October 27, 2024, When God Says No, Mark 10:46-52 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ October 27, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

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There are a lot of stories in the gospels about Jesus healing people. But among all those stories, the story of Bartimaeus is unique. First of all, Mark tells us his name. Bartimaeus is almost the only person in all the gospels who was healed by Jesus, whose name we know. The only other one is Malchus, the soldier whose ear Peter cut off when he came to arrest Jesus in the garden. In every other healing the person is referred to as “the Centurion’s servant” or “the woman with an issue of blood” or “the man with the withered hand”. But here, even though he was “just” a poor beggar who happened to be sitting along the roadside as Jesus passed by with a huge crowd, Mark gives us his name. Bartimaeus wasn’t just an example or a statistic; he was a unique human being. Bartimaeus hadn’t always been a beggar. He was a man, who had a story like you and me, who was once a child, named after his father – because Bartimaeus means “son of Timaeus”.

And we know something else about Bartimaeus. We know that he hadn’t always been blind. When he came running to Jesus, and Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus answered him, “Teacher, I want to see again.” He remembered light. He remembered the blue of the sky and the green of the grass and the gold of the ripening grain in the fields. He remembered the way the stars looked, strewn across the night sky like a million jewels. He remembered how the lamplight shone in the windows of the houses in the village every evening. He remembered the face of his father, Timaeus. And so he begged Jesus, “Teacher, please, let me see again.” “Go, your faith has made you well,” Jesus said, and that very moment he could see again. Just like that, just like turning the lights on in a room that had been dark for a long, long time.

There are so many amazing stories of healing in the gospels, like this story of Bartimaeus, and I always feel like they need to be read with caution. If we believe the Bible, as we do, the story of Bartimaeus teaches us that Jesus has the power to do things like that – he is able to restore the sight of a blind man. No matter what disease or accident had robbed Bartimaeus of his sight, Jesus was able in one instant to undo what had been done to him. One moment he was in the dark and the next his world was full of light and color again. Jesus can do that. He could do it along the roadside just outside of Jericho. He can do it today. That is true.

But he doesn’t always heal in the way we expect. He didn’t heal everyone in Israel in the first century, and he doesn’t heal everyone today. We’ve all known times when we have prayed for physical healing of all kinds, healing of mental illness, of cancer, of injuries – and sometimes the healing doesn’t happen. Not in an instant; not even after a long, long while and a lot of prayer. Nigel Mumford always stressed that when we pray for healing, there is always healing – spiritual or emotional, if not physical – but it can be very hard to accept that if what we are praying for is physical healing. It can make us feel like we did it wrong somehow; we didn’t say the right words; we didn’t pray hard enough. It can make us feel like God forgot us, or doesn’t care as much about us as he does about some people.

When our daughter Ivy had Covid, three years ago, we prayed for her to be healed with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength. We reminded God that she had two little children who needed her desperately. We told God, in case he had forgotten, what a good person she was. But she died. God heard our cries; he brought us comfort and help in a lot of different ways; but he didn’t give us what we asked for.

The apostle Paul himself shares in his second letter to the Church in Corinth how he prayed earnestly that God would heal him of a serious physical affliction – and God’s answer was, “No. My grace is all you need. In fact, I can work through you most powerfully when you are weak.” I can only imagine that it took a little while before Paul found that really comforting.

In John chapter 5 there’s another story about a man who was healed by Jesus. He was unable to walk, and he had spent years – thirty-eight years – lying near a pool in Jerusalem called Bethesda, with a lot of other very sick people. The water in the pool was periodically stirred up, by some underground spring, or by some other cause, and people believed that the first person to get in the pool after the water was stirred up would be healed. Jesus was filled with compassion when he saw this man who had been waiting thirty-eight years, hoping to be healed, and he healed him instantly. But as far as we know, that man was the only one who was healed that day.

I believe that when we pray God always hears us. I believe that he always loves us and cares for us, and wants what is good for us. And I believe that he always answers us.

Jesus promised us:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

God always loves us, always hears us, always responds to us. But God doesn’t always answer by fixing things. And God doesn’t always answer in the way we ask him to.

If the worst happens, if our illness doesn’t get better, if our child dies, if the diagnosis is bad, it doesn’t mean, first of all, that we did something wrong and God is smiting us for it. He doesn’t do that to his children.

It isn’t because God doesn’t care. He loves you, you personally, so much, he knows you so intimately that he knows how many hairs there are on your head. He knew you by name before you were even born.

It isn’t because he’s far away, or because he’s not listening. There isn’t a place you could go, anywhere in the universe, says the psalmist, where you would be hidden from the Father. Even before a word is on your lips, God already knows it.

When we are following Jesus, we are following Jesus in a world that is broken and full of suffering. We are walking the way of the cross in his footsteps. Jesus didn’t avoid suffering or sorrow, he didn’t escape death, and neither will his followers. But he is with us always, even to the end of the age. He will never leave us or forsake us. That is his promise.