Blind Visionary or Dream Stealer

 Mark 10:46-52

November 2, 2003

The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus

⁴⁶They 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. ⁴⁷When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁸Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁹Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” ⁵⁰So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. ⁵¹Then 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.” ⁵²Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Have you ever had a dream which was socially unacceptable to pursue?  Maybe to your parents, to your children, your spouse or co-workers, your personal dream seemed silly, unrealistic or naïve.

There once was a man There once was a man who had such a naïve vision, an unrealistic dream, an out of this world hope…  This dreamer was the son of an itinerant horse trainer who would go from stable to stable, race track to race track, farm to farm and ranch to ranch, training horses. As a result, the boy's high school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he grew up.

"That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of someday owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the track. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on a 200-acre dream ranch.

"He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F with a note that read,

`See me after class.'

"The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, `Why did I receive an F?'

"The teacher said, `This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant family. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later you'll have to pay large stud fees. There's no way you could ever do it.' Then the teacher added, `If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.'

"The boy went home and thought about it long and hard. He asked his father what he should do. His father said, `Look, son, you have to make up your own mind on this. However, I think it is a very important decision for you.' "Finally, after sitting with it for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all.

He stated, "You can keep the F and I'll keep my dream."

That little boy, when he became an adult once told his story to an assembled group.  He said, "I tell you this story because you are sitting in my 4,000-square-foot house in the middle of my 200-acre horse ranch. I still have that school paper framed over the fireplace." He added, "The best part of the story is that two summers ago that same schoolteacher brought 30 kids to camp out on my ranch for a week."

When the teacher was leaving, turned to the dreamer and said, "Look, I can tell you this now. When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer. During those years I stole a lot of kids' dreams. Fortunately you had enough gumption not to give up on yours."[1]

In our lives we will encounter all types of people.  We will encounter dreamers and dream stealers.  We will encounter folks bold enough to hold on to their hope, their vision and their dream and others who would, crush those dreams, not out of hatred or jealousy or malice, but perhaps good intentions, prudence and realism.

We see such extremes in this story of the horse-trainer’s son and his teacher, as we do in the story of Jesus and Blind Bartimaeus.

Like the young man who got an F on his paper, Bartimaeus had a dream.  He wished to see again. 

As bad as blindness is in the 20th century, it was so much worse in Jesus' day. Today a blind person at least has the hope of living a useful life with proper training. Some of the most skilled and creative people in our society are blind. But in first century Palestine blindness meant that you would be subjected to abject poverty. You would be reduced to begging for a living. You lived at the mercy and the generosity of others. Unless your particular kind of blindness was self-correcting, there was no hope whatsoever for a cure. The skills that were necessary were still centuries beyond the medical knowledge of the day.[2]

None of this makes any difference to Bartimaeus and his dream.  He becomes a public nuisance, calling out to Jesus, to heal his blindness, “Have mercy on me!”

Bartimaeus, “shouts out and says, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ ⁴⁸Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’

There!  Did you hear it?  The voices of the dream stealers and vision crushers.

“Many sternly ordered him to be quiet…”

These is how the Gospel writer Mark, describes the “dream stealers.”  Who are these “many?”  Are they the Jerichoan townspeople who have seen this blind beggar, Bartimaeus sitting on the ground near city gate for so long, dismissing him as simply an unfortunate tragedy of nature, whom neither they nor society had anything to offer?  Did these townsfolk resent Bartimaeus’ embarrassing outbursts, wishing they could get Jesus’ attention, hating the fact that this marginal, annoying guy was trying to horn in on their action to approach the celebrity, Jesus, the new rising star in the Jewish community, the rabbinic teacher who was getting everyone’s attention and happened to be passing through town? 

Who were the “many” the dream-stealers, the hope-crushers, the vision-clouders?  Were they Jesus’ disciples, the guys who followed Jesus in the way, but who had a history and track record for filtering out the riffraff in a desperate attempt to shelter Jesus from the throngs of people who would follow him around?  Remember the woman who later in Jesus’ ministry would attempt to wash Jesus’ feet with expensive oil?  Remember the children who wished to approach Jesus?  The disciples tried to silence them and refuse them access to Jesus too.  Were they the “many” who spoke “sternly” to Bartimaeus and who wanted to shut him down?

No matter who these “many” were, Mark the gospel writer has not missed an amazing irony.  Here’s this blind man sitting on the side of the road.  He’s blind but he has a dream.  He has an amazing vision for his own life and for an application of the power of Christ that the blind man’s neighbors and Jesus’ own companions are too blind themselves to see.

In this story of Jesus and Bartimaeus, in the story of the young man who got an F on his paper, the physical blindness and socio-economic disadvantage are clearly there.  They stand huge and horrible, awful obstacles to the life these two really want to live.  But they aren’t the ones with the most profound disabilities in these stories.  The real blindness belongs to the dream-stealers.  They are the ones who are in power over Bartimaeus, and over the itinerant stable worker’s son.

You see it’s socially unacceptable to have faith, hope, vision.  Most people in society don’t bother and don’t want others to bother.  It’s too complicated, it takes too much time, it’s too messy and unproductive to have faith, to have hope, to have vision.

A very famous woman once said, “There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.”[3]

The person who said that was Helen Keller, a woman of whom I’m sure most have you have heard during the course of your lives.  If you remember, Helen Keller was both blind and deaf.  She could neither see nor hear, but miraculously through the help of amazing tutors and still more amazing commitment and personal hope, learned to read, and write and gained an amazing education.

In 1933, she wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly Magazine, entitled, “Three Days to See.”  In the article, she speculates about what she would do if she had only three days of sight in her entire life.  Like those who ask the provocative question, what would you do if you knew that you only had three days to live, she wonders the same thing with only three days of sight.

She answers by saying that she would want to spend the first day with her friends, her family, the animals and individuals she loved and whose faces she had never seen.  The second day she said she would hit the museums and take in all the wonders of nature, learning of the history of the earth and all its inhabitants.  The third day, she writes, she would spend around the city she loved so much, New York City, with its neighborhoods and traffic and skyscrapers, all which she had never seen. 

In these articles, Helen Keller also wrote these words about seeing and blindness.

“Now and then I have tested my seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. "Nothing in particular," she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.

How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter's sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me. Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I place my hand gently on a small tree and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song. I am delighted to have the cool waters of a brook rush through my open fingers. To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug. To me the pageant of seasons is a thrilling and unending drama, the action of which streams through my finger tips.

At times my heart cries out with longing to see all these things. If I can get so much pleasure from mere touch, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight. Yet, those who have eyes apparently see little. The panorama of color and action which fills the world is taken for granted. It is human, perhaps, to appreciate little that which we have and to long for that which we have not, but it is a great pity that in the world of light the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience rather than as a means of adding fullness to life.

If I were the president of a university I should establish a compulsory course in "How to Use Your Eyes." The professor would try to show his pupils how they could add joy to their lives by really seeing what passes unnoticed before them. He would try to awake their dormant and sluggish faculties.

You see when folks tell blind Bartimaeus to pipe down and not bother Jesus, when Jesus hears Bartimaeus crying out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  And the “many sternly order him to be quiet.” He answers in a very interesting way.  He doesn’t speak to Bartimaeus first, responding to Bartimaeus’ pleading.  He instead turns to the “many” the folks around him and Bartimaeus, the disciples or the townsfolk.  He turns to the “many,” and rebukes them, without being overt.  Maybe he rolls his eyes and shakes his head, maybe he calls out with a loud stern voice himself, maybe there were other words that haven’t made the journey through time to us on these pages.  What we do find is that Mark, the Gospel writer says, “

⁴⁹Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”

Jesus, speaks to the doubters, the dream-stealers and subtly puts them in their place.  Like Helen Kellers hired professors, through whom she would teach sighted people how to really see.  Jesus is teaching those who are blind in their souls. 

Between the lines, perhaps we can hear him say, in the words of Helen Keller, “those who have eyes apparently see little… he says, “don’t you see, Bartimaeus is blind, but he’s the only one who sees clearly the miracle and the power that is before him.  Learn from him.  Take advantage of this power yourself”

And as final punctuation on his point, he heals Bartimaeus and Bartimaeus joins Jesus on his way.

Jesus opens Bartimaeus’ eyes, but he also intends to open the eyes of all those other sighted people who have no vision to see the miracles before them.  He teaches them through his relationship with Bartimaeus that the world isn’t as limited and closed in and dark and predictable as the dream-stealers would tell the dreamers they are.

Jesus performs two miracles that day: 1. the physical healing of the blind man Bartimaeus. 2. the souls of the dream-stealing many, the stern voiced throng that would silence a dreamer’s cry.

But, those two miracles can take hold only if those doubters saw, or chose to accept what Jesus offered that day.  We don’t know what happens to al those folks gathered that day.  We know only that Bartimaeus was healed and chose to follow Jesus.  But what about the many?  Were they really healed?  Did they truly accept what hope and miracles Jesus was offering them?  You know as well as I that there some dream-stealers who even after witnessing Jesus that day went home mumbling and grumbling maybe that this crazy rabbi was wasting time with blind beggars or that the traffic jam around the miracle scene kept too many people from getting home on time for dinner.

What about you?

Do you have the vision of these miraculous blind folks?  Do you have the dreams of Bartimaeus? Of Helen Keller?  Of a poor schoolboy?  Or are you a well meaning, “don’t rock the boat” saying, practical, realistic, logical dream-stealer?

Ask my wife, I know I myself am both.  Sometimes each of us take the power of Christ for granted.  We don’t see it, we don’t take advantage of it. 

Here in the church, we are the body of Christ.  In our fellowship, in our gathering together, the Holy Spirit, the power and the miracle of Christ is given as a gift.  Do we value it?  Do we understand its power?  Do we see what we can do with it?  Do you realize what we can do together if we draw together our gifts and follow where Jesus would lead?

We, as Jesus was to the “many stern” dream-stealers, can and must recognize the vision and hopes of others around us, and to interpret to the world around us that hope and vision and dreams that Christ himself would have upheld, the dreams cherished by the marginalized, the ignored, the weakened and those that society would ignore.

Lets use our gifts, our sight, our resources as people of God to hear the call of world for help and to respond as Christ would have us do.           Amen.

 

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Christian Ambition

Mark 10:35-45

October 26, 2003

The Request of James and John

³⁵James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” ³⁶And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” ³⁷And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” ³⁸But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” ³⁹They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; ⁴⁰but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

⁴¹When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. ⁴²So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. ⁴³But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. ⁴⁵For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

.

Have you ever been involved in a church community where every aspect of church life was a power struggle?  Where every time certain people stood to speak in public before the church, half of the rest of the congregation would either visibly roll their eyes or turn to the person sitting next to them and mumble, “here we go again” or simply think to themselves, “what a power trip this person is on?” 

Have you ever been in a congregation where the pastor is constantly accused by some people in the congregation, usually behind his back, that he or she is playing favorites, perhaps only visiting some people in the congregation and ignoring others?  Or maybe only creating relationships with the major contributors, or the folks who have one particular ethnic background, or somehow privileging the newcomers and ignoring the old generation church families, or vice versa.

Have you ever been in a congregation where when one of the kids in the church stood to sing a solo on a Sunday morning, the pastor would inevitably get complaints on Monday morning from irate parents who wanted their child to sing solos? 

Have you ever been in a congregation where adults would be working behind each others’ backs so that other adults would not be elected to certain positions of power during the congregational meeting?

I praise God that in our congregation, at least in these days, such political problems are not everyday occurrences.

Yet for many congregations, like many offices and places of work, like many city halls or school boards or even families, competitive, political, dishonest and even hateful relationships dominate as some people work hard to control the money, to call the shots, or to simply seek opportunities to grandstand and attract attention.

⁴²So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. ⁴³But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. ⁴⁵For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

These words were Jesus’ response to his disciples, James and John, who along with the Apostle Peter were considered by at least one biblical writer to be the “big three” of the original twelve disciples of Jesus.[1]  These guys both seem to be looking for a way to cash in on the relationship they had with the man they believed to be the Messiah and the Christ.  The guy whom they believed would soon be the greatest ruler history had ever seen and whom they believed to be the Son of God himself.

At least they were honest, they weren’t scheming behind others backs!

“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” they asked ³⁶And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” ³⁷And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”

These two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, were only trying to get what was coming to them, only trying to do what they could to get ahead.

Once I spoke to someone who worked for the AMAA overseas in Armenia.  One of the things the AMAA did in those days, and still does to a great extent today, was to distribute aid, goods and gifts sent to Armenia by donors in North America and Europe.  This worker, from North America, was often in close working relationships with Armenian workers, natives of Yerevan and other cities within which the AMAA had a presence and was working.

He said that the AMAA was having great difficulties at the time, in the early 1990’s not long after the earthquake in 1989, finding local folks who could be used as volunteers and even as employees of the AMAA.  “Many people want to receive and even withhold some of the aide they are being asked to distribute, for themselves,” said this North American employee of the AMAA.  “If I’m holding the honey pot, I should receive most of the honey,” was apparently a popular saying and reflects the logic of many people, who were survivors of seventy years of Soviet communism.  The AMAA worked tirelessly, then as now, to employ helpers and workers who lived not by the logic of the fallen, broken world, but of Christ, who said, “⁴⁵For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve”.

Jesus was also the man, whom Mark the gospel writer also records to have said “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  And this time in response to the other of the “big three” disciples of his, Peter, who simply was looking out for Jesus’ best interest.  He had pulled Jesus aside to say “listen you’ve got to be careful about what you say, don’t taunt the chief priests, the elders and the scribes! And don’t talk about how they’re going to abuse you or kill you, because if you talk like that, they will!”

When Peter tried to give Jesus advice like this, he called Peter Satan! Then he gathered all his disciples around himself and said to them,  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Jesus did not exercise power the way the world exercised power.  He did not advocate using the people around him or trampling their hopes and visions and desires, for personal gain.  He insisted on serving them and uplifting them and nurturing them, with humility and love.

Many folks who are in the world and of the world, have no real understanding of the real power that such an approach holds.  They follow the wisdom and the ambition and the road to power that the world of humanity values most and as a result, they often find themselves in despair.

Listen to what  the 19th century Bible scholar G. S. Bowes pointed out regarding the ultimate futility of ambition.  Citing four powerful world rulers of the past, he wrote: "Alexander the Great was not satisfied, even when he had completely subdued the nations. He wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, and he died at an early age in a state of debauchery.  Hannibal, who filled three bushels with the gold rings taken from the knights he had defeated, committed suicide by swallowing poison. Few noted his passing, and he left this earth completely unmourned.  Julius Caesar’s, [armies killed] '…one million of his foes,' and conquered 800 cities, only to be stabbed by his best friends at the scene of his greatest triumph.  Napoleon, the feared conqueror, after being the scourge of Europe, spent his last years in banishment." [2]

Folks look for power and fulfillment for all their ambitions in all the wrong places…

In a seminary missions class, Herbert Jackson told how, as a new missionary, he was assigned a car that would not start without a push. After pondering his problem, he devised a plan. He went to the school near his home, got permission to take some children out of class, and had them push his car off. As he made his rounds, he learned to either park on a hill or leave the engine running. He used this ingenious procedure for two years.

Ill health forced the Jackson family to leave, and a new missionary came to that station. When Jackson proudly began to explain his arrangement for getting the car started, the new missionary began looking under the hood. Before the explanation was complete, the new missionary interrupted, "Why, Dr. Jackson, I believe the only trouble is this loose cable." He gave the cable a twist, stepped into the car, engaged the ignition, and to Jackson's astonishment, the engine roared to life. For two years needless trouble had become routine. Yet, power was there all the time. [3]

Ironically even Napoleon at some point in his life understood the folly of ambition and compared the other three tyrannical world conquerors with whom he has been associated with, of all people - Jesus, “Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal conquered the world but had no friends…Jesus founded his empire upon love and at this hour millions would die for him…He has won the hearts of man, a task a conqueror cannot do.”  [4]

No, Jesus had no love or respect for the ways of people and the world.  But insisted that anybody who wanted to follow him should take up the cross of servanthood and sacrifice that he himself bore and that doing so was itself a source of power. 

⁴³ …whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.

And how does this power of Christ’s reign?  How is it that being humble and refusing the power of the world gives is the avenue by which the power of Christ reigns and rules?

D. L. Moody the popular Evangelist of the 19^th century explained it this way, “…the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Spirit will fill every corner of our hearts. But if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God. We must be emptied before we can be filled.”[5]

Although its impossible to empty our hearts completely of “pride and selfishness and ambition,” we’ve got to work hard to allow room in our hearts and minds and lives for the loving ambitions of Christ.  Humility gives us that opportunity to clear the decks of our own preconceptions, our own ambition and our own selfishness. And it leaves room for Christ’s ambition, which hopes to love another, save another, uplift and nurture another and to spread such values to all the world.

Over the centuries there have been some rulers of this world who have ruled with such power as well:

During the American Revolution a man in civilian clothes rode past a group of soldiers repairing a small defensive barrier. Their leader was shouting instructions, but making no attempt to help them. Asked why by the rider, he retorted with great dignity, "Sir, I am a corporal!" The stranger apologized, dismounted, and proceeded to help the exhausted soldiers. The job done, he turned to the corporal and said, "Corporal, next time you have a job like this and not enough men to do it, go to your commander-in-chief, and I will come and help you again." With that George Washington got back on horse and rode off.[6]

A government official once walked into President Abraham Lincoln’s office and was startled to find the chief executive shining his shoes. “Sir,” he gasped, “surely you do not polish your own shoes!”  “Of course,” replied the humble President.  “Whose do you polish?”[7]

Today, in a few short minutes, we too will engage in a political process.  We will elect officers who in the near future will be installed as deacons and trustees and board members and various other vital positions in our life together.  We will consider topics and items of business that will require our approval, our decisions and our support.  I in no way expect to witness the ambitious, back-biting, political, hateful ways of the world.  Yet to think that any group of humans is immune and protected from such behavior, such motivation or thinking is to be naïve and silly.  We must always guard ourselves against acting out in the un-Christ like and ugly ways that come so naturally to all humanity.

I encourage this congregation, all of us that make up this church, to always, whether today in our meetings or when we finish and head out into the world where we are called to walk our Christian walk, to live as Christ called us to live, to serve for the love of serving Christ and his beloved, to take power humbly, wield it wisely and relinquish it when called by Christ to do so.

For Jesus said, “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant…the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Amen