October 28, 2012 – Mark 10:46-52
Mark 10:46-52
Free to Risk
Reformation Sunday – Lectionary 30 – October 28, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
On October 31st, 1517, 495 years ago, a Roman Catholic monk named Martin Luther
nailed 95 theses for debate to a church door in Wittenburg, Germany.
His main concern was the sale of indulgences,
slips of paper authorized for sale by the church that promised the forgiveness of sins.
For Luther, a professor of Bible, forgiveness was a free gift of God.
Therefore it was something that could neither be bought or sold.
No one was more surprised than this German monk when this seemingly small action led to
the reformation of the entire Western church.
And it all stemmed from the fundamental insight that God’s mercy, God’s compassion,
God’s love, is a free, unmerited gift.
God’s mercy is always a free gift: this is the cornerstone of all Lutheran thought.
And it is something to give thanks for on this Sunday in the church year when we
celebrate the heritage of the Reformation.
This insight that God’s mercy is a free gift is played out beautifully in the Gospel story today.
Blind Bartimaeus sits by the road near Jericho, along which Jesus and his disciples are
passing on their way to Jerusalem.
As they pass him, Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus for healing.
While everyone else – including Jesus’s disciples, presumably – tell him to just hush up,
Jesus, of course, notices the one of little account no one else notices.
Jesus responds to his call for mercy, for Jesus is mercy in human form.
So Jesus asks him the million dollar question: “What is it you want me to do for you?”
You’ll remember this is the same question Jesus asked his disciples last week.
The question they failed miserably at answering when they responded that they wanted
glory and status and honour.
So now we lean forward a little bit when Jesus asks this same question of the blind beggar.
And what Bartimaeus asks of Jesus is wise: let me see again, he says.
What he asks for is his freedom.
Blind beggars lived a precarious life in the ancient world, as they still do today.
Often there was a stigma attached to blindness – as to other physical ailments – that
went with the assumption that some sin was responsible for your condition.
Shunned by many, even perhaps by your family, you might be shackled to a life of
sitting by the roadside begging for alms.
It’s understandable that Bartimaeus would want to be freed from that.
And Jesus, who is mercy, frees him immediately and unconditionally.
Literally, there are no conditions to this act of grace toward Bartimaeus.
“Go,” Jesus says, “you’re all better.”
But what surprises us at this point – and makes us lean into our seats even more –
is what Bartimaeus does with his newfound freedom.
Bartimaeus does the opposite of “go”: what he does instead is to follow Jesus.
Follow the one who has healed him. Follow the one who is mercy.
He follows Jesus on the way, writes Mark, and all we need to add is, “to the cross.”
Bartimaeus uses the freedom given him to give his life to Jesus and to
Jesus’s mission to love, bless, heal and set free this whole world and every person in it.
Bartimaeus’s cloak lays abandoned by the side of the road as he rises up to follow Jesus.
It’s the symbol of his old life that he’s leaving behind, right?
The cloak is a symbol, perhaps, of all that was keeping him from following Jesus.
The million dollar question for you this morning is: What’s your cloak?
what do you need to leave behind? What do you need to be freed from?
Is it some societally imposed hindrance, as in the case of Bartimaeus?
Is it some habit or way of life that has just become comfortable even though is it constraining?
See, I think this story is about values.
I think the story is asking us what we truly value.
What are you willing to leave everything behind for?
What are you willing to risk everything for?
What are willing to give your life for?
At this point in the story, Bartimaeus has been freed to do whatever he likes in a way that was
not possible before.
But what he chooses to do is follow Jesus and invest his life in Jesus’s mission,
even though it may mean for him, too, a cross.
Bartimaeus takes his newfound gift –
a gift he now has the freedom to use in whatever way he wants –
he takes that gift and . . . gives it back in thanksgiving to Jesus and his ministry.
That has become the most important thing for him, and he’s willing to
give his life and risk his life for it.
I’ve been thinking lately about the things people are willing to risk their lives for.
And let me tell you, some things are worth the gift of your life – the great, mysterious,
wondrous gift of your life – and many, many things are, well, not.
Did you all hear about the Red Bull Jump a couple of weeks ago?
Felix Baumgartner went up to the very edge of space and launched himself into a freefall
In order to break the world record for the highest altitude jump.
He jumped from an altitude of 24 miles or 120,000 feet.
I was shocked to learn how easily one could lose one’s life in a feat like that.
Even a small tear in his space suit would have meant almost instant death.
I get that some useful scientific data will come as a result of the jump,
but I also get that the main point was simply to break a record.
And as admiring as I am of the bravery and the human ingenuity required for such a feat,
what I want to ask this morning is:
Really? Really? Is that really worth risking your life for?
Are you willing to leave everything behind for that?
What is it that we truly value?
And what are we willing to risk for it?
On Reformation Sunday we celebrate the free gift of God’s mercy and grace in Jesus.
We celebrate that our successes do not qualify us for a place in God’s reign and that
our failures do not disqualify us.
Luther himself grew frustrated by the end of his life with his failures,
and that made him, on occasion, less than gracious.
I learned this week that Luther’s last sermon was attended by five people,
and he was angry about it.
But let’s remind old Luther that his value and worth and identity didn’t depend on that.
And neither did it depend on his successes.
The truth is: You are God’s beloved now.
That gives us a lot of freedom.
And what we do with that freedom will be determined by what we value.
And that freedom will allow you to risk significantly for the things you value.
See, if the 1st million dollar question this morning is what do you need to leave behind,
the 2nd million dollar question this morning is: what will you do with that freedom?
The freedom to fail miserably, as well as the freedom to succeed brilliantly.
Six years ago you risked signing on to be co-sponsors of refugees in David Mazambi’s family.
You didn’t know – and nobody knew, really, how it would turn out.
On Thursday night, when Wakenge and Tantine and Sammy and Blessing and Bradley
descended the escalator at the Winnipeg Airport we saw risk turn into reality.
We saw risk turn into possibility and new life.
We saw risk turn into safety and refuge.
We saw risk turn into relief.
We saw risk turn into joy.
Now our lives are all intertwined together because you risked to make it happen.
The church, at its best, is a community of freedom grounded in mercy and compassion.
For the mercy of Jesus is still working – working through us.
And the world is waiting for it, says Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann,
it waits for this tender mercy, even as it “falls apart in greed and anger and anxiety.”
See, the world needs us to risk extending the mercy of Jesus to it.
As Luther wrote long ago: God does not need our good works, but our neighbour does.
I quoted the professor of preaching David Lose in my e-mail to you this week.
God in Jesus tells us that our identity, worth, and well-being is not determined by our successes and failures but by God’s gift alone. And precisely because salvation is not up to us, but up to God, we are free to do and try and risk all things in the meantime, because whether we succeed or fail, yet God has promised to bring us and all things to a good end.
You are a people of freedom and a people of mercy.
May you continue to follow Jesus.
May you continue to know deep, deep down that your identity and worth are gifts of God’s
grace and love that no one can take from you.
And in the freedom that that give, say you continue to notice those left behind by the side of
the road, either through poverty or illness or war.
May you continue to value the work incarnated in Jesus that is continued here.
May you leave behind all that hinders you from this work.
May you continue to be re-formed as God’s people of manna-sharing and mercy-giving.
May you continue with Bartimaeus to follow Jesus.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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