Last Pentecost

Sermon for Hope Episcopal Church
The Reverend Martha Frances
Year B, Last Pentecost, Proper 29
Christ the King
26 November 2006

Text: John 18: 33-37
Other Readings: Daniel 7:9-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1: 1-8

Today I invite you to remember with me the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” In it, the emperor is a clothes horse. This king of a distant land really likes to dress for success, & he has several outfits to choose from each day, kept ready for his wearing by a whole team of palace servants. This emperor has a closet for every day of the week, but he’s not satisfied; he’s likes to stimulate the economy with new additions to his wardrobe.

Along come 2 “tailors”, they call themselves. They’ve heard of the emperor’s clothes’ fetish, & they have a scam they figure he’ll fall for. They talk their way through the palace security system & tell the king they can make him a get-up that will not only be stunning, but to those who are foolish or aren’t fit for their office, the clothes will be invisible. “What a deal!” figures the king. He can feed his clothes’ fetish & find out which of his attendants are really competent, all at the same time. He sets the tailors up in a corner room near his private quarters, & they go to work. None but the king’s closest aides are allowed to see the progress of the wardrobe, & they don’t dare reveal that, up on the large loom the tailors are using, not one of them sees a blessed stitch of cloth.

Time comes for the king to try on the clothing, whereupon, he’ll lead a parade through the streets of the city in his new outfit. As he dresses, even his wife is stunned to realize that she must not be fit as his queen. Amazed silence greets the king as he appears on the palace steps & descends to his open-air coach, standing as it moves slowly through the streets lined with parade aficionados also eager to catch a look at the king’s new threads. Well, they certainly glimpse a lot more than they have anticipated, but all fear they are unworthy until a young child cries out, above the clamor of horses, “Look! The emperor has no clothes on!”

Indeed, the emperor appears naked to his whole kingdom, his desire to look good & appear clever & brilliant uncovered, & his shallowness obvious to all who spy his naked self. This ruler who judged the world for its earthly values revealed, in the end, his own lack of truth.

Now we turn to Jesus in his simple though seamless garment standing before Pilate in the Praetorium. Pilate, the puppet king in Judea, taunts Jesus as he asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answers Pilate as he often responds to others’ questions designed to trap him. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Jesus includes 3rd persons in the conversation for of course, others’ opinions matter greatly to Pilate. Pilate is trying to find a middle way between this Jesus who seems to be harmless to the State yet is dangerous according to the pesky Jewish leaders.

Pilate continues to quiz him as if he were, indeed, a king, taunting him that it is the chief priests & the Jewish people who have accused him. Ever calm & collected, Jesus responds that he does, truly, have a kingdom but it is not of this world. Jesus doesn’t mean, by the way, that his kingdom is other-worldly, but rather that, in the Kingdom of God, other values than those of this world hold sway. Jesus reminds us that no amount of clothes or position or posturing to accept accolades like the emperor or even some present-day politicians can remove Jesus himself from the kingdom over which he reigns.

Pilate tries again. “So you are a king?” he counters. Jesus still does not flaunt his position as ruler but answers vaguely, turning the focus from himself to the truth. Of course, those who listen to Jesus’ voice belong to the truth, he says, & Jesus does not need to dress himself up in fancy clothes or titles in order to be the truth who comes from God, indeed is God enfleshed.

What a contrast between the Gospel story for Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Christian year, & the fairy tale about a pompous but foolish emperor! That emperor thought he could show his importance by the clothing he put on his body & a magic trick to determine the ability of his staff, yet he was stripped bare & revealed as foolish & pitiful, a mere shell of a man. Jesus, the King of Kings & Lord of Lords [whom we sang about a few minutes ago], makes few claims for himself & only points toward the consequences of his living as God’s faithful son on earth: being stripped bare & hanged on a cross, deprived of all that this world considers essential for success yet exalted even as he is raised on the cross & goes to his death. Of course, we know the rest of the story, don’t we? We are witnesses of his resurrection.

Jesus Christ & his kingdom still stand over against the values of this world, & sometimes we forget this very basic tenet of our faith. We declare as if we believe it that God’s ways are not our ways, & then we question God when we lose a friend or relative in a senseless death or when our lives don’t go our way. Of course, it’s easier to blame God than to evaluate our own actions which may have led us to the natural consequences of our irresponsible actions. Sometimes circumstances happen which really can’t be blamed on our actions but rather are consequences of free will in the world. We cannot, of our own accord, get ourselves out of the scrapes we get into. At those times, we must rely upon the God who died for us yet also rose that we might come to depend upon the will of God who indeed redeems us from all the foolishness we get ourselves into.

And that’s just the point of the celebration today in which we acknowledge Jesus as Lord of our lives. Each year, at the end of this long season of Sundays after Pentecost when we have studied the words & work of Jesus, before we prepare for the coming of Christmas just about a month away, we pause to celebrate Jesus who shows us the Way, the Truth, & the Life. What attitudes & behaviors will you have to modify or give up in order to welcome Jesus the Christ into your life anew, in order to let the Jesus who comes again at Christmas time enter your heart & mind once again & lead you to the peace which the world cannot give? Which false emperors have you been celebrating instead of the true King of kings?

In just a few moments, as I set the table for the Kingdom feast which we offer each Sunday at this altar, we will honor the power of Jesus’ name & praise God for crowning Jesus the Lord of all. For the last week, we have had our attention on all those things we have to be thankful for in our lives, even if a lot is not going as well as we would like. Gratitude for Jesus’ gift of love & truth in our lives allows us to be open to new ways Jesus can also be Lord of more of our lives. Let us end the year in joyful celebration for Jesus as Lord. Next week, we will begin the new Christian year with the first Sunday of Advent, preparing anew for Jesus’ birth both in Bethlehem & in our hearts & lives. Let us end the year in joyful expectation that God is indeed restoring all things as the collect said at the beginning of our worship today. May you crown Jesus the Lord of your life!

Pentecost 24

Sermon for Hope Episcopal Church

The Reverend Martha Frances

Year B, Pentecost 24, Proper 28

19 November 2006

Text: Mark 13: 14-23

Other Readings: Daniel 12: 1-4a [5-13]; Psalm 16:5-11; Hebrews 10: 31-39

There’s probably not a collect of the day that I cherish so much as I do today’s: calling us to hear, read, mark, learn, & inwardly digest the scriptures so that we may embrace & hold fast to them. If you’ve been around me very long, you know I consider Bible study a keystone to growing as a disciple of Christ. However, today’s particular set of scriptures present a challenge to proclamation of the good news. Right here at Thanksgiving time, I find it difficult to give thanks in all things—like these scriptures. Even the epistle passage begins “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Did you feel a little queasy when you responded to the readers’ “The word of the Lord” with “Thanks be to God”? Yet we’re called to wrestle with the whole of the canon of scripture, not just the selections which fall comfortably on our ears. So I began my study determined to discover the good news to proclaim today.

Those who first read this gospel heard Mark’s “little apocalypse” as a people suffering grievously from foreign occupation, not only because of the heavy taxation & limited freedom that Rome imposed but also because various rulers set about to break the Jewish spirit by desecrating the greatest symbol of their faith, the Jerusalem temple. A mere 10 years after Jesus’ death, the mad emperor Caligula attempted to have his image erected in the Jerusalem temple & almost provoked a revolt. In fact, by the year 70, the Jerusalem temple had been destroyed & the strength of the Jewish people broken irreparably. In the midst of such radical upheaval, Mark reports Jesus’ severe preaching about the end times.

Today’s gospel echoes Daniel from the Hebrew Bible. The prophet Daniel refers in horror to the sacrilege that Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid king of Syria, subjected the Jewish people to scarcely 200 years earlier. He had scandalized the Jews by erecting a pagan altar in the Jerusalem temple & sacrificing a pig on it. Further, the Jewish people had the recent history of desolating sacrileges again set up in the temple, causing the people to mourn its being desecrated once again. The end of the world as they knew it was indeed upon them.

What are we modern 21st Century Americans to make of these passages today? Some read such words as “those in Judea must flee to the mountains” & “the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away,” pack up survival kits & head to the Arkansas hills to await the rapture, sure that they & their closest friends & relatives are the only “elect.” Others decide there is no future on this earth & so they fail to plan for tomorrow & oftentimes fail to care for the earth in environmentally-healthy ways. Still others ignore cautions about safe & responsible sexual relations or decide they can get away with improper use of alcohol & other drugs because they might as well eat, drink, & be merry for tomorrow they will die.

Such short-sighted interpretations of what for the first century Christians was a popular form of literature—apocalypse—is like our watching old westerns or police dramas & assuming we can predict the future from them & know how to behave as a result. In fact, Jesus is telling us exactly the opposite in this excerpt from a larger passage. The disciples have just asked him when his predicted passion would take place & what kind of sign to watch for. He responds with a speech which takes up the whole of Chapter 13, only part of which we read today. He really tells them to quit sitting around waiting for life to happen to them & get on with living in such a way that they & others give glory to God & make this world a better place to live.

In our gospel today, Jesus conveys urgency in living as Christ-bearers. He explains that there won’t be time to prepare or get our affairs in order if we haven’t been doing that all along. Jesus tells the disciples not even he knows when the end times will come, nor is it his business to know because God is in charge anyway. Jesus challenges his followers to live each day as if it were their last yet still to prepare for the future since no one knows how long their life will continue.

Jesus’ own caution is not to pay attention to the “false prophets” who will try to interpret signs & omens when not even Jesus can do that, so beware of others who claim such foreknowledge. Jesus says, in effect, “Get out there & start living, sharing my good news, & let God be in charge of when it’s going to end.”

What might this mean to us today? First, it means that we ought to be very careful not to listen to people who want to interpret certain present-day personal crises or more universal happenings like the terrorist attacks on 9-11 to mean that the world is ending. Jesus says that only God the Creator knows when the uncreation will happen. People have been interpreting signs for centuries & will probably continue to do so. From the first century Roman fire blamed on the Christians to the plagues which wiped out whole populations in Europe to the Holocaust, doomsayers have claimed that was the end time. Jesus says only God knows, so where do these folks get off thinking God tells them things God didn’t even tell Jesus?

Secondly, Jesus tells us we need to live our lives with a certain urgency which looks forward to the goodness of life even when the present looks pretty bleak. Even though African-American slaves had few choices in their lives, their attitude toward their lives made much difference in the quality of their living. Remember the spiritual “My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall?” I can just imagine slaves on a southern plantation singing, “You’ll hear the trumpet sound, to wake the nations underground, looking to my God’s right hand, when

The ancestors of some in our congregation saw the perils & plight of their slave life as only temporary compared to the yearned-for eternal life. Spirituals were often code for the next connection on the underground railroad transporting others to freedom in the North. The first singers of these spirituals knew the tension between hope for a better life in the free North & recognition that for some, only life after death would provide release from the travails of their present existence.

The energy of most spirituals proclaims that the slave owners might own their bodies but not their souls & that joy could be found in the midst of sufferings. Just prior to the gospel passage, Jesus tells his disciples a third time that he must undergo suffering & death but that death would not have dominion over him since he would be raised to new life.

When I was vicar at Lord of the Streets, I was often touched by the hopefulness about life which laughs in the face of adversity. Homeless people sharing in Bible study expressed joy at God’s waking them up in the morning & their finding a safe place to celebrate life & to study the Word of God. Although many lacked basics in life, they often found something to give whether it was coins in the collection plate or time volunteering at LOTS. Thanks be to God for those who travel light & teach the rest of us to do so also.

Jesus also tells us that we need to take responsibility for ourselves & for this earth upon which we live. He certainly would join the writer of Hebrews in celebrating responsible activities of the community & maintaining strength to endure. We hear in Hebrews about those subjected to public abuse & persecution urged to be steadfast. Few of us suffer the persecutions many early Christians endured, but sometimes we don’t adequately use the gifts we have been given. We hope you consider prayerfully your own commitment to this community on this stewardship ingathering day & pledge accordingly. Now is the time for Hope to deepen our own spiritual growth & offer a vibrant fellowship to the larger community. What mission outreach is God calling Hope to at present? Strengthening & growing our own St. Michael’s Day School? Providing an after-school program for the teens at Black Middle School? Backing janitors & others in their insistence on minimum wage being high enough to support a family? Providing .7% of our income to help meet the Millennium Development Goals?

Finally, Jesus reminds us in this farewell address in Mark’s gospel that, in the long run, God is in charge & we can rely on that. False messiahs & false prophets will try to distract us from God’s being in charge of our lives, but ultimately, God’s will must be done. Jesus’ upcoming death is certainly a horrible occurrence, but it is not the last word. Jesus has just assured the disciples that he will indeed arise again from the dead. When we are in the midst of difficulties in our lives, we often forget that “this too shall pass,” as we’re told in 12-Step recovery. It will pass because God has the last word. And this is certainly Good News—the Gospel!

Pentecost 23

Sermon for Hope Episcopal Church
By The Rev. Martha Frances
For The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost Proper 27
12 November 2006

What are we doing here today? Why did we gather? I’m sure there are many answers to this question, some more laudable than others, but I know I need to be here for my own spiritual nourishment. I need to come together with you, my church family, at least a couple of times a week to praise God, to sing and hear scripture and pray and fellowship with a group of people who also love God and want to serve Jesus Christ in our daily lives.

I’ll confess to you that I instituted the Wednesday night Healing Eucharist here at Hope as much because I need to be fed with Christ’s body & blood in the middle of the week as for your sakes. Or perhaps I need to be fed regularly for your sakes as well as for mine. We need each other, & we promised in our Baptismal vows as recently as last week to “continue in the apostles’ teaching & fellowship, in the breaking of bread, & in the prayers” which includes corporate worship, one of the Holy Habits we are emphasizing this year in our stewardship drive.

I wish we were able to have Morning or Evening Prayer regularly during the week here at Hope as well. At this time, that would be more of a strain on our liturgical ministers like our lay readers than we can manage, but the more often we pray & praise God together, the stronger a parish Hope will be. Our community fellowship like we will have with our pot luck Thanksgiving feast next Sunday after church is important for our family health also. Please plan to bring a dish and participate next Sunday also.

In this morning’s gospel, Jesus talks about the quality of worship as he contrasts those ostentatious scribes who are all about garnering honor & wealth to the widow who gives all she has to the glory of God’s house & work. Notice that Jesus doesn’t condemn all scribes—a chapter or so back he affirms the one who rightly recognized that love of God & love of neighbor sum up all the other Jewish laws, but here, he lays bare the motives of those who are all about putting themselves & their positions first.

Neither does he support the system which makes the widow the most defenseless person in society. In Jesus’ day, widows couldn’t inherit from their husband’s estate, so those with no family to take care of them were totally dependent upon the generosity of the community. Fortunately, giving alms to the poor was an honor-bound practice of the Jewish community. The widow’s generosity is not about giving money, at least not primarily, but rather about the widow’s giving all that she has, giving her whole self. In this last story before the telling of Jesus’ passion begins in full, Jesus uses the widow as a pre-cursor of himself—she gives her livelihood to others just as Jesus gives his life for others.

What is the result of her selfless giving? We’re not told, but we have a couple of hints. First, she becomes more connected to the community in giving her all to it. But also, we are given the story of Elijah & the widow at Zarephath as a model of selfless giving to encourage us. This widow whom Elijah asks to feed him is willing to give everything she has for her & her son to live on, yet the oil & meal are always just enough for them to survive, perhaps even to prosper. Elijah did as God bade him do, & likewise, the widow did the same. Both of them—as well as her son— were provided for.

These stories aren’t just designed by the Biblical writers to be told during pledge drives once a year in churches down through the ages, but they are witnesses to the power of our generosity in giving of our whole lives to God, giving fully & joyfully, so that we truly can celebrate as we did in the psalm this morning as we say Hallelujah! Let us give of ourselves as did these poor widows generations apart, that we & our community may flourish in Jesus’ name. Alleluia!

Sunday After All Saints Day

Sunday After All Saints Day
Ecclesiasticus 44:1-10, 13-14; Psalm 149; Revelation 7:2-4, 9-17; Matthew 5:1-12
I sing a song of the saints of God…

Hope Episcopal Church, Houston, Texas
5 November 2006
by The Rev’d William E. Dunn

It’s great to see everyone here today. Where we live out in Atascocita near Lake Houston, Halloween has been the only celebration this week. I know we had our own Halloween Carnival her at Hope and many have had their annual wrestling with the propriety of celebrating Halloween. In most places I have lived, people have taken their Halloween fun seriously. I’ll never forget the first year I was a priest, I went into a bank in Conroe where we were living on Halloween morning to take care of an account… everyone was dressed up as you can imagine. One of the employees who was dressed as the devil came up…took one look at me in my black shirt and collar and said… ”Wow, what a great costume!”

I have to admit, that for a moment, the woman’s comment threw me off-stride. When the laughter died down, I found myself pondering even more deeply the occasion we celebrate today, in particular, the question of what it means to “sing a song of the saints of God.”

In my life I have come to treasure those occasions when time itself stands still. Times when things eternal merge with things temporal. When I was in Seminary, a classmate who was a gifted Greek student, used to speak of two Greek words for time that we use in studying scripture:

Kairos which generally translates “God’s time”

Chronos which generally describes “our time”

Today we commemorate the blessed saints—those the writer of Ecclesiasticus writes, who ruled kingdoms, who were renowned by their power…the leaders, the rich, the wise, the prophetic…who received glory and were honored during their time on earth—and those who died without memorial, those who died as though they had not lived. Today is the day for these righteous men and women of mercy, too, for the souls of the faithful departed through the mercies of God not only rest in peace, but their names live to all generations.

One of the customs associated with All Saints Day that I remember from childhood in my hometown parish is that we would be invited to write down on cards the names of loved ones and friends who had died, so that they could be lifted up in prayer. Now, of course, we pray for the departed every Sunday. We are, after all, Easter people, who believe that because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised.

But our prayers for the dead are typically general in nature. The simple custom we observed on All Saints Day was an intentional way for us to remember specifically, those who had gone before.

Even in a small parish like St. Paul’s in Freeport, you can imagine how large the list would grow. As the names were read, stories…the old stories would form in people’s minds…and during the coffee hour, there were always those who would share something about the people behind the names. For a few moments they seemed to live again. It was an outward and visible sign of the memories, the stories that sustained us in our small Christian community. How important and powerful the stories were, because they connected us with THE STORY…THE CHRISTIAN STORY. It was Kairos and Chronos coming together.

There are more than 4,000 saints known by name and nearly 200 listed in the official calendar of the Episcopal Church. What I love about the custom of gathering the names is that it takes the idea of Sainthood—which often gets reserved for the traditional heroes of the faith…Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; the Martin Luthers and John Wesleys…and the modern-day saints, the Desmond Tutus and Mother Teresas—and makes it accessible to common folks like you and me. “For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”

In remembering the stories of our life in Christ, we are reminded that the gospel has power to transform lives. Real lives. Of real, everyday people like you and me. For every “hero of the faith” like Mother Teresa, there have been thousands of lesser-known saints, whose lives were transformed and empowered by God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Let me tell a story this morning that I first heard from Bishop Bill Frey to illustrate.

More than 100 years ago, up in the Wyoming Territory, there were battles between the Native Americans and the White settlers. Some of the Indian chiefs were rather war-like.

But there was one whose name was Washakee, who was a very wise man, and was attempting to persuade the other Indian chiefs to come to some agreement with these White invaders. And Washakee walked a tight rope, trying to be a peacemaker, without too much success.

One day, however, Washakee’s son was killed in a barroom brawl, in a saloon, in a little village near where he lived. Killed by a White man. And Washakee announced publicly that the next morning, he was going to saddle his horse and ride into town with his gun, and begin killing White men until he himself was killed.

There was a young Episcopal priest in that village whose name was John Roberts. Young man, fresh out of Seminary. He heard what Washakee had said, saddled up his own horse, rode out to the Indian encampment after dark. Found the chief’s tent in the middle of the encampment, walked up to it, silently scratched on the tent flap. The tent flap was pulled back and there was Washakee, face-to-face, six inches away from John Roberts. And there was silence.

And Chief Washakee said, “Have you not heard what I said I was going to do to White men tomorrow?” And John said, “Yes, that’s why I’ve come. I’ve come to offer my life for the life of your son.”

And Washakee said, “Why would you do this?” And John said, “Well, I’m single. I have no family. I’m new in the community. No one would miss me. I’ve come to give my life for the life of your son.”

And Washakee said, “What makes you braver than the other White men?” And John said, “If you have a few minutes, I would be happy to tell you.” And the Chief invited him in.

Somewhere between perhaps three and four o’clock in the morning, Chief Washakee gave his heart to Jesus Christ and was baptized in the teepee. And there ensued nine years of peace, real peace, between the Indians and the White men until Chief Washakee died.

In a very real sense, God did an act of new creation there. Washakee had had an old name, which was “Warrior” and “Wise Man.” But God gave him a new name, through telling him the story of Jesus. And letting Washakee discover in that story his own true identity. Once you were called “Warrior,” even “Wise.” Now you shall be called “My Son,” and “Peacemaker.” How blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be the Children of God.

To tell the story of Jesus has the power to transform lives. That’s one of the most amazing things about the gospel. God’s ability to give us new names, new identity. Once you were called Simon, now you will be called Peter…”For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”

Do you see what the gospel does? Veneration of the saints is wonderful, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough to simply praise heroes of the faith. You and I are called to be saints as well. This morning’s reading from Revelation gives a good working definition of sainthood as those “who have come out of the great ordeal…[and] are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple.”

And if we are called to be saints, then the gospel gives us the way to live into our sainthood. Blessedness comes from righteousness, mercy, peacemaking. It takes courage. Doing right, showing mercy are not popular…they go against the grain in every generation. But it is the life to which we are called. And it is a life that cannot be lived without God himself leading the way.

We all have our stories of how each of us has endured one ordeal or another. And we know that there are many in this commnunity we call Hope who are living into this calling. People who regularly give time to feed the hungry or visit the sick. People who speak out when they see injustice. People who work to produce goods and services that sustain our lives in a responsible way. People who take the time to mentor children. People who mourn with the bereaved. The saints of God are alive and well and touching lives every day.

And our number is growing! New people are coming through baptism and confirmation. As an inclusive community, we are called to embrace this community with open hearts, open minds and open doors so that we may spread God’s transforming love to all people. For them and for us, let us declare anew this day our faith in Christ crucified, our willingness to proclaim his resurrection, and our desire to share in his eternal priesthood. “For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”

AMEN+

Pentecost 21

Sermon for Hope Episcopal Church
The Reverend Martha Frances
Year B, Pentecost 21, Proper 25
29 October 2006

Text: Mark 10: 46-52
Other Readings: Isaiah 59: [1-4] 9-19; Psalm 13; Hebrews 5:12-6:1, 9-12

Jesus asked the blind beggar Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Last week, Jesus used the same words as he asked James & John, “What do you want me to do for you? In today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a blind man, & we would think he would know what Bartimaeus needs from him, yet he doesn’t presume. He asks. Jesus acknowledges Bartimaeus’ dignity as an adult human being to speak for himself. Many of you know my opera buddy Ronnie who is also blind. We’ve been going to the opera together for many years. He travels across town alone by bus to the VA Hospital where he has worked ever since college. He has visited South American & skied in Colorado. He once found my car in the Astrodome parking lot when I was hopelessly lost—he has a memory like a steel trap. Yet when we go to dinner, the server invariably asks me what Ronnie wants to eat. How should I know? Ronnie is quite capable of ordering his own dinner.

Jesus respects our capability by entering our lives like a gentleman—by invitation, asking to be received. This morning, at the end of October 2006, Jesus is asking you & me, “What do you want me to do for you?” What is your answer today to Jesus’ question?

This healing story is Mark’s last story before he begins relating Jesus’ passion. Indeed, Jesus & his disciples are already on their way to Jerusalem. “On his way to Jerusalem” is Mark’s shorthand for Jesus’ journey to death on a cross. Jesus is well-known by now, having preached & taught & performed miracles for 3 years. He has collected quite a following—not only his disciples but also a large crowd. He’s popular, & he’s busy.

When Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus, the crowd tries to silence him—he’s far too important for this no-count beggar. But Bartimaeus is persistent: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, can see what the other followers are too blind to see: he calls Jesus “Son of David.” Not even the disciples have eyes to see that Jesus is Messiah. Last week James & John thought they would have special positions in Jesus’ kingdom. They were too blind to see what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah.

Bartimaeus doesn’t ask for a special position. He only asks that Jesus have mercy, have compassion on him. He trusts that Jesus has the power to heal him. Bartimaeus knows that he has nothing to bring to Jesus except his brokenness, his blindness. He calls out, & Jesus calls the blind man to him.

Remember the stories of Jesus’ calling of the disciples? This is not just a healing story but also another call story. Jesus stops in his tracks & says, “Call him here.” The crowd then rushes to cooperate with Jesus. “Hurry up, Bartimaeus; don’t keep the master waiting!” He jumps up, throws off his cloak, & hurries to Jesus. Bartimaeus throws off that which holds him back—his cloak which is also his protection, because he trusts Jesus.

We here in the church sometimes assume that others know what we want or need. I sometimes find out after-the-fact that a parishioner has been in the hospital. As I have been reminded again with Bill’s death, most people yearn to help out if we can just let them know what would be helpful. I’m getting lots of practical help with my upcoming move, yet I have to admit I’m a little uncomfortable asking for that help. None of us wants to be beholden or a bother, yet our acceptance of help is often a gift to the other person.

Several weeks ago, we heard about the rich young man who said he wanted eternal life, but when Jesus told him to get rid of what held him back, he went away sorrowful. The rich young man couldn’t let go of his cloak—his protection, his wealth—could he?

Bartimaeus, on the other hand, comes to Jesus eagerly & answers, “Let me see again.” Bartimaeus doesn’t hesitate. He knows that Jesus can heal him. Bartimaeus can already see better than many who are not blind. Jesus declares that Bartimaeus’ own faith has healed him. He regains his sight “immediately.” Do you hear the urgency in this story? When he can see again, what does he do? He doesn’t hesitate to follow Jesus, “on the way.” “The Way” was the first name given to the Christian movement after Jesus’ death, long before his followers were called Christians.

Perhaps Jesus is asking you this morning, “What do you want me to do for you today?” No matter how long you have followed Jesus “on the way,” this journey with Jesus requires repetitive letting go as we continue to respond to Jesus’ call to discipleship. Bartimaeus apparently became a disciple known to Mark’s church. His life changed radically as a result of Jesus’ healing him, of that we can be sure.

First, a seeing man was expected to earn his own way, to take on responsibilities not expected of a blind man. Because of his keen insight, he likely became a leader in the Christian community. It was dangerous to be a designated leader of Jesus’ followers. Tradition says all of Jesus’ 12 closest disciples save John the beloved were martyred for their faith. How many more died violently on “the way” they had chosen with Jesus? We don’t know if Bartimaeus was also a martyr, but his life as a disciple was radically different & surely more dangerous.

What cloak of protection do you still wear in your journey with Jesus? I like the image of shedding a coat because most of us have layers of protection we have to shed one at a time. As we are emphasizing this week in our stewardship campaign, the habits of daily prayer & lifelong spiritual study help us discern what the next layer is we need to peel off. Participating in a group for prayer & study supports us in our growth in faith.

What have you been too blind to see thus far in your life? Are you too comfortable in your blindness to reach out for healing for Jesus to open your eyes to areas you haven’t had faith to follow him? No one can answer that question for you, but a hint might be whatever it is that comes to your mind but you try to dismiss quickly. May you mull over the question this week.

Remember, the question is not what we can do on our own; the question is what we want Jesus to do for us. How are we willing for Jesus to strengthen us & prepare us to do? Although we’ve certainly had challenges in joining our 2 churches, who would have thought we would become one community this soon? Our Halloween Carnival yesterday couldn’t have happened without many folks working together. Yes, we still have kinks to work out, but perhaps those are the areas we need to study about & pray for as we make our stewardship commitment this fall & honor it through the next year. Much still needs to be done in order for Hope accomplish what Jesus is calling us to do under the guidance & strength of the Holy Spirit. Jesus doesn’t expect us to operate alone. Jesus doesn’t say, “What do you want to do?” Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” May the people of Hope respond ever more faithfully to Jesus’ overture.