NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 30 in Ordinary Time, Year B

The Gospel of the Lord. Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Our Gospel this week continues without a break from last week's Gospel, and this week's Gospel is a riot of allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures, which I hope you will enjoy as we see what's going on. Finally, after the route which started in Caesarea Philippi, with Jesus heading towards Jerusalem, foretelling his death three times, we've reached Jericho. 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, because in fact the route upwards from Jericho — which is below sea level — to Jerusalem is a 30-kilometer walk, a tough walk, as some of you I know who listen to my homilies have done this yourself. It's a tough walk; it's 30 kilometers in great heat, and of course no one could do it on the Sabbath. So one of the things that you would have 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, in the evening, goes to the Temple in the evening. So this is probably the beginning of the day that Jesus comes into Jerusalem. This is really the last stretch. It's also the last miracle Jesus will do before coming into Jerusalem, before the Passion narrative begins. 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, that 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, "timaios" means worthy, honorable, 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 David. And this was Eli, you remember, the great priest who had taken The prophet Samuel 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 and he'd fallen over backwards and died when he heard this news. But so here we have this Eli figure sitting by the roadside, and the suggestion that it might indeed be he gets filled up later because he throws over his mantle, his tunic, the priestly garment when he gets up later. But his name is a bit of a giveaway, because you see 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 honor me I will honor, 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 the 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 one forever. Everyone who is left in your family shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread." So I hope you can see that what we have here is the fulfillment of the honor-dishonor 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 dishonor and enable him to come back to honor 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 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 mount, so they could never come into the Temple at that time. That's picked up in Matthew's Gospel when it says Jesus, when he goes to the Temple, heals the blind and the lame, making sure that there are none there. 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 fulfill the promised pilgrimage. But he hears that it's Jesus of Nazareth, so he knows something about this. He realizes that a prophecy is being fulfilled. "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me." Many sternly ordered him to be quiet. In other words, this is the people on the way up to the pilgrimage. They didn't want to be disturbed by this kind of row — the strange freakery shouting about the son of David. So they sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, "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. And Jesus stood still. Jesus stops. He hears and he stands still. Other people have stopped him before, but here he willingly, hearing that cry, stops still and says, "Call him here." Get the others to call him to come to him. And they call the blind man, saying to him, "Take heart, get up, he's calling to you." Well, this phrase "take heart, take courage," apart from just being a nice phrase, is a rather key phrase if you're in a Benjaminite city, because Rachel, the mother of Benjamin, went into labor and was clearly going to die giving birth to Benjamin, which in fact she did. But as she was in the process of giving birth, her maids said to her, "Take courage, he's alive, he's a son, you have borne a son." So this "take courage" for Benjamin is the announcement of the arrival of the promised son. There's a special element of joy here in that little phrase, "take courage." "He's calling you." So throwing off his cloak — so this beggar had a cloak; this is, we can imagine, the mantle of the old priesthood — he sprang up and came to Jesus. And this is interesting: "sprang up." And yet again there's a lovely little reference here, or two references. There are two people who sprang up in the book of Samuel. The first is Jonathan, who springs up in fury when he hears that his dad wants to kill David. Remember that he's very fond of David. So he springs up in fury when he hears that Saul has plans to kill David. But the other person who springs up is a guy who we don't hear much of, called Nabal. Nabal was a bad guy. David sent messengers to get some provisions for him — so David is doing the begging there — and Nabal, this bad guy, when he hears this, jumps up and says, "Who is this David, who is this son of Jesse?" So here we have, if you like, the reverse. Here we have the beggar jumping up. He's the one whom the son of David has blessed. Nabal's mistake is being put right. Nabal of old, Eli of old, all these things of old being put right: the blind who wouldn't get out of the way, all being put right on the last trek up to Jerusalem. So he springs up and comes to Jesus. Then Jesus says to him, "What do you want me to do for you?" Exactly the same phrase as he'd used in last week's Gospel, when James and John come to ask him something, they want a favor. But here, Bartimaeus is much more direct. What he wants is quite clear: "Let me see again." And he in fact uses the word "Rabboni," which is Aramaic — strictly Aramaic. And it's not merely a way of saying "master," as if to someone of importance. It's the kind of phrase that you might use when praying to God. In other words, it's even more of an act of faith on the part of Bartimaeus. He's recognizing something beyond merely an important rabbi, the Son of David, someone beyond merely an important rabbi. "Rabboni, let me see again." Why so important? Well, blindness was the defect that wouldn't allow a priest to take part. Probably one of the reasons for his name was so as to be able to make sure that generations remembered that he was a priestly family, because if he was blind he couldn't take part. So the hopes would be that his sons might one day take part. So he wants 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, had made a request for the place of honor, 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 to him. And Jesus says to him immediately: "Go. Your faith has made you well." He doesn't say "follow him." He says "go," because he's not asking to be followed in one sense. He's saying: go up to Jerusalem, go on this route, you can now go. 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 what's going on will only really be learned in the following. He goes up with them, and will no doubt now be a witness to the events that are about to 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. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.