watch my stuff, please!” The cloak of a beggar was like a uniform—it was a sign of his identity. From that cloak people knew he was a designated recipient of alms-giving, which proper Jews were devout in giving.
But leaving the cloak is a sign that Bartimaeus was ready and willing to leave everything for the chance of being healed. He’s not one of those people who get into the lake one toe at a time; he jumps in with all he has and is.
Jesus asks a marvelous question: “What do you want me to do for you?” BarTimaeus could have said many things—you can use your imagination—but he goes for broke and sets the bar high: “Let me see again!”
Jesus says, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Wholeness comes through trusting in Christ. The man is immediately healed and follows Jesus and His followers toward Jerusalem.
PRAYERS FROM BLINDNESS
Last week, Jesus’ action was unilateral—Jesus simply took the initiative to give sight to a man born blind. This week, the blind man asks to see again. The first thing I think we can gather from this is that Jesus honors the prayers of the spiritually blind. He hears the prayers of those who do not yet see Him.
Where do some folks ever get the idea that we have to be okay with God before He will hear us? We know the opposite is true. It is the repentant sinner beating his breast who goes home justified.
I knew a woman who had a hard life. When I asked her about prayer, she said, “I am not worthy of speaking to God.” While my heart was breaking for her, I did feel like saying, “That’s very good of you to know that God is so very good!” None of us is worthy of speaking to God; we do so only by His amazing grace.
Part of the good news in this—that God hears the prayers of sinners and disbelievers—is that we can encourage anyone to pray. As I’ve encountered people who are spiritually blind and unable to see Jesus as Christ and Son of David, I have encouraged them to pray one prayer:
“Lord, please reveal Yourself as You truly are.”
This prayer trusts the Holy Spirit to do the work only the Spirit can do.
But now to the harder topic: Apostasy.
APOSTASY
Apostasy is the loss of faith. Like Bartimaeus, there are people who once could see but now cannot. They once believed, but now do not. In the early church, the term was most often used of those who renounced Jesus under threat of torture or persecution. In other words, they lost their nerve and cursed Christ and praised Caesar rather than be crucified, lit on fire, or thrown to lions—or all of the above. We know nothing of such a threat and we should be glad we don’t. Early church fathers had harsh rebukes for those who preserved themselves rather than their witness to Christ—but this kind of apostasy is rare today.
In our day, we have freedom of religion, which people experience as the simple freedom to think whatever we want. We certainly take that freedom of faith for granted. Leaving Christianity today is as easy as cancelling a magazine subscription. Some leave because they don’t like rules or accountability—not even to God. People depart the faith not in fear of torture and death, but because they prefer lives with fewer expectations. They want to enjoy sinning without a guilty conscience. Rather than smother sin, they smother conscience.
Others just want to get away from the culture of Christianity—The Mickey Mouse Club version of pop Christianity—and others want away from feeling suffocated by the pushy zeal of family members or church members.
A friend of mine ran a church in downtown Seattle—an edgy, hipster church that met in an old movie theater. While on the town, he watched a singer who went by the name of Blenderhead perform the song “One” by U2. So touched was he by the song, that he asked Blenderhead to sing the song at his church. Looking shocked, he agreed. On the Sunday he sang, he was quite the sight: tatted all over, piercings in his ears, eyebrows, nostrils, and tongue—not your average church-goer. At the end of his song, the congregation burst into standing applause. After the service, my friend went up to him to say thanks. As he approached, Blenderhead burst into tears, bawling like a small child. He said, “I’ve always loved God—I just thought there would never be a church that would have someone like me.”
The Church—all churches—need to demonstrate the mercy of Son of David for all who would see.
What should we think of apostates? Should we expect that they can never return or should we work diligently for the restoration of their sight?
APOSTATES, UNLTD.
Some people never really believed,; they just went along with the crowds while they were growing up. They went to school, did their duty, attended church with their families on Sundays, and had faith only to the degree that they were going along with the crowd. Their parents were doing their best to nurture them in the faith, but at the end of the day, they were just doing it for their parents.
Others, who claim to have had real faith, lose it entirely. I have friends—some of them highly educated and generally sincere thinkers—who once professed faith in Christ, persisting even through strong college discouragements—but who have since abandoned faith—relegating it to the myths and legends of the western world. To them, leaving Christianity is like leaving one’s membership in a teenage fanclub. They feel their doubts to be a surer foundation for thought and identity than the new being in Christ. It totally breaks my heart.
I think, “What happened? What went wrong?”
I suppose they look at me like the guy who couldn’t bear to leave the comforts of his hometown for the larger world. they would probably say my faith is:
•just my own form of self-preservation, or
•a rather unfortunate combination of nostalgia, sentimentalism, and gullibility
•a false construction to make me feel good about myself. A mask.
They see me (and us) like UFO enthusiasts gathered at the annual conference in Roswell, bolstering our mutual confirmation bias.
I think they see us as shallow, lacking courage, self-deluded. . . blind!
You may have children or grandchildren who grew up in the church. they were baptized, brought to church on Sundays, active in the youth group, confirmed, and yet somewhere along the line they fell out of obedience—they fell out of care. We know the same heartbreak and ask the same questions: “What happened? What went wrong?”
CHOOSING FAITH
My older, wiser brother was at one time pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Lubbock, Texas. He said, “Faith is like a tree in west Texas: if you don’t water the thing it’s gonna die!” This is true of trees in west Texas. They tend to grow slowly, if at all, but I’m not so sure that this is what faith is like.
Scripture tells us that faith is ultimately a gift given by God. It is often given to people who neither want it nor seek it. These people, it seems, are among the ones who never walk away from God. The faith that they are given changes everything about them, and though they didn’t ask for it, they experience total transformation through it.
But there is a kind of faith that is chosen:
it is chosen by parents for their children,
it is chosen by families for their life together,
it is chosen by repentant souls at Bible camp and revivals.
There is a large problem with this kind of faith, because a faith you can choose is a faith you can lose. If we can choose faith, we can un-choose it just as easily.
The faith that is easy to lose is the “cultural faith”—the faith of the team, the group, the family, the culture. As it can be chosen—it only exists in the realm of the consumer mentality. It’s like Baskin Robbins 31 flavors: we can choose Pralines & Cream or Baseball Nut or Licorice. We choose it, and part of its value and satisfaction resides in the choice itself. Pralines & Cream is the best because I picked it out of all 31 flavors!
To some degree, our choices are nothing but an exercise of ego and individualism—we think, “It is good because I picked it!”
Now if what we call faith is a choice among choices, we reduce it to a product—one that only has value if individually purchased.
We’ve all made bad purchases. Ever buy an article of clothing that looked good on the rack but never looked good when you put it on? Ever tried really hard to like something you bought just because it was expensive—or a great deal—and you didn’t want to admit you hated it? Or worse, those Zips brand shoes your mother bought you instead of Nikes?
Whatever we reduce to a choice among other choices, we desperately cheapen. And what I am saying is that we must not allow our faith to be cheapened in the same way—offering the choice of Jesus as one choice among many.
“MAKING” JESUS LORD AND SAVIOR
We don’t “make” Jesus our Lord and Savior. “I made Jesus my Lord and Savior!” Nothing could be more preposterous. “You did? You took Jesus and lifted Him up to the status of Lord and Savior? You must be almighty yourself to accomplish that!”
It matters how we talk about these things. Our language matters.
We don’t “make” Jesus our Lord and Savior. We can’t. To suggest as much is idolatry. To think that out of a world of possible gods, you and I say, “we choose Jesus” and thereby “make” him Lord and Savior is absurd—it is exactly like idolatry which looks at a hundred different little statues and says, “That one—I choose that one to be God and I choose it to have power and authority.”
We can’t and don’t “make” Jesus Lord and Savior—He IS Lord and Savior. We either see it or we do not. We are sighted or we are blind, and God is the one who chooses.
We might think, “Yes, but Jesus is where I’m placing my bets and putting all my chips! All my trust and investment are on Jesus!” But even this reduces Him to one among many different little squares on a roulette table! A choice among choices. We must understand: He isn’t a square on the roulette table hoping to receive our bets and loyalty; He is Lord over every square, He is the whole table, above the whole casino, Las Vegas, Nevada, America, Earth and cosmos.
TRUE FAITH = GIFT
True faith is not the faith we choose for ourselves. True faith is an act of Go upon us over which we are rendered helpless and powerless. We don’t need to be sold on it, for we are compelled by it—absorbed into it and utterly immersed in the workings of God.
To say, “I chose Jesus,” is like saying, “I chose to breath oxygen.”
We do make real choices, but only after God has turned on the lights. This faith that God gives demands new life of us. We can no longer be blind beggars pleading ignorance. We can certainly fail to water our faith, fail to nurture it, and fail to share it; but we cannot make faith happen; we can only make fake faith happen. And there’s much too much of it about.
God alone produces the real stuff. If we have it we bear fruit. Jesus says bad trees can’t bear good fruit and good trees don’t bear bad fruit. You and I cannot bear fruit by personal force of will or good works. Good fruit is merely the earthly evidence of true faith given by God.
Scripture gives us enormous hope for all our loved ones who have seemingly departed from faith. We should cry out for them “Son of David, HAVE MERCY! Lord, let my friend, brother, daughter, grandchild—SEE again!”
Let us pray God will give them His gift of true faith. †
QUESTIONS:
- 1.What are the significant spiritual steps the man takes between the beginning and end of chapter 9?
- 2.How are these steps similar to those of the Samaritan Woman in John chapter 4: 1-30?
- 3.In both cases, how is faith initiated? Who starts it? What is required of the “convert”?
- 4.What is the problem in saying that people who really want to be saved are more likely to be saved?
- 5.What is the virtue in owning our own blindness, albeit spiritual blindness?
- 6.What is the downside of thinking ourselves more as saints than sinners?