This Sunday was my first opportunity to preach at my new parish.  And what gospel do I get, but one of the deepest, most revealing stories in Mark–and therefore one of the most difficult.

But in my wrestling with this pericope, something was awoken within me.  Something that still has me wrestling.

My homily wasn’t quite what I wanted, and I’ll post it on my sermon site eventually (once I get around to updating it).  But it was the writing of it that I found most important.  I was wrestling with the singular important principle: Bartimaeus has a name.

This idea can only be significant, and further, his story gains its literary significance by the fact that he has a name.  We all have names, of course, but in Mark’s gospel, the blind, the sick, the poor don’t get names.  Each one serves as a lesson in behavior for the disciples, helping them understand how to interact with the less fortunate.  But here, at the end of Jesus’s ministry, in the last pericope before they enter Jerusalem, a blind outsider is identified as an individual and given the status of a name, and a lineage (his father, Timaeus is named).  In this way, we can see that the very heart of this lesson is that the outsider is an equal, not merely worthy of your attention and help, but that they are fully one of us.

This concept was swirling around my head until I realized a singular idea: Bartimaeus is the story.  It’s about him.

And because its about him, we can further conclude that he is the example.  He is the disciple that the Gospel directs us toward.  It builds to this moment, defining for the audience what it means to be following Jesus.  Each pericope redefining and clarifying what “the way” actually means.  So when we are introduced to Bartimaeus, we should know about faith, about responding to Jesus’s questions for us, and for following him “on the way”.

And as I thought more and more about Bartimaeus and what the gospel writer we know as Mark was trying to help us to see the more I felt like James and John, who last week tried to snake the seats of power next to Jesus or the disciples that say to Jesus: “we saw this dude preaching the gospel, so we shut ’em up for ya!”  The more Bartimaeus seems to deserve it and I don’t.

In many ways, this is just me replaying the old problem.  G-d’s grace isn’t found in our abilities or our status; it isn’t in our names or accomplishments; it isn’t even in the things we do for G-d, but in our faith.  In the purity of the faith itself.

So I took this and I preached about Bartimaeus’s example: how he was named in the Scripture before he is given his sight, which means that his identity precedes his healing.  And Jesus’s words themselves: “Go; your faith has made you well” imply that not only is the faith the cause and impetus of the healing, but that the faith was independent of his blindness and the expectation of gaining his sight.

Our faith, therefore, shouldn’t be about what we get.  About expectations of wealth, success, and popularity or about good health for ourselves, our families, and our friends; but about G-d and our relationship.

Lastly, it speaks to a synthesis of identity on the part of Bartimaeus as the true disciple.  There isn’t a singular most important attribute, but a combination of attributes that are all important.

1. First, his faith or belief is named by Jesus as making him well, and the attribute that provides for the revelation. (“Go; your faith has made you well”)
2. But his faith was also demonstrated by his shouting, throwing off of his cloak, and clear response to Jesus.  Bartimaeus acts on his faith and out of his faith.
3. The demonstration of his faith was evidence for vision, a clear sense of what Jesus was asking of him when he asked “What do you want me to do for you?”  Bartimaeus’s response is “My teacher, let me see again.”  He doesn’t ask for healing, but for sight.  He doesn’t say ‘make me see’ but ‘let me see’.
4. This sequence provides a dual understanding or an example of two elements of call by showing Bartimaeus as understanding (seeing) Jesus’s call to him while allowing for Jesus to reveal to Bartimaeus how to live out that call to ministry (following Jesus “on the way”).

These elements reveal that faith, response, vision, and call are of unified importance.  It is easy pick out what is most important, but a useless activity when all are necessary.

In many ways, Bartimaeus gives for me a clear rebuttal to Paul, or at least Martin Luther’s interpretation of Paul’s “justification [or salvation] by faith (alone)”.  It provides not only the necessary correlation between faith and action, but the unification of these principles with the principle descriptor used throughout the pericope: sight.  Faith and works are unified in our ability to see–to understand our call and discern how to make the call into ministry.

All this from a passage that looked an awful lot like a typical healing story.