If I were born in the first century, I would have been blind.  It’s a haunting thought, when it comes.  And yet I’m so accustomed to seeing that it easily floats back to the long-ago and far-away pages of scripture, where it’s still someone else’s story and not mine.  Or is it?    

Four years ago, I lay on the oper-ating table.  The doctor instructed me to look directly at the “red dot,” which seemed an odd request.  To my eye, it was a big blob of red light with no apparent shape to it—like the glow you might see around street lights, but with no real center or focal point.

I hadn’t seen clearly without glasses or contacts since the seventh grade.  Without corrective lenses, I was a lethal weapon behind the wheel of a car.  I couldn’t distinguish the faces of friends in the school cafeteria.  When I woke up in the morning, I could hardly read the clock beside my bed.  For fifteen years. 

But that all changed in about fifteen minutes with Lasik surgery.  Indeed, in a matter of seconds, the red blob gathered itself into a perfect dot, like the end of a pin.  The doctor and the laser did their amazing work.  And as I stood to walk away from this procedure, I could see the clock on the wall across the room.  A medical miracle. 

Many of you are members with me in the vision-impaired-but-still-seeing club, whether you wear glasses or contacts or have had some form of surgery yourselves.  With all of the technological advances in our day, I suppose we’ve never been at too much of a disadvantage.  Not so Bartimaeus.  To be blind in the time of Jesus was to be, in a very real sense, dis-abled.  His lot in life was to sit by the roadside, a beggar, crying out for help.

We need look no further than the Bible to know that physical maladies were then considered to be the result of sin in a person’s life.  On another occasion when Jesus healed a man’s eyes, his own disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind (Jn 9:2)?” 

We twenty-first century followers of Jesus may be more subtle with our religious language, but we work all too often from the same mis-understanding of faith.  Popular theology tells us that good behavior is rewarded with blessing and bad behavior with punishment.  As a result, we might assume that people or countries with less financial fortitude are somehow less faithful.  And we’re confounded when our attempts at moral living don’t prevent pink slips at the office or when loved ones die despite our earnest prayers for healing. 

We are prone to mistake Christianity for a smooth sail into the waters of prosperity, a sure vessel that will steer us away from pain and suf-fering.  But the gospel presents us with an altogether different story, a theology of the cross, wherein bro-kenness is the way to being whole, and every ill is a breeding ground for the glory of God to shine forth.    

It is interesting to note that the gospel writer records the name of this blind man: Bar-Timaeus, or son-of Timaeus, which means, “worthy of honor.”  We’re clued in even before the healing that, contrary to cultural opinion, this beggar is no “mere sinner” but a valuable person.

Bartimaeus is sitting by the roadside in Jericho, the final stop on the journey up to Jerusalem.  He hears the roar of the crowd, tastes the dust in the air as the sound of walking feet grows closer.  Somehow he knows that Jesus is on the way, and it’s not just another train coming through town.  Perhaps because of the talk on the streets, perhaps because of the Spirit of God, Bartimaeus believes that Jesus can heal him, and he begins to shout out for his attention.  Attempts to quiet Bartimaeus fall like fuel on a fire, prompting him to yell even louder, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 

When this cry reaches the divine ear, Jesus stops in his tracks and calls the man, Worthy of Honor, out of the crowd.  And like a child in gym class who just got picked for the team by the star athlete, Bartimaeus springs up, dropping everything, and stands before Jesus.

Now we might expect that Jesus would get right down to business and perform a miracle.  But instead, he asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”  It seems odd that Jesus would ask such a question of a blind man.  But Jesus frequently asked rather curious questions, like, “Do you want to be made well?”    

Well, since Jesus is the asker, perhaps there is some special import to the answers people give.  You remember that just before this encounter, Jesus asks two of his disciples, James and John, the same question he poses to Bartimaeus:  “What do you want me to do for you?”  The Sons of Thunder want to sit at Jesus’ right and left in his glory.  Bartimaeus wants to see.  Their answers are strikingly different, and Jesus responds to them in turn.  To James and John, “You don’t perceive what you are asking.”  To the blind beggar, “Go, your faith has made you well.”

Clearly, the blindness of James and John and the healing of blind Bartimaeus are connected by the question, as if to give us two pictures of discipleship, the one lacking, the other exemplary.  Both encounters occur in the last days of Jesus’ life.  And while James and John expect that walking with Jesus will put them on the fast track to fame and fortune, Bartimaeus responds to the gift of God by following Jesus “along the way” . . . the way to Jerusalem, that is, . . . to the cross. 

James and John, they who had been with Jesus all this time, somehow “miss the mark,” which should serve as a warning to the “seasoned” followers among us.  When it comes to discipleship, their eyes are strangely closed, while Bartimaeus, this beggar by the roadside, requests of Jesus what every disciple should want.  “My teacher,” he says, “let me see.”  It is truly a case of the blind leading the blind. 

Maybe James and John thought those seats of power would be the puzzle piece to complete their human longing, make them everything they wanted to be.  To be fair, Bartimaeus might have had similar feelings about regaining his sight.  Perhaps Jesus sees sickness not so much in the diseases we have as in the cures we seek, the desires of our hearts.  We all have dreams that seem to answer our hunger, but sometimes the very things we want can destroy us.   

You might remember the 1983 movie, A Christmas Story, starring Ralphie, the average, grade-school boy with the fanciful imagination (to say the least).  More than anything, Ralphie wants a Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas.  His parents and teachers, even Santa himself, warn him that it’s a dangerous toy.  And sure enough, on Christmas morning, after Ralphie opens the long-awaited gift, he fulfills the prophecy of the multitude of responsible adults who told him time after time, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.”

The movie concludes with Ralphie concocting yet another wild story, a cover-up, convincing his parents that it wasn’t his favorite toy, but an icicle falling from the roof of the house that broke his glasses.  And despite the near-disaster, Ralphie remains excited about the dream-come-true now at his fingertips. 

The stakes are a bit higher, of course, in the narratives of scripture and our own life dramas.  The requests of James and John and Bartimaeus give us a window into their deepest desires and motiva-tions and cause us to reflect upon our own.  Their stories echo down the halls of disciple-history, begging the question . . . What do we want Jesus to do for us? 

Honest reflection will tell us a thing or two about our theology, the understanding of God that drives our practice and our prayer.  Do we want to ascend to places of power so that we can lord it over others?  Or do we want healing from that which hinders us . . . to see, or perceive, so that we might follow Jesus along the way with eyes wide open?  Do we even know what we want?

Often we look for Jesus to perform miracles in our midst, to suspend the laws of nature, making the lame to walk and the blind to see.  But perhaps the greater miracle occurs when the laws of human nature are suspended, when angry people forgive, when hard hearts are softened, when those who are climbing the ladder of success with no thought for others suddenly see the world around them, and greed gives way to compassion. 

We witness an amazing miracle in the restoration of Bartimaeus’ sight. Yet this healing points to an even greater hope, that Jesus can open the eyes-of-the-spirit in even the densest of disciples.  And so it is that this story belongs not only to Bartimaeus or to the Sons of Thunder, but to you and me and to all of the vision-impaired disciples who call upon Jesus in every age. 

Only after the crucifixion and resurrection did James and John and the rest of the twelve understand much of what Jesus was teaching them along the way.  But they did, ultimately, see God, the world, and themselves in a new light.  And although this other way wasn’t the Red Ryder BB Gun they had wanted, it was precisely the gift they needed: eyes to see, ears to hear, Life beyond life.

The first verse of the great gospel hymn, “Amazing Grace,” speaks of conversion in the language of blindness and sight.  The truth is that as long as we live, we never fully arrive but are always in process, moving, hopefully, toward ever-greater perception. 

If we listen carefully, we can hear Jesus approaching, taste the dust in the air from walking feet grown closer.  He stands before us even now, the only physician with power to perform this miracle, this surgery in our spirits.  The question is, do we want it?  And will we say with Bartimaeus, time and time again, “Teacher, let us see.”