Another Point of View

Sunday,October 25, 2009

Mark 10: 46-52

46 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. 47When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ 48Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ 49Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ 50So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51Then 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.’ 52Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

When we read this Gospel, or others like it, where someone has a healing encounter with the Lord, it is a common and very good meditation to place ourselves in the scene as the one who is receiving the healing, whether it is an emotional healing like the woman at the well, or a physical healing such as in this story of Bartimaeus, the blind man.

But I’m going to shake up the common perspective and ask you if you have ever thought of putting yourself in Jesus’ place? Or how about imagining yourself as one of the disciples who were being taught and trained to follow in the footsteps of Jesus? Do you always consider yourself as one of the needy, one of the blind and deaf, one of the outcast or one of the leprous ones who encountered Jesus? This is where we begin in our journey with Christ. But we must not stay there.

I’d like to remind you of a passage of scripture from 1 Peter 2:9:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

At some point, we all need to seriously face the fact that we are not called to remain poor and needy. That does not mean to say that we should become arrogant or self-important or have an over-inflated sense of our own importance. It doesn't mean that we never have problems or needs. It simply means that we have been called to the Priesthood of the Laity – the Royal Priesthood. It means that we have been called to walk with the same dignity and authority in which Jesus walked and in which the disciples grew and flourished as the Church had its beginnings. It means that we have been chosen to represent Christ to the world and to our brothers and sisters.

Just recently, we were all shocked by the Bishop in Antigonish who had child pornography on his computer. In the wake of that scandal, people are once again voicing opinions about how the church needs to deal with the priesthood. They say priests should be allowed to marry or there should be women priests etc. etc. I am not going to write about what the church should or should not do. What I do want to point out is how these scandals have deeply wounded those priests who are faithful to their calling and serve Christ and the Church with all their hearts. They are wounded because the scandals have tarnished the image of the priesthood, which creates enough difficulties but, as well, this tarnishing has had an impact on the number of young men seriously considering the priesthood. The sacramental or ministerial priesthood is not only wounded but also often overworked and discouraged and some priests and bishops struggle with depression and anxiety.

There is no simple solution but there is something the laity must begin to grasp: that we, too, have been called to priesthood and there is a huge need in the church for people to wake up to that call. We all have an image in our minds of an ideal priest and only a small part of this image is that they faithfully administer the sacraments to the people. The rest of our images are of men who are full of mercy and compassion, who listen, who have wisdom and balance, who don’t isolate themselves from the community, who have a sense of humor and can relate to the aged and the young and everyone in between. Our “wonder priest” supports community events and the people who organize them. He really listens to people, hears their wounds, allays their fears and assures them of Christ’s love. He teaches with authority. He blesses.

We as a lay priesthood are not called to administer the sacraments, but we are called to everything else in the above paragraph. Through baptism, we were anointed for this calling and we can no longer leave all these priestly attributes to the ministerial priests. It’s not easy for people to suddenly stop thinking of themselves as sheep and begin to start thinking of themselves as shepherds with responsibilities as grave and necessary as the responsibilities of the ministerial priesthood but that’s the journey through to maturity in the Spirit.

It’s a decision…and it’s a conversion. It’s a realization that at some point, being a follower of Jesus must grow into being a co-shepherd with Jesus the Chief Shepherd. We need to be willing to move from being the blind man or woman to being someone who has insight and who has received the graces and gifts necessary to be a priest and shepherd to others who are just beginning the journey or who have suffered deep wounds.

As I mentioned before, we were anointed at baptism. We were anointed with great dignity and authority. Authority to do what? If you recall last week’s gospel, it’s certainly not the authority to have power over other people and to “lord it over them’. It is the authority to love like Jesus loved, listen like he listened, to touch others with the very same love and concern as he did, to bless people, to offer sight and wisdom, to set the entangled free, to ease the guilt, to support others and help carry the burdens. Do we really believe these things are part of our vocation as a royal priesthood? Or are we content to leave it all to the parish priest – and then complain when he doesn’t meet our expectations?

This week, take the Sunday Gospel and find a few moments to sit quietly to meditate on the scene conveyed. Put yourself in Jesus’ place. Visualize yourself responding with love and compassion to the blind man. Listen to the blind man and listen to the wounds in his heart and the struggles he has endured because of his blindness. Feel your heart touched by the fact that he has called your name out loud even though he can’t see you. Talk to your Father about him and allow the Father to share with you his own deep love and compassion for the man. Then allow the Father to tell you what to do.

Jesus said, “I only do what I see my Father in heaven doing.” He healed when the Father showed himself healing. He listened when he saw the Father listening. He taught when he heard the Father teaching. Listen to the Father. See if you can hear him say to you, “The Spirit of the Lord is now upon you to bring good news to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to set the prisoners free, to give sight to the blind and proclaim this a time of God’s favor…”

And then, to the next person you run across you may be inspired to say, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’