Andy's Extened story from GS last night (an Amplified story from Luke 18:35 - 43)

Jesus & Bartimaeus
Based on Luke 18:35-43 and Mark 10:46-52

It was early April in the city of Jericho. Well actually the people in the story I’m going to tell you didn’t divide their months the same way we do but it was around April on our calendars today. It wasn’t a real hot day – like most others that time of year, it was around 80 degrees but you could certainly break a sweat sitting outside all day in the sun. It was a dry and dusty place. Maybe you’ve seen pictures of places like that. The city of Jericho was just a few miles away from the one that got destroyed by the Israelites a few hundred years earlier.

It was just before the Jewish Passover. Many Jewish people were traveling to Jerusalem to take part in the Passover festivities that took place there. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish religious life. The temple was there.

Jericho is only 15 miles or so from Jerusalem but Jerusalem is almost a 3,300 feet higher in elevation. In other words, the large group of people had a real up hill hike ahead of them.

This year the people weren’t only headed to Jerusalem because of the Passover. A bunch of people were following a guy named Jesus of Nazareth as he headed up to Jerusalem. For the past couple years, Jesus had been traveling around several parts of Israel causing quite a stir. He taught some pretty wild stuff – he had a very different take on what God considers to be truly religious – and supposedly he had to the power to heal people. There were places that Jesus had gone where entire towns would completely stop what they were doing and come to hear him and to be healed.

As Jesus and the large crowd with him came to the city gate, there were a bunch of people sitting on the side of the road begging. This was commonplace back then and it still is in many places today. The people had all kinds of different stories as to how they got there. Some of them were born with disabilities, others had gotten diseases, some were widows. Each one had their own hard luck story.

The world that they lived in was not the politically correct, handicap accessible world that we live in. Many didn’t even look at the poor and disabled with pity – they actually thought that they must have committed some sin that God was judging them for. So it was commonplace to walk by them without even thinking about them. They were just a nuisance. Their begging was annoying and the fact that they were there in the first place was their own fault.

That day, as the large crowd was coming out of Jericho, one of the people sitting by the roadside was a blind man people called Bartimaeus. His name meant “Son of Timaeus”. Talk about being marginalized by society – not only was he blind but when people referred to him, it was always in reference to his father.

Some of the beggars had cups with money in them and they shook them as the crowd walked by. Bartimaeus had spread out his cloak, his outer layer of clothing, on the ground some people could toss money or gifts on to it. It was like laying an open instrument case in front of you on the sidewalk.

As the crowd was passing by, Bartimaeus could hear them well but the world around him was completely black. Even with the sun shining outside, he was enveloped by total darkness. That’s all he’d ever known.

When a person can’t see, they listen even more intently and hear things a person with vision would never bother to hear. Listening, he realized this was no small crowd passing through. It wasn’t that they were talking loudly or causing a commotion but as he listened he could hear a great number of shoes coming down on the gravel. Yes the unmistakable sound of shoes shuffling against the ground.

He struggled to get anyone’s attention so finally he reached out his hand and when he felt it brush someone’s robe, he grabbed the robe and pulled on it. “What’s going on? Why are so many people on the road? It sounds like someone important is passing through.” The person, caught by surprise pushed aside the blind man’s hand and said, “It’s Jesus of Nazareth”.

Immediately Bartimaeus began to shout, “Jesus, have mercy on me! Jesus, have mercy on me!” Of course he couldn’t see to tell when Jesus himself was actually passing by. So he just continued to yell.

Many of the people passing by reprimanded him and told him to be quiet. Some of Jesus closest followers seemed to be the most irritated. They told him to shut up but he just yelled louder and louder, “Jesus, have mercy on me!”

The yelling caught Jesus attention and he stopped. Turning to one of his disciples, Jesus said, “Bring the blind man to me.” His disciples thought is was an odd request, but they did it anyway.

They walked toward the blind man and called to him, “Cheer up! On your feet! Jesus wants to see you.” As you can imagine, Bartimaeus didn’t waste any time. He immediately got up and pushed aside his cloak that was laying on the ground. It didn’t matter now. He was being called by Jesus.

Could this really be happening? This time he wasn’t just hearing a story about what Jesus had done for someone else. Jesus was calling him. His heart pounded inside his chest. It’s like the way you feel when you know something incredible might happen. You long for it to happen but you’re still afraid. Would Jesus really have mercy him? Would he be healed? Or would this be the biggest disappointment he’d ever had?

As he came to Jesus, Jesus asked him a simple question, so simple that some of the people there wondered to themselves if Jesus was a little slow. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked. The question seemed more than unnecessary.

Bartimaeus didn’t have to stop and think about out. He didn’t meditate for a while and then say, “Well you know what I could really use…” No. Without a second thought he responded, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

And in the next moment the blind man’s life was changed forever. “Go,” Jesus said, “Your faith has healed you.” Immediately the lights went on. Sight illumined his eyes. His whole face and posture changed. For the first time he not only heard the world and imagined what it might be like, he saw it. And the first person he saw was Jesus.

He fell back down to his knees and began praising God. The attitude of the crowd changed too. They began to realize what they had just witnessed and they too began to praise God. That hot dusty road was for those moments transformed into the throne room of God.

After the initial joy of the situation wore off, Jesus said, “We must go on to Jerusalem.” With little thought, Bartimaeus joined the crowd following Jesus on the road. He didn’t think about what he was leaving behind. He just knew that from now on, he wanted to follow Jesus.