Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 27 October 2024.
• First Reading: Job 42: 1-6, 10-17 (Job’s reply to the Lord: My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You)
• Epistle: Hebrews 7: 23-25 (He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him)
• Gospel: Mark 10: 46-52 (Blind Bartimaeus receives his sight)
It is strange how the voyeurism for the suffering of other people has created its own industry. It is presented as sympathy and concern but geared to the 24 hour news cycle and one story is easily displaced by one of even more photogenic matters elsewhere, or the mishaps of the latest entertainment starlet.
And the attention seems geared to the quantity and quality of the pictures rather than the story or the background and the causes and consequences of this particular misery.
So: just what is happening in the Sahel region of Africa, in Haiti, or the slums of any major city on the planet? No drama to report? No suitable pictures of oh-so-tastefully arranged victims of human selfishness? That’s just too bad. On to the next story.
And if this is what happens in the 24-hour news cycle, that it is also there in our own attention spans. Just too many stories, too many images and claims on our sympathy, our emotional energy, not to mention our money.
And then there are the simple cliches about how it is always darkest just before dawn, of how others are suffering even more acutely that we are, how things are bound to get better. What’s for you will not go past you. And so on.
Now look at Job who had been demanding audience with God for his personal sorrows. Grief-stricken at the loss of his children and bereft of his personal wealth. And to add insult to injury his comforters regale him with accounts of the justice of God so that if anything came to Job then he must be the sinner.
But Job’s faith is deeper than that. It is not just that he has a clear conscience before God and so is unable to pinpoint any area of personal sin that might have drawn down these afflictions.
He also had a perfectly clear sense of God and of His righteousness before which he was confident that he might gain an unbiased hearing.
And despite it all, he refused to let go. This was the point where his faith was rock-solid, to the point of obduracy, and perhaps in the eyes of some, of fanaticism, even self-delusion.
And it is with this in mind that Job then obtained his audience with God. Out of the storm, the Lord answered him, challenging him to explain his claims of personal innocence, before the One who created the heavens and the earth, who created all life and is the master of all eternity.
But this time Job really was reduced to silence. He had spoken out, more in frustration and bewilderment than anything else.
And now God had answered Job, with humility. He did not have all the answers, he could now penetrate the mysteries of the Lord and he certainly did not know his way around the courts of heaven. All he really knew was his own ash-pit where he had been sitting in his own misery.
And yet God honoured him.
God spoke and Job was the one giving answers – even answers of humility and repentance. Before the Lord he knew that he really was nothing and had no claims at all.
But it was this very position that put him in the place where he could hear the word of the Lord. All sense of self had been driven from him and his pride was crushed, even if his sense of being and personality were not.
That was the Job who could indeed intercede for his friends and who could also receive the new blessings of God.
Turing to blind Bartimaeus at the roadside in Jericho:
Jesus had come to the city and was on his way out. He had just been with Zacchaeus and accepted his repentance as a corrupt and grasping tax official. Jesus would not be coming this way again, and this was Bartimaeus’ last chance.
And so he cried out, with the same plea that we utter every Sunday. ‘Lord have mercy.’
Nothing more. No demands or claims or arguments. Not even anger: only a simple but heart-felt desperation and faith.
He would not let go and he would not be silent. It did not matter that he was making a scene, or presenting a spectacle of himself. Any embarrassment he might have caused was quite irrelevant.
For Bartimaeus knew within the depths of his being that this Jesus of whom people had spoken so often was here, in his city and on his street. Jesus would pass Bartimaeus by and there would be no second chances.
And this was the simplest and most direct of pleas: ‘Lord have mercy.’ Short, simple and to the point. No arguments or claims for justice or redress of the ills that life had dealt him.
Like Job, Bartimaeus was desperate and was not going to let go.
But there is something else here. It is not just that Jesus, who knew perfectly well that the man was blind. But He still asked Bartimaeus to name his need. Make his petition. Use his own words to express himself. That is one aspect.
But the other was different. We are told that Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way. This was the road to Jerusalem. It was a climb from some 1200 feet below sea level to 2400 feet above it.
But it was also the road to the cross. Jesus was going uphill to Jerusalem, and then again uphill to Calvary. He would be going up to the Upper Room and His farewell Passover and talks to His disciples.
Jesus would put Himself in the place where all sickness, blindness and every other kind of deprivation have thrived.
Lord have mercy.
