Oct 28 | “Crying for Justice,” (Sermon, October 28th 2018)

They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher, let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Mark 10:46-52

 

Something folks might not know about me is that I’m a true crime nut. I freely admit that my perfect day is not hiking a mountain or cycling the Sea Wall or scintillating conversations with friends. Unfortunately for my own health, my perfect day is sitting on my couch alone with some sort of craft project listening to investigative true crime podcasts. The flesh is definitely weak.

A podcast I’ve grown to enjoy quite a lot is CBC’s “Someone Knows Something,” which explores long unsolved cases where despite oft sensational cases there is at best little evidence, or, at worst, the community surrounding the crime is close-lipped and suspicious.

Season Three of SKS is perhaps the most infuriating for these reasons. In May of 1964, in the heat of the American Civil Rights Movement, two young black men, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Dee, were abducted and tortured by the Ku Klux Klan and tossed bound and alive into the Mississippi River. Their bodies were only discovered in July of that year when the FBI were searching for three civil rights workers who disappeared the month before. David Ridgen explains that he decided to explore the case after watching a 1964 segment of a CBC film Summer in Mississippi which showed the police discovering the bodies of Moore and Dee. The director of the film, Beryl Fox, intones, “It was the wrong body. The finding of a negro male was noted and forgotten. The search was not for him. The search was for two white youths and their negro friend.”

After the discovery, the FBI interrogated two suspects, who were arrested in November of 1964, but the prosecutor discovered insufficient evidence and so the case was dropped by local authorities, some of whom were complicit in the crime, and forgotten.

After resurrecting the case, the two suspects were re-examined, and one of them, James Ford Seale, who was still alive and living un-harassed in the community, was convicted. The families of Moore and Dee also sued Franklin County and received a settlement. The case was a victory, especially for Charles Eddie Moore’s brother, Thomas James Moore, who features prominently in the podcast.

Not everyone in town felt this way, of course.

One person interviewed a couple of times is Marylou Webb, owner and editor of the Franklin Advocate newspaper. In a voice like a sweet Southern grandmother’s, she rails against the re-opening of the case in an editorial, calling it “beating a dead dog.” For what it’s worth her husband David Webb was listed as publicity director for Americans for the Preservation for The White Race in 1964, which supported the KKK and segregation.

What’s most germane to today’s passage is what happens when Thomas Moore, who has come with Ridgen to return a photograph to Marylou, asks her about a false story she referenced in the editorial on his brother’s death, as well as the lack of general coverage on the case in her paper.

Marylou bristles. “I am a champion of the people, not just for one guy who’s still got something going. You need to take that chip off your shoulder.”

“I ain’t got no chip on my shoulder,” Thomas insists, but she snaps back, “Yes, you do.”

Later, she says to David that Thomas needs to “shut up and go on and let’s all try to live together.”

I would love to ask Ms. Webb if she would be willing to shut up and go on if it were her brother or sister who was tortured and dumped alive and screaming into a river to be ignored for forty years.

Blind Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is coming and wants to be healed – not an unreasonable demand, it’s kind of Jesus’ thing – and is told (sternly, the text says!) to hush. God bless him, he refuses to be silenced. He cries out all the louder to be seen, to receive justice, to be welcomed into the community.

It seems oppressed people have to do very little, sometimes nothing at all, to draw condemnation from others. Black boys are shot for being in the wrong neighbourhood. Black girls and women are policed at work and school for their hairstyles. Gay couples are harassed for holding hands. Trans people are attacked using the bathroom. Women are told to accept street harassment as “a compliment.” Indigenous peoples are told to shut up about their own history of past oppressions like biological warfare, residential schools, and the Sixties Scoop, and current oppressions like mass incarceration, missing and murdered women, and battles over land and environmental policies.

Lest we wonder if God is much for respectability politics, we are given very big indicators of whose side we should take.

First of all, Bartimaeus is noted as “son of Timaeus.” Why does Mark include this detail, when none of the other Gospels even mention Bartimaeus at all? The name “Timaeus” means “honour.” So Bartimaeus is “son of the honoured one.” Maybe Bartimaeus is already a child of God.

Bartimaeus also does not simply use Jesus’ name, but adds “Son of David.” This shows us clearly that Bartimaeus, despite being blind, understands who Jesus really is, while the disciples in the Gospel of Mark still have trouble figuring this out.

Source: Wikipedia

And again, while the disciples are caught up in the fight over who should sit at Jesus’ right hand, and the rich young man is caught up in his own attachment to his many possessions, Bartimaeus immediately follows Jesus on The Way to Jerusalem. In fact, they reach the city in the very next passage.

Strangely, we don’t hear about Bartimaeus afterward. Did he also forsake and flee? Or did he like Jesus make a nuisance of himself with the authorities and end up punished? We don’t know. For Mark, the mechanics don’t really matter. It is enough to say “he followed on the way.”

Maybe he is not included among the list of disciples later because, in a sense, he is already an Apostle. Having experienced great hardship as a blind man, and having been liberated through the healing touch of God’s Anointed One – a healing touch which is offered only at his explicit request rather than paternalistically imposed by Jesus – he got it.

The others don’t.

What does that mean for the rest of us?

We should note that Bartimaeus had little to lose and everything to gain. Some of us have much to lose, and therefore it may feel like we have less to gain. When you advocate for a group that is not your own, the group you’re in may mark you as a traitor.

It’s a bigger risk.

I think we can take inspiration from Bartimaeus’s courage, but we can also take some inspiration from the humility of Job.

Job was a rich man who had everything. After some prodding of God by The Adversary, the translation of the Hebrew word “Satan,” God decides to test Job’s faith. It’s problematic, even unfair, but it pushes us to grapple with big questions and difficult truths, and for that reason I think the Book of Job is an invaluable text.

After chapters and chapters of complaining and defensiveness, Job finally admits his own dependence on God. Let’s not see this as a kid admitting wrong after a spanking, but an admission that one’s relationship of trust with the Creator of the universe should not be contingent on one’s station in life.

So let us all turn to the Creator and admit that all of us need healing. Healing from societally imposed ills and oppressions, and from the everyday lack of vision that prevents us from living wholly with gratitude, humility, and patience.

It’s not about pointing fingers. Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he should do, implying that there are many things from which he could be liberated, and he will free him from any or all of them.

So it is with us.

Let our prayer be this:

That when we are Bartimaeus, we may have the courage to speak our truth with strength.

And when we are the crowd surrounding Bartimaeus, may we be given the insight to just crowd-surf him right into the arms of the Beloved, who breaks all chains and heals all wounds.

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