Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York
Mark 10:46-52
No one chooses to be blind. Bartimaeus gives the obvious answer to Jesus’ question when he says: “My teacher, let me see again.” This Gospel holds a universal story that every one of us experiences even if our physical vision is 20/20, because it’s about more than physical seeing or blindness. I think perhaps the deeper question we need to ask ourselves is whether we really want to see.
Do we really want to see the reality of our lives, who we are and who we are not? Do we really want to see the needs of our neighbor or the marginalized? Do we really want to see the injustices around us? Do we really want to see who Jesus is and not just who we want him to be? True seeing is more than simply observing with our physical eyes. It implies relationship and a deeper knowing. Such seeing is not without risk. If we really want to see, then we must be willing to change and be changed. We must be willing to leave behind what is to receive what might be.
Sometimes that risk is too much so we turn a blind eye. This is not a physical but a spiritual condition. For most of us life is neither all seeing nor all blindness. It was that way for Bartimaeus too. Remember, Bartimaeus asks to “see again.” At the end of the story, we are told that he “regained his sight.” He had known darkness, and he had known light. He had vision, and he had been blind. Both are a reality for Bartimaeus and for us.
We can identify our own life when we see his life in three stages. First, Bartimaeus can see, then he is blind, sitting and begging on the roadside. Finally, he regains a new and different way of seeing. This is a pattern of spiritual growth we see throughout the Scriptures. Richard Rohr describes it as Order, Disorder, and Reorder. Every original Order includes an initially threatening Disorder, which morphs into and creates a new Reordering, and we begin all over again. Every one of us has lived this pattern. It’s the Paschal Mystery, a story of life, death, and resurrection. We grow spiritually by passing beyond some perfect Order, through an often painful and seemingly unnecessary Disorder, to an enlightened Reorder.
Jesus, by his life, death, and resurrection, offers us a clear vision of what true life looks like. To the extent we do not share that vision we are blind. As tragic as blindness is, the greater tragedy is when we cannot even recognize that we are blind. Bartimaeus knows he is going nowhere, and his life remains unchanged. Every day he holds out the cloak of his blindness and begs. Like him, we stumble our way through life believing that this is as good as it gets. We’re content to sit by the roadside and beg, letting life pass us by. We can feel stuck, more like a spectator than a participant. How and what we see determine the world we live in and the life we live. At some point all of us sit cloaked in darkness, unable to see.
The darkness fills and covers us. Maybe it’s about exhaustion or indifference. Sometimes it’s the darkness of grief and loss. Sin and guilt blind us to what our life could be. Other times we live in the darkness of fear, anger, or resentment. Doubt and despair can distort our vision. Failures and disappointments darken our world. Maybe the answers and beliefs that once lit our way no longer illuminate. There’s no clarity. We hide in the shadows neither wanting to see nor to be seen. Perhaps the deepest darkness is when we become lost to ourselves, not knowing who we are.
It doesn’t matter what caused Bartimaeus’ blindness. What matters is that he knew that he was blind. He held his blindness before Christ believing and hoping that there was more to who he was and what his life could be. It was out of that knowing, believing, and hoping that he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” That’s the cry of one who abandons themselves to God. The one who cannot see cries out to be seen. It is that cry that stopped Jesus in his tracks.
“Call him here,” Jesus said. With that calling misery meets compassion. He stands before Jesus who asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” That is the question for every one of us who have ever sat in darkness. It’s the question Jesus asks us over and over, again. “What do you want me to do for you?” This question offers a turning point, a new beginning. It asks us to look deep within our self, to face what is, and name what we want.
The thing about sitting in darkness is that at the time we can never see what’s coming. The most Bartimaeus could do was to be faithful in his darkness, to not run away from it, but to cry out in hope. And that’s true for us. We are no strangers to the feeling of being depleted with nothing in reserve, when life overwhelms, and we wonder how or if we’ll get by. It’s important for us to reflect on what we have done with that experience, or what that experience has done with us. Those times are a necessary part of our spiritual journey. They are the ways in which we mature and come to ourselves. They are our gateway to fullness of life. I am not suggesting that God causes those times, but that God does not waste them, that God wastes nothing of our lives – not our blindness, not our sitting by the roadside, not our begging, and neither should we.
