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The Pretender Mark 10:46-52 Jesus had a knack for ripping aside the cloaks, the masks that the people around him wore. He saw through things on a regular basis. Often he ripped masks aside by direct confrontation, but frequently, just because he was who he was, because of his reputation and charisma, people would rip their own masks off. This was the case with the famous so-called “Blind Bartimaeus.” Evidently, near Jericho, that famous city around which the patriarch Joshua had marched and whose walls were leveled not by any force of arms, but simply by a group of people singing real loudly, Bartimaeus had a customary place to sit and beg. When he heard that Jesus and his entourage were passing by, he decided to act like the patriarch and do some crying out of his own. He couldn’t let this opportunity slip by. So he yelled out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He wanted to be healed, in other words. But the crowd didn’t like that. The folks standing around watching wanted Bartimaeus to shut up. Why was that? The text doesn’t tell us, but I can imagine, as you might imagine. Then, like today, social groups don’t like for the flaws in their midst to be made evident. When the group has a self image, whether it’s accurate or not, whoa to the person who might give contradictory evidence. This happens with corporations all the time today. Enron has the best interests of its employees in mind. Or even with our national image. The U.S. is a very generous nation, we think, though among the industrialized nations in the world, we give the lowest amount in foreign aid. Norway gives more than we. These things contradict our feel-good self image, so the person who challenges them makes us feel bad. We want him or her to shut up. This crowd didn’t want the blind man to ruin the civic image. “Hush,” they admonish. “You’re embarrassing us.” Why would they rebuke him, otherwise. But when healing is at hand, and you’ve lived with the pain all your life, and you know you want to be rid of this affliction, when you know your need and have an opportunity to meet it, you’re not going to listen to a crowd. Bartimaeus cries even louder. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t care about the sensitivities of the crowd, either. The only thing Jesus cares about is restoring people to health, to that estate God intended for every human being. Besides, he already knows this façade of social respectability is a sham. The national myths don’t fool him. He cares for individuals. “Bring him to me,” he says. Then, when Bartimaeus hears Jesus’ invitation, the text tells us that he tosses aside his cloak. He jumps to his feet. He goes to Jesus. I like Martin Luther’s word at this point in his translation of the text into German. He says that the man “sprang” to his feet. In German, the word for jump is “springen,” which is related to our English word “spring.” A spring throws things up into the air. They pop up. When things spring up, they don’t majestically rise, like a well-planned stage arrival, or like the huge lift that brings the rock star up from the nether regions beneath the stage. Springing is funda-mentally inelegant. It denotes spontaneity and urgency. No calculation figures into this man’s response to Jesus. The man knows his need, knows the answer to his need stands within a few meters of him, that the chance of a lifetime has arrived and he isn’t going to fritter the opportunity away for the sake of satisfying the crowd. He doesn’t take a poll. He doesn’t examine whether he’s appropriately dressed. He doesn’t ask if anyone’s ever done it this way before. He only feels a powerful attraction to healing and by cracky he’ll be relegated to perdition if he doesn’t respond. Can you see the urgency of this moment? He throws his cloak aside. He springs to his feet. He launches himself toward Jesus. . . . . . and probably forgets to ask for assistance. None is mentioned, at least. Now remember, the text has told us that the man is blind, but says nothing about anyone leading him to Jesus. He goes on his own, by himself as best we can deduce. Perhaps he’s led by sound, by vague shadows or blurred images, perhaps by that feel and intuition that people without sight develop. Anyway, it has to be evident to Jesus that the man is blind. So, why did Jesus need to ask the guy what he wanted? Well, Jesus didn’t need to ask, but the blind man needed to. Asking for help is tantamount to taking off the mask. Asking for help is a form of confession. Asking for help means that we actually grasp the nature of our malady. We will not heal ourselves until we admit the nature of our problem and admit it to God, openly, honestly, and with the open and real desire for healing. We will not be healed until we throw our cloak aside. Star Trek fans remember the Klingons. They were the most feared enemies of Star Fleet, and Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise always knew they had a real fight on their hands if they ran into a Klingon “Bird of Prey” starship. The main reason for this was that the Klingons had a technological edge called a “cloaking device.” When it was engaged, the Klingon vessels were invisible to Federation Starships and could sneak out of the neutral zone and secretly observe all Starfleet operations. Only three problems with the cloaking device: 1) it took a tremendous amount of energy and 2) the plasma heat from the star drives could be traced by Federation sensors and 3) they had to uncloak to use any of their weapons. As a preacher and a counselor, I always saw a great spiritual truth in that bit of science fiction. When you go through the universe cloaked so that others can’t see the real you, you use up all kinds of energy, produce a lot of heat, and can’t engage the world with any of your assets. Only by uncloaking can you engage the world and get some rest. I was intrigued, though, to come across an article in the Richmond newspaper this past week which led me to do a bit of digging. I ran across this article which says that a cloaking device may actually be a reality. Listen: New materials that can change the way light and other forms of radiation bend around an object may provide a way to make things invisible, say researchers. Their work suggests that science-fiction portrayals of invisibility, such as the cloaking devices used to hide space ships in Star Trek, might be truly possible. There are a number of problems with the reality, though, just like the science fiction. One is that metamaterials right now are extremely cumbersome and only tiny little objects can be made out of them. But the second reason really intrigues me: if light can’t get in, it also can’t get out. That means that if you don’t let anyone see in, you can’t see out. The more we hide, the less accurately we can see. We’re all Blind Bartimaeus! It’s the Sunday before Halloween. In neighborhoods all around the area, this Tuesday night, all sorts of kids will show up at your doors tugging pillow cases opened at your door, eagerly begging for the material for a profound stomach ache. Masks abound. And it’s fascinating how when a kid puts on a mask, it changes his character. Here’s a kid who comes to church every Sunday, and you walk up to him and say, “Hello, Tommy,” and he fades behind his mother to avoid saying anything to you. But put a werewolf mask on him and he goes up to the door of a perfect stranger and demands candy with a growl that makes the homeowner wonder if he ought to call an exorcist. Take the mask off, and he clutches his mother’s skirts again. Masks do that for adults, too, and I’m not talking about the popularity of costume parties for grown-ups. I’m talking about the roles we assume, the institutions we get into, the political beliefs we parrot, all of which we pull on so frequently without examining them, so that we can move about and gain acceptance in a society we fear would not accept us if we let our true selves show. Years ago, Jackson Browne released an album called “The Pretender.” Listen to some of the lyrics from the title song:
Are you there? Say a prayer for the Pretender, who started out so young and strong, only to surrender. Those are bleak lyrics, huh? Well, who among us has NOT had the feeling of going through the motions, even when it comes to this thing called religion? Our assumed roles in society are our masks, when we simply, unthinkingly assume the attitudes and behaviors of the world around us. Pretending, though, cannot change our most basic inner reality, that person God created us to be. And that inner reality calls to us even in the midst of our daily masquerade. You know why? It calls to us because the same one who passed by that beggar in Jericho passes by us every day. We’re never out of his presence, and the deeper regions of our beings cry out, even though the crowd we have internalized tries to shut us up. Our true selves urge us to give up the role of a Pretender, throw our cloaks aside, and run to the author of authenticity
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