Like
most of you, I was away this past week; and like many of you, I did a lot of
driving. As my friend and I drove up
through West Virginia and Ohio yesterday, we passed a convoy of station wagons
with Indiana license plates, being driven by college-student-aged-looking
drivers. We were pretty sure: this is
the CSC Appalachia service trip making its way home. It was a nice reminder of where we were
going, and who we were going there with.
We were on the way, and so were they.
In this
gospel, Jesus is on his way too; he’s on his way to Jerusalem to suffer and die
and then rise again, and so proclaim God’s love, a love for us so powerful that
not even death, death at our hands, could keep him from being with us. And he has people traveling with him too, and
that must be such a comfort to him. They
don’t know quite what they’re letting themselves in for, and they won’t endure
perfectly, they’ll flee, but for now, they’re traveling on that same way with
him. And Jesus doesn’t demand that
Bartimaeus follow him on that way, he simply tells him to go on his way, on
Bartimaeus’ way.
But,
Bartimaeus has been healed. His sight
has been healed, and maybe his insight never needed to be healed, or maybe this
is a new insight of his, but he gets its, he gets it in a way that the twelve
didn’t yet, that his way must be Jesus’ Way.
His heart is healed to the point that he delights in following Jesus, he
delights in what is most ultimately delightful, and he makes his way Jesus’
Way. And he doesn’t do that because he’s
been tricked into thinking it’s an easy way.
Because it’s not; it’s a way that involves taking up his cross. It’s the way of self-sacrifice; and that’s
the way of Love. And it’s not always
easy or pleasant, but it’s ultimately delightful, it’s what makes our hearts
sing.
And
figuring out how we make our way Jesus’ way is maybe the hardest struggle of
the Christian life. It looks different
at different stages in our life, but so often it does feel like struggle, and
probably will continue to feel that way until we get to heaven. But, God does will to bring us to heaven,
where we will perfectly delight in what is truly delightful, rejoice with God
and lovingly make Christ’s way our way.
Maybe at
some points in our life the struggle is getting over and away from some
habitual sin: gossip, pornography, prejudice, self-doubt. We call out to Jesus for help, and maybe we
find ourselves with Bartimaeus, having so many voices trying to shush us,
trying to dissuade us from calling out.
Then we need to know that Jesus does hear us, and Jesus does call back
to us, and Jesus does heal us to the point that we can cast off the cloaks that
hold us back and leap up and follow.
Maybe at
other points, it’s figuring out which of several good paths is the one God is
calling us along: discerning state of life, work, family commitments. There again, we can be assured that Christ is
calling us, and Christ is acting to form our hearts so that our delight can
truly lead us on his way. In these
times, the way we call out might be less desperate, more reflective, more an
attempt to truly figure out what makes our souls sing, where we find, though
imperfectly, true delight and follow our noses, knowing that the source of all
good things is the God who calls us.
Bartimaeus
had the faith and the courage to ask for something truly amazing: that his
blind eyes would see. We ask for
something just as amazing: that our hearts, so easily distracted, would be
healed and strengthened so that we would see the footprints of the source of
all joy and delight to follow them. We
call out for this. And, like that convoy
of station wagons, Christ calls us to follow together.
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