Father
John McGinn, Rector
Some
psychiatrists were at a convention.
“What was your most difficult case?” one asked the other. “Once I had a patient who lived in a pure
fantasy world,” replied the other. “He
believed that a wildly rich uncle in
Bartimaeus had a
dream. One day he would see. It was a foolish dream; at least it may have
seemed so to his friends. Everybody knew
that people with vision problems did not spontaneously regain their sight. There were no reputable eye doctors in first
century Medea. And even if there were, Bartimaeus was
a beggar. He didn’t even have pockets to
carry his insurance card. No doctor was
even going to let him in the waiting room.
We don’t even know of his proper name.
Bartimaeus means
son of Timaeus. He was a nobody; a blind beggar sitting beside the road. The object of pity and
scorn.
Someone
told Bartimaeus that
a man named Jesus would be passing by; a man who had the reputation for healing
those who were in distress. In an act of
desperation, Bartimaeus
started crying out in a large voice “Jesus, son of David, have mercy
on me.” The people around him rebuked
him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have
mercy on me.”
Have
you ever done that? Cried out to Jesus,
“Have mercy on me”? Perhaps it was a
crisis; the police called, one of your children had been in an accident or the
doctor told you the lump was malignant or your
Marriage
was in trouble and you thought all hope was lost. Did you cry out like Bartimaeus
“Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”
If you haven’t done that at some point, I can assure you that your time
will come.
Fortunately
over the din of the crown, Jesus heard Bartimaeus. He
stopped and said to his disciples, ‘"Call him here." And they called the blind
man, saying to him, "Take heart; get up, he is calling you." So
throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.” (What a picture, Bartimaeus
throwing his cape to the side.) Bartemaeus jumped to his feet and came to
Jesus. He wasn’t going to stay stuck in
his pain, not if he could help it.
You
and I see it all the time, people stuck in their pain. The spurned spouse
who will not let go of her rage that she feels toward her ex. The widow/er who won’t let go after the loss
of their wife/husband. And parents who
can not cope with their child are debilitating disease, who
take it out on each other instead of leaning on each other for
support. We can sympathize even if we
can not feel the pain that they are feeling, since we have not one through it
ourselves.
Still
there comes a time that for our own well being and the well being of those
around us we must throw aside the cloak of our suffering and leap to our future
and come to Jesus with the healing of our hearts. I feel like that when the reaction to the
blows of life are serious and there is a depression, or fear or even a kind of
comfort in feeling sorry for one’s self you will stay in a lifeless hell unless
you force yourself to get unstuck and move on with your life.
We
don’t ask for pain, but we truly are in control of what we do with our
pain. We can fight it and suffer or we
can accept it and learn from it. I
believe healing begins with love and a compassion for others. I think Bartemeaus understood that. He leapt into action. He called to Jesus. “What do you want me to do for you?” asked
Jesus. And Bartimaeus
said, “Teacher, I want to see.” “Go,
your faith has healed you” said Jesus.
Immediately
Bartimaeus
could see and he joined Jesus along the road.
We love a success story. After his sight was returned, he joined Jesus
on his way. No longer was he a beggar
sitting along the road, he followed Jesus.
That tells me that Bartimaeus went from a giver to a receiver.
There are some people in this church who are sitting along the road,
crying out for Jesus. You have been
heard. Your situation may be
desperate. You thought you could control
your life, but it hasn’t worked out hat way and you are nearly to your wits
end. My prayer for you is that this will
be a passing thing. That healing will
come to you and those you love quickly.
If this is a fatal thing, I hope there will come a time when you can let
go of your pain and move forward.
There are people at
A couple of weeks ago at the
I wonder if there are some of you who have gone through life
unscathed. Life has been gentle with you so far. You have seen others in pain, but so far your
life has been ok. You are grateful, and
you should be. You also follow Jesus and
you try to make a difference in someone’s life, which is one of the reasons you
are involved in
There is a group of people in this church who have been praying
for people and for God’s healing in their life.
It is just wonderful. You will
discover if you get involved in something like that in reaching out to others,
you are building up resources so that when you come upon a hard time in your
own life they are there.
One of the best loved hymns in the old Methodist Hymnal is
George Matheson’s “O love that will not let me go.” It was many years ago in January 1982 that
this Hymn appeared in the official paper of the church. I don’t know if you have heard this hymn, but
you might recall that the third verse pursues the theme of a rainbow. It is interesting that in the original,
Matheson wrote “I climb the rainbow in the rain” and somehow this evolved into
“I trace the rainbow through the rain.”
The reality that some people forget is that the blind Matheson wrote it,
but he was in fact climbing a rainbow.
This may be shades of Judy
I hope that you discover the “Joy that seekest through the pain.” Just as important, I hope that you are bringing joy to others in pain. That like Bartimaeus, you have become a follower of Jesus on the road. AMEN