30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) : Homily / Sermon

“Courage … he is calling you.”. (Mark 10:49)

The crowd underestimated poor old blind Bartimaeus.

As Jesus came by, his shouts and appeals were treated with embarrassment by the crowd. They told him to shut up.

He wasn't only blind, he was also a beggar, because how else could a blind man survive. He was to be pitied, for sure, but not respected. To be given the odd coin, or a scrap to eat, perhaps, but not to be listened to, not to be accorded an opinion. Not to be allowed to get in the way.
Don’t shout out blind man, they say. Don’t make a scene, poor beggar.

Our attitudes to disability of various kinds have changed greatly, of course, over the years. But many of the older attitudes lie just a little below the surface.

Deafness, for example, is still associated, in the minds of many, with a lack of intelligence, even though we know this is not true. And the word "dumb" is still used to mean both "unable to speak" and "stupid", as if one were the same as the other. And when someone is confined to a wheelchair, people often talk directly to the person pushing the chair, rather than the one sitting in it - as if being unable to walk also affected your ability to understand and answer simple questions.

 

And in a more blatant way, you can see this kind of attitude in today's Gospel. But then, as now, it is very foolish to underestimate or patronise someone simply because they have a disability of one kind of another. This too, is a kind of blindness - a failure to see beyond the disability to person within.

And so it is with this crowd.
And then, something changes. Jesus calls the Blind Man. And the people catch on, and call to him too - they realise that the call of Jesus is not just for them, but for everyone.

And blind Bartimaeus is now bold, because although he cannot see Jesus with his eyes, with his heart he had already made an act of faith.

Your faith has saved you, Jesus says.

While those around may be inquisitive to see what this man, Jesus, looks like, the blind man, apparently unable to see him, nevertheless reveals great insight.
Despite his blindness, he has vision, and the call of Jesus, and his healing power, gives new vision to the crowd too,
so that all of them, together, in faith, freed from their blindness, walk as one with Christ along the road.

---

Image: Jesus healing blind Bartimaeus, by Johann Heinrich Stöver, 1861
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing_the_blind_near_Jericho