For five weeks we have been reading the story of Jesus healing a blind
man named Bartimaeus. Each week we have
focused on a different element of the story, to help us look closely at
different elements of our relationship with Jesus, and of our life of faith as
a community gathered around him. Today
we read the story one more time – just to find our place within it, and then we
read on to see what comes next.
"Those who went ahead and those
who followed were shouting:
Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in
the name of the Lord!
Blessing is the coming kingdom
of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!
"Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the
temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he
went out to Bethany with the twelve."
The ending seems somewhat anticlimactic.
Like being a lakeside or seashore, watching a great
wave coming in to the shore. The wind is blowing, the waves are up, and
you see them coming in one by one to shore. You see them on their way in
-- rising and falling, rising again and falling as they make their way towards
land.
You see one bigger than the others. It's the
biggest so far, and it gets bigger and bigger with each rise and fall as it
draws nearer the shore. It's so much bigger -- the biggest yet, and
bigger with each rise and fall. Surely when it hits the shore, it will
make something happen. The shore will be different because of it.
But when it does -- when it finally makes its way
to shore and crashes to land, is anything really different? Is anything
changed as the wave breaks with a crash, the water surges -- yes, it does surge
a little higher up the beach than before, and then ... goes back, back into the
lake, the sea, the ocean from which it came?
Like Jesus coming into Jerusalem -- at the head of
a wave that's been building for some time -- all the way from Galilee, from
Nazareth and Capernaum and so many other towns and provinces where Jesus has
been -- all the teaching and healing, the feeding and forgiving and gathering
of new community. A wave that with each rise and fall grows bigger, the
nearer and nearer it draws to Jerusalem.
Expectations are high. Excitement is
great. All kinds of people line the path that he walks and then rides as
he comes into the city. Singing an ancient hymn of hope that their
parents and grand-parents and grand-parents before them have been singing for
generations:
Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in
the name of the Lord!
Blessing is the coming kingdom
of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!
Then when Jesus does enter Jerusalem, he looks
around ... and because it's late ... he leaves and goes back to Bethany with
the twelve.
Bethany is a little town on the outskirts of
Jerusalem. Jesus has friends there -- Mary and her sister Martha and
their brother Lazarus. He's often spent time at their home. It's a
kind of refuge or safe space for him. So what the story is saying is that
when Jesus comes to the city, he makes a big splash, and then because it's late
(!), goes back to his friends' home on the edge of the city, to have a quiet
supper with his disciples.
On one hand, the procession was important.
The excitement of the crowd, the waving of the palms, thee song of a new day
coming -- all of these things were important as a challenge to Jerusalem and
its corrupt ruling elite, and as a challenge to Rome as well -- to the governor
and army, and to its idea of how the world should be run, and for whose
benefit.
It was important to say in as public a way as
possible that there is a new way coming into the world, a new way that the
world is longing for, that people are hungry for, and that surely will come.
But on the other hand, the way the new world comes,
the way the world is changed, the way the Earth is redeemed is not the way the
world usually expects, or hopes for, or is afraid of.
The new world -- the kingdom of God, doesn't come
with the grand gesture, with sweeping and overwhelming victory, with the great
hero.
Rather, it comes through the twelve -- through the
gathered few -- through the little communities and gatherings of new life on
the edge of the city -- through the little pockets and clusters of people whose
lives have been changed from within -- whose hearts have been changed -- and
who because of it are able and willing to live in the world as little grains of
salt, little bits of yeast, little pin-pricks of light -- who are willing to be
sown as seed in the life of the world, buried in the ground of living, just
dying for new life to be brought forth from what they offer.
You see ... when Jesus came into Jerusalem and
raised such a stir, caused such a commotion, the people whose cart he was
upsetting were afraid of him, and that's why they did away with
him -- very quickly, in fact. It wasn't hard.
But it's not him -- or just him, that they should
have feared. It was also his disciples -- thee twelve who he'd gathered
and taught -- and the others around them who also caught the vision, whose
hearts were touched by what they saw and heard and felt, whose lives and ways
of living would never be the same, and who would not let the life of the world
around them be the same again -- who would, wave by wave after wave, be the
coming and the appearing of the kingdom of God, over and over again -- changing
the way the world works, making a difference for good, redeeming Earth by their
persistent, God-driven, God-inspired pressure upon it.
The Gospel -- the good news of God in Jesus is
really the Gospel -- the good news of God in Jesus and those who believe in
him.
By the time we get to the end of the story, the
crowds of Palm Sunday have gone. It's just Jesus and the twelve -- just
Jesus and his closest followers who share the Passover meal, who are together
for the last supper. And that's okay, because it's not the grand gesture,
not the sweeping victory, not the great hero that changes, saves and redeems
the world -- but the little community on the edge of the city, that gathers
around him, remembers his way, and lets themselves be changed from within by
him, and by what they remember of him.
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