"Your Faith Has Made You Whole"

Sermon preached by John C. Hall on October 29, 2006
Text — Mark 10:46-52

They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, † let me see again.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

I’ll get to the story of the blind man in Jericho in a round-about way this morning.

Something you may have heard me say — because I say it fairly often — is that there’s a contradiction at the heart of human life. What I mean by “contradiction” is that we’re at war with ourselves.  We’re divided.  We want contradictory things.

For example, we want to be good. We want to be generous, and virtuous. We come to church. We give to charity. We volunteer. We want to be compassionate.  We want other people’s lives to be easier. But we also want, we want even more, for our own lives to be easier. We like comfort and pleasure. We take care of ourselves first.  We’re selfish.  We feel bad about all the suffering in the world, but it takes a low priority compared to what we want for ourselves.  We will never, really, love our neighbors as ourselves.

Here’s another contradiction. We want to be free.  We like independence.  We like to do what we want to do when we want to do it. We don’t like being tied down, or confined. But, we are also social creatures.  We like relationships. We like being part of a family.  We make commitments that limit our freedom. 

Too much freedom, too many options, and no commitment just keeps us on the surface of things.  We need structure or life would be empty. 

Here’s another example.  We want safety. We want security.  Then we go horseback riding, and swimming in the ocean, or we pay for the terror of riding on roller-coasters. We want some excitement, adventure, and even danger.  Otherwise, we’re bored.

We have these contradictions. And I often wonder what lies at the heart of them. I invite your ideas about this.

Maybe it’s being aware that we’re going to die. We have only so much time. Normally, we think of awareness as a good thing.  I guess it is a good thing. It makes life more precious.  But it comes with a cost. As soon as we’re aware that we’re going to die, we become afraid of dying, and we start figuring out a way to avoid the thought of dying. Part of us that doesn’t want to believe we’ll die. 

(Our dogs and cats don’t have this burden that we have, or so I like to imagine.)

Another contradiction in our nature has to do with our rational and so-called irrational natures. One ancient Greek philosopher (I think it was Plato) described human nature as a chariot being pulled by two horses, one named “Reason” and the other “Passion.” Which one is in charge? We are rational creatures.  We use judgment. We plan. We can act responsibly.  We also feel impulses we can’t control.  Or we don’t want to control them.

Imagine — just for the fun of it — if we made a list of all the irrational, and irresponsible, or just “bad” things we’ve all done in our lives.  That would be quite a list. It would be very interesting reading. If we published it in Tidings, that would be a popular issue. 

We’d never do that.  But we all know the things that would be on the list.  There would be over-eating, over-drinking, over-spending, drug abuse, affairs, compulsive gambling, pornography, lying, cheating on taxes, stealing, emotional abuse, acts of violence — not to mention all the social sins — over-consuming, polluting the air, and neglecting the poor.

We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of.  We’re ashamed of them because they contradict the better side of our nature. If we didn’t have a better side, we wouldn’t be ashamed … of anything.

St. Paul confessed this divided nature in himself.  He wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate (Romans 7:15).”

A few weeks ago, we had Warren Goldstein here.  He wrote the biography of William Sloan Coffin, the great Protestant religious leader who died just a year or so ago. In his book, Goldstein doesn’t just write about all the good things Coffin did.  He also wrote that Coffin had been a very heavy drinker, a reckless driver; he often drove under the influence.  He had a cruel streak. For all his talk about love, he could be an insufferable ego-maniac.  He’d been married three times, and he’d actually physically beaten his second wife. 

Here’s this revered, larger than life moral leader, an inspiring preacher.  He played a big role in the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and so on.  He did many good things.  But his personal life was kind of a mess.

That evening, many people said how disappointed and disillusioned they were to know these things. Couldn’t even William Sloan Coffin get it right?

Warren Goldstein didn’t argue with this disappointment, but he did point out this naïve or maybe childlike fantasy we have —that there is someone out there who is perfect, who doesn’t have a darker side, who never does wrong.

When we’re kids, we like to think of our parents that way, then our parents disappoint us and we start projecting that image onto other figures. But that’s just not the way human beings are.

What does this have to do with our scripture lesson? Bartimaeus is blind.  He’s a beggar.  He’s a blind beggar.  Think about the metaphor in that.  In the Bible, being “blind” always means more than lacking eyesight itself.  Blindness implies a spiritual condition, a lack of understanding, or a lack of acceptance.  And begging implies any deep or desperate need. Bartimaeus has more than eye trouble.

Notice what he shouts as he goes to Jesus.  “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Everyone tells him to shut up, but he goes on,  “Son of David, have mercy on me.” Bartimaeus comes begging for mercy. So, Bartimaeus must be troubled by the same contradiction or conflict in our nature that we all have.

What makes him cry “Have mercy on me”?  What is he ashamed of?  How is his inner life messed up?  What impulse can’t he control?  What’s his torment?  He’s stuck, sitting there by the side of the road.  But what is that all about?

Like every Bible story, this one invites us to see ourselves in the main character. So, what part of you wants mercy?  What is your torment, or guilt, or dilemma? How do you feel stuck?  What is the contradiction in your nature that you have to deal with?

We’re not sure what Bartimaeus’ problem is.  But he’s waiting for Jesus.  He’s waiting for the right person.  He “sees” his salvation, even though his eyes are blind.

We’re all blind beggars in some way. A lot of life is groping in the dark, more than we’d like to admit.  We’re our own worst enemies. We bring on ourselves the same troubles we fear.

We want to be perfect, but we can’t be perfect.  We can’t be perfect because — here you can choose the term you like to fill in the blank — because we’re weak, because we’re sinners, because we’re selfish, because we’re afraid, because we fail, because we’re human. We need mercy.

That’s what brings Bartimaeus to Jesus, and Jesus says to him,  “Go, (get up from where you’re stuck). Your faith has made you well.” 

How does faith make us well?  Faith lets us accept that we’re not perfect; we’re not going to change human nature, even our own. And that’s okay.  Because our hope comes from something beyond our nature, from God, who has mercy upon us, and who gives us the power to get through the day relatively at peace with our nature, and at least relatively free from the worst in our nature..

The best sermon title I ever came up with was some years ago. “Being A Sinner Is Nothing to Be Ashamed Of.” This is the hand we’re dealt.  God made us — creatures at war with ourselves.

That doesn’t absolve us of responsibility.  Responsibility is the higher part of that contradiction. Accepting being a sinner is the first and necessary step to finding the strength not to act like a sinner.

The point is: We all need God’s mercy.  If I know I need mercy, it helps me feel mercy to someone else. We all need God’s mercy and power.  And God’s mercy and power are offered to all.