I went to our diocesan clergy conference this week. You can take that announcement as a warning. I always come back from conference kind of wild eyed, and renewed in my hopes for the church. So, consider yourself warned.
It didn’t help me to calm my restlessness when I read the readings for today. In fact, I found myself a little weepy at the readings. I felt this overwhelming sense of gratitude for the life of Jesus and the life that has been given to me because of him. My prayer at that moment was to ask Jesus to help me see the world that he loves as he sees it. A lofty goal and one that I think is part of our mandate as disciples. It is our life’s work.
One of the things we spoke about at the conference was compassion. We spoke about how everyone is stressed and really working beyond their limits at this point. And when we look at what’s going on around us there is so much to distract us from our work of compassion. I do believe compassion can be hard work especially when everyone is yelling at everyone else and no one is speaking the same language. I get the temptation to out yell others and I know I’ve been guilty of it. But we are called to a higher standard, one that we don’t always meet but one that we should always work toward. I think our model for compassion can be found in our readings today. What strikes me most about our gospel lesson and about Bartimaeus is that while Jesus heals him and Bartimaeus can now see in ways that perhaps others cannot, a more taken aback by the way Jesus sees him. He hears bartimaeus call to him and what he sees in front of him is a man who is broken, and who is dependent upon the good graces of everyone around him to be able to eke out a living. Jesus asks him the same question that he asked the sons of Zebedee last week…what do you want me to do for you? And the answer this week is very very different. It is not an answer that is requesting special favor or power. It is a broken and blind man asking his teacher to let him see. I have no doubt that Jesus had compassion on this man and Jesus was able to put aside the crowds and everyone making so much noise around him. His attention was completely upon this poor man who just wanted to be able to see. Jesus saw him, Jesus heard him, and the man’s life was changed forever.
God’s compassion overflows in the world for all of us, especially in the life and ministry of Jesus. There is no end to the love and compassion that God has for the world God loves. Yet everywhere we look, compassion seems to be missing. So many people just want to be right. So many people who say they are Christians just do not seem to be following “the Way” of Jesus but rather are following some way that they think will let them be prosperous regardless of what it means to anyone else. Church, we have GOT to do better. It’s our time to shine and to show the rest of the world what it actually means to live. Not to live according to the greed ridden values that are projected towards us every day, but to live according to God’s commandments to love God and to love our neighbors. I’m not entirely sure why we have a tendency to forget that commandment, but we do, and I would say that we ALL do, not just the people I don’t agree with. We all have that spiritual blind spot that keeps us from seeing the world as Jesus sees it. We all have people whom we have difficulty being kind to; and in this time when it feels like we aren’t even speaking the same language, I know it’s hard. We have got to learn to sharpen our spiritual vision; we have to ask ourselves over and over again if what we are doing and saying looks like loving our neighbors or not; we have to develop that ability to see and hear people, I would go so far as to say NOTICE others even before we hear or see them; that’s what Jesus did – he noticed people that others had long ago stopped noticing. Like our friend Bartimaus. He had probably been begging for so long that the crowds stopped noticing him, stopped hearing him or seeing him because he was a bother, or because they believed him guilty of some sin which then resulted in his blindness. Jesus breaks those barriers down and sees and hears this desperate man and gives him his sight, restoring him to living a life where he no longer needed to beg in order to eat.
Maybe we need to stop talking so that we can listen; perhaps we could try to be less obsessed with being right, being wealthy, being important, enough to notice, to see, and to hear as Jesus does. I wonder whose life we might be able to change?
I think that the noise from politics is only going to get louder and I don’t think it’s going to stop after election day. We all need to practice listening for the voices of those whom Jesus loves, those voices that might get buried underneath the rest. Lets rehearse asking ourselves, “does what I’m participating in sound like loving my neighbor?” We may be surprised at what and whom we hear. Compassion is hard but not impossible. Maybe we can teach others something as we love our neighbors and notice those around us. We can do this; if we are going to help the kingdom exist on earth as it does in heaven, we are going to have to.