Thus says the LORD:
Shout with joy for Jacob,
exult at the head of the nations;
proclaim your praise and say:
The LORD has delivered his people,
the remnant of Israel.
Behold, I will bring them back
from the land of the north;
I will gather them from the ends of the world,
with the blind and the lame in their midst,
the mothers and those with child;
they shall return as an immense throng.
They departed in tears,
but I will console them and guide them;
I will lead them to brooks of water,
on a level road, so that none shall stumble.
For I am a father to Israel,
Ephraim is my first-born.
R. (3) The Lord has done great
things for us; we are filled with joy. When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,
we were like men dreaming.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with rejoicing. R. The Lord has done great
things for us; we are filled with joy. Then they said among the nations,
"The LORD has done great things for them."
The LORD has done great things for us;
we are glad indeed. R. The Lord has done great
things for us; we are filled with joy. Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the torrents in the southern desert.
Those that sow in tears
shall reap rejoicing. R. The Lord has done great
things for us; we are filled with joy. Although they go forth weeping,
carrying the seed to be sown,
They shall come back rejoicing,
carrying their sheaves. R. The Lord has done great
things for us; we are filled with joy.
Brothers
and sisters:
Every high priest is taken from among men
and made their representative before God,
to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.
He is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring,
for he himself is beset by weakness
and so, for this reason, must make sin offerings for himself
as well as for the people.
No one takes this honor upon himself
but only when called by God,
just as Aaron was.
In the same way,
it was not Christ who glorified himself in becoming high
priest,
but rather the one who said to him: You are my son: this day I have begotten you;
just as he says in another place: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
As Jesus was leaving Jericho with
his disciples and a sizable crowd,
Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus,
sat by the roadside begging.
On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth,
he began to cry out and say,
"Jesus, son of David, have pity on me."
And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent.
But he kept calling out all the more,
"Son of David, have pity on me."
Jesus stopped and said, "Call him."
So they called the blind man, saying to him,
"Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you."
He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.
Jesus said to him in reply, "What do you want me to do for
you?"
The blind man replied to him, "Master, I want to see."
Jesus told him, "Go your way; your faith has saved you."
Immediately he received his sight
and followed him on the way.
It strikes
me, that of all the things that might describe a blind
person, the most obvious would be faith, the very thing for
which Jesus praises Bartimaeus in today’s gospel reading.
Because of our marvelous human ability to adapt, blind
people
can function quite well in our society. But it seems to me
that there must come a point where even the most self
assured blind person must trust, must believe, must rely on
the promises of others and the nature of reality.
I do not
easily come by that kind of faith because I can see.
Sometimes, it seems that even in scripture, there is no
great help in acquiring that faith. Many bible stories
concern unusual happenings: curing the blind, driving
out demons, raising people from the dead, burning bushes,
not your everyday experience. So what does faith have to do
with us ordinary people in our usual situations?
Faith is
saying yes to God. And that yes must be said
here and now where the questions are asked, where the needs
cry out, where God makes himself felt. Faith is the power
that enables us to live with the tension, the pain, the
uncertainties of our future as a country, the demise we are
in now with what seems like a very immoral government (one
that seems to be denying God completely), and even with the
death of loved ones. People of faith do not ignore the
conditions of life. They see the strange events of
existence and the raw material of a meaningful life. Faith
is believing in something or someone we cannot see, but yet
underwriting it with our lives, such as Bartimaeus did.
Faith is
many things my friends, none of them easy for you and me.
It is seeing God in our world as surely Abraham saw God in
his world. But what makes us think it was so easy for
Abraham? I’ve never seen God in a burning bush as Moses
did. Yet, because God does exist, He is as visible to us as
He was on Mt. Sinai. Here and now, indeed, there are bushes
bursting with God, if we have eyes to see. God is where he
walks, where his voice can be heard, where the features of
his face can be traced. God is here and now – or not at
all.
It seems
as if we have loved the past too long and too much. We have
built on solid rock and forgotten that even granite erodes
over time. We have saved the faith and neglected to spend
it. We have deposited it in creeds and hoped our children
would live off the interest, thus denying the fact that each
generation must build its own faith from the ground up.
Where is our faith? We have built beautiful churches, and
we say, “There is your faith.” We have piled brick on top
of brick, and we say, “This is the sign of faith.”
Faith is
saying yes to what is now, not what used to be.
Unfortunately, what is now is getting more alien to our
faith. In these days and times and the new church order,
there will be days that bring no joy or comfort. On those
days, there will be nothing to do but to cling with blind
conviction, like Bartimaeus, to the vision of faith in the
Lord. On those days, we will have to pray in darkness to a
God who may not make his presence felt. This will be a
naked, realistic faith, divested of traditional trappings.
It will have to recognize Christ the King in the disguise of
Jesus the servant. It will kneel at his feet and say, “Rabboni,
I want to see.” God grant us that kind of faith.
It is my
prayer that this message was meaningful to you. Thank you,
God bless, and have a great week ahead!
