You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
What a beautiful question: “What do you want me to do for you?” How often does someone ask us that? Take a moment and think about it. What would you answer if someone stood before you and said, “What do you want me to do for you?”
I can think of a billion things, mostly having to do with stress and anxiety. Inspire my congregations. Increase my metabolism. Send me an IT person. Let my country be at peace.
What if the person standing before you asking that could move heaven and earth? That’s what Bartimaeus experienced in this week’s story: And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher, let me see again.”
On one level, it seems ridiculous for Jesus to ask – isn’t it obvious a blind man wants to see? Yet Jesus did Bartimaeus the honor of asking him to speak his desire. He didn’t assume, he didn’t impose. He asked, inviting relationship.
Jesus gives us the same honor, and the same freedom. Yes, God knows what we need, better than we do. And God wants us to ask, just as we want our children to ask for what they desire. Prayer is not about getting what we want; prayer is about drawing closer in relationship to the God who loves us. As we can ask in freedom, God responds in freedom.
It’s not like a genie granting three wishes; we don’t always understand the response. Just as we don’t give our children things that would harm them, we sometimes seem to experience a “no” from God. Presumably, had Bartimaeus said, “I want you to smite those who harass me,” Jesus would not have complied. We can be sure, though, that we worship a God who desires wholeness for us in body, mind and spirit.
I have preached on this story in nursing homes, to people in wheelchairs. That tested my faith: “What do you want me to do for you?” Still I went about praying for God’s healing love to be released in each one as I shared communion. I don’t know why I didn't see quickened limbs and straightened spines; I believe Jesus’ power is undiminished and his presence real. But I can’t know what healing did take place.
It's not always instant. Yet I will proclaim God’s goodness and love, and speaking what I would like her to do for me, and for this hurting, beautiful world.
© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vision. Show all posts
3-14-23 - Seeing What Is Not
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
How would you respond if somebody you knew to be blind could suddenly see, or someone paralyzed came dancing down the street? Or course, now we have medical advances… but imagine if you were around when this blind man received sight he’d never had? It caused a stir, to say the least…
The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, 'It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.”
Funny how, when we’re positive something cannot be, we can convince ourselves we’re not seeing it. Even when the man said, “I’m the guy…” they couldn’t quite buy it.
He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.”
Do we need to understand “how” to accept “what?” The man himself seems remarkably untroubled by how this came about – even before he gets the third degree from the religious authorities. Maybe it’s because he had no prior visual data to contradict his new reality. He did not have to overcome a lifetime of “that’s impossible; if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” He had never seen anything with his eyes. Maybe that’s why children believe so much more easily than adults – less contradictory data. Madeleine L’Engle has written that as a small child she routinely descended the staircase in her home without touching the steps. She did that until she learned it was impossible.
We can get so locked into our understanding of how the universe works – an understanding that the best scientists admit is incomplete – that we can’t entertain the possibility that the Creator of the whole thing has “laws” we have not yet discovered. Or have not discovered fully. That’s the “Kingdom of God” Jesus was making known, what I like to call the Energy Field of God.
Have you ever been asked to believe something that you knew to be impossible? Was it really? Or was your understanding too limited? Is there something in your life now that you’re being invited to believe? A step of faith you’re being invited to take? A prayer you’re being invited to try on? Can you take a step in that direction in prayer today?
The God we worship as Christ-followers is One who ”calls into being things that were not.” (Romans 4:17). Faith is our ability to believe in what God is calling into being. We don’t have to be limited in prayer by what we’ve already seen. We do have to open ourselves to the possibility that God’s ways are bigger than we can imagine. That’s the beginning of faith vision, seeing what we have not previously been able to see.
God is calling things into being all the time. Imagine the sensory rush as our Spirit-vision kicks in and we truly begin to see the Energy of God at work around us.
How would you respond if somebody you knew to be blind could suddenly see, or someone paralyzed came dancing down the street? Or course, now we have medical advances… but imagine if you were around when this blind man received sight he’d never had? It caused a stir, to say the least…
The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, 'It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.”
Funny how, when we’re positive something cannot be, we can convince ourselves we’re not seeing it. Even when the man said, “I’m the guy…” they couldn’t quite buy it.
He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.”
Do we need to understand “how” to accept “what?” The man himself seems remarkably untroubled by how this came about – even before he gets the third degree from the religious authorities. Maybe it’s because he had no prior visual data to contradict his new reality. He did not have to overcome a lifetime of “that’s impossible; if you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.” He had never seen anything with his eyes. Maybe that’s why children believe so much more easily than adults – less contradictory data. Madeleine L’Engle has written that as a small child she routinely descended the staircase in her home without touching the steps. She did that until she learned it was impossible.
We can get so locked into our understanding of how the universe works – an understanding that the best scientists admit is incomplete – that we can’t entertain the possibility that the Creator of the whole thing has “laws” we have not yet discovered. Or have not discovered fully. That’s the “Kingdom of God” Jesus was making known, what I like to call the Energy Field of God.
Have you ever been asked to believe something that you knew to be impossible? Was it really? Or was your understanding too limited? Is there something in your life now that you’re being invited to believe? A step of faith you’re being invited to take? A prayer you’re being invited to try on? Can you take a step in that direction in prayer today?
The God we worship as Christ-followers is One who ”calls into being things that were not.” (Romans 4:17). Faith is our ability to believe in what God is calling into being. We don’t have to be limited in prayer by what we’ve already seen. We do have to open ourselves to the possibility that God’s ways are bigger than we can imagine. That’s the beginning of faith vision, seeing what we have not previously been able to see.
God is calling things into being all the time. Imagine the sensory rush as our Spirit-vision kicks in and we truly begin to see the Energy of God at work around us.
10-18-21 - Son of...
You can listen to this reflection here.
This Sunday’s Gospel reading finds us at the cusp of the final act in Jesus’ earthly life and mission. He and his entourage come to Jericho and, the text suggests, leave it soon after. Jericho is his last stop on his way to Jerusalem for the last time; there he will enter into his passion and death. On the outskirts of Jericho, the ancient site of Joshua’s miraculous victory, the new Joshua – Yeshu’a – encounters a blind man, a blind man who can see better than anyone else around.
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’
Why does Mark make such a point about Bartimaeus’ sonship? “Bar” means “son” in Aramaic, so Bartimaeus already means “Son of Timaeus.” Thus Mark identifies him as “Son of Timeaeus, Son of Timaeus.” Now, maybe it’s just that his father was named Timaeus, but that’s not a Hebrew name. And this isn’t Mark’s usual pattern. Some scholars think Mark is trying to make a point with this name – “Timaeus” is also the name of one of the more influential Dialogs of Plato, and contains a discourse on the eye and vision. Is Mark signaling his readers with this name that we are talking about a new way of seeing the universe? Or is he suggesting that all the intellectual and philosophical insight in the world won’t allow you to see what can only be perceived by faith?
This blind man already sees by faith what no one else in the story seems to: who Jesus really is. Mark’s gospel is the one that makes the most of the “Messianic secret” – and here a blind man “outs” him as the Son of David – code for the Messiah, whom prophets said would come from David's line.
What do these two sons, the son of Timaeus and the son of David have to do with each other? And what do they have to do with us? One might say we are all sons and daughters of both Timaeus and God, heirs to both worldly reason and spiritual sight. As Jesus lived with two identities at once, human and divine, so we in some measure live in these two realities simultaneously, even as they exist in tension.
This rich story invites us to explore our dual citizenship in the realm of this world and the realm of God. It bids us question how our gift of physical sight and intellectual insight can help or hinder our faith vision.
This Sunday’s Gospel reading finds us at the cusp of the final act in Jesus’ earthly life and mission. He and his entourage come to Jericho and, the text suggests, leave it soon after. Jericho is his last stop on his way to Jerusalem for the last time; there he will enter into his passion and death. On the outskirts of Jericho, the ancient site of Joshua’s miraculous victory, the new Joshua – Yeshu’a – encounters a blind man, a blind man who can see better than anyone else around.
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’
Why does Mark make such a point about Bartimaeus’ sonship? “Bar” means “son” in Aramaic, so Bartimaeus already means “Son of Timaeus.” Thus Mark identifies him as “Son of Timeaeus, Son of Timaeus.” Now, maybe it’s just that his father was named Timaeus, but that’s not a Hebrew name. And this isn’t Mark’s usual pattern. Some scholars think Mark is trying to make a point with this name – “Timaeus” is also the name of one of the more influential Dialogs of Plato, and contains a discourse on the eye and vision. Is Mark signaling his readers with this name that we are talking about a new way of seeing the universe? Or is he suggesting that all the intellectual and philosophical insight in the world won’t allow you to see what can only be perceived by faith?
This blind man already sees by faith what no one else in the story seems to: who Jesus really is. Mark’s gospel is the one that makes the most of the “Messianic secret” – and here a blind man “outs” him as the Son of David – code for the Messiah, whom prophets said would come from David's line.
What do these two sons, the son of Timaeus and the son of David have to do with each other? And what do they have to do with us? One might say we are all sons and daughters of both Timaeus and God, heirs to both worldly reason and spiritual sight. As Jesus lived with two identities at once, human and divine, so we in some measure live in these two realities simultaneously, even as they exist in tension.
This rich story invites us to explore our dual citizenship in the realm of this world and the realm of God. It bids us question how our gift of physical sight and intellectual insight can help or hinder our faith vision.
How does your capacity for thought about God lead you closer to God?
What “evidence” does the world present that holds you back from believing the impossible power of God? Do we fall prey to the mixed messages of too much data?
As we will see, Bartimaeus was unhindered by physical sight, even as he longed to see. But his faith vision was highly developed. The invitation for we who are blessed with physical vision is to be as sure as this blind man was about the God-Life that is all around us, unseen but very, very real.
What “evidence” does the world present that holds you back from believing the impossible power of God? Do we fall prey to the mixed messages of too much data?
As we will see, Bartimaeus was unhindered by physical sight, even as he longed to see. But his faith vision was highly developed. The invitation for we who are blessed with physical vision is to be as sure as this blind man was about the God-Life that is all around us, unseen but very, very real.
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