Shout with joy

"What do you want of me?" Jesus asks Bartimaeus, and us

The Wedding Dance, Peter Bruegel the Elder

A homily delivered at several masses over the weekend of October 27, 2024, based on the readings for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B). Video here at 12 minute mark.

We received our orders this morning in the first line of the first reading: Shout with joy.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been feeling the joy lately. I really should, but it can be hard. Inflation, wars, storms, division. And, what most of us here in America have been thinking and talking about lately–politics. I feel like we’ll really be able to shout for joy when we stop getting political ads.

So, yes–joy can be hard.

Strangely, I often find joy in the hospital, when I bring the Lord to the sick, the mentally ill, the dying. Even patients with dementia, who recognize very little, often recognize the Lord in the eucharist, and when I begin praying the Lord’s Prayer or Hail Mary with a person who has forgotten everything else, they often pray along with me. I’ve seen caregivers shocked that a patient who hasn’t spoken a word or smiled all day, will smile and remember every single word of the Hail Mary. God moves in this world.

Nothing since my ordination has strengthened my faith more than my time spent with those who are the weakest, or lowest, or most needy. People like Bartimaeus, in today’s gospel, who cries out for help to Jesus, only to have the crowd try to shut him up.

‌Jesus isn’t having it. He calls him, and Bartimaeus leaps to his feet. We can imagine him leaping for joy at the call of the savior. And Jesus asks him–what he asks all of us: What do you want of me. And Bartimaeus says, I want to see again. So Jesus heals him, and Bartimaeus becomes part of the rejoicing crowd that follows Jesus on his way.‌

We find a similar crowd in Jeremiah today, but take note: the crowd in Jeremiah, doesn’t exist yet in the time of Jeremiah. It’s a prophecy, predicting the great return of the people after a disaster that will occur in the future. He predicts that the people of Jacob, who symbolize all of the people of God, will be called the head of nations. At the time Jeremiah was saying this, Israel was barely even the head of it’s own nation. Their leaders had let their down.

But they had the two most important things. We have them, too.

First, we have each other, our communities, our churches, our neighbors. We have seen, again and again, our fellow Americans rise up to help each other when our leaders fail us.

The second thing we have is what matters most. The essential thing. The one leader we need, and that’s the Lord God.

In every generation there are trials, and in every generation God raises up saints to serve his people, to be his hands and his feet and his loving gaze in the world. That’s you. Some people are saying your neighbor is evil because he has this or that sign on his lawn. Don’t you believe it.

And what does the Lord promise through Jeremiah? He promises to bring us back from our exile, even from the ends of the earth. He will bring back the blind and the lame–all those who suffer. But there’s more–he says that he will bring back pregnant woman and mothers.

That’s because pregnancy and labor and motherhood are difficult, but babies are a gift and a blessing, always. They were the promise of a future then, as they as are now. They are sign of hope, and a people who would destroy that life in the womb, are a people who lost their future.

All the people of God, no matter what divides us, are called to join in this crowd, as we journey to the promised land. It will not be easy. There will be tears, Jeremiah says, but God himself will console us with his loving care. He will guide us to the wellsprings of life, and those who drink from those waters will never thirst again.

That’s what the prophecy of Jeremiah promises, and that’s what Jesus fulfilled, and Bartimaeus is a sign of that. He is the first person in Mark’s Gospel to call Jesus the Son of David, so already we have a promise fulfilled that an heir of David will lead his people.

He’s also the only person healed in Mark whose name is given. And it’s an interesting name. Bar is the Aramaic for “son of” and “Timaeus” is a Greek name. So in Bar-Timaeus, son of Timaeus, we see the union of a Jew and a gentile, symbolizing the two peoples of the world of coming together.

Bartimaeus wants to see. And Jesus wants us all to see the world as it really is, without this veil of illusion that the devil draws over our eyes. These illusions keep us from seeing the glory in our world, in other people, and even in ourselves. Jesus wants us to see everything–everyone–as he sees it–with love and mercy.

And so Bartimaeus sees again, and joins the procession of people following the Lord. It’s a procession that stretches all the way back to the one in Jeremiah and beyond, and all the way forward, across the centuries and the miles, down to us, here, now. You have taken a place in that procession because you have a living hope in the Son of David, the son God, Christ the Lord.

In the upcoming weeks, life may become challenging here–families and friendships may be strained. People may be angry and frightened. We need to hold tight to the Lord in those time, because we belong to something much larger than any election or even any nation. We are children of God, and he has gathered us into this flock, this church, to lead us to tranquility, abundance, peace … and genuine joy.

Amen.