Bartimaeus was “uncouth.”
“Son of David, have mercy on me!”
This man without sight and without financial means, who parked on the roadside of Jericho’s streets, didn’t know his place, so his neighbors reminded him by telling him to shut up.
Jericho streets. The town of walls tumbling down. The place with a legacy of Israelite triumph not by power or by might, but by the spirit of God shattering borders.
Bartimaeus, freshly reminded of the societal value of his silence, shouts louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus hears. He summons Bartimaeus to come to him. Bartimaeus flings off everything that would hamper him and runs toward Jesus.
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asks.
Bartimaeus says, “Rabbi, I want to see.” At that moment, Jesus heals him, and gains a follower in Bartimaeus. (This is from Mark 10)
Nowhere in the text does Jesus chide Bartimaeus for shouting for his attention. On the contrary, Jesus rewards Bartimaeus for his loud persistence, and his specificity. “I want to see.” Bartimaeus knew what he needed, and Jesus didn’t sever his humanity by demeaning his physical reality; there was no, “you mean, you want spiritual sight, right?” Jesus knew the connective tissue of faith weaves around both flesh and spirit.
Jesus knew the connective tissue of faith weaves around both flesh and spirit.
It’s funny how we grow accustomed to the shouting of the needy. We tune it out. We attempt to silence it. We smother the cries without hearing the words of the afflicted. The twisted moral fabric of our country considers it more impolite to shout than it is to allow fellow human beings to languish in need. (Some really original status-quo keepers might react by saying, “why don’t YOU let a person move into YOUR house since you care so much?” And then we can get into an argument about what that looks like, leave the needy person completely out of the conversation, and never actually help them.)
The descendants of people who witnessed miracles lived in Jericho with Bartimaeus. The very land was a reminder of God’s movement for a needy people. But the people forgot they, too, were once needy.
The neighbors of Bartimaeus—good godly people—didn’t view his begging as an indictment, even though the law and the prophets clearly and repeatedly state that the people of God show their association with Yahweh by caring for the poor among them.
No one should be crying out for help in a town populated by the people of God—not if they are following the way of God.
No one should be crying out for help in a town populated by the people of God.
When people reeeeeaaaaach and call the United States a Christian nation founded on the Bible, I shake my head, in part because they reveal how comfy they are with rape, chattel slavery, and mass genocide being neutral byproducts of Christianity, but also because I wonder: do y’all really want that smoke? Do they really want the scrutiny of God on this nation whose prosperity necessitates the grinding down of so many people? Do these people want the holy eye of Yahweh to assess how they’re doing in loving their neighbors as themselves? (Then I giggle thinking: oh, maybe this is why segregation is important to so many majority culture Christians here; so they can say that they love their neighbor after redlining everyone else out of their communities.)
Voices continue to cry out; an indictment to us as a society. Our learned apathy is also an indictment. We are constantly rehearsing desensitization to poverty and homelessness. We are constantly rehearsing pathologizing poverty and deifying wealth. Just bring up topics like minimum wage, universal healthcare, or student debt forgiveness and watch the rabid piety break out: they do not want to alleviate financial hardship, eliminate wage theft, or create affordable housing anywhere near them. Mammon is our country’s golden calf and there are too many sitting up in pulpits who bring glory to gilded cows rather than the living God, propping up gold-plated con men on any given Sunday when they could have just “stuck to the gospel.”
But sticking to the gospel is unwieldy. It’s good news. It’s good news right now in the land of the living. Any Christian who loves both mammon and Jesus would have to split a person in two—soul and body—in order to prop up their idol and still lay claim to the Savior. How else can they justify smothering the cries of the needy, rather than turning tables over to make sure they flourish, too?
Yet the gospel is holistic. The gospel is sight to the Bartimaeus and paradise to the thief on the cross. It’s the theological discourse of a Samaritan woman and abundant wine at a wedding in Cana. It is as corporeal as Jesus pushed into the world through Mary’s birth canal, and as fulfilling as bread and fish fed to thousands by the Galilean Sea. The gospel is spiritual, but it isn’t just spiritual.
The gospel is spiritual, but it isn’t just spiritual.
The gospel brings wholeness that is inconvenient, expensive even, for the comfortable beneficiaries of syncretistic mammon-loving Christianity. It is a call back into the body, into the senses. It means hearing the shouts of people in need, and responding to them as fellow humans. It means believing their need just as Jesus did. It means not making needy people jump through humiliating hoops or endure religious performances in order to get food, clothing, or shelter (Jesus did not do that; why do we?).
The gospel offers dignity to people whom society violently yet ever-so-politely ignores, and dares the comfortable to lean into the story of flourishing that God is writing. It’s Zacchaeus-level daring that chooses to rely on God instead of mammon.
But wait; there’s more. Jericho was a place inhabited by people who didn’t know Yahweh. When those city walls came tumbling down, the army or Israel slaughtered all of Jericho’s inhabitants (except Rahab and her family, which is a whole ‘nother story). This is decidedly not good news for Jericho natives.
There’s another wall referenced in the New Testament, in the book of Ephesians (chapter 2). This wall is a dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles. Jesus causes this wall to tumble on down as well, but there is no conquering, no slaughter. Jesus brings peace, unifying in himself the Jew and Gentile and reconciling both to each other and to God. The only thing put to death is hostility.
Selah.
Look: this is the gospel. A gospel that hears and responds. A gospel that cares for the body and soul. A gospel that brings life and nourishment now and forever. This gospel transformed Bartimaeus. I pray we, too, have lungs full of mercy cries, and feet that follow after the healing savior, and throw off the encumbrances of mammon-worship in favor of flourishing.
Postscript: consider subscribing to
and — they both paint beautiful pictures of what could be when we believe needy people and choose to partner in their flourishing.
Convicting
Oh this is soooooo powerful, friend. Daaaaaaaamn. You are one of a handful of people who write about the Bible in a way that makes me want to read it (your words, not the Bible). Love love love.