At the roadside

 27th October 2024, Last after Trinity: Jeremiah 31:7-9, Hebrews 7:23-end  & Mark 10:46-end

When was the last time you sat at the roadside?

On route to a holiday, dad would spot a convenient layby seating area  - within minutes the deckchairs would be out, the gas stove lit and the kettle was whistling. After a cuppa and a bite to eat before, we’d be on our way.

Perhaps that’s just a snapshot of the 70s and 80s.  Maybe the closest many of us get is waiting for a bus or an Uber. Waiting to be on our way.

Urban roadsides are places recycling bins and pavements, trees, bus shelters and other “street furniture”; sometimes tempt us to dwell there at cafe tables, shops spill out their wares of fruit and veg, household goods and special offers. 

Sometimes someone will be at the roadside, on the edge. Seeking our gaze or dodging it at the petrol station forecourt or subway. A smile or an apology; a sandwich or something to drink. When we want to be on our way. 

Roadsides can be places where life is written off: the non-place we pass by or through; the place outside, on the margins. 

This month saw the death of Gustavo Gutiérrez - a Peruvian priest and liberation theologian who worked out a radical vision of Catholic social teaching as what he called God’s preferential option for the poor. 

In his Latin American context, he wrote that the question was ‘not how to speak of God in a world come of age, but rather how to proclaim God as Father in a world that is inhumane. What can it mean, he wrote, to tell a non-person that he or she is God’s child?’

In today’s gospel, Jesus enacts the truth of this statement. We find Bartimaeus on the roadside. Even as he cries out for mercy, many tell him to be quiet - regarding him as a disruption, someone not worthy of attention.  He has been overlooked and neglected.

Healing of the Blind Bartimaeus by Maria Laughlin

 

The crowd - those who make up Bartimaeus' neighbours and wider society - render him invisible, unseen.  And yet in the darkness of such clouds a voice does speak. Jesus hears him and stops. He stands still and calls him.  He restores his personhood and agency by asking Bartimeaus what he wanted him to do for him. He doesn’t presume to know. He doesn’t reduce him to his blindness. 

It is a moment of acknowledgement of Bartimaeus in all his fullness - with needs and hopes, fears and desires.  He is invited to look into his own heart and to name what he finds there. 

His worth as a human being is seen as his sight is restored; he is invited to reflect and grow as well as embracing healing and wholeness. He is praised for his faith and he follows. He is able to go on his way from the roadside. Echoing Jeremiah, shouts become a song of praise; a proclamation of faith is made. 

I wonder if the crowd also goes on their way changed: they cannot unsee Bartimaeus’ humanity; they shift from silencing him to encouraging him to take heart, to respond to Jesus’ voice.  It is possible that the many are also healed so that they can share in the restoration of the one?

Yes, Bartimaeus wants to see. But also to be seen by his community. There is movement and joy in this. They paused at the roadside, their eyes are opened.  Opened not only by Jesus’ stillness and call to Bartimaeus but also by the fact that it was the blind man who saw Jesus as he really was. 

Bartimaeus, who had addressed Jesus as Son of David - the Lord’s Messiah, foretold by prophets. He also calls him teacher: the one who comes with sacrificial love, bringing liberation in humble service.

Perhaps here too, Jesus himself is seen: not as a leader with power and military might; not as just another wise man or healer, but as God’s own Son.  The one who comes through life with us and dies for us; the one who bore our weakness, as Hebrews puts it; breaking bonds of sin that we might live; and himself makes continual intercession for us. 

In him, Jeremiah is fulfilled: we are all brought back with tears and consolation: those with child and the lame; the blind and those who are in labour. Upheld, we shall not stumble; there is a joyful letting go into new life, which Bartimeaus embodies. 

As he responds to Jesus and follows him, Bartimeaus throws off his cloak: the garment he’d wrapped about himself for warmth, the covering he’d spread out before him on the roadside to catch coins from those who saw but did not stop. 

He trusted Jesus so much - and with such joy - that he let go of what was familiar and necessary to him. He exchanges the precarious security of a cloak for the challenge and life of walking the way of Jesus.  

In him he found security and safety becoming a disciple; a pilgrim perhaps, someone who had now fallen in love with the solid ground of God’s love. 

Bartimaeus had seen Jesus and Jesus saw him; the crowd were drawn into this moment of transformed sight. Eyes that have been long closed are opened and there is a glimpse of heaven. It is a moment of honesty and trust, vulnerability and joy. 

How do we move forward from this roadside place?

Perhaps it is partly the persistence of naming our own longings in prayer. Jesus asks us that same question:’what do you want me to do for you?’ We might not know how to answer it yet; but perhaps we need to pause to examine our hearts. What do we notice or discover there?

Perhaps we also need to see Jesus afresh - and imagine what liberation might look like. To see Jesus is to shape our lives after his example and teaching. To see others and put them first; to raise them and encourage them to take heart; to be on the roadside and not be too busy to be on our way.  

Gustavo Gutiérrez wrote that this  'involves a commitment that implies leaving the road one is on' in order to enter the world of another'; one who might be seen as an  "insignificant person" - the scorned or unseen, the overburdened, misunderstood or those who feel second rate or left beyond. 

We are to cry out with mercy and respond with joy. We are to be seen and to see. As Pope Francis wrote on X:  ‘Our work with and for the poor does not make any noise. Yet, day by day it causes growth for the common good’.

That growth for the common good means that we are to respond to voices and to see. To turn aside at the roadside, and join with others on the way. To find ourselves astonished as we fall in love with the solid ground of God’s loving gaze towards us. 

I end with the poem 'The Opening of Eyes' by David Whyte:

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

© Julie Gittoes 2024

Will you do something for me?

 Sunday, 20 October 2024: Isaiah 53:4-12, Hebrews 5: 1-10 and Mark 10:35-45

Will you do something for me, please? It’s a slightly softer spin on the question asked of Jesus by James and John: ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’

Perhaps you find it easy to ask for what you want, to express what is needed; or perhaps it’s something you keep buried out of fear of rejection one way or another.  

It’s the kind of question that is both self-revealing and an invitation to know what is going on for the other person. Sometimes it can be demanding or lazy, but at best it is testing out trust and commitment. Will you do something expressing hopes or practical needs, signalling our interdependence. 

Image from wiki

Some of you might have read the novel The Notebook - or more likely, seen the 2004 film adaptation. In it, Noah and Allie confront differences in class, wealth and parental expectations amongst other things. He  has acknowledged that their relationship is going to be something that they will have to work at every day. 

He then asks her: ‘Will you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? 30 years from now, 40 years from now? What’s it look like?’

It’s risky, honest and self-revealing. The question ‘will you do something for me, please?’ is rooted in his love for her, but also gives her agency, freedom and space to imagine consequences and choices. Without too much of a spoiler, the question leads to a life of vulnerability and joy, arguments and compassion; lives lived in love and carrying the memory of the other. 

It’s easy to take offence at James and John - just as the disciples did - because they had the boldness to ask Jesus for something, to name what they wanted.  Jesus doesn’t dismiss that. Instead he invites them to be specific and draws them into taking responsibility, to embrace hard consequences and to reimagine life lived with him. 

Like Peter and the other disciples, James and John had heard Jesus talk about his own suffering and death; talk of resurrection might have been beyond their frame of reference. But nevertheless they trust him. They put their faith in him.

It seems as if they have got to the point where they cannot imagine a future apart from their teacher. All that he has said and done - acts of compassion and challenge, indeed his very character - is so profoundly attractive to them that they want to mould their life around it. Their hopes are rooted in Jesus.

James and John are ambitious. In part for themselves - angering the other disciples. But if we look closely at the conversation, they’re also kinda ambitious for what God is doing. On the basis of what they have witnessed, they fully expect Jesus to be glorified - that in him, God’s reign of justice, mercy and peace comes a little closer. 

What Jesus goes on to do is unpack for all the disciples something of the way in which the world might be remade or renewed. He redirects their ambition in the service of his definition of greatness and leadership. Through lives of service, he wants them and us to open to grace, love and change. 

Jesus deconstructs the world’s way of thinking about what we strive for and how we behave. It is a reversal which nudges us to strive for God’s kingdom - to want it and hope for it. Laying aside fears of disappointment or failure or even rejection, we are to put our lives at the disposal of God’s ways of love. 

James and John might need a bit of redirection but their confidence is admirable. Yes it might be a bit selfish and naive, but they engage. They ask Jesus for what is on their hearts because they are close to him. 

Maybe you have a mental list of friends and family you’d pick up the phone to - without worrying that they might be too busy to help. Our human relationships at their best are rooted in that practical familiarity of love. Those who’ll not reject us despite our quirks; those who are there for us despite being a pain sometimes; those who know us at our worst but also bring out the best in us (as the fictional Noah and Ally demonstrate).

James and John encourage us to be ourselves before God too. To know we are loved, to be honest about what’s on our heart; to be prepared to be challenged; to know that we will be changed. 

One of the things that is challenged and changed for James and John is their sense of entitlement. They want prestige and position by association; they want to lay claim to something without cost. 

Jesus’ response models the expectation he has of his followers. He doesn’t make a demand, he extends an invitation. He asks them to picture their life with him - now and in the future. He speaks of being drawn into something more and describes that in terms of service. 

Service is not about entitlement but steadfast love.

Service upends all that we associate with power and influence, leadership and achievement: the social media influencer versus the soup kitchen volunteer; the tech guru versus the friend sharing a cuppa; the billionaire versus the aid worker. 

Greatness is reimagined as service: it is a path of gift and love; of risk and compassion. Such service is not self-protection or self-advancement. It is about our deepest longings for justice and the patient work of repairing, building and renewing - our relationships, our institutions, our communities. 

Dare we imagine, want and strive for the renewing of creation itself?

It is too easy to slip into a counsel of despair, of scarcity and futility; but we have a choice - to seek glory by asking for what we want or by asking what we can do for others?

We do that not in our own confidence or strength but because ultimately Jesus has already given his life as a ransom for many. We get hints in our other readings today about what that looks like. 

First in Isaiah, we are reminded that power and privilege lie at the heart of our brokenness. It is a text written to communities who’ve suffered loss and destruction at the hands of other forces. Despite that humiliation, the prophet and people sought to remain faithful to God. 

We read this passage through the lens of Jesus: the servant who suffers for all - taking on iniquity, afflictions and suffering. The one who is our servant king: hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered. 

Suffering is sometimes as a direct result of human actions - the interplay of human greed and ambition, the desire to be vindicated or to control resources. Whilst we might chase after wealth and status, power and influence, the heart of God aches at the injustice and pain. God chooses to be with us - chooses to be a servant of all. 

If power and greed, violence and privilege can cause so much harm, Jesus leaves us with the invitation to reimagine the world on a different basis. To share good news in the face of suffering - or in the words of today’s anthem ‘if ye love me’ we are to keep the commandments.

That text is part of Jesus’ prayer for us: that there will be another comforter - the holy spirit - to be with us forever as our strength and guide, advocate and breathe. The one who leads us into all truth. 

Jesus prays for us still - his life and death undoing the harm of our transgressions, our going astray; his new life healing our wounds, and the afflictions of those we injure; bringing light that we might be drawn into a right relationship.

The writer to the Hebrews focuses on this ongoing offering of prayer by Jesus - cries of the heart for all those in anguish, the desire for humanity to know salvation; the cries that we might be strengthened to serve in our own contexts - embodying the life of God’s kingdom, seeking peace within a kinder and more just society. 

Will you do something for me?

If ye love me keep my commandments.

As we eat and drink at our Lord’s table, as we find forgiveness, peace and blessing in this place. 

This is our God, The Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to The Servant King.

© Julie Gittoes 2024

Kudos?

 Sunday 13 October, 20th after Trinity: Amos 5:6-7, 10-15,  Hebrews 4:12-end and Mark 10:17-31

In last night’s quiz, we were asked to guess the word from its definition.

“Kudos” was one of the answers: teased with a definition meaning to receive credit or prestige. 

The man who throws himself at the feet of Jesus today might be described as having a great deal of kudos: wealth and possessions, knowing the commandments and seeking to keep them. 

He sensed that there was something missing. He longed for life; hungered for something more than what he had acquired. Whatever that niggle was, it brought him to Jesus. 

He wants to know what he must do. 

And Jesus didn’t just look at him. He loved him. 

Original image here

The searching and longing of that man is met by the loving gaze of God; by the one who sees us deeply and completely. 

Such love is not only tender and compassionate but insightful and challenging. 

He’s told that he lacks just one thing. 

Maybe he was expecting that and did a mental inventory of his relationships and achievements, his work and his lifestyle - trying to figure out where the gap might be. 

But Jesus isn’t talking about one more thing to do or obtain or accomplish. He is talking about ‘one thing’. 

To be able to pay attention to what matters - being present to God and each other, living out this depth of peace, belonging and meaning; alive, connected, lost in something beyond ourselves. 

Seeking is met with love; longing met challenge. It is as if Jesus is holding up a mirror to our illusions of self and security. The stuff this man controlled, isolated or insulated him; disrupting priorities and commitments.

This loving gaze is provocative: there’s truth and possibility; freedom and grief.

The one searching for that ‘one thing’ walks away.

The one offering that ‘one thing’ doesn’t force him to stay.

What is it that we would hold fast to - even if letting go of it would be for our own life and health? 

Sometimes commentators try to explain away the challenge as being about exceptional circumstances or something relevant then but not now; we manage the shock of obstacles in our spiritual lives by conjuring them away.

For the man who threw himself at Jesus’ feet, he discovered the very things he regarded as his main accomplishment - the source of his status and ability to navigate the world - was actually a burden. It ceased to be a blessing when he hoarded it; built everything upon it. 

What is the untouchable sacred thing we cannot let go of?

In the poem One Art, Elizabeth Bishop reminds us that the art of losing, of letting go isn’t hard to master. She invites us to lose something everyday - accepting the ‘fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent’. 

She talks not only of those treasured items of sentimental value - a loved one’s watch - but those which reflect a life’s efforts and stability: houses and vast realms we thought were ours.  

Even who we are and our relationships are things we ultimately let go of - ‘the joking voice’ as Bishop puts it, or a familiar gesture. Love for all its beauty also means letting go - but also allows space for return or reordering.

In response to the man’s question, Jesus offers life together; friendship, shared endeavour, saying ‘follow me’.

We too get to choose: to choose courage, vulnerability and companionship. Or to cling onto comfort, self-reliance and independence.

In today’s episode, the one looked on with love walks away with a sorrowful heart. In him we see part of the tragedy of our human condition - the tendency to love stuff, to love what we can acquire, more than life. 

Mark’s account doesn’t gloss over this saying, but ‘Jesus doesn’t really mean that we should sell everything’. He leaves us with an open-ended story. The rich young man leaves - we don’t know whether he became more hard-wired to wealth as he aged or whether perhaps he found his way to the foot of the cross. 

The unknown and unresolved ending of his story allows us to explore that invitation into loving obedience for ourselves: the love that lets go and the love that waits; the love that hopes all things; the love that is absent. A love which does not run out of possibilities, even when (especially when) things look and feel impossible for us. 

God’s love in Christ knows and names all our hopes and desires, and also holds and accompanies us at those times when we feel lost, trapped or uncertain. There is delight and protection, strength and challenge in such love. 

It is a self-giving love which leads us to life. The prophet Amos points God’s people in this direction too - life that was holistic and oriented to seeking the good. This life was not just about feelings but a practical commitment to do what was good and just. 

Where we as human beings might see endings, God can bring forth a new beginning. When we feel thwarted by our failings, God’s love seeks the long game of bringing possibility and hope where we think all is lost. 

For the writer of Hebrews, Jesus is at the centre of all things - the one who bears our losses and restores our life.  He knows all our experiences of pain and sorry, the intensity of both our struggles and our hopes. 

By the power of his Spirit, love and life are still at work in us - even in or especially in our weakness. God remains faithful to us in being with us. In God we live and move and have our being. Through him we grow in love, ordering our lives and priorities alone and together; learning what to let go of in order that we may embrace the gift of life. 

It might not be clinging on to our kudos; but an openness to the other. This is love divine all loves excelling: Wesley's great hymn speaks of mercy and compassion; the love that enters every trembling heart with compassion.

A love that is working out a new creation in us; a love that draws us into wonder and praise, perfectly restoring us and our relationship to others. May we glory in this perfect love.

© Julie Gittoes 2024

G.O.A.T?

Sunday, 22 September, Trinity 17:

Wisdom 1:16-2:1, 12-22, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a and Mark 9:30-37

If you were following the gymnastics at the  Paris Olympics, you might have noticed that Simone Biles was seen wearing a diamond pendant in the shape of a goat. 

Biles commissioned it from jeweller Janet Heller because she’s called the GOAT - the greatest of all time. 

Simone Biles

Why is she known as the GOAT in gymnastics? A journey of greatness for sure - with a record breaking number of medals and with five skills named after her, reflecting  the difficulty of her routines. 

She has wowed fans and inspired generations with a greatness not only recognised in those gold, but also her dedication, perseverance and vulnerability. 

Back in 2020, she experienced the “twisties”: losing her sense of where her body is in space: ‘it doesn’t feel comfortable’ she said on a podcast, praying she’d land on her feet; it felt like ‘fighting my body and my mind to do these tricks’ she continued. 

She put her twisties down to stress and psychological factors: saying that the pressure ‘feels heavy… it’s like the weight of the world on your shoulders and I’m very small, so I feel like, at times, it’s very overwhelming… I have to focus on my mental wellbeing and that’s what I did’. 

Whatever criteria we might have for greatness, no one can escape vulnerability and disappointment, loss, hurt and frailty. 

In today’s gospel, Jesus subverts much of what human beings have aspired to or honoured as ‘greatness’: wealth, position, fame, privilege and power. Those things are as seductive today as they were at the height of the roman empire. 

On the road, Jesus once more talks of his betrayal, suffering, death and resurrection.  Once more, the disciples did not understand the sacrifice that radical love for the world entailed. 

Rather than ask, they argue and bicker amongst themselves. Jesus’ question is met with silence. Yet he knows their hearts and inclinations: rivalry and status has distracted and consumed them.

Rather than rebuke them, Jesus speaks to them of a way of love which lays aside self interest; of humility and service which reveals the dignity of being human. 

He doesn’t just speak to them, he shows them. Embracing a child he presents them with a reminder of our vulnerability; of moments when we feel insignificant; of the time we rely on others for nurture and protection. 

In doing so he shifts from argument and silence to welcome; he shifts from the concern for greatness and power to the demands of love, offering an image of how we draw near to God, and God draws near to us. 

The human beings we are, like the children we were, and the children we know, are not perfect but we were, and are beloved. Any nursery or play ground will have its share of tantrums as well as giggles, as we make sense of who we are and how we relate.

Children - like us - can be wilful and obedient, bored and curious, funny and serious, creative, kind and cruel. They are also astonishingly openhearted; they can be particularly at risk of harm, in need of care. 

Jesus’ words remind us why seeking to be a safer church is part of our vision: all of us might be vulnerable due to age, health or circumstances; but the needs of children and young people will always be a concern as they grow into maturity.

They need the safe embrace of communities who listen to them and protect them from misuse of power; where their physical needs are met and their emotional well-being is nurtured. 

They need us to ensure their dignity as they become more fully themselves. Sometimes, as adults, we need to pay attention to that child within us too. Noticing what we nurture and delight in; or where we need that embrace that heals harm or restores confidence.

Sometimes, as human beings, we feel overwhelmed or under pressure; things feel heavy and we feel small; we might lose that sense of where we are - mind and body fighting. 

We experience something like the ‘twisties’ in our life triggered by grief or anxiety, disappointment or uncertainty, change or things beyond our control.

Then perhaps the way Jesus embraces the child reminds us of our way back; allowing us to land on our feet again; to embrace both our vulnerability and our dignity in love.

First, there is something about the place of imagination. Jesus had invited the disciples to imagine a world where power is not coercive, but expressed in mercy; in compassion, or suffering with; a world where love wins over death.

They can’t make that leap. They tip back into arguments about status and greatness but that’s the logic they know. Resurrection seems too revolutionary. 

So Jesus nudges them to open their hearts and minds to the possibility of something more, to the promise of risen life. Dare they have the fearless wonder of a child? Dare they imagine beyond the limits of what they know and reach for the newness, beyond darkness and dazzling to one equal light (as John Donne puts it).

Second, there is something about curiosity and being willing to ask questions. In speaking of the future, Jesus is inviting the disciples into a more intimate relationship with him and into a deeper understanding of the love he embodies. 

The disciples were afraid to ask when they didn’t understand.  But to ask is to show courage and to risk revealing what we don’t know. Questioning and learning is a process of increasing our capacity to act wisely. It’s more than acquiring knowledge - it's about how we relate to God and one another. 

Jesus sits with the disciples. He is fully present with them - enabling them to open up the space to be curious and to begin to reimagine what the future might hold. For a moment they can stop competing with each other and striving for power on the world’s terms. In that moment they are embraced by the one who is enough. 

All that Jesus taught  - and who he is - was foreshadowed in the book of wisdom. The writer names the unsound reasoning of those who are led away from God’s ways; who summon death by words and deeds which are without charity. 

Reproach comes to them in the one who calls himself a child of God. The righteous one is an inconvenience to them, opposing their actions. 

God does deliver this beloved one from condemnation, shame and death; and in opening wide his arms on the cross, this beloved one embraces and delivers us too. 

And therefore, we are invited to lay aside bitter envy and selfish ambition, as James tells his hearers. Boosting in earthly claims to greatness is a tricksy and devilish game of disordered power. 

We know, whether it’s a playground squabble or workplace bullying, that conflicts arise out of those inner cravings: wanting what someone else has or asserting our power or status. 

The alternative is much more attractive: gentleness, peace and mercy in our dealings with others. James reminds us that our life together is to be marked by leaning into the divine not as an abstract idea, but as something that changes how we treat those who need our care.  

Loving devoid of self-interest is a glimpse of God’s ways on earth. For that we rely the grace of God - the Spirit which is around and within us: praying in and through us that we might be given to all good works.

It’s a practical wisdom cultivated as we draw near to God and God draws near to us. As we embrace the vulnerable we  find ourselves welcoming Jesus and the One who sent him.   

If we want to see God, then we look at the faces of those who are socially invisible or need advocacy and protection; to be curious about those who are different and to hear their stories; to be truly present with the other, seeking their well-being, helping them to find their feet. 

We are to see in the child and the childlike, the children we were and the children we welcome, something of God’s heart. 

After all, God revealed Godself in a speechless infant; power made perfect in weakness. The one who in whom our restless hearts find their rest. The one whose embrace invites us to gather around one table, sharing one food and serving one world. 

© Julie Gittoes 2024