Who’s really blind?
We’ve been following Mark’s gospel through the Sundays of ordinary time this year. The authors of the four gospels each organised their material in a particular way and gave emphasis to certain points they wanted to make. While all are based on oral traditions, other texts (notably, Matthew and Luke both draw on Mark) and even eyewitness accounts, they were committed to writing with some care and their inclusion in the canonical writings was also carefully considered.
What are we to make of miracle stories like today’s gospel reading, where Jesus heals a blind beggar (Mark names him as Bartimaeus)? First, across Mark’s gospel, there’s an urgency that is reflected in its brevity. Mark really wants us to get the point of ‘the good news of Jesus Christ’ without distraction.
The story of Bartimaeus is familiar enough – as are a lot of the healing miracles. Bartimaeus was not only blind, he was therefore marginalised, reduced to begging. In healing him, Jesus restores his dignity. A telling detail, easy to miss, is that a good number of Jesus’ followers told Bartimaeus to shut up and get out of the way. Who was really blind? Bartimaeus, or those others who tried to exclude him?
Perhaps because we hear one bit of a gospel one Sunday and another bit the next week, we sometimes think about each story in isolation. Thinking about the stories Mark tells before and after this one is therefore helpful. Last week we had James and John wanting the best seats when Jesus comes into his own. Jesus rightly told them that they didn’t have a clue.
Implicitly, Mark contrasts their worldly ambition with Bartimaeus’ faith. Mark perhaps is making the point that the blind beggar had a better idea about what sort of messiah Jesus was – not one who was going to distribute the spoils to his supporters like some ancient or medieval warlord, as Zebedee’s sons hoped. And some of the disciples wanted to preserve their monopoly when they told a stranger to stop casting out devils in Jesus’ name. Jesus wasn’t too impressed by that, either.
Then before that Jesus was saying little children had to be welcomed and disciples had to become like them. On that Sunday Fr Patrick reminded us it’s not the cute story we’ve been conditioned to think it is; in that place and time, children had no rights. There it is again – forget about the worldly measures of esteem and success. And no one is to be excluded. As Pope Francis said in his Angelus address on 30 June, ‘Brothers and sisters, let us look to God’s heart, so that the Church and society may neither exclude anyone nor treat anyone as “impure”, so that each person, with their own story, is welcomed and loved without labels, without prejudices — loved without adjectives’.
Jim McAloon
