Proper 25 B 2012
Jeremiah 31:7-9; Ps 126; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52
“My teacher, let me see again.”
Jamie turned the big truck he was driving onto Martin Luther King Drive. Five of us were on our way to Diocesan Convention. The final sessions were soon to begin, including vote on a resolution asking us to start every parish meeting with the question, “How will what we are doing here affect or involve people living in poverty?”
We passed a group of men standing on a corner very near to the Convention Center. When the truck slowed, they looked up and held out their hands. One man even took a step into the street.
The light changed and our truck moved on. Only as we left them behind did we really see them. They were day laborers, working below minimum wage for hard manual labor. When our truck slowed they hoped that we were going to stop and offer them work.
“My teacher, let me see again.”
When we gather for Mass, we call out again and again on the holy Name of Jesus. We ask for grace, for forgiveness, for help, for peace, for healing, for new life. Our words are more elegant than the straightforward prayer of blind Bartimaeus today: “Son of David, have mercy on me.” But a great Anglican mystic once said there were two basic prayers: “Thanks, thanks, thanks” and “help, help, help.” Today’s prayer and others like it in the Gospel ultimately became worked into what is called the “Jesus Prayer”—“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” For many devout Christians, the Jesus Prayer is not simply a lovely brief prayer. It is a way of life and of seeing.
Asking Jesus for mercy, for the rich loving-kindness that is at the heart of Christ, and knowing our own deep need, is the essence of Christian prayer. We pray to be healed of the blindness that tempts us to believe that we are self-sufficient. We pray that our eyes be open to the deep need in ourselves, and the deep need and pain of those around us.
The heart of God is broken by the pain of the world, by our pain. When we rest in that deep compassion, we see and are seen by the God who gives us the grace of true sight.
True sight looks with love and compassion on the whole world. True sight sees the invisible suffering in our own midst, on our own street corners, among our own fellow-parishioners, in those who pluck up the courage to come among us, in those whom we ourselves might meet if we pluck up our own courage and go from here with our eyes opened by the compassionate Christ.
“My teacher, let me see again.
Let me see, good and loving Lord, your eyes of mercy upon us. Let me be lost without fear or shrinking in the depths of compassion I see in your gaze. Let me see that, like blind Bartimaeus in the Gospel, I too am blind, to those around me who struggle in silence, to those from whom I turn my own gaze lest they disturb my serenity. Let me see my own poverty and loneliness and pain, Lord, so that I may understand anew how to be patient and compassionate with each person who also walks the way of struggle and of pain.
Let me see the goodness of those who love in the midst of pain, who find the way to reach beyond their own pain and weariness to care for others. Let me see that amidst the disillusion and discouragement of the world, your hand is at work and your heart beats still.
The divine mercy is so deep, the divine compassion is so boundless, and our need is so great, that all we can do is ask. To ask is to hope.
Out of all the crowd on the road out of Jericho, only Bartimaeus heard the Son of God say, “Tell him to come here.”
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