For nearly a month we have been following the progress of Jesus’ disciples. They have been so slow to appreciate who Jesus is and what it really means to follow him. So like us! There have been flashes of insight quickly followed by statements that show they haven’t got a clue (notably Mark 8:27–33). The disciples seem to struggle with spiritual blindness. 

We conclude with the story of Bartimaeus who is presented as a model disciple. He responds to Jesus’ call (v 49); he abandons his possessions (v 50), receives his sight and immediately follows Jesus along the road (which we now know leads to Jerusalem and the cross). All that Jesus has been trying to teach his disciples for months is modelled in a moment by Bartimaeus. 

That’s the way it is for some people: radical conversion, complete change of lifestyle, unhesitating obedience and no looking back. For many of us Christian discipleship is rather more complicated, and progress is more inconsistent, as it was for the twelve. But isn’t it refreshing, and challenging, when we come across a Bartimaeus? Maybe we are guilty of over-complicating the Christian life. Maybe we need to recover that instinctively obedient response to the call of Jesus.

‘Come as the light: to us reveal / our emptiness and woe, / and lead us in those paths of life / where all the righteous go.’¹

Today’s reading concludes our journey through Mark’s account of Jesus’ final path to Jerusalem. Mark chose his material carefully, structuring the narrative to make his main point clear: the disciples were not heroes or celebrities but, until the resurrection, failures. Yes, they left home to follow Jesus, sensing that he alone held the key to knowing and relating to God. For that, we hold them in everlasting gratitude. However, Mark arranged his narrative to show that the disciples constantly misunderstood Jesus’ mission. It is highly likely that Peter was a major source for Mark’s Gospel, which makes this point very powerful. The apostles did not want Mark, who was the first writer to record Jesus’ story, to gloss over their failures as disciples. They did not want the Christians of the early church, suffering persecution, to think the apostles better or more faithful than themselves.

It is fitting, therefore, that Mark should end this part of the narrative with the healing of a blind man. Sight and blindness form one of those meaningful word pairs that the Scripture writers, and Jesus himself, used so effectively – death and life, darkness and light, lost and found. Mark provides what was then a powerful metaphor, when blindness was misunderstood as a punishment. The disciples’ minds are still darkened. Deep down they know they want to see, want to understand. That is why they have not fled from Jesus. Soon the light would dawn upon them. Soon they would see the risen Jesus. Soon they would understand. Soon they would gladly follow him to whatever end. That same blindness can be ours, our eyes dazzled by what the world offers, like some in Mark’s narrative. God, however, can heal our blindness – and then we have but one choice. Simply, like Bartimaeus, we must follow Jesus along the road. 

Jesus, Lord of light and life, take away our darkness of mind. Fill us with your light. Help us to follow you along the road. Take us to eternal life.

¹ Andrew Reed, 1787 – 1862, ‘Spirit divine, attend our prayers’