October 29, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Jeremiah 31:7-9; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52

This blind man is making a lot of noise. He is shouting loudly, and he says something that brings Jesus to halt. It is the only time in Mark’s Gospel when Jesus is called: “Son of David.” This is startling. It is the title of the Messiah. The blind man has just shouted out what Jesus has been telling people not to do. There has been a momentum building in Mark’s Gospel since chapter 8 when Jesus began his final journey to Jerusalem with the healing of a blind.  That first healing story did not go very well. It took two tries on the part of Jesus to bring him to sight. In that story, some people brought the blind man to Jesus, and when it was over, the man, nameless simply disappears.

In the two chapters held together by these blind-man stories, Jesus has spoken of what will happen to him in Jerusalem. The disciples have not gotten the point. They slow and incomplete faith has not let them see what is unfolding in their lives and in the life of their teacher.

Now this blind man brings everything to halt. Mark tells us that Jesus stopped. Suddenly this momentum, this constant turmoil so characteristic of Mark’s Gospel is still. You can almost feel that sense of wonder: “What’s going to happen now?”

Many tried to shut the man up, but nothing will silence the cry of anyone who knows the presence of the Messiah. Nothing will keep him from crying out and bearing witness to his faith, because by that faith he can see, understand, and believe who it is that has come.

And then Jesus says what might seem like the most preposterous thing. He says to a blind man – to someone who can’t see: “Come here.” Think for a minute about that command. How is a blind man going to do that?  He can’t see to walk, but this blind man who can perceive his salvation responds to what at first seems like an impossible command.  And then the most dramatic gesture occurs. He throws off his cloak, the garment in which people would drop their alms. He abandons his old way of life at the invitation of Jesus because he has faith. Not until he rises up from his old ways, not until he throws aside his cloak, not until he comes to Jesus does anything happen to him. He could have shouted: “Can’t you understand, I’m blind?” Or “I can’t, I’m afraid to move around.” He could have said: “You come here and help me.? But he didn’t. He took the risk of getting up and going to Jesus, and when he did everything changed.

The biggest change of all however, is not the healing of his eyes. It is the change of his life. Unlike the blind man of chapter eight, this blind man, says Saint Mark began to follow the “way.” I don’t think he is speaking of a road. There is another more profound meaning to the following Jesus “on the way.”

Bartimaeus is our teacher today. A blind man leads us. He is driven by a desire to see and understand the revelation of the Son of David. This desire is not intellectual curiosity. It is a sense that salvation lies in greater and greater penetration of the mystery of God and humanity, and the mystery of the Divine and the Human.

For those of us who have assembled in this holy place, for those of us who got up today and came to Jesus in this Eucharist, there is a growing desire to understand and enter into the revelation of the Cross and Resurrection. Every day, we must beg the Father of Jesus to have mercy on our blindness. and every day we must throw aside the cloaks of our past, get up, stumble around if that’s what happens, and start begging for what matters, not money, gifts, and security, but begging for enough wisdom, sight, understanding and faith to take up the ways of Jesus and make them our own.

October 22, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 53: 10-11 + Hebrews 4: 14-16 + Mark 10:35-45

The basic trouble in the human community right now is that people wish to do as little as possible and to get as much as possible. In contrast to that condition, we proclaim verses of Mark’s Gospel today that tell about Mark, about James and John, and about the standard of greatness that Jesus proposes. These verses tell us about Mark because he does not hesitate to show us apostles as they really were, allowing us to include ourselves among those called to greatness and faith.

These verses tell us about James and John because they were children of privilege, ambitious, inconsiderate, and slow to understand. From we are told of their family, they came from comfortable surroundings with a father who had hired hands and probably some power and status. What their boldness reveals today is that they thought this might provide them with some privilege, thinking they had influence and deserved a place of honor without paying the price of admission.  Yet in spite of their flaws and that not too perfect faith, they believed in Jesus.

These verses also tell us about the standard of greatness Jesus has come to propose to those who would claim him as their Lord, Leader, and Example. When he speaks of drinking from a cup, it is metaphor that means sharing in one’s life. It was a custom in that culture to share a drink from a common cup with someone who was sharing an experience of life with you. When he speaks of baptism, he is not speaking of a religious ritual, he is using the Greek word literally which means submersion. So, the proposal refers to being totally submerged into an experience, in the sense that someone might be “submerged” in debt. What he offers those of us who will be his disciples is a share in his experience of being God’s child, God’s chosen one. What he offers those of us who will be his disciples

is a complete submersion into his experience of service and sacrifice which leads to exaltation and a place at the right hand of God.

Greatness for followers of Jesus will come from sacrifice, freely embraced and totally fulfilled. It will not come from status or privilege.  It is only when we are filled with the desire to put into life more than we take out, that is, to serve others,

that life for ourselves and for others can be happy and prosperous.  Only then shall we “approach the throne of grace” as the Letter to the Hebrews calls it today, and only then shall we know mercy and grace, joy and peace.

October 8, 2006

Genesis 2:18-24 + Hebrews 2:9-11 + Mark 10:2-16

Today we have a Gospel with three scenes: Pharisees, Disciples, and Children. The Pharisees come along with one of their trick questions. Always a trap, never sincere, they look and wait for ways to discredit Jesus. He will not play along. He takes neither side in their either-or question but goes to the heart of the matter which they cannot perceive. So, he steps inside with those who will succeed him brings them to a new understanding that the Pharisees could never grasp. For you see, the Pharisees stayed in power and had control because they kept everyone split up and divided. Opposition and dispute were their tools.

Once inside with disciples, Jesus lays the foundation for the New Covenant and reveals the Father’s original plan. To help us get the point, the church provides a reading from Genesis today and reviews for us the Father’s plan from the beginning. “Partner” is the description we hear. The woman may have been taken from the man, but the man had no part in it, and he did not even witness it. They are partners says the author of Genesis describing what God intended. In this particular story of creation, the focus is on this relationship. In his teaching with the disciples, Jesus restores that balance and partnership by putting the woman in the case proposed by the Pharisees on the same footing as the man. They are equal, says Jesus.

Alone, separate, neither of them fulfills the creative design of the God. But together, living in unity and interdependence, they are a symbol of restored creation. Mark’s strong stand against divorce is a defense of the unity desired by God. While Jesus presents a vision of what marriage should be, he utters no condemnation of those who are divorced. In fact, in the Gospel of John Jesus comes to the defense of a woman about to be stoned who has often been married.

If this Gospel were really just about marriage, Jesus would have stayed outside with the Pharisees. What Mark leads us to as always is a revelation of God’s plan

being restored in Jesus his Son. Now, marriage as God planned it is not simply a relationship between two people. Rather, it is a covenant between two people and God.

The binding force is not the vows, nor is it the love between the two people. The binding force is God’s own presence in that Relationship. Christ did not say “What the marriage ceremony has joined together.” Neither did he say, “What Love has joined together.” What he said was: “What God has joined together”. This church is filled with sacraments: signs of the God’s Love, signs of God’s presence, signs of God’s healing, forgiving, Love. Married couples do not receive a sacrament. They become one.

The lesson of this Gospel is not only about marriage, however. It is about unity and oneness; about the reality of God’s presence where there is unity and oneness.

The challenge of this gospel is not just found in divorce.  It is found wherever we separate what God intended to be one. In our society, in our church, even in our families, issues of race, economics, gender, sexuality, justice, and life leave us divided, not speaking, alienated, hostile, and even violent.

Then comes the third scene: the children. What a powerful and disturbing image it is. Jesus surrounded by children, embracing them calling them, blessing them. It is an image that must haunt the Christian conscience as we see the horror of malnourished and disease-ridden children at home and abroad who in their innocence bear the suffering caused by the collapse of the human family, and the division of this world into haves and have-nots.

Jesus rebukes those who would separate him from the children. He rebukes those who ignore the lesson children teach us about how utterly dependent we are upon one another. To realize that, and to rejoice in it, is to honor indeed what God has joined together.