“I Want to See,” by Rev. Dr. Mearle Griffith – October 27, 2024, at Mount Vernon, Ohio, based on Mark 10: 46-54

As I told the children, we’re going to be dealing with the story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus, and it begins with Jesus asking what might seem to us to be an obvious question, “What do you want me to do for you?” But it opens up a wonderful opportunity for some sober reflection as we consider the implications of the question, both for Bartimaeus but more appropriate perhaps for us. Will you pray with me? “Holy and loving God, help us today to put ourselves into this story, to do the hard work of self-reflection. What do we really want, and what can You do for us that only You can do? In the name of Christ, I pray. Amen.”

Most of you who’ve heard me enough won’t be surprised when I tell you that I don’t want us to literalize today’s gospel and make it only about physical blindness and sight. When I started my freshman year of college I took a speech class, and I was aware that Dr. Strommer, the professor of speech at the nearby college, had been the judge at many high school speech classes, and I knew that he was blind. I thought going into that class, this is going to be duck soup, you know? I’ll sit where I want, do what I want to. He won’t even know if I showed up to class. First day of class he assigned each one of us a seat and set me right down in front of him. I wonder yet to this day what advance knowledge he had about me. But it was interesting – probably 10 minutes into the class, when we were introducing ourselves, he paused for a moment and he said, “Ma’am” – and pointed down like this – “your knitting needles are a distraction to me. Would you please put those away until after class?” I knew in that moment he was in charge of the classroom, and I had the greatest, greatest admiration for Dr. Strommer for what he taught us about speech, but also what he taught us about life.

We often hear this biblical story and think of blindness and seeing in their outward forms, but what about the inward blindness and seeing? I think the story’s bigger than outward and physical blindness or seeing. I think it’s a universal story that every one of us experience even though our vision is 20/20. You ever feel like you’re in the dark? I don’t mean that somebody turned off the lights on you, but that the light within you is no longer shining brightly. I’m talking about those times when you feel lost and you can’t see a clear way forward. You’re confused and there is no clarity. Maybe the answers and beliefs that once lit your way no longer illuminate your path. You stumble and fumble your way through life not sure even where you’re going. Or maybe it’s the darkness of fear that has captured you. Maybe grief, loss, sorrow have darkened your life, and maybe shadows from your past, shadows of guilt, regret, failure, disappointment mimic your every move, and no matter how fast you run from that shadow it’s still there. I wonder if that’s what it was like for Bartimaeus.

Do you ever feel like you’re sitting on the roadside of life? Do you ever feel that everyone except you has it figured out and is going somewhere? I’m talking about those times when it feels like life is passing us by and we aren’t getting anywhere. We feel stuck, like a spectator of life rather than a participant. Maybe it’s about exhaustion or the lack of wholeheartedness, maybe it’s despair, inertia or indifference. Maybe it feels like your life has been turned upside down, and you have been displaced. Maybe it feels like you don’t have any place to be, or no one would miss you if you were not there. Maybe you’ve been sidelined by loneliness, being an outsider, or offering a voice others don’t want to hear. I wonder if that’s what it was like for Bartimaeus.

Bartimaeus might just be one of my favorite characters in the Bible. You ask me why. There’s something about his audacity and his fierce tenacity that inspires me. He lived in darkness, and yet he saw more clearly than any of his seeing contemporaries. He saw more clearly than anyone else. A blind beggar sitting in the dark alongside the road to Jerusalem knew what he wanted, and he couldn’t be dissuaded from it. Even as I speak these words I am filled with the crazy hope and a wild wonder about my own life. What if when I’m sitting in the dirt, in the dark, beside the road in my life, do I have none that can stop me from calling out to Jesus? What if I don’t care what others think but instead cry out all the louder? What if I believe that Jesus is who He says He is, and what if I trust Him to do what we believe He can? What if I throw off everything, absolutely everything that will hinder me and run in my blindness to Jesus? What if I could speak those four simple words, “I want to see?”

Bartimaeus simply does not give two hoots about conforming to what others want and expect from him. He doesn’t care about criticism or reprimand, and so he is free to seek only his master, his teacher. Lord, give me a heart like Bartimaeus. Give me his courage, his faith, give me his sight. So, Jesus questioned, “What do you want me to do for you?” Maybe one of the most important questions we could ever be asked. And the fact that it came from Jesus makes it even more important.

I remember a story about a retired pastor friend of ours, a pastor in Lakeland, Florida, who told us about his visit with an elderly woman in the hospital. With a long list of hospital calls to make, Riley Short, then the pastor of the 6,000-member First United Methodist Church in Lakeland, went about the business of offering a prayer to this woman from his congregation who was facing surgery. After he finished the prayer, the woman looked up to him and said, “Pastor, that wasn’t much of a prayer.” And for a moment, Reverend Short couldn’t think of anything to say. But when he gathered his composure, he said to her, “Well, I prayed for God’s healing, I prayed for the doctors, I prayed for all the health professionals caring for you.” But she responded, “You never even asked me what I wanted you to pray for.” He realized that she had just completely changed how he approached his bedside prayers. From that moment, he said to me, he now asks the question, “What can I do for you? What do you want me to pray for?

To further unpack this truth, Frederick Buechner offers a series of questions to help us focus on things that really matter, even if we’d rather not face the questions. “When you look at your face in the mirror what do you see in that you most like, and what do you see in the mirror that you most deplore?” Another question – “If you only had one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in 25 words or less? Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember? Is there any person in the world or any cause that if circumstances called for it you would be willing to die for? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?” Buechner continues, “To hear yourself answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are, but both what you are becoming and what you’re failing to become.”

The blind beggar began to shout, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” With His heightened sense of hearing, Jesus had no trouble picking the voice out of the noise of the crowd around Him. And perhaps what caught His attention was this was the first time anyone had ever publicly referred to Him as son of David. I think the text that she read this morning simply called Him teacher, but the older verses talk about the son of David. The son of David was a common title for the Messiah in that day. Everyone knew that, so blind Bartimeaus was the first that we have any record in the Bible of declaring it publicly that Jesus was in fact the savior of the world, the Messiah, and in a very loud and disturbing way. The blind man’s faith allowed him to see something that no one else in the crowd could see. There is another whole sermon needed to reflect on the fact that the blind man could see what nobody else had noticed.

Those around Jesus rebuked the man for his rude interruption. It was unseemly, it was out of order, it violated the Jewish rules of decorum. And this man was undoubtedly seen in that culture as a sinner, as being unclean because of his blindness, presumably punishment for some unspeakable sin. And Jesus asks the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” Wow, what a question. What would you ask for? We too are poor, we too are blind, we too are beggars. And we too need to come before God in our brokenness, in our helplessness, our blindness and our own poverty. We too need to call out to Christ to take pity on us. If we dare renounce our egos and selfishness and beg for God’s help, we too will appear to God asking us, what do you want me to do for you?

The blind man responded in faith, “Rabbi, I want to see.” When you’re blind, that’s a good thing to ask for. The problem with most of us, if we’re totally honest with each other, is that we don’t even know that we’re blind. We’re always asking for the wrong things. We don’t think to ask for help because we try to be so self-sufficient. We want to do it all by ourselves. The ones who I think are truly blind are those who think they have it all together. In their pride they never really call out to Jesus for the help that He can give. As we bring Him our sin, suffering and brokenness, we realize the new reality of faith in our life. Let’s move beyond our fear. Let’s move beyond our pride, and let’s move beyond our doubt and come to Jesus with faith as we bring Him our sin, our suffering and our brokenness. In our pride we’ve never really called out to Jesus for help because our desperation factor can’t overcome our pride factor. Let me say that again, take it home with you, write it down. In our pride we’ve never really called out to Jesus for help because our desperation faction can’t overcome our pride factor. Be encouraged. God is still calling you. Jesus asks the question. He’s calling you in a way that you can hear, and you can do as Bartimaeus did. You can jump up and run to his arms and love Him. Amen.