Saturday, February 14, 2015
Mark 10:46-52
This passage of Mark concerns the healing of the blind beggar, Bartimaeus. This is the second instance in which the writings attributed to Mark referred to healing a blind person. The first instance was in Mark 8:22-26, and Jesus was reported to have put his saliva on the eyes of a person whose vision was very significantly impaired and this resulted in the healing of the man’s sight.
In the second healing of Bartimaeus, this blind man boldly ignores his low social status and the attempts of others to silence his pleas for help from Jesus, whom he identifies as the Son of David. According to some, this appellation of “son of David” was associated with one who would restore the fortunes of ancient Israel as king in the Hebrew Bible’s 2 Samuel 5: 1-5. Bartimaeus’ courage is rewarded with Jesus responding to his distress calls by asking what this man wanted. The blind man replied: “My teacher let me see again.” Jesus simply answered: “Go; your faith has made you well.”
Perhaps we may appreciate that these two blind men, who apparently had an impairment that prevented them from literally seeing, and by implication confined them to a low social status in their time, were not prevented from realizing or knowing an important spiritual truth about Jesus. Both blind men had to “screw up” enough courage to defy the social mores of their times and feel confident that they had the right to break social barriers and seek the help of Jesus. Perhaps in these stories of social action of the “healing of the blind men” we might also identify that in barrier breaking small social actions can accumulate over time to permit many people to participate in co-constructing a new reality inspired by the life of Jesus? What obvious cries for help do we hear but effectively silence in our daily lives to avoid the need to act in our world differently? These are difficult ideas to contemplate and then “screw-up” enough courage to act upon in our times.
- Terry Rothwell
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