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.