Here's this week's sermon, the last of the Lord of the Rings series. I ended up changing a good bit at the end, since I got kind of nervous and I tend to resort to a long series of challenges when I do that. So, anyway, this is what I was intending to say this week in the sermon.
Mark 10:46-52
Knowing and being known
One of the first lessons that we take from hearing this story is how persistent and passionate Bartimaeus is in calling out for Jesus. Anyone who is willing to reach out to Jesus over the objections and the ridicule of the crowd deserves our respect. Clearly, that sort of determination is something that pretty much all of us could use a little more of in our faith.
But there’s more going on here than a simple lesson about persistence. There’s also a question of identity that cuts to the heart of this passage and the interaction between Jesus and Bartimaeus. You see, Bartimaeus is passionate in calling out to Jesus, but he only knows a part of Jesus’ identity. It’s understandable, since Bartimaeus’ name actually means “son of Timaeus,” so it’s not overly surprising that Bartimaeus identifies with Jesus as “Son of David,” the first time anyone has called Jesus that in Mark.
So what does it mean that Bartimaeus called Jesus the “Son of David.” The “Son of David” was the one who will bring justice and rule over Israel, fulfilling God’s promise to David that his descendents would be enthroned over Israel. Jesus took on that particular part of his heritage, but Jesus also takes on the role of the suffering servant, which went beyond the expectations of the “Son of David.” That Bartimaeus referred to Jesus as the Son of David shows his rootedness in cultural expectations, using a title that Jesus had not used that also held some expectations (such as political rule) that Jesus had no intention of fulfilling.
So Jesus heard Bartimaeus calling him, but knew that Bartimaeus only knew him partially. Jesus was likely reminded of that fact in the crowd’s rebuke of Bartimaeus, since there’s some speculation that one of the motivations for their rebuke was an interpretation that David hated the blind. Thus, not only was Bartimaeus’ knowledge of Jesus incomplete, it seemed as though even what he knew of Jesus wasn’t completely developed. Yet Jesus, being addressed passionately for only a part of who he was, didn’t turn away or hate Bartimaeus – he called Bartimaeus closer. Jesus did not expect Bartimaeus, nor does he expect us, to know everything about him before he calls us nearer; what Jesus wants is honest responses of faith, an honest cry for mercy.
What makes Bartimaeus’s partial knowledge of Jesus even more striking is the complete knowledge that Jesus has of Bartimaeus. This is embodied drastically in that little phrase “throwing off his cloak.” In effect, Bartimaeus strips down to his underwear as he’s running up to Jesus. Despite the fact that the cloak was one of the last things that beggars could use as collateral to get a loan, and despite the fact that he’d be running around in his underwear, Bartimaeus throws off his cloak and anything else that might hold him back as he runs to Jesus.
So we have Bartimaeus, who knows Jesus only partially, standing before Jesus in his underwear, exposed in every imaginable way. And Jesus, rather than pointing out what he can clearly see, pushed Bartimaeus to understand himself, asking Bartimaeus what he wants Jesus to do. Bartimaeus understands the part of Jesus that’s about power and influence, but doesn’t realize that another aspect of Jesus’ identity is Jesus’ service, that “the son of Man came not to be served but to serve” bit we talked about last week. Yet despite that partial knowledge, Jesus meets Bartimaeus’ need, allowing Bartimaeus to follow Jesus and learn the rest of the story.
Bartimaeus was able to regain his sight and to follow Jesus because he trusted that Jesus knew him. Bartimaeus was able to stand before Jesus, exposed and vulnerable, and ask for mercy. So what does it mean for us to be fully known and still ask for love and mercy, as Bartimaeus was fully known by Jesus? It makes me think of a successful marriage in a lot of ways. What makes a successful marriage isn’t that each person sees through rose-colored glasses, only seeing the good things about the other. What makes a successful marriage is that each person knows the other, warts and all, and still loves them. Just like that journey of becoming fully known to another, Bartimaeus standing in front of Jesus in his skivvies begging for mercy becomes a symbol of our relationship to a God who already knows everything about us, yet whom we pray to and ask for mercy.
This idea of being known and the power that it has to transform our lives brought to mind a scene from the Lord of the Rings movies where Elrond delivers the sword Anduril to Aragorn. Aragorn has struggled throughout his life with his identity as the heir of the deposed king of Gondor, as you can see in his scraggly appearance. Aragorn knows some of who he is, yet he is unsure about how his identity as King of Gondor will be played out. He sees the potential for both good and evil in his past and in his identity, so he has hesitated to claim that identity for himself.
It takes Elrond, the king of the elves who has helped raise Aragorn and knows who Aragorn is and what Aragorn can be, to help Aragorn “become who he was born to be.” Aragorn is hesitant to claim all of his identity, yet Elrond calls him to take on the duties that only the king of Gondor can fulfill by taking a sword forged from Aragorn’s ancestors’ broken sword, a sword broken in battle against the same enemy Aragorn fights. Elrond knows that it is only by taking on his true identity that Aragorn can gather enough troops for battle and fulfill his role in the mission. Let’s watch their interaction:
THE RETURN OF THE KING DISC 1 SCENE 30 1:40:10 to 1:42:42
Aragorn is only able to take on his identity because he is already known by Elrond, because Elrond sees Aragorn as he truly is and forces Aragorn to acknowledge his true identity. Being completely known has a powerfully freeing impact on us when we accept and embrace the fact that someone else has seen us at our very worst and loves us anyway. In the midst of his blindness and his brashness, as he’s standing there in his underwear in front of a huge crowd of people and Jesus, Bartimaeus was nothing if not exposed and vulnerable. Yet he made himself vulnerable as an act of faith based on his incomplete knowledge of Jesus’ identity.
You can see at the end of this clip that Aragorn remains unsure, that he “keeps no hope for himself.” Yet he is able to trust that he is known, to trust that Elrond does in fact know him and earnestly desires his success and welfare, even though Aragorn doesn’t know fully what will come to pass. Because of that trust and because of that faith in the one who called Aragorn by name, he is able to face those fears and accomplish his role in the mission. It is by being known and by submitting his own desires to the needs of the mission that Aragorn is able to find life and to fight for that which matters most.
Bartimaeus was able to trust when Jesus called him, a trust so complete that Bartimaeus lost all concept of decency and ran forward in his underwear, tossing aside what was his only potential source of money for the chance to meet Jesus. He was able to stand with Jesus and to follow Jesus because he had discovered his true identity as someone valued by the Son of David. Yet it is only in the process of discipleship and in following Jesus that Jesus would be able to correct Bartimaeus’ limited understanding of who Jesus was and what Jesus was doing, thus we can’t forget the next step: and he followed Jesus down the road.
That was are known yet do not know fully is one of the reasons that we’re mistaken if we assume that you have to get to a certain level of holiness or knowledge before you can become active in the church. One of the emphases throughout Methodism has been on a process called sanctification. We uphold a three-pronged understanding of grace – prevenient grace that constantly “woos” us to Christ, justifying grace that puts us in right relationship with God through Christ, and sanctifying grace whereby we are made more and more into the image of Christ and become more Christlike. That can be summarized as first being known by God, then our coming to know God, then learning to become more and more about God. We know that God loves us before we are even aware of it, and loves us as we are coming to know God, not just when we’ve proven ourselves “worthy.” We can never know everything about God, but we can know some things and be passionate about those things.
This movement toward trust and towards intimate knowledge of God is always a process, and is a process that will only be complete upon death. We strive to know God as we are already known not because we will ever completely understand God, but because we have experienced God’s love and want to embrace that identity that Christ shows us in ourselves. As we discover more about who God is, we discover more about who we are, so that as we come closer to Christ in asking for healing we begin to come closer to seeing ourselves rightly.
Today, Christ is calling not only Bartimaeus but you to come to him. He’s also calling us as members of the crowd to be his messengers, to help other people to know who it is that is calling them and to know the love with which they are being called. Then, he calls us to join his followers, to be a part of Christ’s community so that we can know Christ and follow Christ along the way. I invite you to think about where you find yourself in this story – are you part of the crowd, trying to figure out what Jesus wants? Or are you Bartimaeus, hearing your name called and passionately pursuing Christ, believing that while you don’t know everything, you do know something. Can you say that this, this cross and the love that it shows, is the one thing that I know and the one thing that I believe in? If so, will you chose today to follow him and come when he calls?
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