“Son of David, have mercy on me”
Today’s story of the healing of Bartimaeus must be one of our favourite gospel stories. It’s a beautifully told tale full of pathos, excitement and movement. Many artists have produced beautiful paintings of this story. It’s wonderful to pray through as an ignatian meditation; you can’t help but get into the story and see the different reactions: the helpless, blind beggar pathetically asking for mercy; the large unsympathetic crowd which tells him to be quiet. Jesus, far away – how can he hear a single beggar’s voice, but he does. Then the crowd sycophantly changes its tune: “Take heart; he is calling you.” Bartimaeus flings himself forward and Jesus heals him with a word.
It is, of course, a healing story. A blind beggar is able to see. It is also a parable of conversion. The Pharisees and lawyers who seemed to know so much were actually blind. Jesus calls them ‘blind guides.’ We, too, are blind to all sorts of things. Even those of us who are practicing Christians are blind to the revelations of God, to the nature of our sin, to the way that evil works in the world. Jesus, son of David, shows his power as Son of God. Bartimaeus, though blind, could see that power. He does not ask for alms. He asks “that I may receive my sight.” You have to know you are blind to ask to receive your sight. We also need to know how much we don’t see if we are going to ask Jesus to help us see. That raises questions: do I really want to see how sinful I am? I spend most of my life protecting myself from that knowledge. Do I dare to ask Jesus to show me that truth? Do I really want to see how evil is working in the world? Will I be appalled, terrified, shocked out of my mind? Do I dare ask Jesus to show me what I could do to fight against the evil in the world? Would I do it if he asked? It is sometimes easier to be blind, or only partially sighted, seeing just what we want to see. Yet can we take the example of Bartimaeus as our own – flinging ourselves forward to Christ, wanting to see everything as it really is. Can God show me what I can do about violence and injustice in the world? Can God show me what I can do about the environmental crisis? Can God show me how I can live my life as a more faithful and loving Christian, day after day? Those are big things to ask for and hard things to act on.
Yet underneath this spectacular healing there is a truth that is even more amazing than the miracle of healing. Bartimaeus asks Jesus for mercy. He asks this great preacher with his vast entourage to pay attention to him, a pathetic, blind beggar, and the first miracle is that Jesus does. Even though he is so famous, so popular, so surrounded by admirers, he can stop and pay attention to a lowly beggar. We see him doing this often in the gospels, with lepers, with a woman caught in adultery, a poor woman giving alms, even with foreigners. Jesus has compassion. He shows mercy. The key to Jesus is not in the end that he has great power. The key is that he had great love. Mercy and love go together in Jesus’ life.
“Son of David, have mercy on me.” We are reminded of the tax collector in the temple. He is different from Bartimaeus; he can see only too well that he is a sinner. He does not try to excuse himself. He simply asks for mercy and we know that he got it. That simple parable tells us a great deal about God. He is not a judge who carefully administers the law. He is not the kind of judge who counts right deeds and wrong deeds and judges according to the balance. He is a God who loves. The only thing we need to do to gain his mercy is to admit that we need it. The tax-collector did that; Bartimaeus did that. The Pharisees, at least in our Gospel stories, did not do that. It is not that they didn’t know God is a God of mercy and love. Long before the Coming of Christ the Hebrew writers spoke of him as a God of love and mercy. “Have mercy on me O God, after thy great goodness.” The psalms are full of these phrases, celebrating this God of love. It is sad that the Church has so often emphasised God as a god of anger, of rigid justice, of punishment, even of violence. Each of those aspects has a place in the complex story of God working with us human beings but it is love that counts most. And we claim that love through asking for mercy. Asking for mercy admits that we are wrong, we are weak, we are sinful. Once we have done that we can receive God’s mercy and that shows us his love.
Several times a day we say “Lord have mercy.” Are we thinking each time we say it of our need for mercy and of the love of God.
It is not only Christians who understand this need for mercy. The Romans were a horrible people, trampling on enemies, destroying whole peoples. Yet among them was the poet Virgil whose whole life was spent in the decades of civil war. His final poem, the Aeneid seemed to celebrate the glorious history of Rome, especially of Caesar and Augustus. In book 6 the hero Aeneas meets meets his father Anchises in Hades and his father speaks of the Rome that is to come and tells him if there is to be justice they must tread down the proud ‘but spare the vanquished’. In book 12, after six books of bloody warfare Aeneas finally meets his enemy Turnus and defeats him. Turnus pleads for mercy, but Aeneas in a fit of anger kills him, and the whole great poem ends on that deadly note. Rome for ever after will be a city at war because it did not spare the vanquished. As we look round the wars today, in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Sudan, we see the lack of mercy. War will only come to an end when people learn the mercy of God. “Jesus, Lord, come to us in your mercy.” Amen