Two Eyes on Bartimaeus

Propers: The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 30), AD 2021 B

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I see two avenues of exploration here opened unto us with regards to the healing of blind Bartimaeus. The first has to do with his status, and the second with his name.

When Jesus encountered a rich man, not all that long ago, He told him to go and sell all that he had, and to give the money to the poor; then to come follow Jesus. And the man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Among those were almost certainly slaves. The ancient Roman Empire was the sort of slave-centric society that the world would rarely see again up until the antebellum American South. Rome ran on slaves.

And it’s true that slavery in classical antiquity wasn’t the same as it was for early modern Europe and her colonies. It wasn’t race-based, for starters. And slaves could often earn a wage, eventually earn their freedom, often purchasing slaves of their own. There’s at least one account of an imperial slave owning a slave who owned a slave down to the seventh degree. But it’s still the ownership of human beings, which is inherently dehumanizing, inherently cruel.

There were early Christian communities who refused to own slaves; the Syrians were infamous for it. But even those who hadn’t the stomach for outright abolition—such as St Paul, who was surely aware of the results of previous slave uprisings against Rome—nevertheless scandalized polite society by treating slaves as people, with inherent worth and dignity, and furthermore encouraging masters to emancipation. “Welcome him no longer as a slave but as a brother,” wrote Paul.

Even Paul’s writing against same-sex activity must be read in light of masters raping slaves, often child-slaves. More than one Roman was offended when Christians condemned them for that. “Can I not do what I want with my own?” they huffed.

Regardless, that lowest rung of society, those denied human dignity and human worth, that’s exactly who Bartimaeus is. He is a blind beggar. He’s somebody’s son—Bar-Timaeus literally means the “son of Timaeus”—but he’s nobody’s husband, nobody’s father. His disability, his blindness, prevents him from participating in society. He is an outcast, an untouchable, good for nothing; not even a slave. When he cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” the crowd simply wants him to shut up. He has no voice, not even to voice his need.

Yet in proclaiming Jesus “Son of David,” Bartimaeus has already put his neck on the line. He is, in effect, embracing rebellion. By confessing Jesus as the true heir of King David—who lived, mind you, 1000 years before the Christ—Bartimaeus is denouncing the authority of Rome and their puppet House of Herod. Perhaps as a blind beggar he simply has nothing left to lose. Or perhaps it’s because Jewish miracle workers of the day often invoked the name of Solomon, the literal son of David, when they prayed for healings. Solomon, as we learned two weeks ago, was a legendary thaumaturge.

Anyway, Jesus hears Bartimaeus, calls him forward, and asks, “What do you want Me to do for you?” to which he replies, “My teacher, let me see again.” And Jesus says to him, “Go; your faith has made you well”—or, more literally, your faith has saved you. And immediately he regained his sight and followed Him on the Way.

A couple things here you may not have noticed: When Christ calls to Bartimaeus, the blind man throws off his cloak, presumably his only possession, which typically served as both bedroll and cover for the night. He has already divested himself of all he has, in ways that the rich man had found far too daunting. Jesus then says, “Your faith has saved you,” before his sight is regained. Granted, it all happens rather quickly, but even so, it goes faith, then salvation, then sight. The healing is not the salvation; it follows the salvation.

And finally, this episode ends with Bartimaeus following Jesus on the Way—which was the first name, the original name, for the Christian community, the Way of Jesus.

When I served in Boston, lo many moons ago, some folks worshipping at our congregation belonged to a community of blind and partially blind adults. And they took umbrage, understandably, at the Bible’s use of blindness as shorthand for ignorance or deficiency. And it’s true: physical blindness in the Bible typically represents spiritual blindness. “I was blind, but now I see.”

It needn’t always be this way; indeed, many societies view those with physical blindness as being more spiritually aware. They can “see” things, as it were, that the sighted blithely overlook. Odin sacrificed an eyeball for wisdom, as did some of his seers. But keep in mind that the miracles of Jesus are signs: signs both of the blessings that God lavishes generally on all the peoples; and signs of the Church’s proper work as the Body of Jesus Christ. Bartimaeus’ problem is not really that he’s blind. His problem is that people treat him as something less than human because he is blind.

You may not have the power to lay your hands on somebody’s head and miraculously heal them in the Name of Jesus Christ. But when we welcome the lost and the low into our communities, into our hearts and our homes, we are restoring what sin has divided, restoring a fallen society. And when we provide food and shelter and medical care to those in need, in the Name of Jesus, how is it any less miraculous that health is restored by a doctor rather than by a witch-doctor? First the faith, then the salvation, then the restoration. Bartimaeus was welcomed, Bartimaeus was restored, while he was yet still blind.

And that might be the real miracle here, that God welcomes the ones we reject. And that is the miracle that every one of us is capable of performing at any time in the Name of Jesus. To see God in Man is Christianity. It is the Way of Jesus.

Now, the other avenue open to us regarding the story of blind Bartimaeus deals not so much with his societal status as with his very name. As I said, Bartimaeus means “son of Timaeus,” and for whatever reason the Gospel of Mark repeats this explicitly for emphasis: “Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus,” Mark writes. And he appears to juxtapose this quite purposely with Christ as Son of David. What is so important about that name, Timaeus, that Mark feels the need to say it twice?

Perhaps you are familiar with Plato. Scratch that—we are familiar with Plato, whether we realize it or not. Plato is the greatest mind in all of Western philosophy. He was a student of Socrates, who never wrote down a thing, and the teacher of Aristotle, who wrote down pretty much everything. It is commonly quipped that all of European philosophy is but a series of footnotes to Plato, and that 90% of those footnotes were written by Aristotle. It didn’t hurt, mind you, that Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great, who taught the whole known world—including that of the New Testament—how to speak Greek.

Plato is philosophy, in the Western sense of the word. And all of us, to one degree or another, whether or not we acknowledge it, are in fact Platonists. Jews, Christians, Muslims, pagans, all of us are Platonists. And one of Plato’s most famous dialogues is that of Timaeus. Written about 360 BC, Timaeus is Plato taking a stab at an origin myth for the cosmos. He talks about God, the world, the elements, thought-forms, and something called the Demiurge. And Timaeus was highly popular from ancient Rome through medieval Islam and Christendom.

Seen in this light, Bar-Timaeus, son of Timaeus, is the Western wisdom tradition—the Gentiles, the Hellenes, the Greeks—with whom the people of Israel have had an intense love/hate relationship for some three centuries leading up to Jesus; here calling out blindly, desperately, hopefully, for the salvation of our Lord. And Jesus welcomes Bar-Timaeus, accepts his confession, opens his eyes unto faith, and walks with him along the Way. The wisdom of the Greeks is welcomed and awakened by Jesus Christ our Lord: the reconciliation of Athens and Jerusalem.

And if that interpretation seems a little far-fetched, keep in mind that the Gospel of Mark is the only Gospel designed to be memorized and preached in one sitting. You can recite the whole thing in about an hour and a half; I’ve seen people do it. This is the street-corner Gospel, the proclamation Gospel—and it is all written in Greek. The Gospel of Mark is aimed at a Greek-speaking audience, be they Gentile or Jew, in rustic Greek, I’ll grant you, but in the language of Alexander nonetheless.

The people who would hear this—a great number of them at least—would themselves be sons of the Timaeus, the intellectual children of Plato, as are we. And here they would find welcome. Here they would find sight. Here we would find Jesus.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.