take heart

Proper 25 B 2009 (at St. David’s)
(Job 42: 1-6, 10-17; Ps 34: 1-8; Heb 7: 23-28; Mark 10: 46-52)


“Take heart, get up, he is calling you.”

I’m glad to be back here at St. David’s on a Sunday morning. It’s fun to get out of the box, and while your rector is wowing them at SPP I get to spend more time with a community that I feel is deeply bonded to my own.

Bonds and shared history are important. SPP was a mission of St. David’s back when Episcopal churches understood how and why to give birth to new churches. We have a statue of St. David inside our worship space, a reminder of that history and our gratitude. I am a good friend of your former rector John Nesbitt, and he celebrated the 8:00 AM Mass at SPP today. I am also a good friend of your present rector who is preaching at SPP as we speak. Sara and I are co-conspirators as she works for you and with you to help you and God bring forth new life from this place, from this church. I am trying to do the same at SPP. We are both trying to help the Episcopal diocese realize that, as one writer said recently, we have to change if we want to stay the same. If we want to witness to Christ and not bury Christ in our aging building, our old programs, and our daydreaming among our own history, if we want to unlock and open the wonderful treasure-trove which is Anglican-flavored Christianity, with sacrament and liturgy and generous searching intellect and reverence for mystery, then we need to look honestly at ourselves and the people around us and be willing to re-think, re-imagine, and begin again.

You are doing that now. You have held this place in this community and have opened yourselves to the wind of God blowing in new ways. The air is fresh, the place is busy and filled with life, and so I greet you as we re-imagine our lives and take the pilgrimage that Jesus has given us. It is good to be partners with you.

Today we are given this Gospel as a gift to help us do that.

We know this fellow by name—Bartimaeus, which is a mix of Greek and Aramaic meaning Timaeus’ son. He is poor, he has a half-foreign name, and he is blind. In other, more modern words, he is dead in the water and SOL—with no shelter and no way to get something to eat.

All he had was a cloak to help him get both: a raggedy cloak, to pull over his head to ward off the sun and to stretch out in front of him to catch bits of coins and maybe scraps of food. A cloak was a first century equivalent of a shopping cart and a “homeless—please help” sign.

But Bartimaeus has one more thing—a wild hope, a preposterous and desperate hope. “Son of David, have mercy!” Jesus, son of beloved king David, the king whom God swore he would love forever—hear me, see me, have pity on me.

“Take heart, get up, he is calling you.”

Take heart—if you feel any fear or doubt, if you are confused about your present and your future seems dark and cloaked—take heart. You are heard, you are seen. Feel new life beating and coursing through your mind, your heart, your soul.

“Get up”—leave the hopeless place you’ve gotten used to. Leave this place, even if you are afraid to move.

“He is calling you.” Do we believe that? Do we each believe that we are called, that our congregations are called, that St. David’s and SPP are called? Called—to mirror Christ, to be transformed, to be the radiant Body of Christ and the liberating presence of God.

“Take heart, get up, he is calling you.” And when we stand, what shall we ask him to do for us?