Fr Kieron's homily on 'Bartimaeus 25th October 2009

Some of you will know my penchant for slightly tenuous links and associations, so try this one! There is a direct connection between my vocation to the priesthood and the profitability of several high street opticians. Many priests will tell you that they can trace the origins of their calling to when they were altar servers. I can relate to that, but it was also early on in my altar serving career that I realised that my eyesight was somewhat deficient. We had finished mass and I was deputed to extinguish the “big six” (candles) with a snuffer. In those days, the candles were very tall, and I wasn’t and as I struggled to put them out, I realised that I kept missing the flame, because I couldn’t focus properly. So very soon after that discovery I was dragged along to the opticians and a dozen or so pairs of spectacles and many hundreds of pounds later on – here I am. So please, don’t anybody say, that I need to go to Specsavers!

That was a rather convoluted way of illustrating how we take our sight for granted, until, that is, something goes wrong. Sometimes we don’t even know something is wrong until we are tested in some way. We can also compensate for bad eyesight by simply avoiding challenging situations like reading in public or playing ball games. A friend of mine who is blind in one eye even blagged her way into the army by memorising the sight test!

For Bartimaeus, something had gone seriously wrong. He had not always been blind because he asked to be able to see again. Then later, we are told that his sight returned. He may have been physically blind, but he had a keen insight into the identity and power of Jesus, whom he addresses as Son of David.

After he is called by Jesus, his actions become very uncharacteristic of a blind person; he throws off his cloak and jumps up, blind people, understandably, are usually much more measured and cautious in their movements. It is as though faith takes over and immediately sets him free from the inhibitions of his disability. Jesus asks the blind man the same question he asked James and John in last week’s Gospel: what do you want me to do for you? This time he gets the right answer – no nonsense about power and kudos and seats in glory. Simply, let me see again.

As well as being the last of the healing signs of Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, this is also a parable: Bartimaeus had his eyes opened in order that he could follow the Lord; he had recognised his need for the Lord and he had received his call.

We have all received the call to follow but sometimes our eyes need to be opened to see the way ahead or at least re-focussed. We are so often like Thomas in St John’s Gospel: Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?

Sometimes what causes the blurriness in our eyesight; or rather our insight is of our own making, sometimes it comes from outside of us. So it may be our own spiritual laziness, complacency, our need for an easy life. We may simply be overwhelmed by a secular agenda which conspires to give us a blinkered vision where the default position is to focus on material wealth, visible success and power. Often we need our vision, not just to be re-focussed, but to be expanded. Like Bartimaeus, we don’t need Jesus to give us something we never had, but to restore something which should always have been there.

The flip side of original sin is not only original holiness or blessedness, but an original vision of how life can be and should be. This is what we have lost, as a society and sometimes as a Church. But the good news is, it can be restored. What is the vision that the Lord wants for us? We can allow ourselves or the world around us to corrupt our sense of vision, or we can let God’s Spirit correct it and restore it.

We don’t need to see too far ahead, but we need to see far ahead enough to follow. We also need to realise that having a vision is sometimes like the sailors who used the moon and the stars for navigation: they knew they could never reach the moon and the stars, but they could show them the right direction to where they were going.

Jesus has come to restore us to our original vision, if only we will let him, if only we will say that prayer; Son of David have pity on me.

This is a vision of peace and reconciliation, a vision of shared responsibility and ministry, a vision which goes beyond church and looks to the Kingdom. If we leave an optician with a new pairs of specs, we hope that our vision will be clear and focussed; we will also want it to be adaptable to the reality and needs of our lives.

To follow Jesus, our personal vision needs the same qualities:

It must be made clear through the pure light of the gospel, the distraction in our peripheral vision (money, power, ambition, excess wealth), should remain just that, peripheral

It must be focussed and realistic, so we don’t need an original vision for the world (not yet!) but we do need one for our life/family/parish. We need to be able to adapt our vision without losing sight of who we are following, so in other words, while having the same insight, how we follow might be different if we are old; young; single; married; able bodied or not etc., etc.

Bartimaeus treasured a memory of what it was like to see clearly and he had that memory restored. Collectively and individually, we do have a memory of what it was once like to see Jesus clearly, before life got so crowded and complicated. Maybe its time for that memory, that vision, to be restored.