“Excellent Mercy"
October 28, 2012
The 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Tine
A.K.A.
Kingdomtide
and
Time of the Church
Isaiah 59: 9 – 19/Psalm 13/Hebrews 5: 12 - 6: 1; 9-12/Mark 10: 46 - 52
Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time - a recognition of how many weeks since Christ has given to us everything. Yet, we still struggle and fail and deny all that He has given to us at times. We look to ourselves or to others as the answer when in reality, God has given to us, in Christ, the answer to our lives.
Sending Christ to become incarnate through the Virgin Mary to take upon flesh, to identify with man so that He could, in behalf of man, pay the penalty of our rebellion and of our sin. It took Him to the cross. It took Him to a period of pain and sorrow and it caused Him to be put to shame having taken our sin. “He who knew no sin became sin in our behalf.” His purpose was that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
Did Christ take our sin? Did He destroy the power of the enemy? Did He disarm the forces of evil? Did He give to us of His own righteousness? He who knew no sin and became sin that we might be the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. He has bestowed upon us righteousness.
Every time we come to the Table of the Eucharist in the liturgy, as the bread and the cup is lifted, the words had been added to what Christ said and it is meant to remind us of what God has done for us, through Christ. “As oft as you drink this, remember.” It calls to your attention, “Remember and don’t forget because this act is the most powerful love of God in your behalf that could ever be demonstrated.”
Isn’t it amazing how that we forget what God has done. How that we go back again to the beginning. Hebrews says, “Go back to the elementary things when we should be seeking solid food.” We should be seeking the evidences of all that has been good. “Because they have trained their senses to discern good and evil.” Do we know the difference between good and evil today?
If we evaluate this, we are still in childhood because we don’t know the differences between good and evil. Hebrews says that the solid food is for the mature. Because of practice, their senses have been trained. Have we listened to what God has said to us? Have we allowed His Word to deeply be entrenched in our hearts so that we know the difference between right and wrong? We understand the necessity of truth. We can’t hide behind deception or lies because we are mature. We cannot be deceived if we know Christ because we have no reason to hide anything because He has forgiven everything.
God’s mercy is bestowed upon us when we deserved death and punishment. We did not respond to Him. Mercy is compassion. It is to extend help for consequences of sin. It is not just sympathy, but it is an act of desire to remove misery. This is why Christ came. He came in mercy to remove the misery of life; to give us new life; to take away the sin and the iniquity, the heaviness and the condemnation. Mercy is that compassion that forebears punishment even when justice demands it.
This is God. God’s love is greater than our failures. God’s love is greater than all of our sins, but we must respond. Our life requires response to that mercy, but we have to understand that He has taken the sin, the iniquity away from us. Therefore, He has given to us a new life. In that new life, we should be seeing things differently. We should know the difference between right and wrong.
In the gospel, it is a picture of that which God wants us to understand. In my life, blind Bartimaeus was most of the time simply a story of God giving sight to the blind man. This is not the story God wants us to gain from this portion of Scripture. It is a proclamation of God’s mercy and covenant and His commitment to us.
Jesus was in Jericho. Jericho is a low-lying city that is associated with evil or sin. Jericho was the first conflict for Israel when Israel was brought out of the wilderness into the Promised Land. Jericho was destroyed without any weapons used at all. Simply by marching around the wall for seven days, the walls fell and Jericho was destroyed. It shows the evil, the conflict between righteousness and evil.
Luke 10 tells us the story of the Good Samaritan. On the road to Jericho, a man was attacked by robbers. We get a picture that this area is an area of evil, an area that is not safe. You see this in several references in Scriptures. This was something that was not pleasant. When the priest and the Levite went by, they did not stop to help the man who had been injured.
Most of the time, we are challenged to believe that the priests and the Levites had lost perhaps their commitment and their loyalty and their sense of Christianity. Possibly, the reason they did not stop to help the man is because they were afraid that it might be a trap and if they stopped, they will also be robbed and beaten. It is a possibility because the area was known for its evil.
In Matthew 20, as Jesus was leaving Jericho with His disciples, outside they were two blind men. This gives this area and this city a sense of evil. Blindness is symbolic for not knowing truth or not being able to see through things and understand. Bartimaeus, the blind man, was outside the city of Jericho. We have this imagery of that which is wrong, which is of evil and of darkness.
In this particular portion of the gospel, perhaps one of the first times or one of the rare times when Jesus is involved in healing a person, the name of a family member is included in the identity of the person to be healed – the blind beggar, named Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus. I wondered, “Who is Timaeus?” I have never heard of him before. Why is his name mentioned in the story?
I went into some of my books and I was able to find an interpretation for the name of Timaeus. In the older days, people were named according to their character or to their profession. Timaeus has the meaning of honorable. The family was a family of honor in the community. Perhaps, the father was a respectable man. Somehow, his son became blind. Scripture says, “I want to regain my sight.” Therefore he had sight before. He lost his sight for some reason. It maybe in a conflict that which was not good and it brought embarrassment to the family. It doesn't tell us why but why did he need to regain his sight? The family was respectable.
God is speaking to us about our lives and our circumstances. We are living in a world of darkness, a world where evil is acceptable as normal, as okay. We become blinded sometimes to these circumstances and we find ourselves maybe involved in them because we have not discerned the good and the bad. We haven’t separated them. We have been overcome by them and we become blinded. We cannot see good and divide it from evil.
The story speaks so powerfully to us. It also says that when Jesus came by, when Bartimaeus, sitting on the road was begging heard that it was Jesus, he immediately responded and began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” He was a man taught properly in the Jewish religion. He understood about a Messiah. He understood about someone that had been prophesied in the Old Testament that He would open blinded eyes. In Isaiah 29, it was prophesied that in a day, the deaf will hear and the eyes of the blind shall be open. He was taught this in his life. Probably, he had fallen from good graces but remembers he was taught that the day was coming, Christ Himself, coming through this area.
Perhaps, this is symbolic of His incarnation, coming into the darkness of the world; coming into bitterness and pain and sorrow. In the midst of it, He comes to bring light; He comes to bring hope. Bartimaeus was begging. Perhaps, this is the only way he could make a living. Maybe he had been separated from his father’s household because of what had happened. His father was not taking care of him, not providing for him because he was begging.
When he heard that Christ was coming by, he cried out, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” The people around Jesus were trying to save Jesus from the embarrassment of this beggar. They wanted the beggar just to step back and leave Jesus alone. The more he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus heard and He said to the disciples, “Call him to come to Me.”
I would want us to understand the event that was taking place at this moment. This event, this situation is very necessary in response to mercy. In the story, Bartimaeus took off his robe. He took of the old life. He set aside anything that identified him begging before he came to Christ. He made a decision he wasn't going to need that robe anymore. He wasn’t going to be covered and hidden because if Christ was going to touch Him, he was not going to need to beg any longer. He casts it aside. He just didn't take off the coat; he cast it away!
It shows the termination of his heart to get things straightened out. It shows a fact that Bartimaeus has made a decision and he was standing firm in that decision and he was not going to give up. He was cutting the ties; burning the bridges behind him. “I am not going to need my cloak anymore. I am being set free!” When he came to Jesus, Jesus asked him “What do you want me to do for you?” Out of respect, the beggar said, “Rabbonai, I want to regain my sight.” There was this hunger to be restored, the desire to set aside this darkness that had come upon him. He wanted to be set free, to have new life.
In our lives, this is a decision that we must make. Do we want to be free? We have to choose today. The choice is ours. We can hold on to the deception, criteria of defence that comes because we are wrong or evil. Bartimaeus was not giving any excuses. He was not covering up his need. He was exposing it. He threw aside the cloak in order that he could come ready to be set free. He depended upon the cloak, like a baby on a blanket. It was his security that kept him from being seen by many others and identified as the son of Timaeus.
John 9:32 says that no one had healed the blind person since the very beginning of time. This event has been set aside from the beginning of time to be that which made a declaration of the Messianic ability of Christ. Here was a proclamation. Here was a sign that if people would only have seen it, if people would only have been aware, sensitive to the events around them, they would have known Jesus was the Messiah because no one had healed a blind man before.
This definitely was the work of Christ. Here was the symbol of Christ coming to set and to restore humanity to glory. This is what Christ came for. This is why He went to the cross so that we no longer need to wallow in the mire of sin. We no longer need to be controlled by fear or anxiety. He came to set us free, in His mercy. We did not deserve it. We could not earn it. It was God’s heart filled with love that poured forth mercy upon His humanity. Setting them free from the sin of disobedience, from the darkness that would come upon man. Christ had come to set us free.
We have been freed by Christ. If we have been freed, why do we still walk in darkness? Why do we still walk in fear? Why do we still walk in anxiety? Do we not realize and believe? Do we not set aside the cloak? Scripture says, “Take off the old, and put on the new.” Roman 12 says to renew your mind. “I have been set free. I have been delivered by the mercy of God. I have been given new life. I don’t need to walk in this any longer. I don’t need to hold onto this as a crutch because God is my Source. He will not fail me.”
We are to be like Bartimaeus after he received his sight – a witness! You can be assured that he went around telling everyone, “Look, I can see now. My sight has been restored. Jesus healed me in His mercy. I did not deserve it. I had done wrong and I had lost my sight, but He has restored my sight!” What excitement you can imagine would be involved. It is like the man who was crippled from birth. When he was healed at the door of the temple, what did he do? He went into the temple and danced around the temple. How sacrilegious – disturbing the sacredness of the solemnity of the temple. Here he was dancing and they stopped him and said, “What are you doing? What happened to you?” Bartimaeus said, “I have been healed.”
This is what God has done for us through Christ. This is the hope of our lives. The thing that keeps us in the bondage of blindness is self-centeredness, pride. It is also a preoccupation of getting ahead - so consumed with the system of man. “I want to achieve. I want to rise up. I want to become wealthy. I want to become that which others people will respect.” Consumed with these keeps us in blindness from the fact that we have been set free.
We don’t need to worry about our finances; we don’t need to worry about our position, our occupation. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. We are busy amassing more money and material things. We think this is our security. We don’t realize those things will pass away but the sacredness of the life that God has given to us is for eternity. What are we doing for eternity?
In today’s life, people are so consumed seeking comfort. They want everything to be without conflict. They want everything to be pleasant. They don’t want to have pain or sorrow. We come up with all the medicines to take away conflict or pain. When a child is born, immediately they begin giving inoculations so that he would not have childhood sickness. I don’t know what happened because I had all of those sicknesses and I am still alive. I didn’t have the injections. Why are we trying to keep our children from facing these issues and conquering them? Making life so easy for them? They have no drive, realizing that they have been freed. We give it to them artificially. We depend upon on our own faculties. “I can do it myself. “
This keeps us from receiving the mercy. It has already been given, but yet we don’t manifest it because we are going to do it ourselves. We must die to self so that we can rise again to the glory of the new life. It is a dependence upon the mercy of God, not upon our own self. This is what we are taught today in our lifestyles. “You can do it yourself. You don’t need God.” But we can’t.
The reason the world is in the condition it is in is because we have not turned to God. We cannot separate ourselves from God because God is the Source of our life. Not only is He the Source of our life, but the Sustainer of life. How can we deny that which is so necessary?
The Excellence of Mercy. It has taken away the conflict, the fear of punishment. It has taken away the fear of eternity. He has given to us the peace that passeth all understanding, the joy of knowing the greatness of our God. Mercy has been given to us and He shares it with us every time we come to the Table of the Lord. “This is My Body given for you.” You deserve death but look, I am giving My body so that you won’t die. I am giving My body that you can live and have life abundantly.” “This is the Blood of the new covenant given for you. A covenant that I will never leave you nor forsake you. It is a covenant that will give you eternity that which no one else can provide. I provide this for you.”
Mercy is something we did not deserve, but He gave it. His provision is more than enough. He has chosen to set us free. This is the hope of our lives today – the mercy of God. A word that we set aside because we think we have to achieve all things. We need to come back and recognize and understand the meaning of mercy and give our lives to allow it to be fulfilled in all that Christ has given to us.
Mercy – a love of God, the compassion of God upon you to set you free; given you new life from the consequences of sin and given you new life in Christ Jesus.
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