Mark 10:46-52 (NRSV)
They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
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"The story of Jesus healing the blind man Bartimaeus is considered by many Bible scholars to be the closing bookend of what is called an inclusio. An inclusio is a literary device where two passages echo each other in such a way as to create bookends for the material in between them. In this portion of Mark, the two echoing stories involve the healing of a blind man. The material between these two stories is the journey to Jerusalem. The first healing (Mark 8: 22-26) takes place at Bethsaida. The second takes place as Jesus arrives at Jericho, the last stop before arriving in Jerusalem. In the intervening material the journey is punctuated by Jesus’ three predictions of his Passion coupled with the incomprehension of his disciples. Each of these predictions is also accompanied by disputes among the disciples as to who is the greatest.
"The blindness of the two men who need healing is often thought to represent the blindness of the disciples which also needs healing. With the man in Bethsaida, Jesus needs two tries to get the healing right, suggesting that the blindness of the disciples is difficult to heal. The much easier healing of the man in Jericho suggests hope that the disciples, though still blind, will also be healed.
"I agree with this interpretation of the inclusio but there is something else that has caught my attention. [...] When Bartimaeus cries out, the people in the crowd rebuke him and tell him to be quiet. Far from helping Bartimaeus in getting a healing, they try to hinder him. In this, they act the apostles who just a short time ago had tried to keep the mothers from bringing their children to Jesus. Moreover, the crowd has shifted its focus from Jesus to Bartimaeus and in an adversarial way at that. Again, this matches the disciples who focused on each other in their altercations rather than on Jesus.
"If the crowd at this point is an extension of the disciples, then they badly need healing and yet, the more healing they need for their blindness, the more resistant they are to healing. Bartimaeus, in calling out to Jesus by his Messianic title shows that he sees more than those who theoretically have eyes."
- Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory’s Abbey (Three Rivers, MI), from blog post titled “The Blind Man Who Could See.” (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2015/10/22/the-blind-man-who-could-see/)
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"Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” There’s the self-revealing question again. “What do you want me to do for you?” Remember James and John’s answer was “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” How will the blind man reply by contrast?
"He begins, “My teacher,” not just teacher but “my” teacher. This is personal and relational. He feels close to Jesus. He believes his teacher has something to teach him. He knows he is not a self-made, self-contained and self-actualized reservoir of individuality. He acknowledges his dependency, his need for Jesus and the warmth and respect he feels coming from Jesus. Our hearts soften as we hear them talk to each other.
"“My teacher, let me see again.” A simple expression of a simple wish. He wants to be made whole, to see in living color and see his teacher’s face. His request is not referenced to any other human being. He doesn’t want to be better than anyone else, even other people who are blind. He asks not to be served, only made whole."
- Tom Truby, from a sermon titled “Blind Bartimaeus and the Sons of Thunder Meet Themselves in What They Ask For.” (https://girardianlectionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Truby-Proper25-2018-Blind-Bartimaeus-and-the-Sons-of-Thunder-Meet-Themselves-in-What-They-Ask-For.pdf)
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"Jericho only gets mentioned as a place that they come to and effectively go through. So here is Jericho. Jericho is a Benjaminite city, and we'll see why that's important later. But more important for this particular purpose it was a standard place from which people would make the pilgrimage up to Jerusalem [...].
"And, of course, no one could do it on the Sabbath. So one of the things that you would have on at dawn after the Sabbath would be people gathered to start together to make the trip up to Jerusalem, a large crowd of people. So not only Jesus and his disciples but a large crowd were leaving Jericho - that would have been standard particularly the morning after the Sabbath. And remember that this is the day in which Jesus gets to Jerusalem. He comes in on donkeys, so it's what we call Palm Sunday.
[..]
"So here they are, they're all about to leave heading up, when suddenly Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, a blind beggar was sitting by the roadside. Okay, but the name is repeated twice means we're meant to pay a lot of attention to it. And here's the thing: it's a pun in Greek and in Aramaic. In Greek, “Timaeus” means worthy, honourable, bearer of prestige. In Aramaic, it can mean disgraced, poor. It has these two meanings together, and we're going to see in a second why that's so important because the pun is going to respond to something very real.
"Anyhow, he's blind and he's a beggar, so he's doing something - he's begging, asking people for things as they go by. And he's sitting by the roadside. A wonderful memory comes up of a great figure of the Old Testament who blind sat by the roadside waiting for news of the Ark of [the Covenant]. And this was Eli - you remember, the great priest who had taken Samuel the prophet on as his acolyte, and whose two sons, Phinehas and Hophni, had been such bad models and were killed in battle, lost the Ark; and Eli had fallen over backwards. He'd been sitting by the side of the road, he'd fallen over backwards and died when he heard this news.
[...]
"Shortly before Eli dies, he's approached by another prophet, simply a man of God who comes to tick off Eli and his family. He says: “Now the Lord declares, far be it from me, for those who honour me, I will honour, and those who despise me shall be treated with contempt. See a time has come when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your ancestors' family so that no one in your family will live to old age. The fate of your two sons shall be a sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day. I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. I will build him a sure house and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. Everyone who is left in your family shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread.”
"I hope you can see that what we have here [in Mark's Gospel] is the fulfilment of the honour/dishonour paradox in that prophecy. What we have is the descendant of Eli here waiting, longing for the true priest, the true son of David, to come along who will establish the new house and will undo his dishonour and enable him to come back to honour again.
"“When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say: Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” So this is the beginnings of the reference to the son of David. This is very important here because it's the whole of the Passion narrative is going to depend very much on Jesus fulfilling the David narrative. Remember, going up to Jerusalem was what David did in order initially to conquer it when it was a Jebusite city. During David's conquest of Jerusalem, some blind people and some lame people got in the way and he said - this is in 2 Samuel - he got cross with them and said, “May the blind and the lame never be on the mountain.” So they could never come into the Temple. [...] But here this appears to be one of the blind who wasn't allowed to go up, couldn't go up because of David's curse.
"So, here this is someone who's bearing with him so much, if you like, of the curses of old Israel: the failed nature, a failed priesthood, a blind person who couldn't go up, who couldn't fulfil the promised pilgrimage. But he hears that it's Jesus of Nazareth. So he knows something about this, he realises that a prophecy is being fulfilled: “Jesus son of David have mercy on me!” [...] In other words, he knows that at last that which old Eli had been waiting for, the promised Ark, the promised Priest, the one who would undo the disgrace was coming along.
[...]
"So, he wanted to see, but notice he said it straight away. He's begging, so he's used to asking for things, but what he really wants is to see, to be the priest he was supposed to be. Whereas James and John, if you remember [in the passage directly preceding, covered in last week's lectionary], had made a request for the place of honour, and it was only later that they began to understand what they had really asked for, he, Bartimaeus had worked through the begging and now wanted what really mattered.
"And Jesus says to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” He doesn't say follow him, he says go, because he's not asking to be followed once, he's saying 'go up to Jerusalem, go on this route you can now [take], you're no longer forbidden from going up to the temple'. “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” In other words he becomes the model disciple without even needing to be told that this, what's going on, can only really be learned in the following. He goes up with them and will no doubt now be a witness to the events that will unfold from later that day when, after the very long walk, they get to Jerusalem - come in on the donkeys - and the week of the Passion begins."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 30th in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnrLpMyrrDE)
[Source of links to Andrew Marr blog and Tom Truby sermon, and for discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper25b/]
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