30B – 27 Oct 2024
Courage to see
Message by: Fr Richard M Healey
Audio
Liturgy of the Word
30B – Sunday 30 in Year B
MP3 media (9am)
MP3 media (5pm)
Reflection on Bartimaeus: A Journey from Isolation to Community
In this episode, I reflect on the story of Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, exploring themes of isolation, community, and the transformative power of Jesus’ love. Bartimaeus, despite being marginalized, courageously calls out to Jesus, seeking healing. His encounter with Jesus not only restores his sight but also reintegrates him into the community. Drawing on Pope Francis’ encyclical, I emphasise the importance of love and personal encounter within the church. This reflection encourages us to voice our desires and needs to Jesus, fostering a deeper connection with Him and each other.
00:00:00 There’s so much in that scene you could imagine just the wonder, the sense of anticipation on Bartimaeus, even this blind beggar, so alienated and isolated from the rest of the community. Notice on the edge of the road, outside the walls, outside the gate of the town. It’s just a sign of his disconnection, that sense of how he’s lacking in integration with the community. I mean, he’s a blind beggar. What else is he going to do? I really got a sense of this. This week when I spoke to one of our parishioners and visited him; he’s a blind man and he has had a service dog, but the dog got too old, so he had to give it back and is waiting for another dog. And just the difference that this dog has made in his life. When you cross the road: yes you have the tactile device, so you know where the edge of the street is. You’ve got the tactile sound on the traffic light.
00:01:12 So you’ve got an indication of when it’s green and when it’s safe to be able to walk across. But how do you know what direction you’re heading in to make sure you’re walking straight across the road? Because you’ve only just got enough time to make it across. And without having the guide dog to lead you in the right way, you know just how isolating it and separating that is. This is not necessarily a plug to support Guide Dogs Australia, but it’s probably a good reminder of the wonderful work that they do. But all of that sense of disconnection, I mean, we need to get into the mindset of what Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, is going through. It’s just interesting that we get that detail, at least today. It’s so often in the miracle stories that you get in the Gospels, the person is never named. We don’t get any detail at all. But clearly this person is known by the community.
00:02:08 Something has happened, something has changed in his life. And it’s clearly what we read about today. And now he’s part of this community. People know him and they go, oh yeah, old Barty. Yeah, of course I remember that. The story he told me, the story himself, you know, so many times would Barty have been able to, to share that the wonder of what happened on that day when he had the courage to shout out when, even though the crowd was telling him to shut up, be quiet. You know you’re not the centre of attention. But I knew that he had to. This was his one, perhaps only, chance he’d heard about Jesus. He knew some of the stories that had filtered their way even as far as Jericho from Galilee. And he wanted this chance. And so he called out. He couldn’t go to Jesus. The crowd was there, and how would he know which way to head? So he just uses the only asset that he has is to cry out as much as he could, to shout at the top of his voice for Jesus to to come to, to make himself known to him.
00:03:13 And even though the crowd is quieting him, Jesus is able to hear it, and he calls him. Now Jesus could have gone to him, but he doesn’t. He invites the man to come to the middle. It’s interesting that remember all miracle stories when the man who is deaf and mute and Jesus took him away from the crowd, but now Bartimaeus is brought into the centre of this throng of people, no longer just the disciples. This is the huge crowd of people that are making their way up to Jerusalem to join in the procession that we celebrate on Palm Sunday. This is the very end of the ministry of Jesus. The next line after this, this, this gospel finishes is the triumphant entry into Jerusalem. So we’re coming to this crescendo and this huge swathe of people. It’s just before the Jewish festival of Passover. So all these people are gathering to come to, to go in that pilgrimage procession to Jerusalem for the festival. So hundreds of people are there, and Jesus brings Bartimaeus into the very centre of this crowd, this throng of people, all with their own needs or with their own desires, all with their own stories and what has been happening within their experiences.
00:04:32 But in the midst of all of this, Jesus asks the same question he asked of James and John last week. What do you want me to do for you? But Amos has already demonstrated his keenness. He’s thrown off the cloak that you uses to keep himself warm. He’s thrown off that source of being able to collect any coins that might be thrown in his direction. You know, cloaks were often the only thing that you had to sleep in, and that was his whole kind of source of strength and identity. But he’s thrown that off as he’s jumped up and run over to Jesus. And so he makes that declaration, master. I just want to see. I mean, Jesus would have been able to guess that Jesus is an intelligent person. He would have been able to know that that’s what Bartimaeus wanted to be able to see. And yet he still asks that question. He still puts it to Bartimaeus, what do you want me to do for you? So often we kind of imagine that religion and spirituality is just on this whole kind of factory process, where there is an assembly line and, and we just get whatever falls off the end of the assembly line.
00:05:47 It’s all mass produced and we get our little measure of grace. But now the way of Jesus is the way of personal encounter. It’s the way where he’s always inviting people into that experience, always asking us directly, personally, intimately. But you. What do you want me to do for you? What is your need? What is the thing that you are missing in your life? What is the area in your life that you realise that there’s a wounding, that there’s an isolation, that there’s something that is preventing you from being part of this community, that’s preventing you from finding your full place of human flourishing. What is that thing that you need for me? As Pope Francis reminded us this week in his latest encyclical letter Dilexit Nos, in pondering upon the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus, calling us into a deeper encounter in that experience of love. And many of the commentators have noted that it was no accident that it was in the final days of the Synod that Pope Francis released this encyclical letter for us to ponder and to reflect on, because unless we experience the Intimacy and the personal love of our Saviour.
00:07:10 Nothing else will ever really make sense. Pondering about the structures of the church and how we better integrate women and people, LGBT community, and all those different questions that continue to be there present within our church. It’s not about those questions so much until we first address this question of love, until we first open ourselves to being able to face Jesus as he looks with love at us, as he asks us that same question. But you, what do you want me to do for you? How can I bring life into your soul? What is the thing that isolates the separates the causes you do your deepest struggle? How can I bring healing and new life into that part of your life? Bartimaeus answers with a brilliant So question a brilliant resolve, master, I want to see. Remember that in this gospel so often the disciples have failed to see. So often they haven’t been able to understand what Jesus is saying. Three times we’ve heard Jesus announce what is about to happen. He’s prophesied that this is all going to end not in glory, but in his passion and suffering and death at the hands of the Jewish authorities and the Romans.
00:08:36 And each time when Jesus made that prophecy, the disciples completely got it wrong, first in Peter in trying to remonstrate with him, then in John, in trying to to say it’s cold on fire upon those that weren’t part of the ministry. And then last week, with James and John wanting the seats of glory rather than being able to submit to service and being like a slave. And so Jesus is wanting people to come to a place of seeing, being able to understand what is happening. When this story of the procession, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem began. There was another story of the healing of a blind man. At that time it took a bit longer. It wasn’t an instant immediate response as we get, you know, remember that favourite wood that we have in the gospel of Mark? Immediately this thing then happened, and this is the last of those instances of Jesus saying, and immediately this man was able to see and what happens? Bartimaeus begins to follow. Bartimaeus begins to join the crowd.
00:09:38 He becomes one of the disciples of Jesus. That transformation is what this is about. Encountering that love, being open to that love, being open to declare and to shout aloud what it is that we need and what we want for that change to happen. To join Bartimaeus in calling out to Jesus Messiah, Son of David, have mercy on me, that that’s where all of this transformation begins. When it’s an encounter of love, when there is a response of love that everything changes, Bartimaeus becomes for us a sign of what discipleship is all about being encountered, being embraced in love, and then allowing that love to transform every part of his experience and then the experience of the community. And that’s where community begins. That’s why we’re invited into this deeper encounter with love. That’s what we first need to be embraced in love. And so only when we become a more loving and more embracing and more welcoming church, that all of the structures and all everything else that needs to also change, we’ll begin to, to find their place.
00:10:47 So let’s be people that continue to place ourselves before Jesus as he looks at love at us because he asks us the same question, what do you want me to do for you? And let’s respond in whatever comes naturally, whatever seems to stir within the deep recesses of our heart. What is our desire? What is our longing? How can we respond more deeply in love to Jesus, the Son of David?