Mark 10:46-52 ©
The Gospel of the Day – 2015.10.25
(Sunday)
As
Jesus left Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, Bartimaeus (that is,
the son of Timaeus), a blind beggar, was sitting at the side of the road. When
he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout and to say, ‘Son of
David, Jesus, have pity on me.’ And many of them scolded him and told him to
keep quiet, but he only shouted all the louder, ‘Son of David, have pity on
me.’ Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him here.’ So they called the blind man.
‘Courage,’ they said ‘get up; he is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he
jumped up and went to Jesus. Then Jesus spoke, ‘What do you want me to do for
you?’ ‘Rabbuni,’ the blind man said to him ‘Master, let me see again.’ Jesus said
to him, ‘Go; your faith has saved you.’ And immediately his sight returned and
he followed him along the road. (NJB)
Jesus opens the eyes of the blind.
Is it possible that we can do this for our fellows,
our sisters and brothers; for ourselves.
I do not believe that Jesus was ever able to suspend
the laws of nature. This must be read by us as the curing of spiritual
blindness. And while we must read the story this way, the narrative itself
encourages us to a kind of spiritual blindness. This is not the fault of Jesus,
but it is the fault of the Gospel writers, and every succeeding generation of
Christians who came after.
The first false assumption the narrative encourages us
toward is the notion that Jesus is the son of David. He was not. He was the son
of Joseph. While Joseph is said to be in the lineage of David, that is
unimportant, because Jesus is Joseph’s son, and the only reason to call him
that is to put forward the notion that Jesus had some kind of Royal authority;
he did not.
Jesus was not a king. He was a servant.
God is not a king. God is our parent.
We do not relate to Jesus, and God as subjects to a
ruler, but as siblings to a brother, and child to mother and father.
The narrative should also encourage the reader to
never subject themselves to any authority that pretends to control any form of
mediation between the loving power of God, and God’s own children.
The disciples tried to block the man from approaching
Jesus, and Jesus puts them aside.
Finally, remember this, because Christians have been
encouraged to forget this for the past two thousand years; Jesus is addressed
as rabbi, signifying his membership in the Pharisaic movement. He is a rabbi, a
teacher in that tradition of Judaism that developed outside of Palestine in the
post-exilic diaspora.
He was not a priest, he was a teacher, a scholar, and
a commentator on the law.
~ My Commentary
