"The way I am.”

 A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California.

This morning, we find ourselves with Jesus as he passes through the city of Jericho. Surrounded by a crowd, as he always seems to be these days, I imagine Jesus and his disciples having to struggle a bit to make their way through, getting back onto the road to Jerusalem. A bit of a chaotic city scene.

And then, someone starts to shout out from the roadside. Loud enough to cut through the milling of the crowd. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

The man is referred to as a “blind beggar,” which consigns him to the category of those whose voices are not allowed this kind of amplification. So, we are told that many sternly ordered him to be quiet. To put him in his rightful place. But he cries out even more loudly. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Bartimaeus chooses particular words to cry out to Jesus. He calls him the “son of David.” He is the very first person to address him that way. The very first! And it’s a significant statement. It is a political statement. Bartimaeus is a student of Hebrew Scripture, which tells us that “God promised the throne of Israel to David and his descendants (his sons and daughters) forever” (2 Samuel 7:16); tells us that the expected Messiah will be a descendent of David” (Isaiah 11:1, Jeremiah 23:5-6). This is a rather disturbing message for Judean and Roman authorities alike.

Bartimaeus is Paying. Attention. He knows who Jesus is. Perhaps more than any of those ragtag close-circle disciples, he has figured something out about what is going on here. Jesus is more than a run-of-the-mill faith healer, or charismatic preacher. Jesus is of and from and is God.

And, hearing himself known this way, Jesus calls Bartimaeus to him. And he asks him one question: “What do you want me to do for you?” And Bartimaeus, fully known and loved by Jesus standing before him answers, “My teacher, let me see again.” And Jesus says, “Go; your faith has made you well.” And we are told that “immediately, he regained his sight and followed him on the way.”

Did you notice: Jesus does not make assumptions about what this man wants from him. He asks him.

And in asking him, before this huge crowd, Jesus reveals Bartimaeus to be a full, valuable, and beloved human being. As valuable as any king. As valuable as James, and John and Peter, standing there, watching it all unfold. As valuable as each one of us. He reveals this value before that holy question “What do you want me to do for you” – is even answered.

And that revelation, I believe, is the healing that took place that day .

Jesus is demonstrating here that we, humanity, invented the assumptions that disability, that poverty, consign human beings to a place outside the center. To a place of pity or problem. He is demonstrating that God creates all human beings in beautiful and sometimes mysterious diversity. And, he is showing us that God is never constrained by our rules about who gets access, and care, and respect.

That Bartimaeus’s request was to have sight is perhaps not beside the point exactly, but it is not, for me the point. It is not what I want to remember most about Bartimaeus, who is, significantly, given a name in scripture. A full name. Rare and precious. One of very few of those Jesus healed who is granted this honor. And yet, over the years of Christian tradition, the man who coined the term “Son of David” in the Gospel of Mark he has become , “Blind Bartimaeus” – the chapter heading of this story that appears in children’s bibles and study bibles alike.

But he is Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus. Why can’t we use it?  Why can’t we call him by his precious name? It’s almost as though we’re still trying to quiet him down.

Just as Jesus did not assume sight would be Bartimaeus’s request, I have learned it should never be my assumption that any person with limited or no vision, or any disability at all, would make the request to be rid of a piece of what makes them them if given the chance.

Dr. Moira Egan is an academic advisor who founded a ministry at her Roman Catholic parish in New York called Ability Xavier, which seeks to include people with disabilities in all aspects of church, and advocate for disability justice in the community.

Egan was born blind, and she says “I think the assumption is that if any blind person were asked the open-ended question, what do you want, that of course they would say, I want to see. And I think it’s hard for people to believe that that isn’t true.” When asked how she would answer Jesus’ question to Bartimaeus, she says it would be, “I want to be valued. The way I am.”

Egan goes on to wonder if Bartimaeus may also have hoped to be respected and valued for who he was, the way he was made, but knew that the only way to be freed of negative cultural assumptions about disabled people that we see elsewhere in scripture, he had to be pragmatic. And ask Jesus to make him appear to human systems the way he knows he already appears to God. Marvelously made. 

The definition of ableism from the Center for Disability Rights begins: “Ableism is a set of beliefs or practices that devalue and discriminate against people with physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities and often rests on the assumption that disabled people need to be ‘fixed’ in one form or the other.” 

There have and probably will always be ableist interpretations of scripture, including, notably the story of Bartimaeus, which has so often been understood as a time Jesus simply “fixed” a man.

But it is so powerful to notice that Jesus did not call Bartimaeus to him and “fix” him. Instead, he demonstrated that he was not in need of any fixing – not in God’s eyes. Jesus instead chose to call him close. To speak directly to him. Center him. And respect him enough to ask him what he needed. Jesus did not fix Bartemaus. He healed him.

And in the end, this is the kind of healing I think every single one of us in all of our glorious diversity needs and deserves to experience and extend to others: the healing of being known, understood, respected, loved, and listened to. As we are.

This is the kind of healing God offers.

Kathleen Moore