Sermon - Quinquagesima - Luke 18:31-43 - 2018

“As Jesus drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging.” The holy Evangelist St. Mark gives this blind man a name: “Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus.” Thus blind Bartimaeus may have been blind and poor, but stupid he was not. He cleverly chose a location beside the road outside of Jericho, right before the time of the passover when many would be traveling that very road as they made their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This was a roadside location prime for begging and asking for alms.

Yet it apparently wasn’t only a location prime for collection of alms, but it was a place filled with much gossip and talk. For when the blind man heard that “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by,” he didn’t hesitate to cry out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The blind man knew, without seeing Jesus’ face, that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of David, the Messiah who has come to save them.

Blind Bartimaeus hadn’t seen Jesus, nor likely had he met Him before, instead Bartimaeus simply heard the Word which proclaimed that Jesus the Nazarene was the Son of David who delivers mercy. Indeed Bartimaeus was right and when He asked to have his sight recovered, Jesus healed him. “And immediately he recovered his sight and followed Him, glorifying God.” 

Just as Jesus calls blind Bartimaeus to follow after him, so Jesus calls us who are spiritually blind to follow Him, so that He may give us the sight of faith to grasp onto His suffering and death, which alone gives us life. For we are spiritually blind, all of us who have been born of Adam, we neither see nor know the kingdom of God. We are like Jesus’ apostles, who “understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.”

Since the Fall into sin, the world has been shrouded in spiritual darkness. “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe,” St. Paul tells us. All of us who have been born in sin and darkness have been blinded, and the glory of God has been hidden, as if veiled from our eyes because of sin. Because of our spiritual blindness we grope about in the darkness looking for light, trying to find something, anything to open our eyes. Far too often, “Satan who disguises himself as an angel of light” is the only thing that we want to find.

Satan, who is himself darkness, is good at lying to you in order to convince you that his darkness is light. He plays into your blinded nature and your dark passions in order to convince you that he and your sin is the light. He makes you think that your sins are blessings and your wicked desires are honorable. He wants you to be proud of your sin.

But upon you a light has dawned, this light is the light of the world, the light no darkness can overcome. This light is Jesus the Nazarene, the Son of David, the Lord who comes to bring salvation. Though by our sinful nature our eyes have been blinded, by God’s grace He has revealed to us our depravity and given us the desire to be saved from this sinsick blindness.

Through the Word of God, without your sight, He has instilled faith in you which clings to Jesus. He has placed upon our lips, the most fervent prayer “Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon us!” To you has been given faith in Jesus the Lord. This Jesus is such a loving Lord whose kindness is made manifest in His whole being. Because of His loving generosity we need not ever hesitate to call upon Him with heartfelt pleas for mercy, healing, and salvation.

St. Paul teaches us what this love truly is, he writes: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Jesus’ love for us truly does endure all things. Jesus taught His disciples for the third and final time that “he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” Jesus’ love for His people isn’t an abstract concept, it’s not the kind of thing you’ll find written on the valentines day card or flowers or chocolates you’ll be giving your spouse, it’s not about acceptance and tolerance and affirmation, it’s not about a tingly feeling you get in your stomach, but it’s Jesus being beaten, killed, and rising again. Love doesn’t look like a heart, because our hearts are filled only with blind darkness; love looks like a cross with the sin-filled body of Jesus hanging on it.

When Jesus recovered the blind man’s sight, who do you think Bartimaeus first saw? Jesus, of course. So too do the eyes of faith that Jesus has recovered in you, for Jesus called you to follow Him, and it is to Him that our faith must look. “Behold, see, we are going up to Jerusalem!” Our eyes of faith look to Jesus, and in particular He points us to look at the crucified Jesus. 

Perhaps when you picture Jesus in your mind you see a well-toned Jewish man with a beard, feathered hair off to the sides, holding and petting a lamb, sitting next to a babbling brook on a green hillside. Now certainly that’s a calming and soothing picture, but it’s not the Jesus presented in scripture who actually comes to you. The Jesus who reveals Himself in scripture is shamed, beaten, and dying. “He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.”

“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” The suffering of Jesus is for us Christians a most blessed reminder of God’s powerful love for us, that He would give up everything so that we who have nothing may have it all. Indeed, it is true what Jesus says about Himself “everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.” 

Isaiah wrote: “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” Jeremiah wrote: “I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.” The Psalmist wrote: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Long before the birth of Jesus, long before the Jews hated Him, the Son of Man desired to come and be killed on our behalf. It is God’s will and desire that Jesus would forsake His heavenly glory and power in exchange for the agony of the cross. Jesus willingly gave up His Godly power out of His love for us. This is what is known as Christ’s State of Humiliation: not that He was embarrassed to be a man, but that He willingly gave up His Godly power and glory so that He would be crucified upon the cross to atone for our sins.

Do you want to know what God’s heart, will, and desire is? It is that the Son of Man would take on human flesh and blood in the Son of David, Jesus the Christ, who would journey to Jerusalem on our behalf in order to deliver Himself over to be shamefully treated, beaten, killed, and raised for our justification. God’s will then is that you would follow Jesus as He bids all Christians to do, that you would see Him as your Savior, the one who comes and declares to you: “Recover your sight; your faith has saved you.” 

As we approach Lent we will spend a great deal of time considering the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus; in our weekly midweek services we will hear a portion of the passion account read each evening. On Palm Sunday Jesus will bring us along with Him as He enters Jerusalem. On Maundy Thursday Christ will feed us His body and blood on the night when He was betrayed into the hands of evil men. On Good Friday He will carry us with Him to Golgotha, where He’s nailed to the tree. And on the Easter Vigil we will await, with candles burning, for Him to rise from the dead.

In the midst of all of those services, the heart of Jesus is revealed as a heart so tender and kind, filled with compassion for the likes of us poor blind beggars. A heart that desires your healing and salvation. A heart filled with love that will endure all for us. What does this look like? It looks like a beaten and bloodied savior nailed to the cross. 

It doesn’t look pretty; it doesn’t make sense; we can’t understand it. But in the form of the suffering Servant Jesus, God’s glory is hidden and perfected. Our blind eyes that see only suffering and pain, are given sight so that we can see the glory of God’s light shine forth in Jesus, the Son of David. For the glory of God is His perfect love for us sinners, and His love is nowhere made more clear and manifest than when we see Jesus upon the cross.

Jesus has heard your pleas for mercy and answered your prayer by healing you, now hearken unto Jesus as He bids you to follow Him to Jerusalem, to the cross. “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”