Believing is Seeing - Deacon Ray
All four of the Gospels report that Jesus restored sight to the blind. It appears that Jesus did so on multiple occasions. Only Mark’s Gospel gives the name of one of these blind men: Bartimaeus, a name which means “honorable son.” Mark goes out of his way to emphasize the name by repeating the obvious. Bar-Timaeus means son of Timaeus, a fact that Mark includes in addition to the man’s proper name. Bar- meaning son; and Timaeus, meaning honorable in Greek. So what’s going on here? It seems incongruous to attribute honor to a blind beggar. Indeed, honor was the last thing attributed to the blind man in John’s Gospel. He was rather thought to be worthless by the authorities who believed his blindness to be the mark of having been born totally in sin, and worse, an embarrassment to his parents. But there it is: Bartimaeus is in some sense both son of an honorable man, and honorable himself.
Bartimaeus is a sort of EveryMan who serves to demonstrate both our inherent worth and our dire plight. His blindness also evokes an association with the first blind man in the Bible: Adam. Adam and Eve were in some sense “blind” to evil, suffering and death in their innocence. But when they ate the forbidden fruit, “the eyes of both of them were open” to these, while in a tragic reversal they simultaneously became blind to God, seeking to hide from His sight. But for Bartimaeus, Jesus performs a miraculous double-reversal by restoring sight to the blind man, who could then look anew on the face of God (Jesus) and live, while at the same time becoming blind to his formerly suffering existence.
How the Gospel scene unfolds for Bartimaeus is worth further examination. The sequence seems to be key, as it unfolds as a reversal of the tragedy of Eden, where Adam and Eve left God’s presence, consigned to a life of suffering. Our Gospel passage begins by noting the depth of Bartimaeus’ suffering: he is blind and reduced to suffering and the malign indifference of his neighbors.
This grim scene changes, however, the moment that Bartimaeus hears a commotion in the crowd. Who is it, he asks? Jesus of Nazareth they say. Jesus — the one whose name means God saves! And a flicker of hope stirs in Bartimaeus. Hope for what? Bartimaeus dares not even think it (yet), hope for something, anything, for pity’s sake to alleviate his suffering. So he calls out to Jesus for pity. A forlorn hope, perhaps, but the opposition of his neighbors forces him — emboldens him to cry out all the louder. Jesus, son of David, have pity on me! What began as a flicker of hope has now surged into a roaring fire of hope and expectation, so much so that the crowds now hush themselves and take note. Jesus is calling you, they say! The Holy One of God, the messianic Son of David, is calling back God’s lost and wayward son, whom God had expelled from Eden until just this very moment.
The Primeval Curse now works backward at a dizzying pace. From Hope, to God’s Invitation to Return. The next leaf to fall is Bartimaeus’ cloak, which he cast off. He shed his clothing, the mark of the shamefulness of sin, which our first parents crudely fashioned to hide the nakedness of their guilt. Now, far from hiding, Bartimaeus “sprang up” and ran to Jesus. Imagine the haste of a blind man running! He could not see where he was going, of course. But by now Hope was becoming Faith, and He was no longer afraid. And the mixture of need and Faith brought him to Jesus. Freed from the burden of his former way of life, ritually stripped of his shame and the illusion of protection and false identity that clothing sometimes gives, Bartimaeus was given a choice. Jesus asked, what do you want? This is the moment of decision. It corresponds to that fateful choice our first parents made: what do you want? In their pride, they wanted to be God. But in his humility and with sincere Faith, Bartimaeus just wanted to be himself, whole and able to see. In that moment, by the grace of God, Bartimaeus was restored to himself, and he was able to see!
More than that, Bartimaeus was able to see God face to face, just as our first parents did before they turned away. And seeing God, seeing Jesus, Bartimaeus would not be separated from Him! Jesus gave him leave to go, but Bartimaeus, having been restored to sight and new life refused to let the Author of Light and Life out of his sight again. Hope had led to Faith, and Faith grew into Love. So Bartimaeus, honored son that he was, followed Jesus. As Bartimaeus would later learn, Jesus’ way was a path of suffering and death, yet also it was a way leading to restoration and new Life. But neither Jesus nor Bartimaeus were afraid, even though the Cross lay ahead. Because they could see God, nothing else mattered. As Jesus well knew, one more reversal was needful for mankind. The Cross was to become the new Tree of Life. By Christ’s saving work on the Cross, access to the Tree of Life which was lost in Genesis will be restored in the closing chapter of Revelation, where it will bear fruit perpetually, and whose leaves will serve as medicine to heal and to banish any remembrance of suffering or death. Welcome to the New Eden, give glory to God!
All this is possible. Indeed, it is already accomplished for us, as Jesus announced as He died on the Cross. For us, it awaits only our own encounter with Jesus, prompted by awareness of our desperate need for God, mingled with rekindled Hope and lively Faith, and our decision to the question that Jesus puts to each of us: What do you want? I want to see and follow Jesus.
