Mark 10: 46-52

From in the Way to on the Way/ Cloak dropping beautiful

I told you this so many times by now that you probably think to yourself: “If that pastor is going to say it one more time, I am going to lose it!” Well, let’s see if you will… because here goes: When Mark writes his gospel there are two questions at the back of his mind constantly: 1. Who exactly is Jesus? 2. How does one relate to Him? He tells stories about what Jesus said and did in encounters with different people to give us answers and insight into these two questions. He knows the richness and quality of our lives are directly related to the extend that we get these two questions right. Because if Jesus is who He said He is, it changes everything. And He is and it does.

So, in the previous encounter that we read and talked about last week, Mark kind of answers these questions by showing us who Jesus is not and how we should not relate to him. He is not our own personal ambition fulfiller and glorifier. We should not relate to him by seeking out how prominent and revered He can make us. His call is one for service, not one which asks us to reap in as much recognition and accomplishment as we can. The last shall be first in the Kingdom.

In today’s encounter with a blind beggar Mark gives a more positive answer to his two questions. There is a reason this is put back-to-back with the encounter with the ambitious disciples. The encounters are in many ways opposites. In the one, close disciples of Jesus are blind to who he really is and relate to Him in a manner that calls for correction from Jesus. In This passage ironically a blind man who Jesus presumably never met “sees” who He is much clearer, and He relates to Jesus in such a way that we read even though Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem to fulfill His main purpose on earth, He stood still (some translations just say “stopped”), called the man and healed the man. (The only other account where we read that Jesus stood as a reaction to a human being, is in Acts when Stephen sees the heavens open and Jesus standing up while he dies a martyrs death.) So, this detail and the time that it happened in Jesus’s journey tells us that what this man said about Jesus and how He related to Jesus, was significant.

So let us at least follow suit and also pause, stop, to take note and to take to heart what this blind beggar teaches us about Jesus and how to relate to Him.

Son Of David

“Son of David” he calls Jesus. He is the first one to do so in the gospel of Mark. It shows that he connected what Jesus did to important dots in the Jewish scriptures. You see this is a messianic title. Isaiah 29 and 35 prophesied a new era where God would heal the sick, specifically the blind. This blind man must have felt this prophesy in a very personal way. Ezekiel 34 then talks about a Son of David that God will send who will be the one that heals the sick. Bartimaeus connected the dots and called Jesus by this name to see if He wouldn’t react. Because this prophesy was ultimately about Jesus and He calls Jesus by this title, He, Jesus, was not be able to ignore it. If you are in a crowd of people who have no idea who you are and someone calls you by your real name, you cannot ignore it. It is impossible.

Get the picture this man sat at the same busy street corner everyday, listening to all the religious talk. He probably knew the Scriptures as boys were taught to memorize the Old Testament from age six. And he connected what was said about Jesus’s actions to what was said about the Son of David,  the Messiah in Ezekiel.  He chose a title that had deep personal significance and hope for him being blind. He chose a title Jesus paused at and responded to because He recognized it as a name by which his own Father and the prophets of old called him by.

Now note the difference between this and the encounter with James and John in the previous passage. They seek titles whereas the man assigns Jesus a title. They start with their supposed merit and worthiness whereas the blind beggar starts with his biggest flaw and need. The disciples request privilege. This man pleads for mercy and healing. The disciples said: We are not bad, make us better. The beggar said: “I am broken, make me whole.”

Relate to Jesus from your brokenness rather than from your merit. Seek wholeness more than comfort and privilege. Seek Jesus more than approval and acceptance of others. We have a sinful tendency to desire one good thing to hide all the things in us that are broken and bad. We then want to get Jesus in on this project of ours and help us get away with the broken and the bad. We should instead look to Jesus to heal and make whole what is bad and broken.   We should desire wholeness more than the hiddenness that fame money or anything else can offer.

Why can we not stand on our merit when we worked hard to do good things? Max Lucado once explained this in a strange but effective way. Say God today replaced the ten commandments with only one that goes: “To gain eternal life, you should jump from the earth up unto the moon”. Now if I happen to have very long and muscular legs, I might stand next to a person with short legs and feel very chaffed about how much higher I jump than him. But If I look at the distance from the earth to the moon, I realize I don’t feel much less short than the guy standing next to me…and my long legs was a gift anyway, not something I deserved.

We fall into the trap of standing on our own merit when our brokenness happens to be something that we can hide and cover. We think it is ok to drink too much if we can drink and still keep our job and manage to hide it from our children, but that kind of drinking is as soul destroying as that of the homeless person openly drunk in public. We think we are much better than the divorced person if we can claim not to have divorced whilst being in a marriage that is much worse and more abusive than being divorced. The blind beggar’s brokenness was out there in public for all to see. You simply cannot hide it when you are blind. The disciples arrogance in the previous passage was hidden even to themselves. Jesus had to point it out. This is why there is a Holy Presence in a Celebrate Recovery group where people speak openly about their failures. Jesus shows up where people relate and call out to Him to them from their brokenness.

May God give us the grace to desire wholeness and the healing he offers much more than the acclaim, the wealth, and the fame the world offers us as a mask for our brokenness.

Participatory Healing…

So, Jesus is a healer. We relate positively with him when we are open and honest about our brokenness and need for wholeness and healing. Jesus responds to that.  But it is fair to say -and one shouldn’t miss it in this encounter- that Jesus does a specific kind of healing we can call participatory healing. This man wasn’t passive in his healing. He cries out. He moves toward Jesus. And he leaves his cloak. There is more to all of this than meets the eye.

Him calling out is kind of logical. But note that when you really call out to Jesus as the source of life and healing, you will attract the attention of not just Jesus but also of people annoyed with you. We read that some actively tried to silence him. He persisted. It is an essential element of crying out to God. You have to persist. You have to do it in spite of opposition and other people not joining in. Intercessors are people that stand in the gap and do so with persistence until it closes.  

Secondly, I like the “on your feet part”. Jesus travelled much further to reach this man than he does to meet Jesus, but Jesus still stood still and expected the blind man to come to him. To us it is a small thing but keep in mind that this man was blind and found himself in a crowd, some of whom were hostile towards him. It took no small effort from his side and perspective to get to his feet and answer the call of Jesus. When you want healing from Jesus you do everything to move in the direction of healing yourself. When you want Jesus to heal you of Cancer you do eat healthy, and you do go for treatments that fight the cancer. When you want Jesus to free you from addiction you do show up at the AA meeting even if you must cancel a party with friends. You need to move. Even when you visit the physiotherapist you must do the exercises, she gives you.

Then this man throws down his cloak. To us it is no big deal. It almost sounds the natural thing to do but did you know that many scholars postulate that this cloak was not only how he assembled the money he got from begging but was probably government issued? It was a designation, a kind of licence or official permission to beg.  Beggars were usually chased out of the city but some with good reason to beg like blindness, would be granted permission to beg at certain spots. Now, can you imagine what security this man left behind by dropping his cloak and how many reasons there were to hang on to it? Even if Jesus healed him, he probably had no other training or skills to earn a living with. This cloak was his means of income. It was what identified him as a legitimate source of pity and money.

But it was also something that hided this man as much as it identified him. It was a sure way for people to see him as nothing but a blind beggar. And as Jesus showed him who he really was, he now realized that he needs to show Jesus and others who he really is. Also, he realized that he needs to become. He has not yet arrived. That is why we read that the man who in the beginning found himself stuck in one spot beside the road now followed Jesus on the road after shedding his cloak.

We also have cloaks. Doesn’t your job sometimes feel like one? On one hand a means of income and usefulness to others and security. On the other hand, something that ties you up, limits you and makes you feel stuck. Something this cloak hides other sides of you that you feel called to develop and show to others also. Or your role as a mom or dad. I am not saying quit your job and leave your kids. But maybe we can all do with negotiating and compromising our cloaks more than we do our own healing and wholeness. When you are broken and remain clinging to your cloak, you will remain stuck and when things break down you will take as much if not more than what you are now still able to contribute. Sometimes you need to have to drop your coat to get to Jesus. There are times where you can pick it up again and maybe use it in a different way. There are also times when you need to let go of it completely. Yes, sometimes even change careers if that serves your obedience to God’s call. How about letting go of children? Surely that can never be! Well, just this week in the SurreyNow there was a story of a kid who recovered from addiction. His parents refusing to let him live in their house if he used drugs was to a great extent what healed him. It was either letting him be homeless of enabling him to die of an overdose. So, I guess sometimes even that is warranted!

Close

We sometimes get stuck. That is not the worse thing that can happen to us. The worst thing is when we get comfortable with being stuck, that we make what enables us to survive whilst being stuck or what got us stuck our whole identity and destiny. That breaks off our yearning for and connection to God.

When we cry out to Jesus for healing and wholeness and move to follow Him, we get unstuck and whole. We also get to grow when this happens. We get to do this because Jesus came to us and Jesus stopped to attend to us.

Be open and eager to receive healing and wholeness from Jesus. Allow Him to free you from the good and the bad things that is preventing you to grow. Drop your cloak and follow the man whose wounds brought us wholeness.

Amen

Gabriel J Snyman

October 24th 2021

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