“What Do You Want Me to Do for You?”  (Mark 10:46-52)

Intro:  Today we read the last of Jesus’ miracles in Mark’s gospel.  It is the healing of a blind man who shows a bold faith that is rightly placed.  Jesus and the disciples are heading for Jerusalem, they are in Jericho as they encounter the blind Bartimaeus.  // 

Many years ago, when I was in my first year high school (about 14 years old) I had one of my first “big adventure when I took an AMTRAK train out to the New York City all by myself to visit a friend who had moved there.  My welcome to the big apple started when I innocently asked a local for directions.  I had come into Grand Central station and was headed for Penn station to catch a subway train.  So I asked somebody, “which way?”  I was too young and trusting to be suspicious of this guy when he said “I can tell you where to go” and he pointed me in exactly the wrong direction. 

When I finally got on the subway, I remember what my friend had said about riding the trains, “Dan if you want to fit in, don’t look at anybody, and pretend like you know exactly what you are doing, walk with attitude.”  Things started out OK, I got on the right car, had my face fixed with that certain “don’t mess with me” look, and I sat down.  A few minutes into the ride that all went out the window as I got startled when someone came and shoved a pencil in my hand with a note saying “I cannot speak, selling these pencils is the only way I can make a living, God bless you”.  And he stood there, waiting for me to make up my mind.  I gave it back and shook my head, not wanting this exchange to go on any longer than it had to, he moved on to someone else and then was gone.   

As I left the train, I hoped I wouldn’t bump into him again.  I didn’t want to be asked once more, or shamed by guilt into buying something, or reminded of his difficult situation. There was a mixture of reactions within me, part feeling sorry that anyone comes to such a difficult place, and a more powerful feeling of self-protection and wanting to beware of scams.  I didn’t want to take much time or do much work to figure out what his situation was, to know if his need was genuine, so I chose to send him on and I carried on.  It’s an attitude that isn’t easy to outgrow.  Many of us feel this way, even if we don’t like to admit it.  We have become adept at waving away panhandlers, avoiding eye contact with beggars, stepping around the homeless.  We become numb to the hardships we see on the evening news every day.  (I know each day driving in to work that most likely I’ll have an offer to clean my windscreen on the corner of Buckley and Linwood.   

The story of Bartimaeus is played out a million times a day.  The crowd marches by and does not see the suffering man beside the road.  One wonders who is truly sightless in the story – blind Bartimaeus or the unseeing crowds who passed him by without a second glance.  Even when he cries out for help, the crowds try to hush his disturbing voice.  It seems ironic that claim that their eyes are so firmly fixed on the Saviour, that they entirely overlook the man in need of help. 

Jesus didn’t overlook Bartimaeus.  Jesus never lost the ability to see people in need, whether hungry, or sick, or downtrodden.  He was never too busy to stop for someone who was hurting.  To be sure we cannot heal every hurt.  But we can learn to see those who are in need, maybe get past the awkwardness of asking “Is something wrong?  Can I help?”  Every healing Jesus performed begins with the miracle of seeing someone in need.  Seeing alone will not always help, there can surely be no help without recognizing it. 

Mark includes an interesting detail in his narrative.  He tells us that Bartimaeus came to Jesus after throwing off his cloak.  Some commentators believe that the blind wore a particular kind of garment in those days, a hooded cloak that was designed to hide the upper part of the face. The blank stare of blind eyes was unsettling to many people.  By wearing a cloak that covered their eyes, the blind could move through the crowds without making others uncomfortable. 

 We can perhaps wonder if the world has not changed much.  We are still uncomfortable with the pain and disability of others.   I remember being surprised when a patient once told me that her crutches and leg braces gave her super power.  She said she has the gift of invisibility.  Everyday, she is able to move through crowds and no one acknowledges her presence or looks her in the eye. 

Bartimaeus apparently senses that Jesus is a man he can approach with uncovered eyes, unhidden pain, undisguised need.  He throws off the cloak of politeness and comes barefaced to Jesus.  And Jesus meets Bartimaeus as a fully human being, face to face, eye to eye.  In that meeting Bartimaeus is truly seen, and this is the beginning of his healing.

Bartimaeus is a timeless example of faith.  He calls out to God with his need.  Just the act of crying out is an act of faith, he believes something will happen, that God can do something.  It is faith when we express our deepest needs, giving voice to what is on our hearts.  Sometimes we don’t know what we need, sometimes we don’t ask for what we need.  Too often we hold things in, refusing to let pain show.  But we should not, we should speak up, even cry out just as the blind man did while others were telling him to keep quiet.  The disciples did not think that Jesus should be bothered with his problems.

That is another dimension of his faith, he persists, even while others would try to keep him silent.  Jesus responds to his persistence with the question others have heard “What would you have me do for you?” The most important phrase in this wonderful story comes from Jesus. He asks the beggar a crucial question which makes the healing possible – “What is it that you want me to do for you? How does your life need to be new and different in order for you to be whole and strong and free? What needs to change in your life in order for you to be fully alive??

And he is ready with an answer.  He does not wish for riches, or to be made young, or to be a king.  He asks for his sight back.  I want to see again.  And Jesus says yes.  He says his faith has opened his eyes.  The man can see, and now he chooses to follow Jesus.  What a great example of faith, to call out, to trust, to answer, to receive, and then to follow.      

Change – personal change, relational change, cultural change – change is at the very heart of individual and societal healing. And it takes great courage to participate in our own healing and wholeness – to participate in our own changing – to name what it is we need and want. Yes, in this story, Jesus could have offered comfortable charity. But he chose to offer uncomfortable change. And the new sight the beggar receives catapults him into a new kind of discipleship, a new kind of wholeness, a new kind of responsibility that demands transformation – transformation in him, and then through him, a transformation of the world. As one essayist has suggested, we are not human beings. We are human “becomings.”

With his actions Jesus was showing his earliest followers about changes needed.  This blind man’s faith has something to show them.   If they could open their eyes, they could become a group of disciples reaching out to the needy and welcoming all.  Jesus came to show there is room not only for the hale and hearty, but also for the blind and lame, the prisoners and even the ragged men with pencils and begging cups.  The way of Christ is wide enough for all, even for those who must be carried along.

This full experience of grace can only be a reality if we learn to see as Jesus saw.  If we open our eyes and our arms, there’s no reason for anyone to be left sitting by the side of the road while grace passes by.   As we draw closer to God, may we be willing to let go of our expectations of how God ought to be, and be willing to cry out with our most desperate needs.  For it is in the place of greatest poverty and need that Christ can enter into our lives.  May we follow where our loving God will lead.  Amen.     

 “Girded Loins” Job 38:1-7, 34-41

Intro:  Our reading this morning comes from the one of the last chapters in the book of Job.  Throughout this book Job has been  suffering and he wonders why out loud to God.  Now we hear God responding to Job’s request for a hearing.  The response comes in a whirlwind and it is not the answer Job was looking for.  It is worth noting that this is the last time in the Old Testament that God speaks.  Let us listen for God’s word to us.  //  

The questions sound loaded.  Who are you?  Where were you?  Are you able? 

At first glance the God that we meet in this morning’s text sounds pretty sarcastic and high-and-mighty.  Plenty of people have said they don’t like Job’s God.  It would be easy to see God here as uncaring or arrogant.  The questions God puts to Job sound intimidating.  “Gird up you loins like a man and tell me, who are you?”  Job can only say “I am no-one.”  “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”  “I was nowhere” seems the honest answer.  “Are you able to shut in the sea or cause eagles to soar?”  “No, I am not able.”    

All of this sounds demeaning.  Of course Job wasn’t there and Job cannot do all the things God talks about.  And how would Job have felt when God says “who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”  Or in other words “how dumb are you Job?”  Job does not feel he is asking stupid questions.  He is in misery and he is asking why.

Job is in the worst of nightmares.  Ever since the beginning of his story, his has been the story of loss.  He’s lost his family, his property, his status in the community, and his health.  He has been sitting on a garbage dump listening to his well-meaning friends.  They keep telling him that his present circumstances must be the consequence of something he did to make God angry.  But he say’s I didn’t do anything to deserve this!  And he hadn’t.

Job sounds like a young child who is persistently asking “why” and for the longest time it seemed that God would not answer him.  Then after Job defies God to give him some reason why it seems like God responds as frustrated parent who shouting ‘because!”  It  does not look like God gives a sensible answer.  But we shall see that there is sense in this response.  The point of this story is not that Job isn’t entitled to ask these questions.  He is.  The liberating invitation of this story is the strong call to Job, and to us, is to hear God calling us to accompany God as the human creations that we are.  Being created in the image of God does make us special in all of creation.  God made Job and gave him the freedom and opportunity to live as he saw best, now would he live hand in hand with God.

Job is crying out to be heard by God.  He sought a word from the Lord to help make sense of his predicaments.  His world was collapsing and he wanted to know why.  He was boldly asking to see God face to face so he could ask some heart felt questions.  Profound questions that he wanted answers to.  He got his wish and he was surprised, transformed by his encounter with God. 

After chapters upon chapters of Job demanding to speak with God, after putting up with his friends trying to explain his plight, the Almighty speaks up, “Okay, Job.  I will explain it to you.”  Except the answers that God gives are non-answer answers.  Why is there suffering?  What have you done to deserve this?  Is there any justice in the world?  Good questions, here’s your answer Job:  Who are you?  Where were you?  Are you able? 

When God answers the most personal and deepest questions we ask, the answer God gives is unknowable mystery.  There are many mysteries in life we try to answer.  When terrible things happen the first question we want to ask is “why?”  Too often we try to give an explanation when there is none.  “Why did this accident happen?”  “Well, the car missed a turn, he driving too fast, ” Or we try to offer some thoughtless theology about God’s ways.  When what we need to do is sit silently in the dust of those painful questions.  (Job’s friends did the right thing at first- they just sat with him).  Most of the answers we attempt to offer go nowhere in the face of the most personal and profound questions.  We need to be embraced by something bigger than a quick solution.

Heaven knows we try to claim concise black and white answers from a predictable God. We are a country that loves prescriptions and recipes.  We see them in all the magazines in the check out line, 10 easy steps for better what ever.  Some people would like that in church as well.  Prescriptions for keeping healthy relationships; a prescription for keeping in God’s will.  A recipe for inner peace; a recipe for God’s protection, …

As we read the book of Job we see the answers God gives are hardly simple prescriptions and certainly not easy recipes.  When it comes to the profound questions of our existence God doesn’t clarify, God poses deeper questions.  When it comes to our core concerns God doesn’t spell it out for our satisfaction, God muddles it with mystery.

And for Job this is enough.  In part he understands that God is God and he is not, he accepts there are limits to the human capacity to understand life’s experiences, he comes to terms with God’s majestic presence which dwarfs even his personal suffering.  Even though this is a non-answer answer, it is enough. God speaks mystery and Job replies with a profound, “Yes.” Job is humbled.  He has experienced a personal encounter with God.  God has spoken to him.  Job learns to live with unanswered questions.  He will learn to trust God with the mysteries of Life, including the mysteries of his own life.

Perhaps another way to think of Job’s story is to imagine a conversation between a father and son.  The father is a quiet gentle man, the son has reached the age when he feels like he can do anything.  (I’m not sure is that 12 or 16 these days?) Full of confidence, maybe too confident having found some of the answers to his questions in life.  One day the father comes in his son’s room and asked him what he knew about life.  Had he ever lost a loved one?  No he hadn’t (but the father had).  What did he know about how inhumane people could be?  Not much (but War was something the father saw first hand).

Did the son know anything about the frailty of a person’s days? How could he, he was in the prime of life (the father, on the other hand, knew all too well what it’s like to watch one’s life “blip” “blip” “blip” on a heart monitor).  The questions from Dad go on like that for five minutes, then he gets up and walks out.  Questions from a typically silent man.  Questions he never asked again.  These were questions for which the son couldn’t possibly have an answer. What could he say? He hadn’t lived these things, but the father had.  He had lived them and his living had been the answer to them.  And because he knew the son, loved him, quietly watched over him, the son knew the answer to these most personal and profound questions rested with his father.  Even if he didn’t know, the son knew the one who asked this question, he knew that the father knew; and because of that, he felt safe even when he didn’t have the answers.  He knew the one who did.

So it is with us.  When confronted with life’s most profound questions, questions which sometimes we can’t begin to define, let alone solve, it is then we find that we have been embraced by something bigger:  the One who loves us, who watches over us, and who holds the mystery of our life that is not ours to know.  We can and should ask why.  But the answer will come only in experiencing the mystery.   It is by experiencing the mystery that when we can see past the pain of our immediate circumstances.  Then we can take a new perspective on the  questions of who are you?, We can each say “I am yours God”.  Where were you? We can respond  “I have always been with you.”  Are you able to do amazing, incredible things?.  Yes God with you help.  That is the new life we live once we see how God answers us and invites us.   Amen. 

 “Tough on the Camel” Mark 10:17-30
Everyone should have received one or two cards as you came in to worship this morning.  It says M or F and then some numbers.  Now is the time to unlock the mystery of what these mean!  This is an “experience of perspective”, as a way of seeing snapshots of information about the world’s population.  (This is to help us see some characteristics of the population of the world.)  If the world’s population was only 100 people here is the situation.  If you have female on your card please raise hand….  OK now males….  (Out of one hundred, 49 will be women and 51 men).   

I know Presbyterians don’t like to raise both hands in worship, but just for today.   

Now I’ll ask you to raise your hand if you have a number 1 on your card…. 

(Out of a world’s population of 100, 58 would be Asians) 

#2 (Out of a world population of 100, 12 would be north and South Americans) 

#3 on your card, please raise your hand.  (19 out of 100 will be African). 

#4 on your card, please raise your hand.  (10 out of 100 will be European). 

#5 on your card, please raise your hand.  (1 out of 100 will be Oceania). 

#6 (26/100 will be less than 15 years old.  Median age of the village is 31 years)

#7 (4/100 will be 75 or older.  And the average life expectance is 75 years.) 

#8 (84/100 will have black hair)

#9 (2/100 will have red hair)

If you have a number 10 please raise your hand.   (69 out of 100 would be NON-Christian.  2/3rds of the world) 

Would number 11’s hand please?  (66 of 100 would have access to internet) 

Now number 12’s please raise your hand.  (10 of 100 would not be able to read.) 

Now number 13.  10 people would own better than 75% of the world wealth (most US citizens.) 

This is a glimpse of our world.  It is a glimpse of the world that God loves so such as to send Jesus to be with us. 

Around the world today, people are gathered around the table.  World Communion Sunday started fifty years ago as a way of acting out the global, universal, radically inclusive grace of God.  Today, as Christians, we celebrate God’s grace embodied in Jesus, but also God’s grace that is even bigger than the distinctiveness of Jesus.   God’s grace existed before Jesus was born. 

World Communion Sunday is the day when we envision a table big enough to host the whole world—a table big enough to hold Christians and Jews and Muslims, Afghanis and Americans, Israelis and Palestinians.   World Communion Sunday is the day when we are bold enough, perhaps foolish enough, to imagine a world where lambs and wolves can lie down together, a world where trust and peace are stronger than violence and suspicion.

“What must I do,” asks the young man, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  It is a heart-felt, faith-filled question, asked in moment that is hard to imagine.  Jesus responds, “You know the commandments,” and yes, this person knows every last one of them and lives them. Here we meet a good person—perhaps a little smug in bragging as he says, “I have kept all these commandments since my youth”— and we believe that he is a good and religious person.  To his question Jesus responds, “You lack one thing,” go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor…and come, follow me.”

Mark says, “When the man heard this, he was shocked.” and who wouldn’t be? Even the disciples were shocked, but Jesus didn’t sooth their dismay – he continued, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” The disciples were astounded.

Astonishment is not a bad place to begin.  If we were we more susceptible to astonishment we might be more changeable and more teachable.  As it is, because we think we’ve seen it all, heard it all and know it all, wonders and miracles happen all around us, but we overlook them.  They slip away. They cannot penetrate our protected lives.  Mark pictures the disciples as a pretty misbegotten bunch, but they have this much going for them: they are not above being flabbergasted and today they are.

In our reading we see a man who is suddenly asked to make a huge sacrifice, give up everything, on the spot.  He is the one person in the gospels that turns Jesus down when asked specifically to come and follow.  This is a scene that is full of all kinds of emotion.  As it starts we see the excitement of the man who has everything, he is well dressed and well respected, yet something is missing and he seeks out Jesus, a dusty teacher from a nowhere town.  When he sees Jesus his enthusiasm causes him to interrupt Jesus’ journey and he humbly greets him with great praise.  Then he asks the question that is closest to his heart,  “Good Teacher tell me, please what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Here is a guy who has it all, has played by the rules and yet is seeking something more.  This is a guy everybody would like, Jesus likes him and appreciates the man’s goodness and sincerity of heart.

He has kept the commandments, he has lived a good life.  He is a good person.  But Jesus says one thing is lacking.  One can imagine the man saying just tell me what it is, I’ll get it, or I’ll do it.  I can do anything!  I know I can.  He is so close to having the answer he has been seeking for, I bet he is just on his tip toes waiting for Jesus’ response.  Then it comes.  Not words for the world, but words right to him.  What he must do, what he is lacking. 

He needs to know what it is to know need.  He has yet to taste what it is to be without, what it is like to be the one asking for help, or uncertain where the next meal is coming from.  For so long he could rest comfortably knowing that his needs were met, he probably could afford to be generous and give good sized gifts when he wanted too.   When Jesus says sell everything you have, give it all away to the poor and come follow me.  He can’t do that, he doesn’t know how he could live without all that stuff.  He is the only one we read of who hears Jesus call to follow, and who does not do so joyfully.  He turns away.  A moment ago he is filled with excitement, now come tears and sorrow.  Give up my possessions and prestige that go with that?  That’s too much, I can’t go that high. 

The disciples don’t get it.  They ask him about it later.  Who, then, can be saved?  They ask. This guy was “A” list, he lived the right kind of life, he did all the right things.  He must be favored by God just look at all the blessings in his life.  If he can’t find salvation, who can?    Jesus’ response is clear.  People can not find salvation on their own.  It is impossible.   With God all things are possible.  Learn to depend on God.

Jesus is not calling everyone to take vows of poverty.  This is not a new economic order being ushered in.  His pronouncement is not an attack on wealth per se; but a particular message to this man’s obstacle.  One thing you lack.  For him it was the attachment to too many things.  We are each called to live responsibly with what God has given us, that is true for all of us.  A complete liquidation of funds by everyone is not the message. 

“How hard it is, how hard it is.”  Discipleship is never a free ride, never cheap grace.  Earlier Jesus has said, if anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross.  The rich man was to deny the way of life he could have had by holding tightly to his riches. 

We need to be disturbed because we lack a sense of enough ness. Some may think that “Too much of a good thing is wonderful,” but too many of us mistake that quip for a way of life. For the sake of our own health and life, not to mention our spiritual life, we need to learn when enough is enough. You’ve seen t-shirts and bumper stickers with the slogan: “You can never be too thin or too rich.” Or he who dies with the most toys wins.  How wrong that is! This story’s warns us and invites us to find a way of saying “enough.”

“One thing you lack” is a haunting, disturbing, phrase, for we all lack at least one thing.  Me, many many more than one.  But even that one thing, or those things, can not be achieved without God’s help.  That is Jesus’ point.  Self-denial is not enough.  Unlimited charity is not enough, attending church regularly and praying daily is not enough.  All are to be commended.  All are worthy, but all fall short of the glory of God.  This is what could have been driving Martin Luther mad until he realized that only by the grace of God are we saved, and only by God’s grace do we find the faith to follow.

As Jesus had been ministering many who had been broken come in to him and left whole.  This morning a man who was whole comes to him and leaves broken.  For him the one thing that was lacking was the richness of giving and depending on God.  He only knew the poverty of possession and he chose to stay there.  (I’m going to stay with my stuff)

“What must I do?” someone asks. Think of all the easy answers that could come: “do whatever you feel like”; “do whatever you want to do”; “do what everyone else is doing.” But no. The good news of this story is that God loves us enough to shake us loose from all the cheap imitations of meaningful life, it comes with the “blessed disturbance” of Jesus’ summons: come and follow me.  One who loves us enough not to evade the honest answer.   Amen.