“After Epiphany” and Bartimaeus

21 January 1990

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

The first words in Christ’s preaching newness of life that had come with His incarnation were ‘Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand’ – it is there for us to take.

And indeed it was there and it is still there because the Living God has come into the world , and the world has found a new center, a focus; eternity in His Person is present in the world; humanity has been revealed in its fullness and all beauty in Him; and what He calls us to, is to realise that the Kingdom of God is not a Kingdom of power, a Kingdom of domination, but our God is a God of compassion, a God Who comes to us as a servant, to save, to heal, to make all things new.

And this is why His words ‘repent’ are so important for us, because repentance does not simply mean brokenheartedness about our sins, our unworthiness; in Greek the word ‘repent’ means ‘t u r n Godwards'; if we only repent, it means ‘turn away from your own self'! Don’t be immersed in nothing but you! Turn away from all the things which are passing, and meaningless”: not because they are passing – because in themselves they are decay, and death – and look Godwards...

At times, we find in ourselves enough light, enough courage, and understanding to do so; we can see that in Saints who having heard Christ speak in the days of His incarnation, on earth, or who read the Gospel, or who were told by His disciples from century to century about the meaning of life, suddenly realised that all they have lived for, was too small, that there was in them a greatness, a vastness and depth which could not be filled with what they had been living for; and who turned wholeheartedly, with all their mind, all their energies, towards God Himself. This was repentance, an active, real repentance.

But there were such who were not able to detach themselves from what held them prisoners, who were prisoners, slaves of what they should be treating as beauty, as meaning, as joy, as love. Some of those people were deprived of them to realise that they were in need of something else: of God.

The story of Bartimaeus speaks to us in that way; we don’t know who he was; we know only that there was a time when he had his sight, he could see; he could see the beauty of the world, he could see the beauty of human faces, he could be as one among many, no different from others, he could have deep, joyful, rich relationships; and all this, possibly, as it does to many of us, screened away the depth of life, making impossible for him to detach himself from surface and see what is at the heart of things: in the way in which, in the full light of sun colours become so bright, relief so intense, shadows so deep that we can see o n l y that; this is probably what the Scripture warns us against when it says to us that we should be afraid, careful about the demon of the noonday, the moment when the visible becomes so intense, that the invisible is no longer visible for us, perceptible. Bartimaeus had seen all those things; perhaps, the visible had blinded him to the invisible – and he went blind; and these was nothing around him he could see; the world that had been beauty and joy for him was now wrapped in darkness. And when he turned to all those who might have helped him, he received no help, no human help, nothing.

Until one day, he heard a crowd passing by; a crowd that was different from the many crowds that had passed him while he was sitting and begging. This crowd was not simply a disorderly mass of men moving along; it had a focus, it had a heart, a center; he perceived that this crowd was unique; he asked, what the matter was – Who was at the heart of this crowd? And he was told, it was Jesus of Nasareth. And then he felt, that his last chance was passing him, that if God passed without him having time to address Him, it would be too late... The Scripture says to us: Turn to God as long as there is time to do this... And he cried, he shouted; and the pious people around Christ tried to silence him: wasn't Christ speaking of great things of the spirit, of eternity – how dare this man interrupt His speech, bring Him down to things so lowly as the blindness of a poor beggar? But the blindness of the poor beggar was to God more important than the listening crowd. He stopped; He called him, and He asked him, what he wanted: his sight. And He gave him his sight; and in the same way in which He gave his sight to the man born blind, He gave it, and at the same time the blind man saw before him the face of God incarnate, the depth of God's own eyes looking at him in compassion...

Isn't that a lesson for us, all of it? Because the Kingdom of God is in our midst, because we are blinded by the relief and colour of what we see. Is it necessary for us that tragedy should strike for us to realise that human help, our own strength cannot save us? Is it necessary that we should wait for tragedy to turn to God and find i n Him all beauty, all meaning? But does it mean also that when illness strikes, and when misery comes upon us, we must not turn towards human help? No, it doesn't. There is a passage in Ecclesiasticus that speaks very clearly about it: When illness touches us, it says, – not quite in these words – when illness touches us, let us first turn to God, assess our sinfulness, repent of it, turn Godwards, and then, let us turn to those who can heal; but at the centre, there must be God. And then, both the healer and the person in need, i n God, will find new life.

A last thing; the day of Bartimaeus is the beginning of the weeks that prepare us for Lent; let us reflect week after week on what they convey to us; ask ourselves about our own blindness and its causes, and ask ourselves whether we wish to turn to God Who is light, healing, beauty, meaning.

Next week will be the day of Zaccheus, and the story of Zaccheus will ask us: how deep is you vanity? How totally possessed are you by the fear of the opinion of others, e v e n at the cost of the judgement of God?

Then will come the day of the Pharisee and the Publican; how much arrogance, how much self-assurance is there in us? How far are we even from understanding what humility and brokenheartedness are? The Publican did not dare enter into the realm of God that was the Temple! How easily, arrogantly, we walk in it...

And then will come the day of the Prodigal Son, the one that had lost his way in his folly, but who also found his way back...

And lastly, if we have gone through all these motions, we can ask ourselves, B u t w h y all that? And the answer will come: because as Adam and Eve we have lost God, and God is the only way, the only life, the fullness of truth.

If we come to that point, then we can make the last move before we enter into Lent: ask for forgiveness, forgiveness from all those whom we have offended , ask forgiveness from God, pass a severe, honest judgement on ourselves; and then, we will enter into Lent, a word that in old English, as in German means s p r i n g, the beginning of life that will lead us to the fullness of the revelation of life in the Resurrection of Christ. Amen.

A last word: for the first¹ time since his canonisation the memory of Theophan the Recluse should be kept on Tuesday; we have no service on that day, but pray to him, and thank God Who sent him in our midst as a teacher of life.