Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Unworthiness is not Worthlessness: "Go your way; your faith has saved you."

Faith is a gift, freely given, immeasurably valuable, but rarely embraced. Why? Consider Bartimaeus in today’s gospel. He is blind and wants to see. In his blindness, he yells out in his darkness at the passing healer, Jesus, whom he knows will save him. The folks around him probably wondered what he had done to displease God such that he was blind; and what does Bartimaeus do? He makes a scene—a very annoying distraction for those trying to get a glimpse of Jesus. Bartimaeus seems also to attribute his blindness to sinfulness because he doesn’t yell out “Make me better! Over here, Jesus. I’m blind. Make me better”. Bartimaeus gets Jesus’ attention by yelling "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me." He yells this out twice. By addressing Jesus as Son of David, he implicitly acknowledges Jesus as successor to David and Messiah. Jesus’ reply is intriguing: “Go your way; your faith has saved you." Jesus didn’t say “I have healed you”, but rather focuses on the power of Bartimaeus’ faith. There is no recording of Bartimaeus even having been touched by Jesus. Jesus simply declares him healed by Bartimaeus' faith and to “Go your way….”

Bartimaeus’ healing is a wonderful instruction in faith, healing, and mission. In leading with the phrase “Have mercy on me”, he understands healing begins establishing the correct relationship between himself and Jesus. He, perhaps more than anyone else in the crowd, knows he is the least entitled; but his faith in the nature of Jesus’ compassion gives him the courage to call out. If our sense of unworthiness doesn’t compel us to call out, our real need isn’t healing, but faith. Realizing our unworthiness isn’t the same as worthlessness. God’s love gives us our worth; we cannot generate it ourselves. William Sloane Coffin, a famous preacher, wrote of this dynamic eloquently:

“Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.”

Bartimaeus understood the source of his worth by faith, and this is what gave him the courage to call out for healing from Jesus. Approaching God in a humility that is based upon establishing this right relationship is essential. Too often a sense of worthlessness keeps our prayers silent or redirected towards a favorite saint. We might be unworthy, but we are far from worthless. God’s love establishes our worth for all time, independent of our actions. Recognizing God’s love can allow us to cry out to God “Have mercy on me, a sinner….unworthy, but not worthless, because you love me, God!” Faith, then, at its essence is letting God know you’ve received the gift and want to claim it despite all the negative voices telling you to “be silent.” Get up. Jesus is calling you!

—Fr. Todd

Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

“...whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.”

Mark’s community faced many struggles.  This community was likely made up of Jews living outside Palestine, and Romans. It is this reason that many have suggested that “Mark’s” community was in or near Rome. More important, though, is this community faced persecution from outside and division from within; it was a community under siege. One source of internal division seems to be over positions of prestige and honor within the community as reflected in James and John jostling for position. It is interesting to note that in Matthew, it isn’t the disciples seeking position and prestige, but rather their mother interceding on their behalf! Although such concern for ranking was not exclusive to Gentiles, Jesus’ response suggests the Kingdom will not be about the exercise of authority, but about the exercise of humility. Jesus’ identification with the Suffering Servant Messiah of Isaiah was difficult to accept, and the motif of the journey to Jesus’ death on the cross is central to following him both in a figurative and literal sense.

            How, then, do we regard the admonition to be servants? How far do we take this? Once again, Jesus gives us a standard of living that seems absurdly idealistic. And, once again, we see how far we are from that ideal. Following Jesus, the greatest cross for many is the cross of failure when one comes to understand the demands of love and sacrifice asked of us. Rather than becoming disheartened, however, it should remind us of the need for God’s grace, and our humble response of humility and gratitude.

            If we could but picture ourselves in a long retinue of followers, tripping constantly and falling farther and farther behind on this journey to Jerusalem, only to discover at the end of the line Jesus, offering us water and encouragement by telling us we were not the last after all; Jesus will be just behind us all the way.

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

All things are possible for God

           I grew up with this Bible story of the Rich Young Man's entreaty for eternal life. Sadly, the Young Man, cannot part with his possessions.  Jesus then uses this as a teaching moment, not to excoriate the rich, per se, but to show how powerful we cling to that which impedes us from entering the Kingdom.
           There is a popular story that attempts to deflate the hyperbole of a camel struggling to go through the eye of a needle. Without any historical evidence, some claim that there was a lesser gate in the wall surrounding Jerusalem that was opened at night, and to be able to move a camel through it, the camel had to crouch and kneel; it becomes inconvenient, but far from impossible. The rich feel better.
            Both the Jerome Biblical Commentary (Catholic commentary) and the Interpreter's Bible (Protestant) dismiss this "urban legend". What is telling isn't that this myth of the "eye of a needle" has had so much traction. This parable, however, isn't a story about the rich, but a story about the nature of faith.

The power of the hyperbole is essential for this parable. It is more comfortable to believe that God rewards Christians who "do their duty", who obey the ordinances of the institution; however, Jesus is asking us to live this impossibility of dispossession---to get rid of anything that stands in the way of living the gospel.

Sometimes this can be rather a spectacular grace, but more often than not, it is "whispering grace", grace that comes through a "chance encounter" with a stranger, or a growing sense of being loved by others who have experienced God's grace.  We then enter the Kingdom; we breach the impossibly narrow gates we've constructed to keep God's riches out.

Later in this gospel passage, Jesus declares to his disciples: "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God".  The nature of the Kingdom isn't an earthly institution we can control, or through our wits and gain an advantage.  The Kingdom is ubiquitous.  It is all around us; we are swimming in it.  The Kingdom is revealed when we open our eyes to the grace of our poverty in Christ.  There is no greater act of downsizing than committing oneself to following the way of Christ rather than the commands of the Church. 

The wealth we need to jettison is the wealth of the false faith that is the security of conforming ourselves to the will of the Church, rather than the will of God.  When the institution doesn't reveal the Good News, we must live the Good News, not by fighting the church, but by modeling to the church what the Good News looks like.  We must live for the sake of Christ and the gospel, not the institutional grace of following rules and spending time trying to enter the Kingdom with what we refuse to leave behind.