HIS EYES WERE OPENED

 

HIS EYES WERE OPENED

Mark writes in a fresh engaging style that draws us into the scene. Take the Bartimaeus story. It’s Jericho: so the place where the Jews first entered the promised land. He is a blind beggar: so he is utterly poor. But he has one thing: curiosity. ‘Who is this one passing by?’ It is Jesus of Nazareth! He starts to shout! ‘Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.’ And many told him to keep quiet. But he shouted even louder.

It is drama as Mark tells it. Jesus responds, ‘Call him here’ and the fickle crowd change their tune and say, ‘Courage! He is calling you.’ Delighted, he throws off his cloak (a precious possession) and goes to Jesus who cures him, ‘Go, your faith has saved you.’ And he follows him along the way.

So much for the story. What does it mean? Jeremiah gives us a clue in the first reading. ‘Shout with joy for Jacob! Hail the chief of nations!’ For some weeks now, we have been reading, implicitly, about the passion – ‘He have his life as a ransom for many’. Today, again implicitly, we are reading of the resurrection. It is not Jesus who spells out its meaning. It is the apostles in the Acts.

‘Everyone was amazed and perplexed … what does it all mean?’ (2:12ff) ‘Then Peter stood up, ‘Make no mistake and listen carefully. ... The whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. … the promise is for you, for your children and for all who are far away, everyone who the Lord our God calls to him.’

Paul will later rejoice, just like Bartimaeus, ‘because of the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I count everything else as loss’ (Phil 3:8). Paul was the most insistent announcer of the news that the hope of Israel was fulfilled in a crucified Messiah. He had been zealous in persecuting Jesus’ first followers but, like Bartimaeus at Jericho, his eyes were opened at Damascus and he entered a long period of ‘formation’ – fourteen years he tells us – before he began his ministry.

And we? Where do we fit into the story? Well, it is all for us too. We have our own blindness in our day. We have only to think of what goes on in our world. And Jesus is there too with us. He can pass us by and leave us in our blindness. Unless! Unless we are curious and searching and cry out to him. He will open our eyes too.

27 October 2024   Sunday 30 B          Jer 31:7-9   Heb 5:1-6   Mk 10:46-52