"Reforming the Ordinary" (Mark 10: 46-52)

"Reforming the Ordinary" (Mark 10: 46-52)Preached by Sam Locke on 10/28/18 at St. Peter's United Church of Christ (Carmel, IN)

Audio File

The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus

46 They 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. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

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The last several weeks we have been studying the Gospel of Mark, specifically taking a look at the ministry of Jesus through his teaching and healing.

We have a term for this time of year in the church, it is called ordinary time. This term is one of those things I always kind of wondered about when I saw it printed somewhere, but also one of those things where I didn’t really care enough to look any deeper. Insert a seminary classroom where I’m forced to care about such things, and the term doesn’t get any less perplexing. Not helped by the excitingly green liturgical colors, one cannot blame you for assuming a relationship to our default definition for the word ordinary - something plain, boring and vanilla.

But here is this morning’s curveball: the definition of ordinary has some nuances. Ordinary can mean plain and boring, adjectives I hope you don’t apply to this morning’s meditation. But, in the context of the church’s liturgical calendar, ordinary also means ordered. The word ordinary comes to us from the Latin word ordinalis and means a sequence, specifically a numbered sequence. Put another way, it is the way things are planned to unfold. Ordinary is what is supposed to happen. Ordinary has an element of providence, which at least one of the leaders we recognize on this Reformation Sunday might get excited about.

Focusing in on this morning’s text, it is important to note that next week, we’ll move out of Mark. The next story after our passage this morning begins the Palm Sunday narrative, and we are just not ready for that. There are more things to unfold. There are more things to do. It is a good place for a pause because maybe we yearn for just a little bit of ordinary in our lives. As we prepare Halloween costumes, see the Christmas decorations coming out in Target and enjoy fall pastimes like football and nasty political ads, an ordinary day seems pretty appealing.

If we are looking for ordinary, the author of Mark doesn’t disappoint us this morning. Don’t get me wrong, this is a powerful story of Jesus healing a blind person through faith. It’s a pretty big deal. But, being the final healing story we get about Jesus, the story hardly seems like a grand finale fitting of the Messiah.

So far in Mark we have been presented with sixteen healing stories. We’ve met unclean spirits, demons and lepers. We’ve encountered children, massive crowds and even a mother-in-law. Again, not to say the blind beggar isn’t important - he absolutely is - but, compared to these other encounters, it does seem quite ordinary.

As a second-career pastor with a professional background in marketing, my project plan for this finale would have looked considerably different, a little less ordinary. The story we heard this morning is not the way I would have planned it.

I wouldn’t have planned the final healing in Jericho. When I hear Jericho, I can’t help but sing in the back of my mind the children’s song about Jericho … Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho … [and the walls came tumblin’ down]. We marketers don’t like our readers getting sidetracked, so I would have chosen a different place simply because of the name. But, more substantively, at this point in history, the walls are long gone. Jericho, in this moment, is the ancient equivalent of a resort town. Even today, while the desert has taken a toll on the lush landscape from two thousand years ago, visitors are still greeted by an enormous and luxurious Intercontinental Hotel.

No, I don’t want a resort town. I’d plan this finale for a ragged town with so many people in need you couldn't avoid them. A healing for the masses that would enshire Christ’s power in the hearts and minds of everyone around them. Instead we get a blind beggar, just like the ordinary people in need we walk by every day. We know the need is there and, intellectually, we may believe our Christian duty is to help him. Another day. I’ve got things to do. I have got to make an impact with my giving, I have to be strategic. The final story of healing can’t be a handout to a blind beggar. No, it must be one of those one-in-a-million “pulled ‘emself up by the bootstraps” stories.

Every marketer knows you don’t bury the lead. This is the first reference to Christ as the Son of David. This isn’t just a genealogical fact. The phrase Son of David is what begins to link Jesus to generations of Jewish royalty, a title with the power to credential him into making an even bigger impact among a larger pool of people. The author of Mark, however, has a mere blind beggar make this proclamation and we skip over it as though it has no meaning at all. The world needs to know how powerful Jesus is. The world needs to know how powerful we are. The world needs to know how powerful I am.

I would have let the conflict simmer a little longer. Who doesn’t like watching a good dumpster fire? Think about how people make fun of the behavior at political rallies, unless it is the rally they attend. And how the people at those rallies make fun of the people not there. Yea, I would have included more drama in the grand finale. Signs and balloons. Maybe even a well-scripted fist-fight or two. But, no, the author of Mark, never one to use too many words, gives us a nonchalant telling of the person who is the physical manifestation of God healing someone as though it were no more exciting than where we’ll eat lunch after I’m done talking this morning.

I wouldn’t have asked the blind person what they wanted, I would have told them what they needed. So many things could go wrong, this has to be scripted better. What if the beggar asks for something Jesus can’t deliver? Or what if the beggar is trying to trick him? No, we know what the person needs. Surely the Son of David knows better than this blind beggar. It would need to look more like it does today. Affluent people proclaiming to know how to fix poverty without ever talking to a poor person. Proclaiming distaste for the gay “lifestyle” without ever having asked a gay person about their life. Surely this formula will make the story better.

You can bet the heroine of my story would have taken credit for the healing. If we read the text closely, Mark doesn’t directly say Jesus was the one who did the healing. We assume so. That’s probably what happened based on the context we have, but Mark doesn’t say it. What does Mark say healed the blind beggar? Faith. Faith … please! Jesus did that! Take the credit. After all, it isn’t my Christian values leading me to doing the right thing, it is the sheer magnitude of my awesomeness.

Finally, we would have celebrated at the end. We would have celebrated hard. None of this simply going about our business walking down the road to Jerusalem stuff, there would have been caterers and balloons and maybe even a marching band. The world would have known about this healing. The world needs to know how great Jesus is. How great we are. How great I am.

Yes, my grand finale would have looked a lot different.

But, of course, the author of Mark got to write the story first. In pure Markan fashion, we get a story rich on details but short on hyperbole. One with lots of messages but very few words.

This story, the final healing story of Jesus Christ, is written in a way that makes it seem downright ordinary. Not in the numbered sequence kind of way, but in the vanilla sort of way.

No, it’s not how I would have written the story. And that’s probably good because, sometimes, my my siblings in Christ, the way we write our own stories is pretty terrible. We could use a little more ordinary.

We could have an ordinary conversation with a close friend, but instead we use that time to post our lunch on Instagram.

We could demand our politicians on both sides act like ordinary adults, not middle school bullies. Instead, we join them. We call people on the other side of an issue names and then wonder why they don’t want to converse with us. If only they would listen, we explain, all the while keeping our ears closed.

We could help the blind beggar but the truth is we really don’t even notice him. That would be way too ordinary. Instead, we help in ways to get our names on pumpkins in a gas station or be recognized in other ways for how great we are. If someone else doesn’t know about it, does it event count?

We don’t like the ordinary, it is just too, well, ordinary. We live in a world where we can get a package from Amazon in an hour, get a message to the other side of the planet in mere seconds and even have McDonald’s delivered without ever leaving our couches. My kids will grow up in a society will they will never have had to wait for anything. And, let’s be honest, we love how thrilling that is. And, maybe, these thrills are okay. I just hope we don’t lose site of the ordinary in the process.

Sometimes, ordinary can be wonderful. We can’t always be on the mountaintop, we can’t always be “on.” It is okay to enjoy the ordinary. Think about putting on your favorite sweater on the first crisp fall day, the smell of your favorite recipe being made, the joy of simply hearing a baby giggle or seeing a child smile.

When I think about it, the happiest moments of my life have all been rather ordinary in the grand scheme of the world’s history, but they are moments I wouldn’t trade for anything. What are the memories you cherish the most? Are they grand-finale worthy, or simply an ordinary part of how your life unfolded?

How does our perspective of this story of the blind beggar, and our own lives today, change when we think of ordinary in this deeper way - not of being vanilla but of being part of the way our life has ordinarily transpired. Sure, in this moment, things may not be unfolding the way you or I might have have hoped or planned, but there is always progression. Ordinary always moves forward - a numbered sequence - and it never stops. Watching the progression reminds us to be joyful recipients of God’s irresistible grace.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean resigning to our circumstances of the moment: we don’t have to accept the status quo, we don’t have to tolerate abusive situations, and we certainly cannot waiver in our obligation to build a better community for one another.

The promise of a reformed view of the ordinary does, however, give us the hope to carry on. The ordinary gives us the resolve we need to play the long game.

When I’m annoyed at another picture of a chicken sandwich on Instagram, I can smile at someone else sharing their ordinary with me.

When you hear a politician tell you this is the most important election of your lifetime, you can smile. We know there will be another one just as important.

When we seem stuck or trapped in a season of our lives that just won’t end, we can smile at the ugly green liturgical colors because we know there will be happier moments of white, red and purple.

And, yes, when we read a story that is just not exciting enough for us, we can smile, with the confidence of knowing, sometimes, ordinary is better.

The crowd told the blind beggar: “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” The fuss was followed by an ordinary, yet transformational, outcome. So, my siblings in Christ: “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” We have no idea the power of the ordinary things our collective faith will put into motion. Amen.