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More than forty years ago, an accidental chemical spill robbed Antonio Sanchez-Migallon of his sight. Recently, however, he received a cornea transplant. Able to see himself in the mirror clearly for the first time in years, he said, "I thought I would look better. I look really ugly and old." His wife, however, said, "He is more handsome ... and friendlier."

That was hardly the first time that someone was surprised by what opened eyes revealed. The famous Helen Keller, who could neither see nor hear, once said that the worst calamity that could befall someone was "to have eyes and fail to see." She was, of course, referring to the failure to understand or appreciate what our eyes do see, a kind of spiritual blindness.

Consider the case of Bartimaeus, whose story is told in our scripture today. Bartimaeus was blind. He was sitting by the road leading out of Jericho, begging. We know only a few things about him. His father was Timaeus, and we assume that Bartimaeus lived in Jericho, since that's where he sat begging. We also surmise that he may have once been able to see, because later, when Jesus asks him what he wants, Bartimaeus says, "Let me see again." We can be fairly certain that aside from some sort of miracle, he had no prospect of ever seeing again. Cornea transplants were centuries in the future. But other than those few facts, he's pretty much a stranger to us.

We know even less about the people in the large crowd that surrounded Jesus as he left Jericho. We have no names or numbers, but we can draw a few conclusions. They were probably a mix of types: Some were there because they were enthralled by Jesus, some because others brought them, some because they wanted something from Jesus, and some just to see what all the excitement was about. They probably were not bad people, but most didn't have Jesus' sensitivity and ability to see into the hearts of their fellow mortals. Most had no idea that following Jesus for very long could be costly, could demand even their very lives. They were blind to the cost of discipleship, blind to the demands of God, and even blind to the needs of the poor beggar sitting sightless beside the road. Thus, when Bartimaeus calls out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" they tell him to be quiet. They were blind to Jesus' great capacity for compassion.

When Jesus and the crowd passed by where Bartimaeus was, Jesus probably could not see Bartimaeus, who would have been sitting down. And Bartimaeus, even if he had had his sight, wouldn't have been able to see Jesus either, because the crowd was in the way, milling around Jesus. But Bartimaeus wasn't a man to let an opportunity pass him by. He had heard about Jesus and so he shouted out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." The crowd told him to shut up, but Bartimaeus shouted louder.

We know what happened next: Jesus called Bartimaeus to him and asked what he wanted. Bartimaeus said, "To see again," and Jesus restored his sight.

But return to the crowd for a minute. Who is the crowd around Jesus today? It's the church. Aren't we, along with Christians around the world, the crowd that mills around Jesus? Of course, we prefer to call ourselves "congregations" rather than "crowds," but is it possible that we, and millions like us, sometimes block the Bartimaeuses of this age from seeing Jesus?

We may identify ourselves with the crowd, but it's just as likely that we see ourselves more a Bartimaeus -- a person who wants to see Jesus but who finds that the crowd, the church, keeps getting in the way. We might actually be saying, "Here I am trying to see Jesus but the church keeps obscuring the view."

Now I don't mean this as a condemnation of the church. The church worldwide and locally has faithfully proclaimed Jesus Christ. But think about the ways in which any church can develop blind spots and actually can interfere with someone's search for spiritual connection. We can get involved in issues and causes that are important, but become so focused on them that we don't give enough attention to matters of spiritual growth. We can ask people to serve on committees but then act as if that's the whole of Christian service. We can harp so heavily on Christian conversion that we ignore the fact that that is but one entry point into a spiritual life that needs ongoing attention. Any of these things can be ways the church unintentionally obscures Christ.

Then, too, churches can do things that actually turn people off to finding the way of Christ. I've heard people from some congregations say things like:


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"I go to Sunday school, but they never really talk about the Bible."

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"I went to that church for six months but finally left it because nobody ever talked to me."

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"I give my money to the church and then the conference buys a expensive luxury house for the bishop."

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"The church talks about being the family of God, but when I went through my divorce, nobody ever asked how I was doing."

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"I was sick, and nobody visited me."

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"I stopped attending for several weeks because of some schedule problems I was having, and not one person ever called me to see if everything was okay."


We can no doubt all name someone who has left a church, saying something like that. And truth be told, often we can't blame them. The church is called by Jesus, but it's made up of people -- with the usual mix of human goodness and failings.

It has always been a problem for the church that even as we seek to proclaim Christ, some of our actions may unwittingly obscure him.

Do you realize that some of the religious denominations into which the church is divided have developed because one branch of the church or another became the crowd that obscured Jesus? Consider the church known as The Salvation Army. That was founded in 1865 by a British Methodist minister named William Booth. Now Booth and his wife, Catherine, had both been deeply inspired by the example and writings of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Wesley died in 1791, but by the 1860s, the denomination he had founded, especially in Victorian England, had become stuffy and had lost its vision. Booth, following Wesley's example, began preaching on street corners to the poor and the degraded, and he won many converts to Jesus. But when he sent them to the local churches for continued spiritual care, he found the churches unresponsive, and not very welcoming to people from the lower classes. Finally, feeling he had no other choice, he began holding services for these new converts himself, an action that eventually led to the birth of The Salvation Army as a ministry to the poor.

But Bartimaeus gives us an example of someone who refused to let the crowd keep him from Jesus. His behavior is a lesson in how to search for, find, and develop a growing relationship with God as a disciple of Jesus Christ. When Jesus came near, Bartimaeus did not let opportunity pass without attempting to connect with Jesus. And despite the crowd trying to shush him up, Barti-maeus refused to stay put and shut up.

The lesson Bartimaeus teaches us is an important one -- that each of us needs to nurture our own relationship with God and not depend totally on the church to do it for us. It is not enough to just come to church and then give no thought to our relationship to God in between Sundays. Each of us needs to read and think and pray and listen for God's instruction for ourselves. The church can help, and we need the support of fellow Christians, but our personal connection with Christ needs to be personally maintained. Each of us has a responsibility to connect with God daily, our source of spiritual light and life.

I want to be clear that I am not advocating personal faith as a substitute for faith nourished in a church connection. In the gospel story, Bartimaeus regains his sight, but the next thing he does is join the crowd around Jesus. As the gospel writer puts it, Bartimaeus "followed [Jesus] on the way." Bartimaeus understood that "following" was the natural and necessary product of "seeing," that one follows the other. A great preacher of an earlier era, George Buttrick, placed this in perspective when he said, "If religion does not begin with the individual, it never begins. But if it ends with the individual, it ends." We need the church to help us grow and develop in the faith.

But we also need it to support what we personally do to stay connected with God. As a comparison, think about how we take personal responsibility to make things we really want happen in other areas of our lives. Karen Phelps is a distance runner, and she wanted to win races, so she set herself a training plan, as follows:


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Run daily, even if you don't feel like it.

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Run daily, even if you sometimes have to skip fun and pleasure to do it.

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Run daily, even in bad weather and even if people think you are weird.

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Run daily, even when it gives you aches and pains and you feel like quitting.

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Run daily, even if you don't feel it is doing you any good.


That regimen helped her win more races. But Karen is also a Christian, and she said she found that she needed to make a similar commitment to deepening her spiritual life. So you can imagine her spiritual regimen starting out with something like, "Pray daily, even if you don't feel like it." And so on.

Like Bartimaeus, she has learned the importance of taking personal responsibility to keep her faith healthy. Church attendance is part of that, but we need to be more than the crowd around Jesus. We need to personally connect with him.

In Sholem Asch's novel The Nazarene, a blind man mocks the miracles and teachings of Jesus, even though he could have been healed if he would have asked. Jesus remarks, in response to his blindness, "What shall it avail one to be made seeing with the eyes and have the heart remain blind?"

We need to be in the crowd around Jesus, but we need to step out of the crowd too, so that we can be ones to whom he grants spiritual sight, that our souls might see.