THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME B

[cappie]

Today’s Gospel turns on an irony—it is a blind man, Bartimaeus, who becomes the first person outside of the Apostles to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. And his healing is the last miracle Jesus performs before entering the holy city of Jerusalem for His last week on earth.

The scene on the road to Jerusalem evokes the joyful procession prophesied by Jeremiah in today’s First Reading. In Jesus this prophecy is fulfilled. God, through the Messiah, is delivering His people from exile, bringing them back from the ends of the earth, with the blind and lame in their midst.

Bartimaeus occupies a unique niche in the gospel: his is both a healing story and a call story. It is his healing that enables his call, and it is his call that is the final ingredient of his healing. “Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”

This is worth a very close look in our own lives, this relationship between healing and call, how very short a distance there is between the two, how intermingled they are. Often, we feel unequipped to answer the call Jesus places in our lives, too broken and mixed up, sinful or apathetic or trapped in a net of responsibilities and habits that seems inescapable, even for gospel work. How could someone as “unhealed” as we are do something radical for Jesus?

But we do not have to wait for healing to answer Jesus’ call. Bartimaeus doesn’t. The people in the crowd say, ‘‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ So, throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.” Still blind, relying on no guidance from the people around him to feel his way, reacting with joy and abandon, he throws away his cloak and goes to Jesus.

This is not an insignificant moment. Bartimaeus was homeless, a blind beggar on the street. His cloak was his only asset. It was his only protection from the weather and the cold, the closest thing to shelter he had. He cast it away without a second thought, and still blind, still unhealed, answers the call to make his way to Jesus. We can do the same.

And in perhaps the most remarkable turn in this remarkable story, Bartimaeus is not the only one healed and called in this story. Did you catch who else had a radical conversion? The crowd. They begin with cruelty and exclusion in their hearts, doing everything they can to keep Bartimaeus away from Jesus: “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” And this is the pivotal moment. Jesus does not call Bartimaeus directly. He calls the crowd to call Bartimaeus. “Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’”

And then the redemption, so easy to skip over if you’re not paying close attention. “And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’” This is the moment of the crowd’s conversion, the crowd’s healing, and the crowd’s call. Jesus’ love is so sneaky and so powerful that it broke open their hardened hearts and they probably didn’t even notice it. They go from trying to keep people away from Jesus to urging them forward. They go from seeing Bartimaeus as an embarrassment and trying to shut him up and keep him hidden, to telling him to take heart and go forward into Jesus’ embrace.

What we learn here is that call is never individual. We hear call in community. Bartimaeus calls for Jesus, Jesus calls the crowd, the crowd calls Bartimaeus, then Jesus calls Bartimaeus to follow him on the way. This entire process of call and response is deeply healing to everyone involved.

Where do we start? We listen, and we call out to Jesus, just as Bartimaeus did: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Because he is always calling and always healing. And it begins with his simple question to us: “What do you want me to do for you?” So, we take Bartimaeus’ words to our hearts, “Teacher, let me see.”