October 25th, 2024
When I thought about this story – the story that Liz just read for us, in which Bartimaues gets his sight restored by Jesus – I thought of something curious.
I have to set this up for you a little bit. This curious thought starts with the way we Christians believe in Jesus.
Our Christian faith is based upon a remarkable idea… the idea a particular person – Jesus of Nazareth – who lived, taught, and healed people for 33 short years before he was executed by the Roman Empire – that this particular man was, in some mysterious and wonderful way, both human and God.
Somehow, Jesus was both human and divine.
It never occurred to me before, but as I was driving in my car, thinking about Bartimaues, I realized that the people – like this Bartimaues – who happened to have live during the same 33 years that Jesus lived, had something amazing, that the rest of us, who lived either before or after Jesus, just don’t have.
If Jesus is both human and divine, than Bartimaues, and all the disciples, and indeed, all the multitudes of people described in the New Testament – didn’t have to pray to God. They got to converse with God in exactly the same way that you and I talk to each other.
For those 33 years, when God was incarnate as Jesus, the Divine was not, as it sometimes seems to us, a distant idea shrouded in mystery.
During Christ’s life, humans could actually have a conversation with God.
How fortunate for them!
In Jesus, God was enough of a human being to be able to actually engage in conversation
Imagine being able to have a conversation with God!
Let’s give this some thought.
There is a logic to the way a conversation between two people works.
In a conversation one person says something and the other person responds. Sometimes its more messy than that, but basically there is an exchange of ideas that moves back and forth.
If a question is asked, an answer can be given promptly and clearly.
Sometimes this interaction is pleasant. Sometimes it is unpleasant.
If there happens to be a difference between the people who are in conversation – whether it be age or power, or in social status – this difference is navigated through the use of social norms that involve speech and body language.
Praying is weirdly the same and also profoundly different from this.
Often when we pray, we use language to express ourselves to God, just in the same way that we do when we are talking to each other. There are norms, and kinds of speech and body language that we use to show respect to God when we pray.
In these ways prayer is similar to conversation.
But one of the crucial differences between praying and conversing is that when we pray, the other who is involved in this act of communication, is not another person.
When we pray, we express our hopes and desires to a mystery.
To the eternal.
To the unknown.
And since the one that we are praying to is not a person, praying is not a back and forth exchange of ideas in the same way.
If we want the answer to a question that we ask in prayer, we do not really expect to hear a voice from heaven answering us. We typically do not get immediate answers from God, as we might get from Jesus. Instead we attend to the world around us to see if God somehow answers us through things that happen to us.
It’s not very efficient form of communication is it?
It’s kind of quaint.
Kind of old-timey.
It’s not at all like our wireless technology that is getting faster and faster all the time.
**
So here’s an interesting question that leaps out from all this speculation about conversation and prayer.
Since we can’t speak to God as we might talk to another person, we have developed a whole tradition around prayer. But what if you did have the chance, like Bartimaues, to actually have a conversation with God – how would you talk to God ?
As we mull over this question, I realize that there is another pretty important thing that we need to consider.
There is another crucially important way that prayer is different from other kinds of communication.
When I talk to another person, I know that, no matter how wise the person may be – they are just another person. They may know an awful lot about many many things, but they don’t know everything.
God, on the otherhand, is omniscient. All knowing.
God knows how the rings of Saturn were formed.
God knows if the 7:15 to Scarsdale will be on time.
God knows how bumble bees fly and how Blue whales dive.
But as amazing as all that is, that’s kind of neither here nor there, because the really significant thing is that God knows you.
God knows what is in your heart…
So… knowing this, how would you proceed if, like Bartimaues, you got the chance to have a conversation with God?
At this juncture, we can look to the Bible. I think we should take a look at what Bartimaues did, and see what we can learn from it.
**
For those of us who listen attentively to the stories that are told about Jesus, the story of Bartimaues son of Timaeus sounds familiar. Stories like this one have defined Jesus for us.
We know Jesus is a healer.
This is a healing story.
We know that Jesus can perform miracles.
This is a miracle story.
This story neatly brings together healing and miracle, in the person of Jesus.
Bartimaues, knows these things about Jesus. Even though he has a impressive sounding name, the text tells us that, as far as society is concerned, he is, as my father would say “small potatoes.” Bartimaues is a blind beggar who sits by the roadside. When he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing, he starts up an unholy row, shouting at the top of his lungs to try to get Christ’s attention:
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
A blind beggar covered with dust yelling at Jesus! This is intolerable! Everyone, including the disciples are annoyed. They tell him to shut up.
Shut up Bartimaues!
But instead playing nicey-nice and politely fading into the background, as a beggar by the side of the road is supposed to do, Bartimaues ignores social convention and cries out again:
“…Son of David, have mercy on me!”
So this is quite interesting. You would think that, if you got a chance to talk directly to God, your first instinct would be to be polite!
But Bartimaues is actually kind of rude. He is loud and insistent.
He will not take no for an answer.
But is Jesus offended? Does God-among-us tell Bartimaues to just keep it down?
No.
Jesus responds as we God will always respond to us. Jesus recognizes Bartimaues. God recognizes him.
Jesus stood still the text says and said, “Call him here.”
This feels profound to me.
Jesus stood still.
Isn’t wonderful to know that, if you call oout to God, God will stand still?
The rest of the story proceeds as we are accustomed to these stories going. Jesus asks Bartimaues what he wants, and the beggar asks to be given sight. Jesus compliments Bartimaues for his faith, saying:
“Go; your faith has made you well.”
And… “Immediately he regained his sight…”
**
There is something about this story that makes me, in my role as a pastor, a little bit anxious.
If we read this story as a direct conversation between a human (Bartimaues) and God (Jesus) – we may be left with the impression that we can expect God to respond immediately to any request that we make by performing a miracle that will make our suffering promptly disappear.
This, after all, is what he does for Bartimaues.
But is this true to our experience of our lives?
Has God promptly and decisively acted on your behalf everytime you have asked?
Personally – even though I am up here in the pulpit, and I consider myself a person of faith, I don’t think it works that way.
I think this story gives us a false hope that God will play nice and do whatever we ask.
If God were that predictable we would live in a very different world.
We could say (as I often do) “God, please stop the war in Gaza,” and God would agree and stop it.
That would be nice.
I wish it were so.
But even though this story makes me nervous, I think there is something valuable to learn from it.
Something that may answer the question I asked earlier – how might we act if we got the chance to have a conversation with God?
As I was driving around and thinking about all this, it occurred to me that we always measure the value of prayer by whether or not it is answered.
But must we do this?
What if we just focused on the human side of the conversation?
That, after all, is the question: what would we say if we had a chance to talk to God.
Must the quality of what we say be measured by the nature of God’s response?
It is, actually, nearly impossible to measure the quality of a prayer in this way since God’s response –whatever it may be — cannot be anticipated.
All we can really do, is evaluate what we bring to God.
If we think about our interaction with God in this way – about what we bring to it, rather than what we get from it…
Bartimaues’ story is very instructive.
Bartimaues’ story shows us that we don’t have to be polite to God in order for God to stand still and listen to us.
We don’t have to be submissive and grovelling in order for God to stand still and listen to us.
If we are angry, we can be angry.
If we are feeling grief, we can weep.
When it comes down to it, there is only one thing we must do when we pray to God.
There is only one thing that is of utmost importance.
Truth.
Truth.
We must express what is truly in our hearts.
God knows our hearts, we cannot lie to God.
We can easily lie to others.
We can even do a pretty good job at lying to ourselves.
But we cannot lie to God. So we should not try.
To lie to God is to turn away from God.
So whether we converse with God, as Bartimaues did, or we pray to God, as we all do – interaction with God gives us an opportunity to be honest.
To be real.
To give God the truth – even if it is rude – is to show your faith.
In the 8th Chapter of John, Jesus says: “The truth will set you free.”
When we give God our truth, God will give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and the hearts that we need to live our lives fully.
Amen