Christ Encounters of the Liturgical Kind
Discipleship: Instructed in the Way of Jesus Christ
The war has been won, you are a victory acquired in time.
Genesis 42: 8, 9 - LXX - English
ἐπέγνω δὲ ᾿Ιωσὴφ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς αὐτοῦ αὐτοὶ δὲ οὐκ ἐπέγνωσαν αὐτόν.
καὶ ἐμνήσθη ᾿Ιωσὴφ τῶν ἐνυπνίων αὐτοῦ ὧν εἶδεν αὐτός
καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· κατάσκοποί ἐστε κατανοῆσαι τὰ ἴχνη τῆς χώρας ἥκατε.
Blind Bartimaeus ~ Mark 10: 46-52
Today's Story ~ We walk by
faith, not by sight ~ 995 words
Nearly three hundred years earlier, my brothers and I responded to the divine calling placed upon us. The time had come to share our sacred writings with the surrounding nations, for the Lord God had been using their own cultural experiences and mythologies to prepare them for this encounter. Mystery schools flourished throughout the ancient world. Highly enlightened spiritual masters would hand down secret and hidden knowledge to their most trusted disciples through various oral traditions, a series of initiations, and ritual practices. Often these things were carefully disguised in such a way as to mislead the common man on the streets. Even the spiritual seeker would have to spend many years first demonstrating their worthiness, loyalty, and fidelity before they could be genuinely entrusted with the sacred knowledge of a given community. This was as true for us Hebrews as it was for other cultures.
To be sure, translating our sacred scrolls from Hebrew into Greek was not a decision made lightly. We understood that our language was of divine origins. Each letter was also a word-picture or thought-image. A simple forty-letter sentence could yield an entire page worth of commentary to those properly trained in the sacred arts. It is also worth mentioning that our alphabet did not technically have any vowels, but rather it was made up of consonants. The reader of the text supplied the appropriate vowels in accordance with their own understanding of the text. This meant that it was not at all uncommon for different individuals to read specific passages in radically different ways. All of this was inherent to our native tongue. We knew that some things would be lost in translation, but we also knew that a living witness would always be available to supply any missing details. Equally important, the Greek language had its own divine properties and we used them to our advantage throughout our translations.
Now, it is the beginning of what would later become known as the Christian era. We, through our descendants, had spent the last several hundred years introducing the Gentiles to our sacred writings. We were also introduced to theirs. One of several major differences between the two related to where the stories took place. The Gentiles generally spoke of gods and goddesses that dwelt in another realm that was far away. These gods and goddesses occasionally came to the earth to interact directly with the mortals, but generally they influenced things from afar. Our sacred writings, however, spoke of the God who is in our midst. Present in both space and time, our God also dwelt in real flesh-and-blood people. Even our genealogies dated back to great historical and spiritual events.
In spite of this, my brothers and I had begun to lose sight of this reality. Our time spent among the Gentiles had taught us to over-allegorize everything. It was simply understood that nothing was literally or historically accurate. Everything was a picture of body, soul, and spirit. Whenever reading a sacred text, your goal was to internalize and apply it to yourself. This, in fact, introduces today's story. The ancient Greek language was the universal language during this time in much the same way as English is in your own. As an educated and cultured citizen, you would have been well acquainted with the Homeric epics, the writings of Aristotle, Plato, and other classical authors.
Of all the writings, Plato's Timeaus would be among the most important. It's here that one discovers the world in which my brothers and I now found ourselves, for we could see the heavens above. We could read its testimony and search the sacred writings for guidance. We could read the astrological charts, observe the cosmological laws, and avoid karmic entanglements. The blind could not do this. They wandered aimlessly from life to life with no real hope of salvation, for they were eternally stuck to a karmic cycle of indebtedness. Physical sight did not guarantee spiritual sight, for few could spiritually see. Without physical sight, however, spiritual sight was virtually impossible.
Simply put, few situations were worse than to find yourself without sight. Sight was among the most valued of all possessions. To better understand this, my master sent me to the edges of Jericho to acquaint myself with a local blind man. We had heard that a great healer might be coming to town today, so there was some curiosity as to what might happen with this particular man. Regardless, my assignment was to observe and document his plight.
Sure enough, the one called Jesus visited our town. Great multitudes of people surrounded him and his disciples. He seemed to be leaving the city when suddenly the blind man caught word of Jesus' nearness.
Like a blubbering baby, he began to cry out, "Jesus, son of David, deal kindly with me!"
"Seriously," I thought to myself, "quit making a fool of yourself..."
Still, he continued to cry out all the more, "Jesus, son of David, deal kindly with me!"
The crowds tried to silence him, but to no avail. Jesus suddenly stopped and had him called forward.
Upon hearing the invitation, the blind man tossed aside his cloak. He stood to his feet and went to Jesus.
Jesus asked him, "What would you like for me to do for you?"
In humility, he responded, "Master, that I may see again!"
With great compassion, Jesus replied, "Continue on your journey, for your faith has made you whole."
Without delay, his sight was restored to him and he began to follow Jesus along the path of life.
No one actually knew his name, but the Evangelist named him in honor of my own restoration, for I also had my own encounter with the son of David. When I tossed aside my former teachings, I was also made whole. This has allowed me to follow in the way of the Master to this very day, for we walk by faith and not by sight.
I have retold the story from the perspective of blind Bartimeaus, but I made a few changes. Most of my story introduces a spiritually enlightened disciple, whereas the last part portrays both a physical and a spiritual healing. The Gospel of Mark identifies one man in this story (Mk 10: 46-52), but the Gospel of Matthew identifies two men on two separate occasions (Matt. 9: 27-31 & 20: 29-34). Matthew could have done this for a number of different reasons, but it is likely that he was making Mark's point much more explicit. The healing of physical sight is good, but the healing of spiritual sight is even better. The fact that Mark places this story at Jericho is no more of an accident than his decision to contrast the son of David with the blind man in Plato's Timeaus.
After all, children are the offspring of their parents' nuptial and conjugal union. This is all the more true when it comes to spiritual children and the synthesis of ideas or the merging of belief systems. Much more could be said about all of this, but it is sufficient to say that Mark deliberately sought to invert the ancient world. He did this by portraying the ancient mystery schools as themselves being blind while using a physically blind man as the model disciple of the freshly inaugurated Kingdom of God. This gave the poor, the sick, and the outcasts a voice in the world and it empowered them to cry out on behalf of all creation. It was simply no longer acceptable for the few to withhold from the many, for the Lord of the cosmos had now fully come to his own creation.
Image information:
The Battle of Jericho, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1794-1872 ,Websource: CommonWikimedia
Bibliography:
Holy Ground, by Gordon W. Lathrop; Fortress Press, 2003; GoogleBooks
Lord of the Cosmos, by Michael Patella; T & T Clark International, 2006; GoogleBooks
The Gospel & the Zodiac, by Bill Darlison; Duckworth Overlook, 2007; GoogleBooks
The Pagan Christ, by Tom Harpur; Walker Publishing Company Inc, 2004; GoogleBooks
The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, by Dennis R. MacDonald, Yale University Press, 2000; GoogleBooks
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