Coming to know the Risen One

The high priest slept well that Friday night. The streets and squares of Jerusalem were quiet again after the daily disruptions this Jesus had brought to the city and the temple. Now he was dead and buried. Friday was what the high priest would have called a peaceful night and he slept well again on Saturday. The Romans had taken care of Jesus, and hopefully his followers had gotten the message and were on their way back to Galilee. The unrest this man had created in the city – it could have become a major crisis, especially during the holidays. Any kind of disturbance bothered Rome – but now things were under control. The high priest was proud of himself – he had nipped the problem in the bud. He was done with Jesus, done with civil unrest and excited crowds; Jerusalem was quiet again. The holy temple would once again be a place for orderly worship, with wise leaders in place to protect and preserve the sacred tradition. The high priest slept well – until Sunday.

On the first day of the week the first reports of rumors began to trickle in, disturbing rumors. A handful of men and women, followers, no doubt, of this Jesus, were making claims that they had seen Jesus, that he was alive because God had raised him from the dead. Very soon, he heard reports that Peter and John were in the temple just about every day, teaching and healing, and attracting large crowds. People came not just from the city but even from the surrounding towns, bringing the sick and those tormented by demons, and the buzz was the followers of Jesus were healing them. “Hello, insomnia,” the high-priest sighed, “Rome will not be pleased.”

In the book of Acts, Luke paints a portrait of the church as a movement of fearless witnesses whose presence and work bring wholeness and hope to the city; but what is exciting news to some, is disruptive and disturbing to others. No wonder, the high priest was nervous; institutions and the people they empower want stability more than anything, which means that any change must occur only on their terms and under their control. The followers of Jesus didn’t meet those requirements; like their master, they acted with a different kind of authority. Soon the chief priests, elders, and scribes – the entire temple leadership – assembled to discuss the matter: “What will we do with them?” They called in Peter and John, ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, and released them. Peter and John in turn met with the other disciples and talked about what had happened at the council meeting. They prayed, “Lord, look at their threats, and grant your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” They prayed for courage to speak and act in the name of Jesus, and their prayers were answered. Their boldness gave the high priest a headache, and after yet another sleepless night he took action. This Jesus thing had to stop, whatever the cost. And so he had the apostles arrested and shut up in prison. He slept a little better that night. But while he was dreaming of taking back control of the temple and the city, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, and the apostles walked out. Before the sun was up, the good news of Jesus’ resurrection was again being proclaimed in the temple and in the streets of Jerusalem.

Again the high priest had the apostles brought in and stand before the council for questioning. “We gave you strict orders, didn’t we, not to teach in this name. Why have you defied the express directive of this council to desist this preaching?” Peter and the apostles answered with disarming simplicity, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”

It was human authority that killed Jesus to silence him. It was human authority that resisted his authority to teach and forgive. It was human authority that accused him and found him guilty, convicted and executed him. It was human authority that did all it could to put an end to Jesus. But God raised him up. God exalted him that he might continue to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things. You want to forbid us to witness? You might as well forbid us to breathe, or tell the wind to cease to blow! This is who we are, now that Jesus is risen from the dead, and this is what we do. His life is our life.

Who would have thought that one day Peter would speak like that? Who would have thought that frightened disciples would have the courage to take a stand like that? Who would have thought that they would look human authority in the eye and defy it with such bold grace? Who would have thought they could be so free?

In the Gospel according to John we see a very different snapshot of the early church. We are looking at a terrified little band, huddled in a dark room with a chair braced against the door. The air is thick with fear, and nobody says anything. Yes, there was the word the women had brought back from the tomb, but what are words against the grip of fear? What are words against the reasonable expectation that they, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth would be next in line to be convicted and executed by the city’s religious and civil authorities? The first day of the new creation has dawned with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but the disciples are still sitting in Friday darkness with little hope and little courage. The gospel makes it very clear: this is a community that will have only one thing going for it – the risen Christ himself.

And then Jesus enters the scene with words of peace, and their fear falls away and joy take its place. This is how the resurrection stops being a word and begins to become the reality in which we dare to live. It’s a glimpse of the living Christ or a whisper. It doesn’t necessarily happen all at once, but sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly, much like love happens. Much like the first disciples encountered the crucified Jesus alive among them and were transformed by his presence and his gifts.

The difference between Peter who denied three times that he knew Jesus and Peter who declared, “We must obey God rather than any human authority,” the difference is Peter’s encounter with the living Christ and his peace, his forgiveness, and his mission. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” the living Christ says to us as he said to the first disciples. And he breathed on them as he breathes on us, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

The difference between a frightened group of men and women hiding behind locked doors and the same men and women fearlessly proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the difference is the Holy Spirit. The difference is our relationship with the Living One, a relationship so intimate that we breathe in what he breathes out.

He made our life his own – the promises we make and break, the ways in which we betray, deny and abandon each other – he made our life his own, so that his life would be ours. His life of obedience and faithfulness is for us and for all, and we begin to live in it. His compassion is for us and for all, and we continue to live in it, resisting the pull of fear. His life is for us and for all of creation, and we share it with all.

This is what we do now that Jesus is risen from the dead and this is who we are. We are his and we live the life he gives. We discover who we are meant to be in our relationship with him. Thomas was not with them that night when Jesus came, John tells us. Thomas missed the whole thing; he was a latecomer like all of us. I don’t know if the Apostle Thomas is the patron saint of all who weren’t there, but I suggest we think of him that way. He takes our place in the story, and perhaps he is named the Twin, because he is our twin; his experience is so much like ours: he wasn’t there, but he wasn’t satisfied with second-hand reports. He needed to see for himself, he needed to get close enough to touch. He didn’t take anyone’s word for what God had done, but waited for God to act and for the Risen One to make himself known to him. And Thomas, the one who didn’t want to settle for repeating the words of others but held out for an experience of the Risen One on his own terms, this Thomas made a confession of faith unlike any other in the gospels when he encountered the living Christ: my Lord and my God.

We are reading the words of witnesses and they themselves tell us to be patient with our questions and our hunger for certainty. Much of the time, our faith will be a mix of belief and disbelief, a back and forth between clarity of vision and stumbling in the dark, moments of speaking with great confidence and moments of knowing deep in our bones things for which we have no words. The witnesses encourage us to be patient with our questions and our hunger for certainty; they encourage us to come and see. They invite us to let ourselves be drawn into the life we can only know by entering it.

Too much to take in

9.9 million viewers watched the premiere of season six, the final season, of Downton Abbey in January. Numbers like that made it the most-watched drama series in the 45-year history of PBS, and a noteworthy TV event that brought together fans of Masterpiece Theatre with a British accent and lovers of soapy stories. In our home, I wasn’t the biggest fan, but I must admit that I’ll miss Lady Violet and her zinging one liners. What was it about this lush period piece that kept so many of us tuning in, every January, for six years? I don’t know, but I think the experience was a very reassuring one for many. We were watching the disintegration of aristocratic British society in the early 20^th century, and we could empathize with the family of Lord and Lady Grantham as well as with the men and women downstairs. We were watching change of global proportions rolling through the little world of the big house, and it all turned out alright in the end. In the final episode we got to see Anna Bates, holding her newborn baby, tucked happily into the luxurious bed of Lady Mary whom she served as lady’s maid. Hard to imagine for poor, old Mr Carson, the butler, but the walls of the house did not collapse and life continued with a new generation who would grow up in this strange new world, and for them it would simply be the world. There are lots of reasons why we’ve been watching this show, but I believe one big reason has been that we ourselves are living through a period of dramatic changes on a global scale, and it’s immensely reassuring to see things turn out alright for Lady Edith and Daisy, and even Mr Barrow. As Lady Violet, the acid-tongued Dowager Countess, declares at the end of Edith’s wedding to Bertie, “There’s a lot at risk, but with any luck, they’ll be happy enough. Which is the English version of a happy ending.”

We love happy endings. Lillian Daniel kept a crumpled up newspaper story with a Vancouver dateline, August 25, 1996; she kept it like a treasure. It told the strange tale of a couple whose airplane crashed in a remote lake, leaving an oil slick and some of the couple’s possessions floating eerily on the water’s surface, their bodies drowned and disappeared. As their obituaries got written and funeral plans were finalized, a coroner was flown out to the crash site days later to write the final report. And there, lo and behold, on the shore a full quarter mile’s swim from where the plane had made its fiery nosedive, there they were, the stranded couple, waving their arms in the vast wilderness, hoping to attract the attention of somebody on that lonely plane flying by overhead. The coroner came to write a death report, and he got to tell a story of life. “Tears turn to laughter as dead couple returns,” reads the headline.

We love happy endings, because they help us not give in to the many unhappy ones. They help us hold on to hope. But I’m not done yet with that little story. When that Vancouver couple returned home after their plane crash and their time in the wilderness, their eight-year-old son, Lewis, greeted them with a cake in the shape of an airplane, and written on it with sweet icing were the words, “Bugsy and Sheila, Welcome Home. You are grounded.” [1]

You know what he meant; he may have picked up some of the pilot lingo or he may have heard those words addressed to himself a few times before. But whether he knew it or not, he also told them a deep truth about this extraordinary moment of escape from death. They were grounded in ways they hadn’t been before the experience. Grounded in gratitude. Grounded in recognizing how beautiful a gift life was. Grounded in embracing what really mattered to them, rather than being distracted by a million things that clamored for their attention. All that used to seem important had slipped to the bottom and suddenly, as though a veil had been pulled away, the ordinariness of daily life revealed life’s glory.

“You are grounded,” Lewis had written on the cake, giving words to their experience of having discovered something real to stand on. I imagine there was a long group hug, and they kissed and they cried and they laughed. They were grounded in the joy of being alive. Grounded in their love for each other. If this were a movie, this is where you’d want to start rolling the closing credits. We love happy endings, because we know that in real life it’s just a matter of time before that grounding in gratitude gets overwhelmed by the craziness of daily demands and weekly schedules.

Why am I telling you all this? We love happy endings so much, we may come to this day with a season finale mindset. But the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not a happy ending. In Luke, as in all the gospels, the Easter morning scenes come at the end of the story, but the resurrection is no happy end; it is the reason the whole story is being told in the first place. The resurrection is a whole new beginning to the story of life.

The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee watched as he was crucified; they saw where his body was laid. And they sat that long day after Friday, small jars of ointment and bags of fragrant spices in their laps; they just sat waiting. Luke says they rested, but we know it wasn’t a Sabbath of rest for them, let alone a Sabbath of peace. With hearts heavy with grief, they were waiting for the world to turn so they could go to the tomb and anoint the body, so they could do with love and care what had to be done in a hurry before sunset on Friday. At early dawn they came to the tomb and nothing was like it was supposed to be. The stone was rolled away, but when they went in, they did not find the body. This was no remote lake where the deep sometimes does swallow drowned bodies, this was a tomb hewn from rock. Bodies weren’t supposed to disappear.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” the two messengers said. “He is not here, but has risen.” The tomb didn’t speak with its wide gaping mouth, its only message was the absence of Jesus’ body. The heavenly messengers did speak, but their words only added new questions to an already profoundly confusing and perplexing situation. And then they said, “Remember how he told you that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” And the women remembered and Jesus’ own words helped them begin to unfold the wondrous thing God had done: The world of sinners had had its way with Jesus, but God raised him from the dead. In response to the world’s loud and violent No, God spoke a vindicating Yes. And in response to the world’s proud and self-assured affirmation of its own way, its own truth, and its own life, God affirmed the way of Jesus as God’s own way. God affirmed the way of compassion and mercy. God didn’t just raise somebody to reveal God’s power to bring life out of death, God raised Jesus who lived to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor to all. And the women found the stone rolled away not because somehow this was necessary in order for Jesus to get out of the tomb; no, the stone was rolled away so they could get in, we could get in, and then come away with a new word from that place where all things come to an end. They came away with the word of life, with the good news of resurrection, the good news of a new creation in Christ, the promise of life redeemed and fulfilled. The stone was rolled away so we would get out of the tomb of our fear and despair and find the living one among the living.

The women remembered Jesus’ words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Their response? The translations vary, just pick one. “These words seemed to them an idle tale, empty talk, a silly story, a foolish yarn, sheer humbug, utter nonsense, and they did not believe them.” Luke Johnson detects “a definite air of male superiority in this response,” and he’s not the only one. But there’s more here than just common sexism. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is a newness so radical, our language fails to capture it. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead will either ground our experience of the world and our knowledge of God, or it will remain a strange word that doesn’t fit any of our categories. The resurrection of Jesus is a reality that is too much for any of us to take in, but it has a way of taking us in.

The gospel reading from Luke for this day ends with a curious verse:

But Peter got up and and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went away, amazed at what had happened.

Now why would he get up and run to the tomb after they had all just dismissed the women’s words as utter nonsense? What was it that made him get up and not walk, but run to the tomb? Put yourself in his shoes for a moment. You’d been with Jesus pretty much from day one. You heard him teach, you watched him eat with sinners and you shared in those meals, you saw him heal and forgive and embrace, and before dawn on Friday you denied three times that you even knew him.

‘Hey, Peter, what made you run to the tomb?’ Here are some answers people have given:

I went because I was curious.

I wondered if the women might be right.

I hoped they might be right.

I wanted to see for myself.

I went because I felt guilty.

I had to apologize.

The Holy Spirit drew me.

I wondered if I was the reason Jesus was alive. ^[2]

The resurrection of Jesus isn’t something we can take in, but it is a reality that takes us in and grounds us completely in the risen life of Christ. We are grounded in grace and forgiveness. With wave after wave of unprecedented change rolling through our world, we are grounded in God’s redemptive purposes for all of creation. With the daily news giving us little to hold on to but our fear or our sarcasm, we are grounded in love that never ends. We are grounded, and we have never been freer to live fearlessly.

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[1] Lillian Daniel, “You are grounded,” Journal for Preachers 27 no 3 Easter 2004, 20-21.

[2] See Anna Carter Florence, Journal for Preachers 27 no 3 Easter, 2004, 35-37.

In the name of Jesus

Palm Sunday is a curious day. We spread palm branches up and down the center aisle, turning the long stretch of carpet into a royal highway, and we sing with joyful exuberance, welcoming the Lord Jesus into the city. Today, the tall double doors of the front entrance are the city gates of Jerusalem, and the table in the great hall awaits the gathering of the guests who are coming from all the ends of the earth for the royal banquet. We sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because we do want him here, we do want him to rule and make all things right – but we also remember why we have come to call this particular week, Holy Week; because it’s not all royal welcome and hosanna. Our hopes and the promises of God are being fulfilled in ways no one could have imagined.

We do want Jesus to rule and to make all things right, but we are also beginning to understand that it is not just them who get in the way of Christ’s reign – them being the Jews, or the Romans, or the fickle crowds or whoever else we think we can blame – it is we ourselves who cannot let God’s love rule our lives. Our own visions of a world made right often have more in common with imperial dreams of world domination than with the peculiar way of Christ. We get power wrong, and we half know it, and so we feel a little awkward standing in the gate of the city and watching Jesus riding down Broadway on a donkey. He’s turning our world upside down, and we half know that that is what it takes to make things right, but we only half know it and the other half resists the pull of God’s love. We get power wrong. We see the donkey, but in our imagination it’s still the strong man in shining armor, riding high on a white stallion, who comes to save us. We see Jesus, but we still dream of Superman and Wonder Woman.

There is a city, not far from here, and it could be any city, in any state.[1] In that city, there’s a hospital for men and women who are emotionally wounded and mentally ill. A few years ago, the medical staff and the board of that psychiatric hospital wanted to open halfway houses in the community, so that people who were on their way to full recovery could be supported while making the transition back into life outside. Rather than taking one giant step from the small world of the hospital to the big world of the city, they would be encouraged to take a number of small steps toward greater independence. Well, not everybody in the city was thrilled about the idea, and so there was a contentious city council meeting.

The place was packed. Hundreds of people squeezed into the meeting room, shouting their opposition to the halfway houses, “We don’t want these people in our neighborhood.” After a couple of brief presentations and a lot of yelling the city council said no to the proposal. Just then, the back doors of the auditorium opened, and in came this little woman with a white scarf over her head. Suddenly it was so quiet, even people up in the balcony could hear the hushed voices from below, “Is that Mother Teresa?” Indeed, it was her. She happened to be in town to dedicate a new Sisters of Charity program and she had heard about this meeting. She came down the center aisle and everybody gasped as she came to the front, turned around, got down on her knees in front of the city council, raised her arms and said, “In the name of Jesus, make room for these children of God! When you reject them, you reject Jesus. When you affirm them, you embrace Jesus.” With her arms up in the air, she pleaded, “Please, please, please, please, please, in the name of Jesus, make room for these children of God! Make room for them in your neighborhoods.”

Now imagine for a moment you’re on the city council. There is Mother Teresa on her knees in front of you. Crews from several television stations have followed her into the auditorium, with cameras rolling. What are you going to do? Somebody say something; somebody do something.

One of the councilmen moved that the previous motion be reconsidered, there was a second, and then the city council did a complete 180 and voted unanimously in favor of opening those neighborhood halfway houses. There were hundreds of people packed into that auditorium, and not one of them uttered a word of opposition to the motion. Nobody shouted when it passed. Why? Because of the pleas of a little old woman who spoke with such authority? Everybody knew how Mother Teresa served God by serving the poor. Everybody knew that she wanted nothing but to live in the love and mercy of God. And seeing her there on her knees between the elected officials and the hushed crowd, everybody in that room wanted that life, the life her pleas represented, a life of love and mercy; and they wanted it more than any other life, for themselves and for everybody else, and together they moved one step closer to the kingdom where mercy reigns. They couldn’t say what made them change their minds, it was a strange power, it was a love stronger than all their fears.

Jesus doesn’t ride into town in front of an army. He doesn’t change the world by imposing his will on us. He turns the world upside down by refusing the path of coercion. He transforms the world by embracing the way of obedience, by doing what love of God and neighbor demand. That is the passion of his life to this final breath. We call this week holy because in the events we recall in prayer and ritual we enter the mystery of God’s power revealed in the life and death of Jesus.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” the Apostle Paul urges us. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit … Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Phil 2:3-4). Such words were rare and foreign in a city like Philippi, which isn’t to say they aren’t rare and foreign in a city like Nashville. The citizens of Philippi valued their connections to the imperial household, their privileges, and their advantages as subjects of Caesar. Roman culture valued force, competition, and honor-seeking, and humility was not considered a virtue. The perfect career of a young Roman aristocrat followed the cursus honorum, or “course of honor.” It was a ladder that comprised a mixture of military and political administration posts. Each office had a minimum age for election, and at each stage the upwardly mobile young man gained new responsibilities and new privileges. Lower classes of people developed their own sequence of offices that mimicked the upper classes. Roman society, much like ours, was built on the pursuit of status. You move up, and you socialize with the people who can help you move up even higher. But when everybody is only concerned about moving up the ladder, the only reason to look around is to check out the competition with a quick glance over the shoulder; others aren’t even seen.

We call this week holy because the final days of Jesus’ life on earth reveal to us the heart of reality, and it’s not relentless competition and survival, but rather relentless love and communion.

“You want to talk about status?” Paul seems to suggest. “OK, let’s talk about status.” Jesus had the highest status imaginable: equality with God. Only he did not regard that equality as something to be used for his own advantage. On the contrary. He emptied himself. He humbled himself. He “made himself of no reputation,” as the King James translation says it so beautifully. He climbed down the ladder, his mind on nothing but the will of God, loving us sinners with a passion and a vulnerability for which we have no words. On the cross, his career in reverse reached its end and he died the most cruel and degrading death, reserved for slaves and rebels against Rome’s rule.

And isn’t that just the way the world works? Isn’t that the way it has been since the dawn of humankind and will always be? Yes, that is part of the truth we must face when we look to the cross. This is what we are capable of doing to each other in the name of religion, in the name of justice, in the name of political convenience. But this dark Friday truth has a glorious, hopeful side: God vindicated the way of Jesus. God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him, the crucified servant, the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. We call this week holy, because the story of Jesus reveals who God is, and not despite the cross, but because of it. We look to the cross and we see love that goes all the way for the life of the world, for the sake of communion with us, for the sake of righteousness.

Today we sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because we do want him here, we do want him to rule and make all things right for all the children of God, especially the ones for whom no one wants to make room in their neighborhood. We sing, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because this humble one, riding on a donkey, comes with forgiveness, never tiring of showing us a world where all are neighbors and all are at home, never tiring of inviting us to live there.

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[1] Based on a story told by Tony Campolo http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/campolo_5218.htm

Can You See Me Now

My friend John is a photographer, but he also loves to tell stories about his travels in the U. S. and around the world. A few days ago, John talked about a trip to India and the large groups of children that often surrounded him there, laughing, shouting, pulling his sleeves and begging for change, and how one day he decided that he was done handing out small coins to them. He got into the back of one of those three-wheel taxis and took off, feeling terrible about his lack of generosity and compassion. He turned around and looked back through the small window cut into the canvas of the cab; he saw the children he had just so cold-heartedly abandoned: they were playing soccer on the street, laughing and shouting and having a great time. He was relieved to see them run around and play, and to note that, contrary to the dark thoughts of his guilt-ridden heart, their world did not revolve around him.

Another story he told that night was from a trip to China. He visited a town where begging had apparently been elevated to a performance art. John saw a man at a street corner, and he was fascinated by him while at the same time trying to ignore him. The man had no legs and he was sitting in a small wooden cart; one of his arms looked twisted and paralyzed, and he used his other arm to push himself forward. John tried to look past him, but the man wouldn’t let him. He addressed John as he walked past, but John kept walking, pretending he couldn’t hear him. He thought he had escaped, but the man in the cart followed him, pushing himself forward on the road with astounding proficiency. John walked a little faster, his eyes firmly locked on the end of the street, but the man didn’t stop his pursuit. John picked up the pace some more, but the man in the cart was determined and astonishingly quick on his wheels. They came to the end of the block and John crossed the street, certain that the man would give up the chase now, but no, he was relentless. Halfway down the second block, John stopped and turned around. They looked at each other, neither said a word, and then they just burst out laughing, deep, full-throated belly laughs that shook their bodies so hard that fear, guilt, awkwardness, shame and anger vanished until nothing but joy remained. Then they went to get a cup of tea.

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Mark Horvath also works with a camera, but his preferred format are video and film. He once heard a story about a homeless man on Hollywood Blvd who thought he was invisible. One day a kid handed the man a pamphlet, and he was shocked and amazed: “What!? You can see me? How can you see me? I’m invisible!”

Horvath writes about that moment, “It isn’t hard to comprehend this man’s slow spiral into invisibility. Once on the street, people started to walk past him, ignoring him as if he didn’t exist … much like they do a piece of trash on the sidewalk. It’s not that people are bad, but if we make eye contact, or engage in conversation, then we have to admit they exist and that we might have a basic human need to care. But it’s so much easier to simply close our eyes and shield our hearts to their existence.” Horvath knows we’re not literally closing our eyes; we just keep them focussed on the end of the street and hope that invisibility works both ways. The homeless man blends into the background, and we who are passing by blend into the steady stream of faceless pedestrians; it’s a kind of blindness.

Horvath writes about homeless men and women, “I not only feel their pain, I truly know their pain. I lived their pain. You’d never know it now but I was a homeless person. Seventeen years ago, I lived on Hollywood Blvd. But today, I find myself looking away, ignoring the faces, avoiding their eyes — and I’m ashamed when I realize I’m doing it. But I really can feel their pain, and it is almost unbearable, but it’s just under the surface of my professional exterior.” After years of using a television camera to tell the stories of homelessness and the organizations trying to help, Horvath began shooting short, unedited clips of homeless men and women telling their stories, and he posted them on his website, Invisible People. The purpose of the project, he writes, “is to make the invisible visible. I hope these people and their stories connect with you and don’t let go. I hope their conversations with me will start a conversation in your circle of friends.”[1] Stories and conversations against the pervasive blindness.

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Jesus and his band of disciples were in Galilee, where Jesus was proclaiming the good news of God: “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[2] He healed the sick, freed the oppressed, he taught and fed the people with parables and bread, and the disciples watched and learned. They watched a lot, but they were slow to learn. “Do you still not perceive or understand?” Jesus said to them at one point, frustration in his voice. “Do you have eyes, but fail to see?”[3]

They came to Bethsaida, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. Jesus laid his hands on his eyes and looked at him intently and the man’s sight was restored and he saw everything clearly.[4] The disciples watched, but they were slow to understand who Jesus was, and what it meant to follow him. They were far from seeing everything clearly.

They followed him as best they could as he turned to Jerusalem. On the way, Jesus told them repeatedly what would happen in the city and he taught them about the demands of discipleship, about serving one another and being attentive to little ones and about the meaning of greatness in the kingdom of God. “What is it you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked the sons of Zebedee, who had been with him almost as long as Peter, and they responded, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”[5] Jesus modeled being a servant, but his disciples, to this day, dream of power and privilege.

Then they came to Jericho, the last stop for travelers and pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem, and there, just outside the city, sitting by the roadside, was Bartimaeus, a blind beggar. When he heard that it was Jesus who was walking by, he began to shout out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many in the crowd told him to hold his tongue and be quiet. Easy for them to say, they weren’t beggars. For them it was just fine for Bartimaeus to blend into the background and remain invisible, but he cried out even more loudly, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He knew it was Messiah time; he knew this was the time when the eyes of the blind are opened and the poor have their debts canceled and the oppressed go free. He may have been blind, but his vision was better than theirs; his insight more profound than the disciples’. He named and entreated Jesus, and when the people rebuked him, he asked again, louder this time. He refused to be silenced. He refused to blend into the background and remain part of the everyday road side backdrop everybody had gotten used to. He cried out, relentlessly, and Jesus stood still. “Call him here,” he said, and they did. “Courage,” they said, “get up, he’s calling you.” They didn’t have to tell him twice. He sprang up and came to Jesus.

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him, the same question he had asked James and John who had been stumbling along behind him since the earliest days of his mission in Galilee. They dreamed of power and privilege; they didn’t see who he was; they didn’t perceive what his mission was, despite their having been with him so long. The blind beggar answered Jesus, “Let me see again.” And Jesus said, “Go, your faith has made you well.” He didn’t send him away; he told him that the days of his marginalization and invisibility were over. Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way to the cross.

After a long series of episodes in Mark’s gospel in which the disciples just don’t get it, it is a blind man who finally sees clearly who Jesus is and follows him up to Jerusalem. There’s hope for us blind beggars who can’t quite see who Jesus is and what it means to follow him. It’s Messiah time; he’s calling us. The rich man went away grieving when Jesus called him, for he had many possessions. Bartimaeus, throwing off his cloak, jumped up and came to Jesus and followed him on the way. His cloak was everything for him, mattress, blanket, umbrella, coat and coin catcher – it was everything he owned and it represented the life he left behind for the sake of the kingdom, like a fisherman who walks away from his nets and a tax collector who abandons his desk to follow Jesus. Bartimaeus walked away from invisibility and blindness and followed Jesus on the kingdom way. With his eyes opened by Jesus, he began to see everything in his light. He began to notice what others routinely missed or ignored. He began to see everything in the context of Jesus and found a whole new life.

Jesus asks a simple question, “What do you want me to do for you?”

How do you answer?