Bartimaeus, Now More than Ever: A Half-Century Living into this Story
by Ched Myers
Note: The lectionary Gospel reading for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost (Oct 27) was Mark 10:45-52: the tale of Bartimaeus. The following meditation celebrates the triennial “Feast of Bartimaeus,” and includes parts that Ched shared on the Oct 24th Sabeel Wave of Prayer (“Sabeel” means “the way”; right, Bartimeo,” Mexico.)
Michael McRay of Becoming Restoried wrote recently that one dictionary traces the etymology of the word story to ‘seeing wisely.’ “The stories we tell and hear directly affect the breadth of our imagination. Stories are how we learn to see.” This struck me as I prepared to commemorate again the “Feast of Bartimaeus.”
Mark’s poignant vignette of vision restored—the last of the healing stories in his narrative —comes up every three years in the lectionary cycle. The intentional community I helped start adopted the Bartimaeus name in 1976. The ecumenical Common Lectionary was established seven years later, so I’ve commemorated this feast a dozen times or more. In a couple of years, I will celebrate my Jubilee anniversary of being claimed by this story.
I write this piece on the Jewish Feast of Simchat Torah, a joyous celebration that marks the start of a new lectionary cycle for the Hebrew Bible. It is ritualized in synagogues with a joyous dance with a Torah scroll.
An elder holds it in the middle of a circle, or it is unfurled so the whole congregation clasps it. Twenty years ago, Elaine & I experienced this beautiful liturgy with our friends Denise and Neil at Temple Sinai in Oakland, CA; I so wish we had something like it in our churches!
In October 2011, we opened the Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice on Simchat Torah, a wonderful celebration and seminar, led by scholars Norman Gottwald and Jack Elliott of blessed memory (left, poring over an old Torah scroll with Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb). This is, in other words, an ideal time to reflect again on the Bartimaeus story and its legacy for our work.
Unfortunately, Jewish and Christian love for scripture is too often undermined by our refusal to look at social and political injustices in which we are implicated. Both our peoples still live in denial of violence and racism, as the genocide in Gaza has unmasked afresh.
(See this compelling testimony of one Jewish leader who didn’t dance this year at Simchat Torah as a protest against the war.)
Denial is the opposite of discipleship. And the Gospel reading for October 26th speaks directly to this challenge—leading us into the Triduum of All Saints, even as the war on Gaza and the region waxes.
As I’ve outlined in Say to This Mountain (pp. 99-100), the middle part of Mark’s narrative consists of what I call his “discipleship catechism” (8:22-10:52), framed by two stories of visually impaired men being healed by Jesus (8:22-26; 10:46-52). It begins with a “confessional crisis” (8:27-30), a fulcrum dead center in the story. This commences a triple cycle with the catechetical character of a “school of the road,” as Jesus and his disciples journey from the far north of Palestine to the outskirts of Jerusalem:
“Story” comes from the Latin historia, “and is connected to the Old English storey, which originally meant a tier of painted windows” (see here). Think of this Markan sequence, then, in terms of a series of stained glass
windows, through which medieval churches sought to communicate the gospel to illiterate folk. (Right: a stained glass window triptych at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Camden, Maine.)
If that’s not enough literary artistry, our gospel reading is the culmination of a tryptich within that tryptich. Three consecutive episodes depict contrasting responses to Jesus’ call (10:17-52): the rejection by a rich man, the disciples’ cluelessness; and a poor man who only wants to see. Each episode, as you see at left, occurs in proximity to “the Way,” and the sequence reveals that true “blindness” lies in both the possession of, and aspiration to, wealth and power. Happily, this sequence appears intact over three consecutive weeks of the lectionary. The church should pay attention!
The first part of the tryptich speaks to people like us: socially mobile, entitled and reluctant to change. A powerful leader approaches Jesus with the presumption that he can “inherit” eternal life just as he inherited his privilege (10:17). Jesus challenges him to redistribute his wealth to the marginalized—the medicine that love demands (10:21). Because those infected by
Affluenza can only recover through a discipleship of reparations and restorative justice (see lots more about that in my upcoming book Healing Affluenza, Resisting Plutocracy!). “Get up” here is a healing verb in Mark (and is repeated in 10:49). But because the rich man “owned much property,” this turns out to be the only explicit discipleship call rejection story in the gospel.
Jesus goes on to explain to his followers the truth of camels and needles (10:23-27), concluding in classic Jubilary style that “Many that are first will be last, and the last first” (10:31). He is calling us to reverse the historical
direction of our unjust social order—which is the meaning of repentance: to “turn around.” Those at the bottom of the social order are now the object of primary concern.
The second episode in the triptych again begins “on the Way” (10:32), but as they near Jerusalem, it’s beginning to dawn on Jesus’ followers that this is not the path to fame and fortune! Mark’s caricature now turns dark. As did Peter earlier in
the story (8:32), James and John now also exhibit cluelessness. Jesus asks them what they want, and they immediately ask for positions of power after the Messianic coup they imagine is coming (10:37). Exasperated, Jesus turns the question back on them, as he is wont to do. Are they able to embrace his “baptism” of the cross? Mark cannot resist sarcasm: “No problem,” answer the Zebedee boys (10:39a). Well, it turns out that Jesus can guarantee that disciples will suffer, but cannot grant our aspirations upward—only downward to servanthood.
The third cameo in the triptych reveals Mark’s portrait of true discipleship. On the outskirts of Jericho, a poor beggar sits “beside the Way,” his vision impaired (10:46). Bartimaeus hears the noise of a passing crowd, and sensing the presence of a holy man, cries out for mercy from “Son of David”—twice (10:47-48). Ironically, this is a moniker Jesus will repudiate later in Mark’s story (12:35-37)—which only proves that orthodoxy is not discipleship. Unlike the rich man, Bartimaeus is a victim of the system, not its beneficiary. Unlike the disciples, he dares not approach Jesus directly. He inquires not about eternal life or career advancement, but asks for mercy, despite those who would silence him (10:47f). And Jesus comes to a dead stop to listen to this human being’s pain.
The rich man walked away from Jesus’ call to redistribute his wealth, but Bartimaeus gives up what little he has (the cloak represents the tool of his panhandler’s trade), betting his life on healing. Jesus asks him what he
wants—the exact query he posed to his disciples in the previous vignette. Unlike them, Bartimaeus just wants his vision restored. (Right: “Jesus and Bartimaeus,” by Charles McCullough.)
Jesus cannot answer the rich man’s question because he will not make reparation. He cannot grant the disciples’ request because it arises from delusions of grandiosity. But he can help this poor man because Bartimaeus knows he is “blind.” As he so often does among broken persons, Jesus commends this man’s initiative: “Your faith has healed you.” At the beginning of Mark’s discipleship catechism, Peter calls Jesus by the “correct” name, but resists the Way of the cross (8:29-34). At the end of this sequence, Bartimaeus calls him by the “wrong” name, but “follows Jesus on the Way” (10:52). The last have become first.
The genius of this triptych is that it places the story’s protagonists—the disciples, including us as readers—between two archetypal opposites: a rich person who rejects the Way and a poor person who embraces it. It begs the question: will we climb ladders and aspire to entitlement, or give up everything to see? That is:
- to recognize our weary world as it truly is—shedding denial and delusion in order to engage inconvenient truths about economic disparity and racial oppression and ecological destruction and war without end; and
- to envision our beautiful world as it truly could be, free of despair or distraction: the divine dream of enough for all and beloved community and restored creation and the peaceable kingdom…
…in order to follow the Way.
I’ve walked under the banner of Bartimaeus since 1976. Twenty-five years ago, our Cooperative adopted the same name. This archetypal story helps us see—that our vision needs restoration! In this fraught historical moment—under the long shadows of genocide, climate catastrophe and autocracy—this call is more relevant than ever.