Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Last Sunday after Trinity 2024

Just over a year ago, I attended a clergy conference whose theme was “Faith and the Arts.” In the first session that we had together, one of the educators from the National Gallery gave us all a challenge – trying to get us to see art that we all knew well with new eyes. She put up onscreen a picture of Van Gogh’s painting of sunflowers - I’m sure you can all think of it in your mind’s eye: blue background, yellow vase, a wild profusion of yellow and orange flowers spilling out over the top – and she asked us to draw it. But she asked us to draw it without looking down at our paper, and without taking our pencil off the page. It was a brilliant exercise in making us look at the painting with fresh eyes, and absolutely no one will ever see what I produced from it!

When you first came through the doors of Westminster Abbey this morning, I wonder what was the first thing you saw? Whether it’s your first time here or your five-hundredth, I’d imagine that you’ve seen the inside of the Abbey somewhere before: on TV, on our website perhaps… Or even if you hadn’t, was there something different to what you expected? Did it seem bigger or smaller than it looked on TV? Was there something that told you about this place’s history? Or it’s royal connections? All these questions reveal something else about seeing things with “fresh eyes,” Whether it’s art, a person, a situation, or a problem, It’s not enough just to see. There has to be another step in the process. A step which asks questions, which seeks to go beyond the surface. And there’s a word for it: Discernment.

We can see that discernment at work in our Gospel reading this morning as we hear the story of the healing of Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is sitting by the roadside as a beggar, outside of the walls of Jericho. People like him are literally outcasts: they have no means of earning a living, there is some suspicion that their misfortune means that they are in some way morally corrupt, and so they are disbarred from “normal” society. Pushed outside to the margins. Bartimaeus’ blindness, and his outcast status, mean that he is doubly disadvantaged. But he hears that Jesus and his group are passing by. We don’t know what Bartimaeus may have heard about Jesus – in fact, Jesus is leaving Jericho and the Gospel doesn’t tell us that anything happened in Jericho – but whatever he has heard, whatever he has gleaned, makes him think that this is someone who can help. But it’s more than that: Bartimaeus doesn’t just see Jesus as a teacher, or a healer, or even a prophet as others in the Gospels do, his discernment has gone deeper than that. Bartimaeus refers to Jesus in a very particular way. ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.’ “Son of David” is a very rare title to be used of Jesus in Mark. Indeed, this is the one time that it is used in those terms, and it is a very specifically messianic title. Bartimaeus has discerned who Jesus truly is: The Messiah who can have mercy upon him, and he is wonderfully insistent in asking him for that mercy.

If we contrast that to those who are gathered around Jesus, we see where discernment is lacking. Bartimaeus is an outcast, in many ways the lowest of the low and their response to his extraordinary utterance, his ability to discern who Jesus truly is, is to shush him. They sternly order him to be quiet.  They cannot see beyond the surface, and cannot hear what he is truly saying. That is not Jesus’s response, however. Jesus stops, calls Bartimaeus to him, and when Bartimaeus stands in front of him – a beggar who has been sitting on the road, presumably encrusted with the dust of that place, and since he had to be led to Jesus equally presumably obviously blind – Jesus still doesn’t assume. Jesus asks him what he wants. I find this very moving. Bartimaeus is someone who is clearly in need, and it is clear what that need is, but in order to discern, Jesus asks the question: ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And in hearing Bartimaeus’ request, grants him his sight.

Discernment is what we are asking for in our Collect for today. ‘Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:  help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.’ We pray that we might not only hear and read scripture, but mark it, learn it and, crucially, inwardly digest it. Discernment isn’t just a useful Christian skill to have on tap when you want to (for example) make a difficult decision. Christians are consistently called to look at the world with discerning eyes: eyes that can see where God is working, and what God is calling us to do. In his letter to the Romans, Paul exhorts his readers to ‘not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God —what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ In the transforming of our minds, we have not only the discernment but the fresh eyes again. Eyes that don’t see as the world sees, But as God sees.

I have talked about Bartimaeus’ discernment of who Jesus is, I have talked about Jesus asking questions to discern what Bartimaeus needs, but I haven’t spoken about what Bartimaeus actually asked for. Bartimaeus asks for his sight, yes, but the way that he asks for it is very significant. ‘My teacher, let me see again..’ It’s just three words in the Greek: ‘rhabbouni, hina anablepō.’ Anablepō means “that I may see again,” and it appears a few times in relation to Jesus restoring sight. It has another meaning, however, and that is to look up. As in: ‘Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves.’ Now, I think it can be problematic to read too much into a single word with multiple meanings, but I don’t think it is too much to argue that Bartimaeus received more than just his vision back. We know that Bartimaeus went on to follow Jesus: the Gospel tells us so. And we know that he must have become well known to the church, because not only do we know his name (unlike many others that Jesus healed) but we know his father’s name as well. What Bartimaeus received was not just the ability to look, but to look up, to see the world with fresh eyes. To be transformed by the renewing of his mind.

The world and the church are in the midst of generation-defining conflicts, and our news and particularly social media are becoming increasingly inflammatory. In the face of such posturing and increasingly disturbing and violent rhetoric, as Christians we can wield discernment. Asking the questions, as Jesus did, to get at the root of such rhetoric and perhaps come up with a different answer. It is by no means easy, especially when you are being attacked for those things that pertain to your identity, but as Christians, we are called to be like Jesus, The Master Discerner, the one who continually saw beyond the surface to the truth of God lying underneath and then helped others to see it too. We are called to be Bartimaeus, knowing who is in our midst and asking for his mercy. And are called to be as Christ, able to see beyond our pre-conceptions and expectations to the needy person that we all are, just beneath the surface. Through his example, may we be able to see with fresh eyes, and glory in the presence of God revealed in our midst.