This Week: Proper 25B
Gospel: Mark 10:46-52
For many preachers, this week’s gospel might be a tempting reprieve from the intensity of the last few weeks—when Jesus keeps talking about dying, the disciples keep screwing up, and we get these moments that bear a striking resemblance to teachings we can take out of context and be OK with.
If we did, however, we might miss some of what provides this moment with its intensity: its proximity to the Triumphal Entry (literally the next verses) and its capping of a sequence of confusion and disorientation by the disciples to what it is they actually think they are on a mission to do.
In other words, this is a wonderful hinge moment between the journey to Jerusalem and the journey through it.
The story, however, does have an opportunity to speak to something we don’t often get to speak about this time of year: joy. Just picture the man leaping out of his clothes and running to Jesus—it is the sort of image that has mild (if sophomoric) comedic value as much as it does sweetness and joy. Isn’t this the ideal we strive for? To be so excited to participate in this stuff, that we literally leap up and go?
The story also offers a great opportunity for reflection—the kind of moment that offers the possibility for theological reflection without a proper “answer”—with regards to Bartimaeus becoming a disciple of Jesus. And what it means to the whole project to come in at the end. His presence here reminds me bit of the parable of the workers in Matthew—when all are paid the same. It also offers an interesting pretext for later disciples to be considered apostles, most famously Paul, who comes in after Jesus’s death. This calls into question our desire for giving seniority, ranking people according to time-served, and the like. Ideas that we should reconsider given last week’s gospel, anyway.
For myself, I am tempted to go in a few directions, but I always preference context above everything, and use this as a culmination of a pre-Jerusalem discipleship arc — that reminds us of what we are called to do.
Perhaps we continue our conversation of faith — of discipleship as embodying faith — which reflects a commitment to service and hope and a rejection of individualism and certainty. Faith as cure, as sustenance, like manna.