Blind Bartimaeus: Gets What He Wants As Well As What He Needs
October 29 , 2006
The Very Rev. Harry Pritchett
The Cathedral. of St. Philip
(Mark 10:46-52)
As the appointed lectionary in Mark’s Gospel moves us through this section, various people are coming up to Jesus to ask for something. The rich young ruler wants to know how he can earn eternal life, and the answer he gets does not please him. He goes away sorrowful. He wants to know something clearly, and Jesus gives him a clear answer about what he needs for his soul’s health. “Sell what you have and give to the poor and follow me.” And then James and John, the Zebedee brothers, want some sort of guarantee of their personal prestige and power, and the answer they get is what Jesus perceives they really need to hear about the very nature of power and leadership in the topsy turvy kingdom of God. “Whoever would be powerful must be the servant of all.”
And then today we get the story of blind Bartimaeus. In spite of the attempts of the rest of the crowd to silence him, Batimaeus keeps crying out more and more for Jesus’ mercy. He is not afraid to admit his brokenness before God and everybody else (as my grandmother would have said.) And Jesus who is hurrying toward Jerusalem, notices him and stops. “What is it that you really want me to do for you?” By asking this question first, Jesus seems to imply that mercy, which Bartimaeus has been screaming for up to this point, is a forgone conclusion. It is as natural to Jesus as breathing. So Bartimaeus answers Jesus’ inquiry with, “Let me receive my sight.” And Jesus says, “Go your way – your faith, your trust, has made you well.” And lo and behold Bartimaeus not only begins to see, but contrary to others in the gospels that are healed, he follows Jesus in the Way… which means the way toward Jerusalem and the cross
. On that note, this story ends. It is different from the story of the rich young ruler who goes away sorrowful, because what he wanted and what Jesus saw he needed were not the same thing. And James and John become downright disappointed because what they wanted and what Jesus saw they needed on a deeper level were not the same thing. But Bartimaeus seems to get what he wants , as well as what he needs. I wonder if in fact Bartimaeus gets not simply what he knew he wanted which is mercy and eyesight, but also what he apparently needs, which is a clear vision of what to do now with his whole life. And so he decides to follow Jesus on the Way.
Well, all this Biblical exegesis is perhaps my devious way of slipping into some possible insights about the subject of money.. what we want and what we need, how we spend it and how we decide to give it away. I do this because how we deal with our financial income says more in our western capitalism about how we live our whole lives and perhaps even how we are following in the Way of the Lord. In the last 20 years or so many members of the church have come to see the issue of money and what they give away outside their own family circle as more directly connected to their Christian faith. They have received their sight so to speak, to the Biblical witness rather than the vague politeness by which Episcopalians previously tended to cover over any open discussion of the money subject.
As new insights have occurred in recent years and more conversation has taken place, it seems to me that People tend to make decisions about what they give to the church in three broad ways. First is what I call the way of “random dollar giving”. I was having lunch many years ago with my friend Mark. I happen to know (in fact I had decided to make a point of knowing) how much he pledged. It was one thousand dollars a year, a bit higher than the average for Saint Thomas Church, Huntsville, where I was rector at the time. I asked Mark how he went about deciding how much he would give away. He said, “I don’t have any idea. I just pick an amount that seems about right.” And I said, “Why don’t you just pick ten percent of your income?” And Mark said, “Oh, that’s too much!”
Mark was practicing what I like to call “random dollar giving”. It’s hard to feel either good or bad about that kind of giving. It is giving compared to nothing. It is just what seems about “right”
A second group of people make decisions about what they give away in what I would call a “vaguely intentional” manner. Another friend named Tom said that the first step he took in his giving practices came when somebody suggested that you could tell what a person’s values really are by looking at the way they spend their money. Tom looked and Tom didn’t like what he saw. He said to me, “I resolved right then and there that I would not give less money to the church each week than I spend on scotch whiskey.” Now Tom was a real scotch lover, and so what he did was double his pledge. That’s at least a start at being intentional. He was vaguely intentional. Later on, by the way, Tom quit drinking completely with the help of A.A. But you see to be even vaguely intentional leads inevitably to the question, how’s your giving compared to what else? Compared to scotch whiskey? Compared to your club dues? Compared to your vacation budget? Compared to the boat? Or the season’s tickets? Or the children’s private schools? Or even the house? People who make decisions in the “vaguely intentional” way, simply do some thinking about what they give away and compare it to something and don’t just choose a figure randomly because it seems about right.
And that gets me to the third way that people make decisions about giving and that is when people become theologically serious. Some people who are theologically serious say that they make their money decisions by “giving until it hurts”. In other words, they practice sacrificial giving. A friend said to me, “I knew I was getting serious about my commitment to the faith when my wife and I got into a big hassle about whether to increase our pledge instead of buying new dining room chairs.” Now that’s sacrificial giving – giving up something you want in order to give the money away. I have a certain admiration for sacrificial giving. It is certainly theologically serious. But the truth is that I personally neither practice it nor do I necessarily recommend it to you. Because I find that if I think too much about something that I really do want, but deny myself so I can give the money away, then what I may wind up doing is not being a very cheerful giver. For me, it is simply easier to decide first what percentage of my income I’m going to give away and then figure out how I’m going to live on what’s left. That is much easier for me than it is to give away a significant portion of my total income from what is left over after I have paid for the so-called necessities. The biblical notion of giving the first fruits of the harvest turn out to be, at least for me, a very gracious concession to my natural resistance to the pain of sacrifice. Now if we are going to be theologically serious however, we must say a word about necessities… about what it is we assume we need. The word “necessities” belongs in quotes every time I use it in this context because I think it means absolutely nothing. It is just a figure of speech. It has no objective meaning whatsoever. One person’s luxury is another person’s necessity. And yet the term dominates discussions of whether tithing is merely a laudable goal or is a realistic possibility for serious Christian folk. Someone said to me several years ago.” I think clergy should only be paid enough to cover the necessities.” At that time we were riding down Peachtree Street in her late model Mercedes with all the bells and whistles.. And so I asked her, “Well, how did you decide that it was a necessity for you to buy this car rather than an old Ford?” She said, “I wanted it.” Now I can understand that. That’s a comprehensible explanation of why you do something. But to say that it was a necessity means absolutely nothing.
After some similar words as I am saying this morning, someone exclaimed to me several years ago,” With all this talk about tithing and giving and money, it seems like you are trying to make us feel guilty. I don’t want to feel guilty about what I give away”. And so, I backed off. God forbid I should make anybody feel guilty. The American Psychiatric Association would have me up on charges. But I want you to know that I have repented. I’ve changed my mind. I did that person a disservice. Ultimately I said what he wanted me to say and not what I believed he needed on a deeper level.
Here is what I wish I had said. “I hate to tell you this, buddy, but you are guilty and so am I. So it is not inappropriate for us to feel guilty. Guilt feelings may be God’s way of telling us we are doing something wrong! But here’s something else, and that is, we are forgiven. If you do not feel forgiven and thankful maybe you need to see better the good news of Jesus. Maybe you need to admit openly and truthfully God have mercy on me. Maybe, we all need to have new vision deep in our souls, more and more that we are indeed accepted and even liked by the “Heart of All That Is.” If that’s not mercy at it’s rock bottom level, buddy, then I don’t know what is.” I wish I had said that then, but I didn’t, so I’m saying it now. And so you see, you see….. my fellow followers, just like Bartimaeus, that message is what I fundamentally need. It is God’s profound mercy. It trumps every time all the wants, desires, and trophies… all the so called necessities of upper class consumer society where most of us live. It is when I hear and know deep down that message of grace and mercy, that what I want and what I need curiously come together again, and like Bartimaeus, at least for the moment, I follow gladly the Way of the Lord with my whole life including my checkbook.
Amen.Comments? Contact Dean Pritchett at: HPritchett@stphilipscathedral.org