What do you want Me to do for you?

 Now they came to Jericho.  As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging.  And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"  Then many warned him to be quiet; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"  So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called.  Then they called the blind man, saying to him, "Be of good cheer.  Rise, He is calling you."  And throwing aside his garment, he rose and came to Jesus.  So Jesus answered and said to him, "What do you want Me to do for you?"  The blind man said to Him, "Rabboni, that I may receive my sight."  Then Jesus said to him, "Go your way; your faith has made you well."  And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.

- Mark 10:46-52

 Now they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was going before them; and they were amazed.  And as they followed they were afraid.  Then He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them the things that would happen to Him:  "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him to the Gentiles; and they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him.  And the third day He will rise again."Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Him, saying, "Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask."  And he said to them, "What do you want Me to do for you?"  They said to Him, "Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory."  But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you ask.  Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"  They said to Him, "We are able."  So Jesus said to them, "You will indeed drink the cup that I drink, and with the baptism I am baptized with you will be baptized; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared."  And when the ten heard it, they began to be greatly displeased with James and John.  But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, "You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.  Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant.  And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

Now they came to Jericho.  As He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging.  And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"  Then many warned him to be quiet; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"  So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called.  Then they called the blind man, saying to him, "Be of good cheer.  Rise, He is calling you."  And throwing aside his garment, he rose and came to Jesus.  So Jesus answered and said to him, "What do you want Me to do for you?"  The blind man said to Him, "Rabboni, that I may receive my sight."  Then Jesus said to him, "Go your way; your faith has made you well."  And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus on the road.  Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem.  Encountering a blind man is symbolic of a humanity fallen into sin, or what we may rather term the things that separate us from God, make God hard to "see."   In a parallel vein, the restoration of sight to the blind was a sign expected to be performed by the Messiah (Isaiah 29:18; 35:4-5).  My study bible says this was a power God had reserved for Himself (compare John 9:32).  As God is light we can see both the literal manifestation of that truth in restoring sight to the blind, and the figurative in liberating (redeeming) humanity from whatever holds it hostage and keeps us from fulfillment of our image in God.    Bartimaeus calls Jesus Son of David, a messianic title.  This tells us that Bartimaeus had faith that Jesus was indeed the Christ.  There is also a patristic spiritual interpretation to this miracle.  Jericho was a low-lying city associated with sin and all manner of evil, crime and danger -- in Luke's Gospel, the story of the Good Samaritan (a foreigner) who helped a man besieged by robbers who injured him takes place in Jericho (Luke 10:30; 19:1).  It symbolizes fallen humanity.  Christ passing through Jericho is an image of the Incarnation.  Jesus restoring sight to Bartimaeus parallels the restoration of humanity to glory.  Having been made whole by Christ, my study bible says, human nature can now follow Christ on the road to the Kingdom, symbolized by our Lord's subsequent entrance into Jerusalem (11:1-11).

What does it mean to be unable to see?  In our story, Bartimaeus clearly "sees" something, even while he is still blind.  He knows, or at least has a strong, urgent hope, that Christ can help him and give him what he needs.  He has a faith that opens his eyes, in other words, to the hope that his eyes may be opened by Christ.  That is a kind of nutshell hidden "in plain sight" in this story.  It is not only the Messiah that delivers us from what ails and holds hostage, but it is our faith that makes that possible, that gives us the urge to make connection with our Redeemer.  Atonement and redemption in various contexts can often blind us to the reality of what a Redeemer is.  A deliverer or redeemer is a champion, someone who liberates or frees us what from binds us.   In the time of Christ and earlier, we can think of the endless skirmishes and battles between kingdoms and tribes.  Slaves were often those peoples who were simply conquered by others.  Even in the Middle East today, we can see active hostage taking as part of warfare.  A redeemer is one who liberates, who pays the ransom for a hostage in order to free them.  If we are speaking about a humanity held hostage by the evil in the world, then we can see a great parallel here to the healing by Christ.  Humanity awaits its redeemer and liberator.  All the things that ail us keep us blind to what life could be, what we could be, what our Creator wishes for us, and all the potentials contained within the image in which we were created.  In the Incarnation, it is Creator who comes as Liberator -- to free us from the "strong man" because He is the stronger.  Jesus Himself gives us precisely this parallel when He responds to the accusation that He casts out demons by the power of the devil ("No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house" - 3:27).  The power of evil is a kind of blindness that manifests as a fetter or chains, a stumbling block, that which binds us and keeps us captive to something.  It manifests as hopelessness and despair, a lack of faith, an inability to find solutions to problems, to think outside of the box or the bind we seem to be in.  It keeps us from seeing.  It is darkness itself that limits, stifles, and dictates there are no alternatives.  It is the opposite of creativity, opposed to the energies of grace which are of the Creator.  Christ is the hope of the hopeless, and His saints the same (particularly an attribution of the Virgin Mary) precisely because of faith, and the connection that faith makes to the energies of grace, to Creator and thereby to what is hidden from us in our darkness and blindness.  When we struggle against an unseen enemy, even forces which seem to be within ourselves, impulses we can't understand and that work like demons within us, it is hope and faith that sustains to try again, to find a new way, a gleam of an idea where we hadn't looked or thought to see before.  Faith knows we have another day to try again.  Faith gives us a chance to find a way out, a way through -- when the world will shut us out and tell us we're finished.  So often, it is faith we need to take courage and face the fears that keep us stuck, so we can try a new way.  Isaiah tells us the truth of God whose thoughts are not our thoughts and whose ways are not our ways.  Bartimaeus finds his Redeemer, and so may we do likewise, with the hope He extends to us, His way. Note that the patristic spiritual interpretation tells us this is just the beginning of the road.  Only God can say where we may go with Him (see 10:27, in yesterday's reading).  Only He can show us what life may look like in the Holy City and what we ourselves may be like as one who lives in it.  That's what the road is for.