Ordinary 30

The ThirtiethSunday of Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 31:7-9; Psalm 126; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52

Bartimaeus is blind and thus reduced to begging. Jesus has a reputation for healing. “Bartimaeus began to cry out…and many rebuked him, telling him to be silent”. So why would you silence Bartimaeus for crying out to Jesus? Why would you not want this man to be healed and see?

Would his healing somehow threaten the people who were silencing him? Yet how? Were they hard-of-heart and he was making a disturbance? Did they lack any sense of compassion? Did these people feel they needed to protect Jesus from a blind beggar?

I’ve always found this reaction to Bartimaeus very curious.

Might we find an answer in reflecting on who is shouting out for attention and healing today? For there are many people crying out in our world and regretfully there are people who would prefer they be silent and invisible. Because if we refuse to listen to the cries of the needy and turn a blind eye to their situations, God will hear them and acts in their defense.

Do we hear the continued cry of Black people against racism and injustice? The murder of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery keep the old wounds of slavery and lynchings open that have festered for centuries. And there are those who want to silence the Black Lives Matter movement. Why? Why don’t we want to listen to the stories of blackness and the inequity within our society so that healing and reconciliation can take place between races?

Indigenous peoples across this continent, over 600 tribes in Canada and the United States, shout for justice against broken treaties, genocides, stolen land, the violence of residential schools and the encroachment of industry and governments on sacred lands. Why don’t we want to listen to their stories and repair the breach between Native Peoples of this continent and the descendants of the European explorers and colonial immigrants?

Why do families keep secrets, sometimes for generations? Why within some families is it alright if someone is known to be gay or transgender as long as they don’t talk about it? Why don’t we want to listen to the stories of fear, suicide, exclusion, and bullying of our children and friends?

There are other stories; the stories of women, the homeless, veterans, people with mental illnesses and refugees that many people do not want to hear. Our society often prefers such people to be silent. I expect because it threatens the stories we have told ourselves as a religious communities and nations, as a people, within families and as individuals. We’ve told the lies or incomplete stories so often that we believe they are inviolably true. To alter or expand those stories might alter us and we are afraid of what that will mean. When self-defining stories are altered they seemingly threaten our existence, our position of perceived power, our stability and comfort.

But is that true?

It is not easy to confront the full truth of a self-defining story. But is knowing the fallible, imperfect, sometimes evil and sinful truth of people who came before us diminish us or rather  give us insight to move forward together into a better future?

Turkey refuses to confront the Armenian Genocide. Our Catholic Church struggles with the ongoing stories of clergy sexual violence. Germany continues to confront its Nazi past. South Africa and Canada have had Truth and Reconciliation Commissions to tell, but more importantly to listen, to the stories of the victims of the apartheid system and the governmental treatment of First Nations, respectively.

We don’t know if Bartimaeus was blind from birth or whether he was blinded by a disease or an accident. We know nothing else about the man, not even his name. Bartimaeus simply means “son of Timaeus”. He is a no one and everyone at the same time. Which means Bartimaeus is you and me. So why silence Bartimaeus and all the people he represents?  

Why silence “a no one and everyone”?

Because injustice, hate, prejudices, evil structures of society such as slavery and division fester in darkness and silence.

Bartimaeus is given the gift of sight and immediately began following Jesus up the road. Nothing is said of those who wanted to silence him. I wonder why?