Even Jesus Asks--October 24, 2024

Even Jesus Asks--October 24, 2024

As [Jesus] and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way. [Mark 10:46-52]

At first blush, it might seem embarrassing that Jesus asks the man at the roadside, "What do you want me to do for you?"  

I mean, after all, isn't Jesus the wonder-working Son of God who knows what is on our hearts before we have said anything out loud?  Doesn't he have a way of knowing what his disciples are thinking even before they blurt out their gut impulses?  Doesn't it seem obvious to him that a man who was pushed to the margins of his society because of his impaired vision would ask for Jesus to restore his sight?  And since Jesus knows what we need best anyway, shouldn't he just institute a messianic policy of fixing things his way first without having to consult the poor suffering slobs who need fixing?

Well, honestly, in a word, no.

No, he shouldn't just barge in and undo every malady without so much as a word. 

And, no, it might not be obvious what someone else thinks they want from Jesus. (This man, for example, might have just been asking for Jesus to buy him lunch rather than a miracle; or, by calling him by the politically charged title "Son of David," he could have been taken for a zealot calling for Jesus to provoke an insurrection.  One of those would have been asking too little of Jesus, and the other would have been to misunderstand Jesus completely.)

Even if it is true that Jesus has a way of knowing what's on our minds before we have put it into words (or before we even know how to put our needs into words!), it seems that Jesus makes the intentional choice to ask Bartimaeus what he wants. He asks, in other words, not so much because he can't guess at likely responses, but because the asking is important if you are going to treat others as people to be loved rather than problems to be solved.  And that's just it: Jesus operates out of love as his dominant mode of being, and love recognizes the personhood and dignity of other people rather than reducing them to a list of troubles or a set of symptoms. Even the wonder-working Son of God asks what the panhandler with impaired vision wants Jesus to do for him, because Jesus loves him as a person rather than treating him as an object in need of fixing.  To borrow Martin Buber's classic phrasing, Jesus always operates out of "I-Thou" relationships that regard other people as Somebody, rather than out of an "I-It" paradigm that sees them as some thing.

In other relationships in our lives, we already know and practice the skill of asking questions as ways of honoring people.  I might know ten times out of ten what my daughter will want to have in her lunch, but I ask her every morning anyway, as a way of honoring that she has agency and choice in the matter. (Of course, I reserve the right to overrule a request for an all candy-and-Cheetos lunch, but I do ask her even when I can already predict what she'll say.)  I know I have been asked into my son's room if he calls for me, but I still knock at the door and ask if I may come in when I have arrived at the threshold, because I want to model a way of treating other people with that kind of respect--even if he is the one who called me in the first place.  I ask my wife about how her day was and what happened in it, even if I could probably have guessed with more than 85% accuracy what will make the day's summary.  Inviting the conversation is a way of honoring the other person.  And asking people what we can do for them rather than assuming we already know is a way of leading with love rather than reducing people to items on our to-do list.

And this, dear ones, is an important lesson for learning to love the way Jesus does.  Jesus takes the time to see people as people rather than his rehab projects.  Jesus takes the time for conversation with people, meeting them where they are rather than jumping ahead to some "sales pitch" approach to get them to sign up for his club.  Jesus take the time even to ask people what they want him to do for them, even when it might seem obvious (or, like the disciples James and John asking for the spots at his left and right hand, when the thing they are asking for is not his to grant).  Jesus doesn't walk through the world reducing us to our afflictions, but rather he sees us as three-dimensional people who are often complicated, usually messy, sometimes righteous and sometimes rotten.  He doesn't see the man with leprosy from a mile away and launch a blast of divine energy at him from a distance, but waits for the man to come up close, ask Jesus if he is willing to help, and then touches the man with compassion and makes him well--in response to what he has asked.  Jesus doesn't see the paralyzed man lowered through the roof and assume that that only thing that matters about him is the immobility of his legs--he starts by announcing that his sins are forgiven!  Jesus doesn't raise dead Lazarus from the grave with a business-like efficiency to check another miracle of his to-do list, but breaks down in tears and weeps over the death of someone he loved.  Jesus sees us as actual people, and that means when he comes face to face with Bartimaeus, Jesus will take the time to invite conversation with him rather than just treating him as a statistic.

So much of our culture teaches us to oversimplify other people by seeing them as puzzles for us to solve or problems for us to fix.  When someone comes to us needing to vent what's on their heart, we are quick to interrupt with a question like, "What do you need me to do about it?" when sometimes there is nothing to be done, other than to listen to the person whose heart is breaking and in need of care.  Or when the news tells the story about a struggling neighborhood in the city, it is easy to sit at a distance and diagnose the problem from the comfort of our living rooms or back decks rather than to listen to the stories of the people who are living there, to find out what they see they need and why our cookie-cutter solutions lobbed at them from a distance might not "fix" them.  Or when churches go on overseas mission trips to other countries, it is terribly tempting to go with our own sense of assumed superiority to tell people what they need us to do or how to fix their troubles, rather than to listen to their assessment and to assist in ways they would actually find helpful.  For a very long time in Christian history what passed for "missions" really boiled down to one group of well-to-do people imposing their way of doing things on other peoples without ever stopping to ask what those other people actually needed or wanted. Maybe it's time to recover Jesus' way of asking people rather than assuming we know what they need and then launching into our efforts to "fix" them without asking their permission first.

I have a feeling that the people around us would find themselves feeling much more seen and much more deeply loved if we started, like Jesus, by asking them how we can best help them rather than to assume we already know "what's best for them" and turning them into our pet projects. If we want to grow in loving like Jesus, it will require that we stop first and learn to ask people about their lives, their stories, their successes, their struggles, and their needs. It will mean a concerted effort not to project our assumptions on them, and it will mean treating people as people rather than problems to be solved.

It might be hard to unlearn those old ways of reducing people to our off-the-cuff assumptions of what's "wrong" with them and how we should "fix" them, but it's worth it to make that effort.  It's worth it because that effort is the difference between seeing others as items on a to-do list and people worthy of the kind of love Jesus offers them.  So it's worth it for us to take the time to listen to people about their needs, struggles, joys, and all the rest.  It's worth it to inquire how they would like us to share the journey with them.  It's worth it to be humble enough to consider that we don't already have the answers and that people aren't problems to be "fixed." After all, even Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he needs.

Lord Jesus, help us to love other people as human beings rather than our pet projects--the way you have shown us first, and the way you have loved us first.