2002.7.28. Dr. Sharon H. Ringe(Wesley Theological Seminary)

Interruptions on the Way

Mark 10:46-52

Many thanks to all of you for the honor of preaching at your church on this Sunday when you pay special attention to your partnership with Wesley Theological Seminary, and to our common call to ministry and discipleship. I am especially grateful to Reverend Kim for the invitation to share in this morning with you. I am honored to be here.

Our call to discipleship or to full-time ministry is one of those big topics in church life that tempt us to take refuge in generalizations and platitudes. When our new students gather each fall to begin their studies, we try to get them to think more concretely about that topic by asking them to tell us what brought them to Wesley. There are always some students-perhaps very nervous or, on the other hand, overly sure of themselves-who will say, "I came by car." Eventually, though, they will begin to tell stories about their experiences of growing awareness that the saying in Micah 6:8, "What does the Lord require of you, except to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk gently with your God," might actually apply to them. The stories are fascinating, and often profoundly moving.

Some have known since childhood that they were called to the ministry. Perhaps someone in the church where they grew up mentioned it to them, or they found themselves fascinated by theological questions and by the dynamics of church life. In my generation, many of us experienced something at a church camp that would not leave us alone long after the sunburns had faded. These people have proceeded on a direct path through college into seminary with utter clarity of heart and mind. In my experience, in fact, a much higher percentage of our Korean students tell such stories than do students from other ethnic groups.

But not all. By far the more common narratives speak of a life begun in another direction. Perhaps church has always been an important part of it, though not always. There have been careers in other professions, in business, or in the military. Or early marriage and a decision to be a stay-at-home Mom has occupied a woman's skills and attention. Then that life was interrupted. Perhaps the interruption was something sudden, like the recovery from a serious accident or illness that posed the question "why did God spare me?" Perhaps a job was lost, or the youngest child was less focused on the family than on the agenda of the larger world that beckoned. Or retirement loomed, and with it, the question, "so now what?" Often, though, the stories are simply of a growing uneasiness-of unfinished business, a nagging in the heart or soul of a "call" that had been there all along, but that had been pushed aside in favor of other concerns. By the way, if any of those stories sound familiar to you or to others among your families or friends, jot their names on the cards in your bulletins and give them to your Pastor. He will get them to someone at Wesley, so that we can begin a conversation that might be the start of a whole new life's journey for them or for you.

But I want to get back to my sermon: that was like a commercial break. I said the stories students tell are often stories of lives being interrupted. In English, that word has a negative connotation, like a break in a smooth flow, or a speed-bump in the road. There is a powerful book called An Interrupted Life. It was written by a Dutch woman named Etty Hillesum about her experience of incarceration in one of the labor camps of Hitler's Germany. For her, the life she had known stopped-it was interrupted-and only later was she able to pick it up again. Now, seminary is hard, even burdensome, to many of our students who have to juggle work, studies, family, church, and the wrestling of their own spiritual journeys, but it's clearly not the sort of interruption of which Ms. Hillesum wrote. But to some it seems that way. Economic comfort is replaced by the limited resources of a student. Job security is replaced by a number of years of uncertainty about one's professional future. One's very sense of identity is shaken, especially when friends or former colleagues learn of the new direction one's life will take, and laugh either to their faces or behind their backs.

But I want to suggest that "interruption" can be a word that conveys a promise as well as a risk, or perhaps even the most profound hope at its scariest and most threatening moments. This morning's lesson from the Gospel of Mark tells the story of interruptions in a number of lives and projects.

The story begins with Jesus and the disciples leaving Jericho to begin the climb up to Jerusalem. The geography is accurate. Jericho is in the valley from which one climbs the mountain to the holy city. But that note about geography is also an important signal in the larger Gospel account Mark is bringing us. This story is the final episode in the account of Jesus' public ministry before he enters Jerusalem to begin the events of the final week before the crucifixion. However, simply by saying that they are "going up to Jerusalem," Mark is telling us something about his understanding of the events there. With that phrase he makes it clear that Jesus is replicating the journey that used to be taken at the start of each new year by Israel's kings, when they would set aside their royal robes and leave the throne, to descend to Jericho and ascend as commoners to the holy city to accept again God's commission to govern Israel with justice and integrity. The Psalms that are quoted through the account of Jesus' journey up the mountain are from the "Songs of Ascent" recited as the kings made that same journey. For Mark, then, Jesus is on the way to his enthronement, this time on the cross of treason and shame.

But his journey is interrupted before it even gets started by a blind beggar. Imagine one of the homeless people who beg at the entrances to the Metro interrupting a presidential motorcade! That is the picture Mark has painted. The on-lookers respond like the Secret Service by trying to silence him, but he persists, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus, the soon to be enthroned king, stops to acknowledge the man known only as "son of Timaeus" (for that is what Bartimaeus means, as Mark tells those in his audience who do not understand Aramaic), who suddenly finds himself affirmed by those who had heckled earlier.

Now, I am going to ask you to do a difficult thing. We all know this story very well. We know that in the end Jesus will heal the man's blindness. But I am going to ask that we not rush to that ending of the story, and instead look carefully at what goes on in the interaction described between Jesus and the man. What do you hear in the plea, "Have mercy on me!"? As the story is told, Jesus doesn't assume he knows what the man wants, so he asks. Does he want alms-a few coins to sustain him in his marginal existence through another day? The word used in the Greek text would fit with that meaning, though, of course, we do not know for certain what language would have marked their exchange in the Aramaic of Jesus' day.

Jesus is not said here to know what is in the man's heart or mind, but rather he is aid to ask him directly, "What do you want me to do for you?" That question in the face of the man's evident need-or so we think-strikes us as an interruption in the logic of the story. Mark helps us to see that the man also is brought up short by the question, when Mark delays the man's reply by his reintroduction with the unnecessary description of him as "the blind beggar." His reply too is a stumbling, tentative one: "Er...um...that I might see."

Regardless of how tentative the grammatical mood makes these words seem, in fact they merely confirm what his action has already done. When Jesus summoned the man, he is said to throw off his cloak, jump up, and come to him. The man was seated, and the cloak would have covered his lap, so that it would catch the coins thrown to him by the passers-by. After all, a blind man would not have been able to find the coins if they were simply dropped on the ground. By throwing aside that cloak, Bartimaeus threw aside the tool of his trade, like the fishermen casting aside their nets in the stories we usually think of as the calling of the disciples. When he jumped up without his cloak, his life was already different. His words asking for sight to be restored so that he would no longer need to beg simply confirmed that interruption, that profound change.

Jesus too is said to speak words that only confirm the change that the man's faith has already made: "Go; your faith has made you well." And, we are told, the man followed Jesus "on the way." What I have called this interruption of the man's former life seems like a positive interruption indeed. But Jesus' words raise warning flags, for that too is a phrase with ambiguous significance. On the one hand, the early followers of Jesus were called "the people of the way," and thus Mark is recognizing the man as having responded to a call to a new identity as a member of that community. But within the narrative of the Gospel, the phrase says even more. If the man followed Jesus, the path left for him in Mark's account was only the short climb to Jerusalem and the week's ministry before Jesus' death. The way led straight to the cross.

In Mark's Gospel there are no stories of appearances of the risen Christ on Easter morning to soften the message. The Easter picture is bleak. The male disciples have already forsaken Jesus and fled, and even after being instructed by the heavenly visitor at the empty tomb, the women now "said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." We do encounter the risen Christ in Mark's Gospel, but only after we go back to the Galilee, "where he will meet [us], as he told [us]," and proclaim the Gospel again. According to Mark, we meet the Risen One each time we tell the Gospel story in which Jesus teaches, preaches, heals, and calls people to discipleship, of which Mark's words are called only "the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (Mark 1:1). The Risen One is present in every part of the Gospel, but Mark helps us recognize the Risen one especially in the stories of the storms on the sea (Mark 4:35-41; 6:45-52), when he appears among us alert and fully present to calm our fears and speak the word that even the wind and the seas obey. In the calm and courage restored, we recognize that Jesus' summons which interrupts life and business as usual, for Bartimaeus and for us, becomes an interruption for life-life so authentic that death itself cannot stop it-when we follow "on the way."

And so we return to the question with which we began. What brings people on "the way" to seminary, and what brings all of us on "the way" that leads us to the church and to lives of discipleship? An interruption-let's be honest about that-of much that many in our society, and perhaps even we ourselves, prize as important. An interruption that comes when we jump up from where we had been plying our trade and answer with the honesty of Bartimaeus Jesus' question about our deepest desires, even with all the risks that will inevitably entail, in order to find that life we call abundant and eternal.

"Take courage! Get up! He is calling you!" "What do you want me to do for you?" "Er...that we might see." "Go; your faith has made you well." And they saw again, and followed him on the way. Amen