Who's Your Model

Who’s your model of Christian discipleship? Who exemplifies for you what a faithful follower of Jesus looks like? Take a minute or two right now and ponder who stands out for you, in your own life, as a faithful follower of Jesus. It can be someone living or dead, someone you’ve read about or someone you’ve known face to face. The person might not even be a professed Christian, yet still exemplify faithful discipleship. Take a minute or two and see who comes to mind. [Congregation ponders for a minute or two.]

I’d like to propose another possibility, one perhaps that none of you has thought of: formerly blind Bartimaeus from today’s Gospel reading. Let me remind you that the Gospel of Mark, or any of the books of the Bible that tell a story, is like a novel or a movie. If you hadn’t slogged through all 960 pages or all four hours of Gone with the Wind, for example, Rhett Butler’s parting words to Scarlett O’Hara, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” wouldn’t make much sense. It’s the same with the Gospel. In church, we read it in snippets, a scene here, an episode there, and out of order to boot! No wonder you have a hard time following the story! So let’s recap again. We’re at the end of a large section that began in chapter 8 with another healing of a blind man. This section has depicted Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. Along the way, Jesus has predicted three times what will happen to him in Jerusalem. Of course, we already know what will happen in Jerusalem, since we heard that part of the story back on Palm Sunday and Easter! Jesus has also been explaining to his friends what being one of his followers really involves and how leaders of a community of disciples ought to behave. Surprisingly, Jesus’ closest disciples don’t understand his message. Time and again, they are deaf and blind to it: clearly they expect Jesus to be a political messiah, and they certainly don’t behave as servant leaders. They have yet to realize that following Jesus ultimately leads to a new way of seeing.

Bartimaeus gets it! Here at this last stopping point before Jerusalem, Mark finally provides his readers with a model of what faithful discipleship truly looks like. Are you surprised? A blind beggar is a model of discipleship? Let’s take a closer look at Bartimaeus and what he does in this story. To begin with, Bartimaeus recognizes Jesus. He understands that Jesus is indeed God’s anointed one, even if he is not a political savior. “Jesus, Son of David,” he calls out, using one of the traditional titles for the messiah. Knowing that Jesus is God’s anointed, Bartimaeus asks Jesus, not to “have mercy,” i.e., think kindly about him, as the NRSV translation puts it, but, more correctly, to do something for him. What’s more important, Bartimaeus is insistent and persistent in reaching out to Jesus. Even though he is physically unseeing, he is not deterred by the obstacles thrown up by others, and he continues to call out. When Jesus reaches out to him, he leaves behind what might have been his sole possession, his cloak, and rushes toward Jesus. In answer to Jesus’ question, he clearly states his need. How different his answer is to James’ and John’s answer to that very same question, which we heard last week. Clearly, too, Bartimaeus is a person of faith, trusting Jesus and expecting something life-changing to happen. Finally, Bartimaeus allows his encounter with Jesus to change his life. He “followed him on the way,” presumably to Jerusalem, and probably in the new way of life that Jesus’ death and resurrection inaugurated.

So is Bartimaeus a model of discipleship for us? Let’s turn the spotlight back on ourselves. Do we recognize Jesus’ true identity? Is he really God’s anointed one? Was he an interesting historical figure, the subject of some revered books, or is he, as Marcus Borg puts it, “the decisive revelation of what a life full of God looks like?”1 Is he active in our lives? Do we call out to him in prayer, and are we persistent in our prayers? When he calls us into his service, can we surrender all those elements in our lives that get in the way of our relationship with him? Think about it: what might you have to give up in order to have a deeper relationship with Jesus? Are we like James and John, sure that Jesus has nothing to give us but wealth and fame? Or, rather, can we admit our helplessness and need and honestly ask Jesus to heal our spiritual brokenness? What kind of faith do we have? Does our faith consist only of intellectual assent to certain propositions about God and Jesus? Or do trust in Jesus’ love and care, persist in staying in relationship with him, and try to model our lives after his example? Does our encounter with Jesus change our lives? Are we changed and renewed people when we rise from prayer or when we receive Christ’s Body and Blood?

Who’s your model of faithful discipleship? Is it Bartimaeus or someone else? Thanks be to God, models of faithful discipleship abound! Beginning literally with Jesus’ resurrection and stretching all the way to those whom we encounter in our own lives, Jesus’ faithful followers are beyond numbering. Let me tell you about two whom I recently discovered. On our church calendar for this past Friday I discovered Alfred the Great. Although he was a fifth son, Alfred became king of England in 871 and reigned until his death in 899. Most of his reign was consumed with repelling Danish invaders. “Battle, murder, and sudden death,” were common events. At the same time, Alfred was a deeply faithful Christian, and in his later years he strove to repair the cultural and educational institutions damaged by the Danes. He especially wished to see parish clergy better educated, and he supervised translations into English of important theological and historical works. His devotion to continual renewal in Christ shines forth in his reminder – timely even for us – that, “He seemed a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.”2

There being no one on our church calendar on October 24, this past Wednesday, I turned to Robert Ellsberg’s All Saints, an inspiring collection of reflections on saints for our time. There I discovered Fritz Eichenberg, a Quaker artist who lived from 1901 to 1990.3 Born in Cologne, he was a talented artist from an assimilated Jewish background. In 1933, realizing that there was little hope for a career in art in Nazi Germany, he emigrated with his family to the U.S. However, his wife tragically died in 1938. Finding consolation in Quaker teaching and attracted by the Quaker vision of the Peaceable Kingdom, he formally joined the Society of Friends soon thereafter. In 1949, he was introduced to Dorothy Day, the editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper and founder of intentional communities serving the poor. By that time, Eichenberg had become known for his woodcut illustrations of the Russian classics, in which Day was also greatly interested. Seeing in Day’s newspaper an expression of his own pursuit of mercy and peace, he agreed to Day’s request that he serve God through his woodcut illustrations. He began by depicting the saints. His woodcuts, whether of Benedict, John of the Cross, or Francis of Assisi, show strong flesh and blood people who struggle to follow Jesus and challenge us to do the same. Depictions of modern saints also came from his hands: Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton, Cesar Chavez. Finally, he agreed to depict the life of Christ in contemporary settings. His moving and powerful images show us Jesus’ birth in a war zone, Jesus in a line of people waiting for their daily handout of bread, the “Christ of the Homeless,” and a haunting Pietá, that links Jesus with refugees, outcasts, and prisoners.

Who is your model of faithful Christian discipleship? Is it formerly blind Bartimaeus, who had the courage to persist in making known his true needs to Jesus, and who was forever changed by his encounter with the servant messiah? Is it Alfred the Great, who, despite the political turbulence of his time, understood the need to continually pursue and facilitate deeper Christian learning and formation? Is it Fritz Eichenberg, who used his great artistic talent to open the eyes of those around him and to further the cause of peace and justice? Or is it someone else altogether? Someone perhaps known only to you? The good news is that God has surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses, both living and dead, a great cloud of faithful disciples of Our Lord. I invite you to reflect on one of these models and ask God to help you to become a more faithful disciple yourself.

1. The Heart of Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), 88.
2. Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006 (New York: Church Publishing, 2006), 430.
3. All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 463-4