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| Jesus heals the blind beggar |
- Job 42:1-6, 10-17 and Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22) •
- Jeremiah 31:7-9 and Psalm 126 •
- Hebrews 7:23-28 •
- Mark 10:46-52
The Christian Year is drawing to a close. Two of the Sundays
between now and Advent are special – All Saints Sunday (Nov 4) and Christ the King (Nov 25), but for the rest,
the readings continue as they have for several weeks past -- passages from the Epistle to the Hebrews are set
alongside passages from the Gospel of Mark. It is an interesting, but also
slightly puzzling combination. For the most part Mark relates episodes in which
Jesus figures as a teacher, a prophet, a leader and a healer. The extracts from
Hebrews, on the other hand, insist again and again that we should see Jesus as priest. This is a label Mark never
employs. The readings for this week follow the same pattern. Mark tells the story of
Bartimaeus, a blind beggar whose persistence finally wins him the attention of
Jesus. His request is plain and simple – ‘I want to see again’ and
his sight is indeed restored. How does this healing ministry
fit with the description of Jesus in Hebrews as ‘high priest, holy, blameless,
undefiled’?
Jesus’ ‘healing ministry’ is not as straightforward
as it appears. First, in many of the examples Mark gives us – the crazy man by
the lakeside, the woman with the hemorrhage, the centurion -- Jesus doesn’t
seek out the sufferers. They push themselves forward. Second, he doesn’t
claim his powers have healed them, but says ‘Your faith has made you well’. And third, when healing takes place – to the
astonishment of lookers – the disciples are told not to spread the word, to keep it secret. All these are clues
that in the context of Jesus ministry, physical healing, however much it matters to the individuals concerned, must not be the main focus. We will have lost its true meaning if we do not see it pointing to things spiritual.
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| Icon of Jesus the High Priest |
‘Actions speak louder than words’. When say this we are
thinking of cases in which deeds communicate a message with a force that mere
words would lack. This is how it is with the actions of Jesus. Often, the
healing miracles should be interpreted as spiritual ‘signs’ rather than medical ‘wonders’.
Bartimaeous embodies both the sort of deep longing that has the strength to persist,
and a faith founded on absolute trust. His physical blindness, and the
restoration of his sight, provide Jesus with an occasion that he can use to prompt
the onlookers, and Bartimaeous, and us, to a new awareness of spiritual
blindness. The dark and narrow minded paths in
which our lives so often go is the blindness from which Christ continues to free us, if only we sincerely long for him to do so. He does this, Hebrews tells us, because on the Cross he makes a sacrifice that
renders every other sacrifice redundant. Priest and healer, it seems, are not
so far apart after all.
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