PHOTO: Diana Wilcox
October 27, 2024: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard. Amen.
The lesson we heard from the letter to the Hebrews started with “The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office.” Nice, right? As you might guess, this priest isn’t planning on preaching from THAT text today.
I would much rather talk with you’all a bit about the gospel reading from Mark 10, in which a blind man calls out to Jesus, is healed, and then follows Jesus “on the way” to Jerusalem.
Now, there is a lot to say about this very short story, but one thing I saw in a commentary had me rolling. It read, I kid you not, “While a symbolic reading offers insight, it has blind spots.” Seriously? A symbolic reading about a blind man offers insights and blind spots???” Needless to say, we need not dwell on that too much. Instead, let’s begin by taking a look at just the first two sentences, because they are packed with subtext that we, with our twenty-first century lens, might miss. Remember, it said “Jesus and his disciples 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.”
First – in this gospel that, as I have often noted, is always in a hurry and generally not one to offer long narratives, why the need to repeat a reference to the city of Jericho? Secondly, why the need to tell us twice that our blind guy Bart was the son of Timaeus? Yes, the actual text spells it out only once, but that meaning was already in the actual name: Bar-Timaeus. It literally means “son of Timaeus.”
Before we begin, remember when it is that this gospel is likely to have been written. Most scholars point to a time around 68-70 CE, about 35-37 years after the resurrection. This is the first gospel to be written and comes after the letters of St. Paul, and at or just after, the time of the second destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. To this author, standing amidst the dust and rubble of the temple, the Western wall the only remaining part of what was once the center of Jewish faith life, the good news of Jesus, son of God, as he exclaims at the opening of the gospel, was critical for all to understand. Keep this in mind, let’s return to this story, and the opening lines.
Starting with the first thing about Jericho…it cannot be lost on those earliest listeners of this story the meaning of this city to the faithful. Not only was Jericho only about 17 miles from Jerusalem, so clearly we are heading toward that important city whose temple walls were left in ruin, but Jericho itself is central to another time when walls came tumbling down. In that story, as we know, it was Joshua, who led God’s people, and the walls of the city of Jericho fell.
That was a fascinating story to be sure, but what has Jesus to do with that? Well, it is all in the name – Joshua, or Yehoshua in Hebrew. The Greek translation of Joshua is, drum roll please…Jesus! So, what is the author up to? Well, perhaps he wanted his listeners to consider a question – whose shout will tear down walls now? Bartimaeus to Jesus? Crowds in Jerusalem shouting “Hosanna in the highest” and then “crucify him?” Jesus’ loud cry from the cross? The author just a few chapters later will tell the story of Jesus saying to his disciples, as they stood in the shadow of the great temple walls, “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’”
So, what these earliest listeners would be primed to understand just by this reference to Jericho, is that a new Joshua was about to bring down some mighty big walls.
And then we need to consider why the double naming of Bart. This is one that could have several possible meanings, but the one I think is most interesting and plausible is that it is a figurative reference to Plato’s Timaeus, who delivers “Plato’s most important cosmological and theological treatise, involving sight as the foundation of knowledge.”[1]
Now, we sometimes think that folks in the time of Jesus had no knowledge of science or philosophy, but that is not the case at all. Greek philosophy and language spread throughout all of the known world during the Hellenistic period, and was not only well known to writers like St. Paul, who was university educated, but to the authors of the gospels. Greek philosophy also heavily influenced the earliest church theologians.
So, enough of history, and back to Bart, or rather, to Plato and Timaeus. Timaeus is one of those in conversation with Plato in his dialogs about the nature of the world and of humanity. Timaeus, in his bit of the dialog “begins with a distinction between the physical world, and the eternal world.”[2] He says “The sight in my opinion is the source of the greatest benefit to us, for had we never seen the stars and the sun and the heaven, none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would ever have been uttered… God invented and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence, which are akin to them…that we, learning them and partaking of the natural truth of reason, might imitate the absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our own vagaries.”
So, why this reference to Timaeus, especially as we rarely get the name of anyone who is healed, including the previous guy back in chapter 8? Was he, as one scholar believes, throwing off the cloak of philosophy as he went forward to follow Jesus? Maybe. But perhaps it is simpler than that. Perhaps it is meant to remind people of what Timaeus said about sight. That sight allows us to “behold all that is before us, which in its vastness and beauty expose an intelligence beyond our comprehension, which draws us closer to God.” And Bartimaeus, being restored in his sight, beheld God standing before him in the face of Jesus Christ, and because he had that experience, he was awakened to his part in the cosmos, and followed Jesus on the way to Jerusalem and the cross.
Now, all of this has been a lot of fun for folks like me who are biblical nerds and love exegetical deep dives into Greek texts and philosophy, but what does any of it have to do with us and our lives today?
Well, one thing is that we might want to first consider what we are doing with our own sight?
A few weeks ago, many across this area got to see something amazing – the aurora borealis, or Northern lights. It was absolutely stunning! But, one story I heard really struck me. It was at the Clergy Conference. We were blessed to have as a speaker and leader Dr. Deirdre Goode, an Academic Dean at two local seminaries, and biblical professor. She and her wife live up in Maine, and they were so excited to see the aurora, that they drove to a special place, but it was far too dark to even drive the roads. They came back to where they began and got out of their car.
As they stood looking up, they couldn’t see anything. But as their eyes adjusted, Dr. Goode said that they saw a “disturbance in the darkness.” Getting out their telescope and phones and cameras, they were able to see the aurora that was waiting for them to behold.
Many of us experienced something similar – that we could sense the presence of a change
PHOTO: Diana Wilcox
in the sky, but couldn’t see it without help. Living in Sussex County, without much light pollution, I couldn’t see it either until I used my iPhone and wow! There in the night sky was this awesome mix of pink, green, and purple. While not what one might experience further north, it took my breath away. It felt like a glimpse of the eternal world from the physical world. And behold, “the courses of intelligence in the heaven” did seem so near to me, and perhaps to you as well.
But for this experience to become more than a neat snapshot to post on social media, we need to remember Timaeus and his words that we may “behold all that is before us, which in its vastness and beauty expose an intelligence beyond our comprehension, which draws us closer to God.” Of course, for followers of Jesus, we don’t need an iPhone camera to do this. No, we just need to be like Bartimaeus and have a willingness to let Christ in our hearts that he might open our eyes.
And because of that, because through Christ we see the vastness of God’s creation, because we have experienced the healing grace of Jesus here at this table – we, like Bartimaeus, cannot turn back! We must follow him and by our lives in him make a few walls come tumbling down today:
Walls of hate and division.
Walls of cruelty and ignorance to the needs of others.
Walls of arrogance and abuse of God’s creation.
That is our response to this glimpse of God we experience here and in the world. It isn’t just philosophy, or limited soley to auroras. As one of our parishioners, Michelle Ryndak, a scientist herself, once wrote: “There were Christians who openly expressed that science was opposed to God and caused people not to believe. Honestly, this puzzled me. I felt nothing could come as close to conveying the mystery and deepness and vastness of God and life and creation as science. When God said, “Let there be light,” did [God] flip a heavenly switch on a wall, or did an “extremely dense point explode with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe?” Does this not sound like work on the scale of “God?”…The rejection of science was, to me, a rejection of God.
Who needs Timaeus when you have a scientist who sees an “intelligence beyond our comprehension,” in the universe we see and explore each and every day? That is what being a child of Timaeus means. That is what being a child of God means!
So, today, as part of our stewardship season, you will receive a gift blessed at the altar. This is not a thank you for being a good parishioner by coming today, though I want to say Thank You! Thank you for choosing to share of your time and your gift of presence with us. It means more than you can know to me and to all of the rest of us gathered here. No, this gift is to remind you of what you heard today. It is a piece of sea glass.
Many find that they experience God’s presence in the universe best by looking up at the stars, as Timaeus spoke about, but others find the vastness of the ocean touches their hearts, minds, and souls in much the same way. Sea glass is made from broken bits of bottles that, over the course of time, get tossed and turned in the ocean, changing them in the process. They start as pieces with sharp edges that will cut, and glass too dark to see through. By the time the ocean has done it’s work, they become softer and beautifully unique.
Let these little bits of glass remind you of the ocean, inspiring you, no matter where you are, “to behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply them to the courses of your own intelligence.” Or put another way, let it help you to see God in all things, and to act with that knowledge deep in your heart.
Let it also remind of you this place, your spiritual home, and the importance of your presence here – physically on Sundays. You may be one person, but when joined with all the others, we truly become something to behold. For here we are nourished in Christ, our rough edges are healed, and we made ready once more to join him on the way.
We need to do this now more than ever, because the world has grown dark in some places. We feel it deeply as we approach the election results, and the aftermath that will entail here in the United States, and most especially for those who are suffering from poverty, hunger, war, and neglect all over the world. And yet we know there is a “disturbance in the darkness,” and with our knowledge of the love of God found in Christ Jesus, we see the beauty of God’s creation, and the vastness of God’s love – no camera lens required.
So, let us shed our cloaks and follow him – be him – on the way that others may also see the wonder of God in all creation, and come to experience the unconditional healing grace and love of Christ Jesus by his light shining in us and through us.
Amen.
For the audio, click below, or subscribe to our iTunes Sermon Podcast by clicking here (also available on Audible):
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing_the_blind_near_Jericho
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timaeus_(dialogue)
The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
October 27, 2024
Pentecost 23 – Year B – Track 1
1st Reading – Jeremiah 31:7-9
2nd Reading – Hebrews 7:23-28
Gospel – Mark 10:46-52
