The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
I love a good story. Being an Episcopalian and a past English major, I really love a good story that involves God and history and drama and intrigue and pageantry and England.
So I was in luck a few weeks ago when this year’s Booker Prize winner was announced, and it was Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. The Booker Prize is an annual prize for fiction awarded to a novel written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, or of a former colony, and has introduced me to a few of my favorite authors, including Salman Rushdie, A.S. Byatt, and Aravind Adiga. My copy of this year’s Booker arrived in its Amazon box about a week and a half ago. On Monday I finally let myself open it and I haven’t put it down since.
Wolf Hall is the story of Thomas Cromwell and traces the trajectory of his life from his origins as the son of an alcoholic blacksmith to a trusted confidante of Cardinal Wolsey, Roman Catholic prelate and Lord Chancellor of England during the reign of Henry VIII, and eventually to advisor to King Henry VIII himself when that king decides he would like to divorce his first wife, Katherine, and marry Lady Anne Boleyn, though the book ends shortly before that second marriage. Cromwell ultimately is one of the architects of what would become the Church of England, which would, of course, give rise to our Episcopal Church. So each night this week I have fallen asleep reading this book, with my head full of palace intrigue and papal edicts and rich descriptions of this time in our church’s history.
And all of that is why, around the middle of this week, I almost drove into a ditch when I heard on the radio that Pope Benedict had announced he would authorize a mechanism by which disaffected Episcopal clergy could “return to the Roman Catholic church”, maintaining their Anglican customs. Suddenly my night-time reading and my daily existence collided, and I had to remind myself that I was in fact living 500 years after medieval times. Because I am a modern priest, as soon as I got home I immediately set about emailing and reading blogs and updating facebook statuses, all to figure out what in the world was going on, why our church was suddenly enmeshed in a conversation that I thought had had its end in 1552.
Luckily, the gospel today has a good story in it, if you will allow me a little poetic license --
There was a man named Timaeus. He was a craftsman, he worked with his hands, and he lived in a small village near Jericho. His wife came to him one day and told him he would be a father, and Timaeus looked on with joy over the months as her belly grew, and finally, she gave birth to a son. In this son, named Bartimaeus, literally the son – bar, of Timaeus – Timaeus saw immortality for his family line, for his craft, and he was full of love for the Lord who had blessed him so. A few years went by, maybe ten, and Bartimaeus became his father’s apprentice in the workroom, began learning the skills that would allow him to support his own family one day. But then, one day, he felt weak. He took to his bed as a sickness swept through the village, and Timaeus sat at his son’s bedside for three days, praying as his son struggled against fever. Finally, on the morning of the third day, the fever broke and Timaeus rejoiced once again to the Lord for delivering his son through this peril. However, Bartimaeus’ mother noticed later that day that something wasn’t quite right, that the boy had survived his illness, but had not emerged unblemished. Bartimaeus was blind, and with his sight died the hopes of his father, his family. Bartimaeus continued to grow, no longer able to practice a craft, and eventually he wound up on the side of a road, sitting in the dirt of the gutter, able only to beg for his continued survival.
And this is where we find him, this day, sitting in the dusty roadside, calling out to travelers for a coin or two to spend on food. Someone calls to him, “Jesus, the healer of Nazareth is coming with his followers.” As he hears the group grow closer on the road, Bartimaeus calls out – “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
The disciples hear him and immediately hush him out of fear. Their master has been acting strangely lately. Three times he has foretold his own arrest in Jerusalem, has told of punishment, death, saying that he will rise again. The disciples do not understand what their teacher is saying. His stories often leave them confused and distressed, but they are on edge and on the look out for danger. They tell Bartimaeus to close his mouth, to leave them in peace. They know that the name he is using for Jesus – Son of God – is grounds for treason, as it implies that the messiah has come to earth, to free the Israelites from their Roman governors.
Bartimaeus ignores them, calls out again, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stops, there in the road, and he says to his disciples, “Call him here.” Bartimaeus leaps up from the ground and runs to Jesus’ side as Jesus asks, warily, wearily – “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus has posed this same question to James and John, only to be disappointed when they ask for worldly power, for the seats at his right and left hand in glory, proving that despite all of his preparations, they still just don’t get it, what he has been set on this earth to do, what awaits him in the last days of his ministry.
Bartimaeus asks, “My teacher, let me see again.”
Bartimaeus asks only for his sight, to be put whole once more, so that he no longer be a beggar -- he doesn’t ask for riches or power or fame -- but only to be returned to sight so that he may better follow Jesus, his teacher, his Lord, the Son of God.
Jesus answers him not with “You are healed” or “I give you your sight,” but he says, “Go. Your faith has made you well.” And Bartimaeus’ sight is restored in that instant, and the newly sighted man, we are told, falls into step behind his teacher, his Messiah, and follows him to certain death in Jerusalem.
May we all have such faith in our Lord, in this new time of papal intrigue and talk of schism, that we might only ask to be made whole, so that we may better follow him.
