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.
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.
