What is Truth?

by Rev Megan Means

(Based on John 18:33-37)

The Anglican lectionary guides our theme today towards the climactic end to the church year, proposing we concentrate on Christ the King and The Reign of Christ. This is a time for us to reflect on the meaning of Christ’s reign over the church, over the world, and over our lives. What kind of ‘king’ was and is Jesus?  What did and does his rule look and feel like? What does it mean to live under his kingship today?

The lectionary has given us a rather odd Gospel reading. Do we read about Jesus in his kingly glory, transfigured and dazzling on a mountaintop?  Did we hear about him rise from the waters of baptism with the heavens thundering? Do we hear about one of his more spectacular miracles? No, Jesus is not described in any majestic outfit. Instead, the Gospel of John offers us a picture of Jesus at his physical and emotional worst: arrested, hungry, abandoned, sleep-deprived and standing before Pontius Pilate for questioning. If we were going to write Jesus into a kingly scene, most of us would not have chosen this reading, would we?  So, where did this title of ‘king’ come from?

I think that it came from Jesus thinking that he was the King of the Jews or, at the least, a ‘King’ in a kingdom ‘not of this world’. Was Pilate’s approach just a political charge, as anyone who claimed to be a king was seen to be a threat that had to be dealt with?

Did we pick up that Pilate does not ask Jesus whether he was claiming to be a divine man, or whether he thought he was the ‘Son of Man’, or whether he was opposed to the Jewish leadership, or whether he disagreed with the teachings of the Pharisees or Sadducees, or anything else. He is only recorded here as asking Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Did Jesus considered himself to be the Jewish messiah, a king? Possibly, yes. But back in this story’s context, Jesus may have meant something very different and more specific than what we may read and link into it today. There were various views of what a messiah would be like among Jews of Jesus’s day. The messiah was expected to be a political ruler over Israel. He was to be a great priest who ruled God’s people through God’s law. And he was to be a cosmic judge of the earth who would destroy God’s enemies in an act of judgment.  The common thread here is that the future messiah would be a figure of grandeur and might, who would come with the authority and with the power of God.

But this Jesus was just the opposite. An itinerant Jewish preacher from rural Galilee who challenged the law and religious sects. He lived out teachings of love, mercy, forgiveness and serving one another and who died for these efforts. I think that Jesus was only really considered the messiah by his followers after his death, as that is when the term ‘Christ’ became the most common designation for him.

According to our earliest Gospels and their sources, Jesus did not publicly proclaim that this was his self-understanding. He does not preach about himself as the future messiah or king – in Mark, Matthew, Luke, Q, M, or the L sources. He only seems to tell his disciples, in private. They know who he thinks he is and they know who he thinks they are. Namely, Jesus is the future king and they will be serving under him. Jesus is recorded in Matthew and Luke (Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:28-30) as telling his twelve disciples that in the future kingdom of God, they would themselves be seated on twelve thrones ruling the twelve tribes of Israel.

So, Jesus did think that he would be a future king and messiah of the coming kingdom of God in some way. Did his followers ever called him king and messiah? Nathanael declared, “Rabbi you are the Son of God, you are king of Israel.” (John 1:49) And after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him ‘king’ by force, Jesus withdrew again to a mountain by himself (John 6:15). In John 12:13, the crowd took palm branches and went out to meet Jesus, shouting, “Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the king of Israel!”

So, this must have also been what those in the public arena heard and thought as well, and why Pilate used this as a political charge against him. Any talk of another king, in any sense, in the Roman empire was enough to order ultimate punishment. Could this be why Jesus really died?


In his time, was Jesus an apocalyptic-ist (?)? One who believed that God would soon intervene in the course of history, overthrow the forces of evil, and establish a good, and very real, political kingdom here on earth. Therefore, his listeners had to turn to God immediately and repent in preparation for this imminent end.
But when Jesus ended up being arrested and crucified, did this completely and utterly destroy the disciples’ vision of what was to happen in the near physical future? Had they thought that they were going to be physically seated on twelve thrones ruling the twelve tribes of Israel, with Jesus as the King?

When Jesus was raised from the dead, and returned, it was the disciples who were the witnesses, so, did this make them change, adapt and shift how they understood who Jesus was and how the future kingdom may arrive? Is this why the term ‘messiah’ gained strength after Jesus’s resurrection?

Back at the Pilate scene, Jesus went on to say that “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice”. He implied to Pilate that he, Pilate, was looking at the truth.  “I am the truth.” To unpack this, I would say that Jesus understood his power as different because he believed he was truth and was established in truth. What does it mean, in our post-truth era, then, to worship the King of Truth? What does it mean to ‘belong to the Truth’ in a culture that increasingly denies Truth’s validity? Perhaps most importantly, how can we bear witness to a complex truth, a truth like the incarnation story of birth, life, death and resurrection, in a world that prefers Instagram, Facebook, and Tweets, etc, or internet games and action hero movies?

One of the most urgent tasks facing the Church on this Christ-the-King Sunday is forging a robust and gracious, urgent and respectful, relationship to the Truth. If Jesus came to testify to the Truth, if he is the Truth, if he is the King of Truth, then what does our loyalty to Truth look like, here and now?  I’m painfully aware of the Church’s long and miserable tradition of using ‘the truth’ to consolidate and abuse its own power. Religious institutions have excelled at using ‘truth’ to colonize, enslave, reject, abuse, and dehumanize those we conveniently call “Others”.
And, who displayed more truth this week: the Treaty Principles Bill before parliament or the hīkoi mō te Tiriti? [A heated local constitutional issue – Ed]

Jesus calls us to belong to the Truth that he embodied in his life, death, and resurrection. His Truth was not self-centred in any way. It did not serve to bolster his own power and authority. His Truth was not and is not an instrument, a weapon, or a slogan. The Truth is Jesus. 

Today we acknowledge the Reign of Christ the King. Can we stand for the Truth as Jesus did?  Can we belong to the Truth as he did? Can we tell and keep telling the joy-filled, pain-filled and powerfully undeniable stories that we know to be the truth about Jesus? Next week, we will enter into Advent, a season of waiting, longing, and listening. A time for waiting for the Truth to reveal itself, in the first cries of a vulnerable baby that grew to redefined kingship. The Truth lives and we belong to the Truth. The Truth is Jesus.

Thoughts Around an Apocalypse

by Dr Liz Young

(Based on Mark 13:1-8; Dan 12:1-3; Psalm 16; Heb 10:19-25)

The readings for today are all about ‘the end of the world as we know it’, and after I’ve shared the thoughts of others on the apocalypse I will add some thoughts on our current threat of climate change, one of the many changes threatening our lives. In Daniel, the archangel Gabriel announces that some will live and some will die in the apocalypse. In Psalm 16 the psalmist sings, “You, O Lord, are all I have and you give me all I need, and my future is in your hands.” And in Hebrews, the writer says, “Let us hold on firmly to the hope we profess, because we can trust God to keep His promises.”

Then we come to the Gospel: “As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said ‘look teacher, what wonderful stones and buildings.’”
Jesus answered, “You see these great buildings. Not a single stone will be left in place, everyone of them will be thrown down.”
Which reminded me of how my John admired all the majestic mediaeval cathedrals we visited when we went to Europe, my two favourites being Wells and Vézelay.

And Jesus’s statement was prophetic. On the day of his crucifixion an earthquake caused the veil of the temple to be broken into two.

Later in this reading, Jesus was sitting at the Mount of Olives when Peter, James, John and Andrew came to him in private and asked, “Tell us when this will be. And tell us what will happen to warn us, that the time will come for all these things to take place.” Jesus replied, “Watch out’, don’t let anyone deceive you. Many men claiming to speak for me will come and say ‘I am He’, and they will deceive many people.”
This was very true for the early church in 200-400 AD, and we have watched bemused in the past few weeks, as Donald Trump, a congenital liar, gets voted in as President of the USA. When I moaned to my John that Trump got in because of poor school education in the Midwest, he reminded me that my sister got her PhD in Kansas, and I always use Harvard for my medical cross checking.
Politicians have always twisted the truth to their own advantage, and I was reminded of Disraeli’s words, that “there are lies, damned lies and statistics”.

But the readings also emphasize hope: there is always hope amongst the gloom and doom.

When this is over,
May we never again
Take for granted
A handshake with a stranger;
Full shelves at the store;:
Conversations with neighbours;
A crowded theatre;
Friday night out;
A routine check up;
The school rush each morning;
Coffee with a friend;
The stadium roaring;
Each deep breath;
A boring Tuesday;
Life itself.

When this ends,
May we find
That we have become
More like the people
We wanted to be,
We were called to be,
We hoped to be.
And may we stay
That way – better
For each other,
Because of the worst.

(Laura Kelly Fanucci)

To return to the Mark Gospel, what a mix of topics in this chapter: the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, linked with the announcement of Jesus’s second coming. Jesus warning us of false prophets and that the disciples will be handed over to the authorities …

The last words of the reading are “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs”, and my optimistic self immediately thought of what do birth pangs lead to? The joy of the arrival of a new child, with the attendant responsibilities, the interrupted nights, and the challenge of caring for a vulnerable child who in spite of having obviously inherited similar characteristics, has their own individual personality, that you have to learn to adapt to and accept.

To revisit the apocalypse theme,
from Steve Garnaas-Holmes, …

People will never turn on each other
And, golly, we have the utmost care for pregnant women, we’re safe.
I’m glad.
Imagine living in that type of upheaval;
In that world justice isn’t abstract, but a daily commitment.
In that world it’s necessary and hard to care for each other.
Christians can’t stand by and see how it turns out.
They have to be part of how it turns out.
They have to bear witness daily – not by saying the right stuff,
But by living lives of radical kindness and courage.
They have to sacrifice for the sake of love,
And dare to be kind to the wrong sort of people.
They have to risk rejection, even persecution,
For their unconditional kindness.
They have to resist injustice and stand up against the Emperor.
I mean, in that world they have no security but God.
They have no defender but Jesus, no hope but Grace.
They have to live lives of death and resurrection.
And we might not want that, perhaps.

Our own current anxieties centre around climate change and I was pleased to read evidence in the New Scientist that corals can adapt to warmer seas: and elsewhere to read of community efforts to help others to minimize its impact, so …

Let us create a community that trusts both in God and in one another, and go out today with Hope in our hearts, planning to share more of ourselves with each other.   Amen

All In

by Barry Pollard

(Based on Mark 12:28-34; Deut 6:1-9; Heb 9:11-14)

Have you ever been to a casino? If you haven’t ventured through the alluring doors into a gambling den, perhaps, then, you have seen on a big screen the gambling in Monte Carlo and such places?

Have you heard the expression ‘I’m all in’? This is when a gambler decides that luck is finally on their side and will favour them with a big win. The phrase means, I am betting all the money I have. A pretty big deal – especially when playing games of chance. The expression has become a metaphor to mean total commitment to something. Today I am not using the term to encourage change in your gambling habits; instead I’m hoping it will describe the relationships that we can have for and with God.

Our first reading today, from Deuteronomy, came from a section subtitled “A Call for Wholehearted Commitment”. Hear again: 
Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
[I continue to wear my 2014 Hope Project bangle on my wrist as a reminder of my commitment to God and His to me.]

Did we grasp the intensity that built through these few verses? Our love for God should be with all our heart, soul and strength. And our commitment to the commands that were given to us will be demonstrated by our attention to them – talking about them with our children, to each other, and strangers, every waking moment. And by sporting physical reminders of them and even decorating our homes with them!

As we have been tracking through the Gospel of Mark we have encountered several accounts of Jesus’s ministry that have hopefully stuck in our minds. As I read and re-read the verses for today I was aware of the players in this account: Jesus and a teacher of religious law, a Sadducee (in one version). This teacher belonged to a group that Jesus variously labelled ‘hypocrites and vipers’. These were the guys that were big on rules and regulations, coming up with 613 of them, to keep the masses largely in tow. Sadly, because of their sheer number, the focus of the masses was always on how they were following them, seldom on the One they were supposed to be engaging with.

Anyway, I was struck by the opening gambit by the Sadducee (I’ll refer to this teacher as the Sadducee to avoid us muddling him with Jesus, who was often referred to as Teacher). We rarely hear Jesus being acknowledged positively by these guys but, in the first exchange between the two, Mark records that the Sadducee was impressed with how Jesus had just handled himself when quizzed by his group about whose wife the woman, who was hypothetically married to seven brothers in succession, would be at resurrection. In answering, Jesus steered the exchange, by Scripture references, to the declaration that God is the God of the living, not the dead, and so the question fades towards irrelevance.
So, the Sadducee thought Jesus had answered well and proceeded to test him again by asking which of the commandments was the most important.

Because Jesus had absolute command of Scripture, he responded immediately with, “The most important is, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength’. The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

Jesus had taken the first, to love God wholeheartedly, from Deuteronomy 6: 4-5, and the second came from Leviticus 19:18. What Jesus did was amalgamate the two separate components and present them as a ‘combo’. He didn’t go back to the Ten Commandments, which I have always thought of as the ‘standards’, to single out just one as most important.

Each of the Ten Commandments (see here) is worthy of its place in the list but none, singly or even grouped, convey the message that Jesus wanted to convey. He had come to do things differently; not to get us to work harder at our salvation but to transform our thinking and our hearts. He sought relationship. Loading another compliance issue on us would not have the right effect.

So, instead, Jesus offered a simple and effective alternative!

Consider in the exchange with the Sadducee the terms that each uses. In the first component of the answer, Jesus says we must love God with all of our heart, soul and strength (from the Deuteronomy verses) but adds ‘mind’, “putting the last piece of the human puzzle in place”, in the words of the Reverend Chelsey Harmon, a Canadian pastor whose work on this reading I consulted.  She explained, the heart was thought to be the seat of our spiritual life, our inner being; the soul referred to one’s emotions and desires; and strength was understood as one’s power or ability to take action. And Jesus added to that the mind, which refers to our understanding and reasoning.
While the Sadducee agreed in principle with the sentiments of Jesus’s response, his list of commitments was short. He stated we should love God with the heart, our understanding (mind) and strength. Missing was the soul, our emotions and desires. Straight away he had reduced the human response to God to less than what God expects and wants. Our emotional connection is a key component of the phenomenon of love.

Why is this important?

Think back to what a Jewish faith walk looked like a couple of millennia ago. Largely governed by compliance with those 613 rules and regulations, there was little focus on a personal relationship with God. Things were handled by intermediaries. You paid your money and purchased a variety of sacrificial offerings, depending upon what you were trying to gain restoration from. We have heard these ranged from small birds all the way through to the equivalent of the national intake of beef for several months!

The Hebrews reading argued that, to get right with God, such sacrifices only cleanse from ceremonial impurity. It went on to compare the sacrifice Jesus made for us. The sacrifice of the blood of Jesus purifies our consciences from sinful deeds.

What is the difference?

Ceremonial impurity relates to uncleanness that is without moral component. Ceremonial impurity could result from eating the wrong food, menstruation, sexual intercourse, certain skin conditions, and so on. When the sacrificial benefits of Jesus are highlighted alongside ceremonial impurity, the morality of the mind comes into consideration.  The conscience of the sinner is taken into account. By his sacrifice Jesus is able to purify us when we confess and repent. There are no blood sacrifices other than his that can do this. His is the one true and perfect sacrifice for our sin. He is the only intermediary we need. He is the one who changes hearts.

The Sadducee was stuck in the old way. Jesus had come to launch the new way.

The second part of the “most important commandment” is that we should love our neighbour as we love ourselves. This, although derived from Scripture, put the Sadducee in a spot. He was a member of an elite group of wealthy upper-class men who made up what we could call the ‘Jewish aristocracy’, and would have benefitted from his position. The Sadducee would have been, in all likelihood, self-absorbed, self-focussed. The call Jesus is making in his “most important commandment” is about turning the God relationship into an other-focussed one. The change requires a turn from inward-focus to outward-focus.

So, for a number of reasons, Jesus perceives the response from the Sadducee to the most important commandment to be less than wholehearted.
After praising the answer Jesus gave to his question, the Sadducee admits that to God, loving God and your neighbour matters more than performing any other religious duty or task, or keeping any specific law. It is this insight that Jesus takes note of, as a sign of the man’s wisdom and understanding. Jesus says to the man, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” “Not far from” implies to me, “Not quite there yet.” The Sadducee was not “all in”. Was Jesus offering a compliment, simply making a statement of fact, or was he giving a warning?

Mark’s Gospel has quite a few reminders about being ‘all in’. Remember the account of the rich man in Chapter 10 – he too was not far from the kingdom, and understood what Jesus was telling him, but he couldn’t do what was required of him. He was close, not far from the Kingdom, but he was not ‘all in’.
In Chapter 8, after speaking of his coming crucifixion, Jesus tells the disciples that to follow Him they have to be ‘all in’, turning from their selfish ways by “taking up their crosses” and following Him.
And there are repeated messages about how we should treat the marginalised and children; that our service to others is the way that we serve God.
Taking these things together, the gospel message becomes clearer. Agreeing with and understanding the idea, or the law, or the commandment, gets us close to the Kingdom of God, but obeying it through action is what actually shows that we are part of God’s Kingdom. How we live shows whether we have gone ‘all in’ for the love of God, ourselves, and others.

So, what does it mean to love God and our neighbours all in? How can we be all in?

In answering this question I would highlight two references. The first is from Word for Today, 31 October 2024 (see here).

The second is from Reverend Doctor Selwyn Hughes, who concludes his series looking at ‘God’s story and the part we play in it’:

“On this last day of thinking together about God as the divine story writer, I would like to drop into your heart this thought: no matter how insignificant you may feel, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and have been born again, the truth is that you are included in God’s big story. Your name is written into his universal epic. One day, when the whole story is unfolded in eternity, you will see what part you have played in the eternal scheme of things. You don’t have to spend your time scrupulously trying to figure out in what scene you appear. Trust that the Casting Director has given you a role that highlights not only your special talents and individuality but, more importantly, the way in which divine grace is at work in your life.
Just to be part of God’s great epic, to be caught up in the narrative he is telling, is one of the highest privileges afforded any human being. A friend of mine says, ‘I don’t mind being just a spear carrier as long as I am part of God’s big story.’
How different life is when we realise that through all that happens to us a divine story, a bigger story, is being written. Drop your anchor into the depths of this reassuring and encouraging revelation. In the strongest currents of life it will, I promise, help to hold you fast.”

[And I love Selwyn’s prayer for that day:
My Father and my God, how can I ever sufficiently thank you for the priceless privilege of telling in my own voice your story? Help me from this day forward to see all things from your point of view.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.]

And if you are still not sure about how to be “all in”, perhaps think about this idea promoted by Joyce Meyer: that we do everything for God, and with God. A sure-fire way to start changing our thinking. And you know that our thoughts determine our words, and our words determine our actions, and our actions determine our character! If we determine to think of everything in terms of being for God then we will find that he is right there with us providing the wherewithal for us to be successful for him. Not about us any more, but “all in” for and with Him!

Rabbi, I want to see …

by Joan Fanshawe

(Based on Mark 10:46-52)

Two weeks ago, the Gospel reading from Mark gave us the story of a rich man who came to Jesus asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

Today, in contrast, we have heard the story of the blind beggar’s encounter with Jesus: a man named Bartimaeus, whose sight was restored.

The rich man came asking what he could do to earn salvation. Jesus gave him what turned out to be an impossible task: give up his wealth for the benefit of the poor, then come and follow him, Jesus. Bartimaeus, on the other hand, sits at the side of the road and simply calls out to Jesus asking for mercy.

Although the crowd tries to silence him, Jesus hears him and asks what he wants. “Rabbi, I want to see,” is his reply and this request is immediately granted. “Go,” says Jesus, “your faith has made you whole.”

The rich man is told to give everything up and then follow, but he goes away. Bartimaeus, in a sense, is given everything when his vision is restored and told to go on his way, but he follows.

There are several ways of looking at this account from Mark’s Gospel.
We could just say that Jesus took pity on a blind man begging by the city gate and healed his blindness, and wasn’t that a wonderful miracle?
We could pick up on the fact that Bartimaeus became a follower and think that was great too. But perhaps not really surprising in the circumstances.

We are nearing the end of the church liturgical year now and our continuing stories of Jesus’s life and ministry will take a pause while we celebrate Advent and Christmas. But in the last few weeks we have become aware that the Mark is telling about Jesus and his disciples and followers ‘on the road’ or ‘the way’, teaching and healing and making their way to Jerusalem. In other words, walking towards what we know will be the end of Jesus’s earthly life.
Quite often the stories we’ve heard along this journey have also been saying that the disciples were not getting the message, or really seeing and understanding what Jesus has been trying to tell them about himself.

A vital link piece in today’s story is the blind beggar shouting out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”
“Son of David” is a recognition of the fulfilment of the ancient prophesy of the promised Messiah being of King David’s line. With Jesus thus identified in this account, we might not be surprised that Mark gives the blind man a name, when very few people in the Gospel stories are named.

Names were important in the ancient world; they weren’t just labels; they conveyed meaning, and an odd name would capture the readers’ or listeners’ attention, and add to the meaning of a story.

So, what does the name Bartimaeus signify?

Mark’s listeners would have noticed that Bartimaeus was not a familiar name. It begins with the Aramaic ‘Bar’, signifying ‘son of’, but attached to a Greek name Timaeus. So, Bar-timaeus … ‘son of Timaeus’.

Some scholars attribute the name’s meaning to an Aramaic word meaning ‘honour’,  giving the blind man a worthwhile background.  However, others see the name Timaeus and the situation of the beggar as being linked to a word meaning a ‘son of poverty and shame’, reduced as he was to sitting with his cloak spread to receive coins from passers-by.

Rev Dr Eric Funston, an Episcopal priest in Ohio, has another suggestion, thinking about this story in the context of Mark first sharing it to his largely Gentile audience in Rome, who would have had little knowledge of the Aramaic language. They would have known some Greek though, and many would have been familiar with Greek literature.

Timaeus is indeed a Greek name – rare but well known. Because there was a Timaeus of Locri, and also Timaeus the historian, who lived in Athens around two and a half centuries before Christ. His histories were later declared unreliable and a wilful distortion of the truth by some. The historian Polybius condemned him as “an old ragwoman”, nothing more than a collector of old wives tales (which we might call mis-information or dis-information these days). If this historian is the Timaeus of whom the roadside beggar is a “son” or follower, Mark may have been telling his readers, and telling us, of the blindness that can come from untruth, distortions of fact, or someone else’s ‘alternative truth’, blinding ourselves to the truth of Jesus’s teaching about truth. Capital T truth, the Truth that will set you free.

However, Dr Funston concludes that it’s Timaeus of Locri, a famous character in Plato’s philosophical Dialogues, who is very likely the candidate for Mark’s reference. That Bartimaeus, “son of Timaeus,” should be blind in Mark’s Gospel is noteworthy because in the Dialogues, Timaeus sings the praises of our sense of sight. The blessing and benefit of sight and, thus, observation enables our understanding of the nature of the created universe, God’s place and our place as individuals and community in the ongoing story.

If Mark’s blind beggar Bartimaeus is recognisable to his listeners from this ancient connection it does seem to me that the blindness is more about being unable to see the possibilities of a new way of being.

How could this passage speak to us us today? Like Bartimaeus sitting outside of Jericho, we can be blind to the way we are existing and stay our comfort zone .
We can be blind to the needs of the world we live in.
We can be blinded by self-preservation and self-sufficiency; blinded by the influence of others’ opinions.

We can see the blindness of political and religious differences in the extreme violence of wars currently raging and the lie that violence is a solution to our disagreements.

And this can lead to our being blinded by anxiety and hopelessness.

Maybe we are all the rich man seeking salvation; we are all blind Bartimaeus sitting with our cloaks and begging bowls by the side of the road.

 Jesus is coming by. What shall we do?

Will we like the rich man hold on to whatever blinds us and turn back into the darkness? Or will we be like Bartimaeus and seize the opportunity with eyes wide open?

I’m intrigued that Mark, writing what most understand to be the first account of Jesus’s life and sharing this teaching with an early Christ-centred community, gives us this account of Bartimaeus.
And that so many details in the story can still connect with us more than two thousand years later.
I keep thinking of the verse that mentions Bartimaeus casting off his cloak at Jesus’s invitation to come to him. That cloak represents his whole way of life, his livelihood, his persona, as he spreads it daily to mark his place by the roadside, to bear his begging bowl where people could leave coins or other offerings.  The cloak would keep him protected at night and people would know him and recognise him wrapped in it. Even for a beggar, it was a still big move to leave all that and go to Jesus – then, with his vision restored, follow the way of Truth and Love.

For us, there is blindness in our own lives, behaviours we want to cling on to. It can be hard to face but in our deepest hearts we know that they separate us from God and need to be cast off like Bartimaeus’s cloak, so that we too can lead a full life as followers on the Way.

Jesus is coming by. What shall we choose?
Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.

~~~
Open the eyes of my heart
to see your grace in every moment,
to see with hope and gratitude,
with trust and humility.
Teach me to look with my mind as open 
as my eyes; teach me in every gaze
to look and see as things really are,
not as I already think they are,
not as fear (mine or anyone’s) tells me to see,
but to see with grace as you see.
Let me see with the eyes of love.
Teacher, let me see anew.

Amen

“My teacher, let me see again.” 
                         — Mark 10.51

[Prayer poem by Steve Garnaas-Holmes]