Sunday, October 25, 2015
Sermon for Pentecost 22
Proper 25 B
~ October 25, 2015
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
That we may obtain what you promise,
make us love
what you command.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity,
Long ago, commentators
noticed that the cry of the blind man resembled the Jesus prayer: Jesus Son of David, have mercy on me and
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy
on me. So, this healing miracle may
be interpreted as a figure of the spiritual life. I can’t resist the temptation
to regard this formal similarity as permission to interpret the story as an
allegory. [I say temptation, because
allegory was out of favor fifty years ago when I was in seminary, and doing
what I am about to do produces guilt-feelings such as I might experience if I considered
shop-lifting, but here goes!]
· Bystanders rebuke him and try to get him to stop, just as our thoughts interfere, whenever we try to pray the Jesus prayer.
· Jesus summons the blind man, whereupon the bystanders turn into supporters.
· Bartimaios throws off his cloak – everything he has – and comes to Jesus.
· Then he receives his sight, the mystical vision.
Let’s go
through these one by one.
· The New Testament enjoins us to “pray
without ceasing.” On one level, the practice of the Jesus Prayer fulfills that
literally: constantly invoking divine aid, just as the blind Bartimaios
persevered in his loud appeal, despite the scorn of the onlookers.
· If you attempt this kind of prayer you
hear immediately from the bystanders, advising you to shut up. Distractions
pour in to consciousness. In traditional language, these thoughts are demonic. Not necessarily diabolical, but demonic. Nowadays, we would say that they are sub-conscious. The
fathers say, just ignore them. Don’t let them vex you. They can’t hurt you. Just
keep on saying the prayer. Follow the blind man’s example.
· Then, eventually something happens. The
demons turn into angels, assisting us in our spiritual process. “Take heart,”
they say. The Master is calling you. Or some such encouragement. That is very
nice to hear. The danger is that these angels can be just as distracting as the
demons. The pleasant feeling of their consolation is not the goal. Ignore them
too, and keep on saying the prayer. Adepts report that, with perseverance over
a long time, the prayer eventually seems to say itself. Some unconscious part
of ourselves – or some Other – is praying within us. This is called the Prayer
of the Heart. Maybe that is the allegorical meaning of the advice to “take
heart.” The Prayer itself descends into one’s inmost core, operating at every
level of conscious and sub-conscious being.
· Then comes the grace to Love what
Jesus commands. His command is to come to Him, and we can leap up, discarding
everything. To a beggar, the cloak was not just an outer garment: it was a
bedroll and a roof. It was all he had, a necessity to bare survival. Throwing
it off is throwing off everything – not just material possessions, but emotional
and even spiritual consolations. To come to Jesus, as the blind man did, the
cloak must be left behind. When we can love doing so, and only then, can we
receive what He promises.
That is, we receive our sight again. Apparently, Bartimaios could once
see and then lost his sight. Maybe that is true of everyone in some way. Maybe
it is related to the mysterious pronouncement of a few weeks ago that no one
can enter the Kingdom of God except as a little child. At the risk of
sentimentality, this may have something to do with immediacy of perception and
innocent wonder at the beauty of Reality. Anyway, the last state is better than
the first; the sight one receives again
is better – incomparably better – than the sight that was lost. One who
receives sight again, like
Bartimaios, sees Reality as it is. Bartimaios sees Jesus; he sees God.
Finally, by
the way, I can’t think of any other people Jesus healed whose name we know – except for Lazarus. We know
the names of some of their parents, but not their own names. So let’s get
really allegorical and notice the meaning of the blind man’s name. Actually,
even Bartimaios is a patronymic – Son of Timaios, but it was his name. Tim-aios means precious, or costly, or valuable, dear. So Bartimaios is the son, the heir of what is valuable and
precious – what is MOST precious in the world. In his inmost self, Bartimaios is
the most exalted of God’s creatures, the Image of God, human consciousness, which
is to say created matter conscious of itself. But, somehow, that consciousness
is impaired, darkened, blind.
Jesus is here to cure that blindness, to restore the sight
and to bring to consciousness what never was seen. Jesus also tells Bartimaios –
as He tells many He heals – “your faith has healed you.” In other words, our co-operation is part of
the miracle. Bartimaios has to persevere, ignoring the bystanders, even the
encouraging ones. Then he has to jump up and leave everything behind. Active
human participation is part of personal salvation and cosmic redemption. In
order to obtain what He promises, we must co-operate with grace, growing to
love what He commands.
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME, LORD JESUS!
