Perspective of Faith (30th Sunday Ordinary B)

A good friend emailed me this story:

The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him. Every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the elements, and to store his few possessions.

One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. He felt the worst had happened, and everything was lost. He was stunned with disbelief, grief, and anger. He cried out, 'God! How could you do this to me? '

Early the next day, he was awakened by the sound of a ship approaching the island! It had come to rescue him! “How did you know I was here?” asked the weary man of his rescuers. They replied, "We saw your smoke signal."

Aahhh… how blind was he to the ways of God! What he saw was his suffering, his loss, his own grief. He failed to see the grace of God working through the flames that consumed his hut and the smoke that rolled up to the sky. He was blinded by his anger.

But indeed, it is hard to see God's ways. Human as we are, we are always short-sighted or blinded by our own personal agenda, self-centered motivations and emotional rage. It is real hard to see, for instance, beyond the suffering wrought by these supertyphoons and Covid-19 pandemic. We see our losses; we face our suffering; we endure our grief. But we are slow to understand all these and even more slow in seeing the hand of a loving and providential God in these darkest moments of our lives.

Hence, it is good to be instructed by the story of Bartimaeus in today's gospel (Mk 10: 46-52).

“What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 51), Jesus asks the blind Bartimaeus. But before we treat Bartimaeus’ response, it is good to recall that the same question has been offered by Jesus to James and John, Zebedee’s sons in last Sunday’s gospel. Their answer betrayed their personal agenda and motives. They asked for privilege and position. We recall that asked with the same question, “What do you want me to do for you?” they gave this straightforward petition: “Make sure that we sit in your glory, one at your right and the other at your left.” And we heard Jesus rebuking them, “you do not know what you are asking.” Last Sunday then we saw how Jesus’ disciples continued to fail to see the meaning of authentic discipleship. They continued to be blind as to the real meaning of Christ’s messiahship. They refused to accept the path of suffering, rejection, powerlessness, and death that the messiah, and hence his disciples, had to go through. What they had wanted to see was the fulfillment of their own personal and political ambitions. They failed to see as God sees. In a word, they were blind like Bartimaeus.

All too often, we are like Jesus’ disciples blinded by our personal motives. Our self-centeredness blinds us to God’s intentions. We see only our own agenda. We look at the world and realities and events through our human lens. No wonder we don’t understand a lot of things. We don’t see beyond the ugly surface of our sufferings. We don’t see what we gain in our losses. We don’t understand when things start to get out of our hands. We simply fail to see God’s hands.

Ironically, Bartimaeus, the blind, can point us the way forward. Mark’s Gospel presents Bartimaeus as the exemplar disciple. When asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus answers, “Master, I want to see” (v. 51).  Jesus heals him and instructs him to go his way. Bartimaeus receives his sight but followed Jesus on the way.

Therefore, like him, we would do well to do three things: First, like Bartimaeus, we have to admit that we are blind in terms of recognizing the ways of God. We have to admit that we need the grace of God to see beyond our self-centered motives and agenda. We have to face the fact that our human way of seeing is often clouded by our grief and anger and, therefore, incapable of discerning God’s ways.

Second, we have to ask God fervently: “Master, I want to see.”  We have to ask God to open our eyes of faith that we may see as God sees, to open our eyes to see through the suffering that life brings and discern God’s intentions and the directions He is leading us to, and to open our eyes to see his hands working even when our hut is burning and when all that we have are destroyed by flood and relentless typhoons.

Third, like Bartimaeus, let us accept both the gift of a new perspective and the task of following Jesus. Discipleship is following Jesus precisely with this new perspective of faith and not with our initial perspective of self-centeredness. This means following Jesus in the path He has chosen-- the path of humble service, total self-giving, and sacrificial death.