Bartimaeus; October 25, 2015; The Rev. Dr. Richard Smith

We don’t really know much about Bartimaeus, the blind man in today’s gospel.

Some scholars say his name means “son of poverty”; others say it means “son of brokenness”. In either case, the name suggests the guy’s been through a lot.

We know he’s a panhandler.
And we know he’s blind.

In the biblical view, blindness is not simply about eyes that don’t work. In the scriptures, the eyes are hooked up to the heart. It’s as though the eyes are headlights; the light that enables us to see originates in the heart and travels up through the chest into the head and out through the eyes. Bad physiology, but good spirituality. If your heart is in darkness, you will not be able to see. If you have no compassion in your heart, no human feeling for others, you will simply not see what’s happening to those around you, much less understand their joys and struggles, their laughter and tears.

This was the story of Bartimaeus. He could not see because somehow his heart had grown dark and cold.

The gospel doesn’t tell us how he got this way, what experiences might have hardened him so:

• Was it an old wound that had gone unhealed, leaving him numb and bitter? 
• Maybe it was the loss of someone who meant the world to him. 
• Perhaps he’d known a string of failures or bad breaks that left him exhausted, cynical, and without hope. 
• Perhaps in all the day-to-day busyness he had forgotten that the human heart needs conscious tending now and then in order to remain supple, compassionate, and alive.

In any case, this blind man with lots of pain and darkness in his heart is sitting by the road. And one day Jesus walks by. And in contrast to Bartimaeus, Jesus is loving and kind and full of joy. And somehow, in the exchange between these two men, the old scars in Bartimaeus’ heart begin to heal and he begins to regain his sight.

We Christians have a word for this experience. We call it grace. And to show you how grace works, let me tell you another story …

A young woman grows up in a very painful environment, with very little love as a little girl, lots of abuse and trauma. Her family does not love her. Eventually she is sent from one foster home to another, but none of her foster families ever really welcome or love her.

And as she grows, all the trauma and pain take their toll. Her heart shrivels up, she becomes cold and hard. She has to be this way; her world is cold and hard and she has to protect herself. This becomes very visible in the way she walks, the clothes she wears, the things she says. She gets addicted to drugs, gets involved in an abusive relationship, eventually falls into prostitution, tries several times to commit suicide.

Then one day, a young man sees her. He is from a very loving family, and so he himself is very loving and kind. And, for some crazy reason, he falls madly in love with her. Can’t take his eyes off of her, wants just to talk with her, just be around her.

And she responds to him as she does to everyone else: She doesn’t trust him, pushes him away, ridicules him. But the young man keeps coming back, wanting to talk with her, get to know her. Finally, after a long time, after he has come back over and over, she begins to wonder, “Well, maybe he’s different from the other men I’ve known. Maybe he won’t go away. Maybe he really does love me. Maybe I really can trust him.” Slowly the ice begins to melt and she begins to let down her guard.

As she begins to let this young man into her heart, she begins to change.

Her own body feels different now. She walks differently, talks differently, dresses differently. There is a new calm, a confidence, a joy in her face.

She notices things she never noticed before, some very simple: the sparkle in a child’s eyes, the lyrics to a beautiful song, the smell of the trees after the rain. She begins to see things.

All because of this young man loved her, and because she let him into her life.

This is a moment of grace.

When Bartimaeus’ shriveled heart encounters Jesus, it, too, is a moment of grace. Like that young woman, perhaps for the first time, he chooses to invite love into his life, except that he does it in his own boisterous way by shouting disruptively, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”

Then, after Jesus calls him forward, he says, “Lord, I want to see.” A prayer not only for physical eyesight, but also a prayer for healing and a new heart.

This is the kind of prayer Jesus can answer. Jesus can’t answer every kind of prayer. He’s not like a genie or some fairy-tale character. Last Sunday, when James and John asked him to grant them the highest positions of honor in the kingdom, he could not grant their prayer. But this prayer of Bartimaeus, for healing and a compassionate heart that can see, this prayer Jesus can and does answer.

Today we conclude our series in the fundraising season, and I’ve been asked to speak about my vision for St. John’s. Which is easy. If you want to know about St. John’s, read today’s gospel, because you can see that story of grace played out over and over in our own midst, in our own hearts.

Week after week we come to this table, each with our own scars and joys, each of us vulnerable in our own ways, none of us perfect, each of us a pilgrim still on the way, who has not yet arrived at our destination.

And every now and then, in this place, with these unlikely people, we have moments of grace. As we break the bread and tell the old stories and sing the songs, sometimes we get a glimpse of a love we don’t fully understand but which we come to trust is real, a love that calls each of us by name.

Slowly, we begin to let down our guard, and our hearts become a little more supple and compassionate. We step out of the safe siloes in which we normally move. We see things we didn’t notice before, feel things we never felt before. This is the story of Bartimaeus. It is the story of St. John’s. It is a story of grace.

And this grace plays itself out in our lives, enabling us to teach math or cut hair or answer email, or manage a team, or chase after a toddler with a little more compassion, a little more joy. Slowly, over time, if we let it happen, our lives are changed by what happens here.

This is the gist of what I would say today.

I know I should also mention all the wonderful projects we as a parish have underway. I hope you’re as proud of them as I am.

• In these days when when racism and anti-immigrant hostility are being whipped up by shameful politicians for political gain, we continue to stand with neighborhood immigrant families under threat of being torn apart by our immigration system. In fact, we helped bring about an important victory on this issue this past week. I’ll say more about that later.
• And with our friends from SFOP, we are playing an important role in stopping the displacement taking its toll across our neighborhood and city.
• And several of us will soon travel to Nicaragua to help El Porvenir provide clean, safe water to rural families
• And Robert Cromey keeps vigil for peace each Thursday at the Federal Building
• And our Nightwalks for an end to gun violence are becoming an important institution in the Mission and spreading soon to the Tenderloin and other parts of the City
• And we continue to support the amazing work of Mission Graduates in helping young people stay in school so they can have a shot at life
• And a conversation is just beginning about how we can care for the homeless in the coming days of the El Nino downpours.
• And in any given week this building embraces a host of people: Native Aztecs with their powerful drumming and dancing; Buddhists in quiet meditation, the Julian Pantry, free community dinners, veterans healing from the traumas of war, a host of community meetings and town halls. 

In countless other ways, St, John’s remains, as we have been for years, part of the fabric of this neighborhood with all its terrible beauty.

All these amazing things. Political pundits might put their own spin on what some of these things mean. For us, they are simply ways of putting our faith, our deepest values, into action.

But beneath all these great efforts lies the story of Jesus that weaves itself into each of our hearts and holds us together as a community.

In the end, our story here at St. John’s is a story of grace that heals our hearts like that of Bartimaeus, and opens them to a compassion that can see out into the world where many of our brothers and sisters are struggling, sometimes literally for their lives.

And then we try in our own small ways to bring that compassion into the world, we try to make the world a little better.

But in the end, it’s all about grace. In the end, all is grace.

Gratitude Gestates Generosity, the Rev. Jacqueline Cherry, October 18, 2015 – Proper 19, Yr. B Mark 10:35-45

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O God.

This is the second week of our fundraising campaign. My task this morning is to talk about why we should give; specifically why we should make a pledge to St. John’s. Fr. Robert Cromey doesn’t like the word stewardship. He prefers we use “fundraising”. I love Cromey, but I don’t always agree with him. Fundraising is about money. Period. I believe if we put money at the heart of our campaign, we will fail. So, with pure delight, I will explain how the act of giving can transcend balancing a deficit budget and can, in fact, transform lives.

In the gospel stories we’ve heard over the last few weeks, Jesus and his disciples are traveling to Jerusalem.  Now Jesus is acutely aware of his fate, but the disciples have no idea that their messiah is a dead man walking. Rather, James and John, seized by vainglory, have their hearts set on scoring the exulted positions at the right and left hand of Jesus.

Last Sunday we heard about the rich man who asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ explicit response - “Sell what you own, give it to the poor, and follow me,” was hardly the answer the man was hoping for.  And I doubt it’s what we want to hear either.

Almost three years ago, when my 82-year-old dad was dying, and when nobody else was listening, he told me he had only two regrets: One, he wished he had traveled more.  And two, my dad wished he had given away more money.

Never in my life had I heard him say anything like that about money. It was precisely because he carefully considered every dime he spent, that we always had what we needed, and more. I’ll tell you a little more about William Robert Cherry, Jr. He was really smart, very handsome, charming and funny, and he was really stubborn. For 25 years he worked hard at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UCSD. He loved nature and cared about the environment. My dad always understood how precious water was. Way back in the 60’s he hooked up a hose to the washing machine that diverted the water to the plants in our backyard. When I was older, he timed my showers, and on occasion turned off the hot water if I had exceeded his time limit. He held firm to the conviction of “If it’s yellow, it’s mellow,” though he didn’t use those words. At heart, my dad was an environmentalist, and sometimes I teased him about it.  Oh dad, I would say, you don’t care about saving the water, you care about saving your money. Both things were true.

I’ve thought about how my dad must have felt at the end of his life, with more money than he needed, and regretting not having given away more. Though our theme this morning is “Why Give?”, in light of my dad I have to wonder why he didn’t give. Was he gripped by a relentless fear of not having enough? He was, after all, born 3 months before the start of WWII, during the Great Depression. For the last 6 weeks of his life, I stayed by his side. There are endless stories, both funny and gut wrenching I could tell. But this morning I want to tell you that I think my dad’s inability to believe in something greater than humanity was the reason he didn’t give away more of his money. You see, my dad’s empirical mind didn’t allow for the existence of God. He believed he was nothing more than flesh and bones. It’s interesting that the rich man in last week’s gospel turned away from Jesus even though he believed in God and the promise of eternal life. Either way, both men chose to hold on to their possessions.

By now, most all of you know that I’m alive today because I received a new, very healthy kidney last March. Many in this congregation intimately witnessed the rejection of my 20-year-old transplanted kidney, while prayers for healing flooded in from around the world. In mind-blowing acts of generosity, Sarah, Kevin and Kathy offered their kidneys. A loyal group of people, all of whom are from this congregation, drove me to, and sat with me through dialysis, week after week, month after month. They were with me for the early morning procedures, scans, ER visits, hospital stays and countless runs the pharmacy. At times I was so close to death that even now it scares me to think about. I suffered like this for 8 months. And, at the same time, my heart was broken wide open by the love of my friends. Before I ever got the transplant, I was healed. Even during dialysis treatments, I couldn’t help but feel grateful.

One day, while hooked up to the dialysis machine, I had a great epiphany — gratitude gestates generosity. When I am grateful I want to give. And it sounds nice too — Gratitude Gestates Generosity. Then, in a wave of urgent compassion, and I had a clear vision of how I could put my gratitude into action.

Do you remember Jesus’ response to James’ and John’s self-serving request to occupy a position of extreme honor at his right and left side? Jesus says, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” This doesn’t mean we should abandon our power to become servants. It means that if we are fortunate enough to be in a position of power, because of authority or money, we should use that power to take care of others rather than manipulate them, or in Jesus words, “Lord it over them.”

Jesus is suggesting we use the resources we have to exalt others, rather than look to others for praise and recognition of our accomplishments. Jesus is telling us that power and authority manifested through grace and humility can reorder society.

In the kingdom of heaven there will be no thrones for the powerful.
In the kingdom of heaven stone hearts return to flesh;
In the kingdom of heaven the lowly are lifted up;
In the kingdom of heaven the thirsty have clean water to drink.
Brick by brick, step by step, prayer by prayer, this congregation is helping to build the kingdom of heaven on earth. It’s the love of this congregation that has inspired me to give what I can to help create a new and just social order.

As most of you know, Liz Specht helped to found El Porvenir, an organization that works side-by-side with rural families in Nicaragua to construct wells, latrines, and washing facilities. On February 12, a group of volunteers from St. John’s will travel to Nicaragua on a 10-day work trip. My understanding is that they will help the villagers install some 40 or 50 latrines. With my dangerously suppressed immune system, I can’t make the trip.

But because my dad showed me how to love nature and care for the environment, and because he loved saving money as much as he loved saving water, I am blessed with the opportunity to give away some of the money he regretted holding on to. I will be donating $25,000 to pay for those 40 or 50 latrines and to help with some of the work party’s travel expenses.

To be clear, I’m not giving away my dad’s money because I’m a good person;
I’m giving away his money because I’ve been inspired by good people.

Now I need to tell you one more thing about my dad. With all of his stubbornness, he fought death to the end (oh boy did he put up a fight). His last two days were spent in the Hospice of San Diego. Out of the blue an older woman, who reminded me of a sophisticated Aunt Bee from Mayberry R.F.D., walked into the room. She asked if she could touch my dad. I said she could. She stood at his head and touched his chest, then she leaned down and whispered something in his ear. She stayed with him just 3 or 4 minutes. When she finished I asked what she had said. She apologized for not asking my permission to talk to him. That was okay, but I really wanted to know what she had said. She told me she recited a couple of short psalms. I only remember one - Psalm 4:8

I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep;
for only you, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

He died shortly after her visit. Somehow this unknown woman spoke of God in a way that resonated with my dad. And the God he couldn’t believe in during his life, was there to comfort him at his death.

A couple of weeks ago Jamie told us that he gives to St. John’s because he hates change. I don’t want St. John’s to change either. Because when I enter this holy place, I am aware of God’s presence. It’s as if this very church were God’s dwelling place.  When I walk into this sanctuary, I know I will be loved just as I am. Every time I am here, I am filled to overflowing with gratitude. This church changes lives. This church saves lives.

And that’s why we should give to St. John’s. When we give we are not simply filling the gaps in a bare-bones budget. Giving allows us to keep the doors of St. John’s open so anyone can walk in off the streets and dwell in the peace of God’s presence. Giving allows us to keep our doors open so we can follow Jesus back out into the world in love, to lift up the lowly and offer clean water to the thirsty.

Amen.