The Eyes of Faith: Mark 10:36-52 - Second Sunday in Lent

I was driving down Route 28 with Elizabeth and Rebecca in the car.

About thirty yards in front of me was a late model Volkswagen which began swerving. Through the back window, I could see that the driver was searching for something on the floor of the car. Whenever his head moved, the car swerved.

Then, he began to slow down, so I moved into the left lane to pass. He must’ve realized that he was traveling below the speed limit, because he quickly sped up and I moved back into the right lane. And his frantic search continued.

Elizabeth and I looked on with bated breath, praying that this driver wasn’t going to crash. 

Finally, he exited, and Elizabeth noticed he was driving with his wrists on the steering wheel while texting with his thumbs. We questioned if he had dropped his phone while texting; hence all the weaving and swerving. 

JESUS MAFA. Jesus cures the man born blind, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48383 [retrieved February 24, 2024]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

This driver may as well have been blind because he was more focused on his phone than on the road.

My driver’s ed teacher taught me that the number one thing people say after a collision is: “I didn’t see them.”

The fact that you have eyesight does not mean that you will see everything. You must focus your attention to see.

At the same time, I’ve known people with blindness to be quite perceptive and aware of their surroundings. They hold regular jobs, they play musical instruments, they walk through town with the help of seeing-eye dogs. Their other senses are so sharp that they see without eyesight. 

Click here to read the Scripture text

Bartimaeus, a blind man, saw Jesus by hearing other people’s testimony about him. But he also saw Jesus through his need. Those two factors working together are what gave him the faith to call out to Jesus, and not as healer, but as “Jesus, Son of David.” In other words, the Messiah. 

What’s remarkable in this exchange is how Bartimaeus sees Jesus versus how his disciples see him. 

For the third time, Jesus taught his disciples that he will be condemned by the religious leaders who will hand him over to the Roman authorities who will kill him, and after three days he will rise again. 

Soon after Jesus says these things, James and John ask Jesus to seat them at his right and his left in his glory. James and John want power. Bartimaeus needs mercy. Bartimaeus wants to see. James and John want to be seen. 

It begs the question: who’s truly blind? Jesus’s disciples are blinded by their own ambitions. Like a driver staring at their phone, they have taken their eyes off the way of Jesus, which Bartimaeus is so eager to walk. Bartimaeus saw Jesus through the eyes of faith. The disciples, however, couldn’t see the truth, despite how much Jesus had taught them and shown them. 

Much of your spiritual blindness is the result of what you choose to fix your eyes upon. We occupy our eyes with so many things in this digital age. I loathe to understand the extent to which our minds are influenced by what we see on a screen. It never ceases to amaze me how many things have screens: our cars, refrigerators, roadside billboards, gasoline pumps!

Ultimately, our blindness to Jesus Christ is rooted in sin. But thanks be to God that Jesus does not leave you on the roadside to live out your days being blind his salvation. 

Like Bartimaeus, Jesus makes himself visible to those who need forgiveness, mercy, and hope. This is why faith is most visible in places of pain and struggle: hospitals, hospices, mental health facilities, addiction support groups, grief support groups, prisons, and lands where Christians are persecuted. 

Bartimaeus, however, was not without help in coming to see Jesus. He wouldn’t have called out to Jesus in the first place if people hadn’t told him about Jesus. And it took people in the crowd to help him up when Jesus called out to him. This is what the Church is for. You and I are the voice of Jesus, calling out to the neighbor in love. 

How else will the neighbor know the way to Jesus unless we are the ones who show them and accompany them?

Most of the people Jesus heals are never known by their name. But Bartimaeus was, which, to me, demonstrates that he became well-known among the followers of Jesus, because his testimony helped others to see Jesus. I wouldn’t be here today without the people who ministered Christ to me. We don’t do ministry to win points with God; we do it because our faith is strengthened as we see the love of Jesus revealed in what he does for others. I cannot tell you the extent to which my own faith has been strengthened by the faith I’ve witnessed in people enduring unimaginable suffering, along with people who never seem to tire of giving and serving. 

So, in this season of Lent, I challenge you to watch your eyes and be mindful of what you are looking at. With Jesus in your life, there is always grace, love, and goodness to be seen. But are you paying attention? And are you seeing Jesus in the eyes of the neighbor who needs your good works? Are you excited and hopeful about what Jesus will show you when you follow him on the way?