The Last Sunday after Trinity

The Rev’d Devin McLachlan

The Last Sunday after Trinity, 27 October 2024

St Bene’t’s Church, Cambridge

Mark 10.46-52 — The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus 

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.

Amazing Grace is one of my favourite hymns, written back in 1772 by the Rev. John Newton. Born three hundred years ago, his mother died when John was a child, and his father drowned when John was 25. He was then press-ganged into service on a British Man-of-War, rated midshipman but after trying to desert was turned before the mast, flogged, and eventually transferred to a slave ship.

In a series of disasters, and alcohol-fueled bad decisions, he soon found himself traded away and all but enslaved to a slave trader’s household in Sierra Leone. Then, when he was ransomed at last by a family friend, the ship taking him home to Britain was nearly sunk in a storm off the coast of Donegal.

This storm, in a life of many storms, blew him into the long-waiting arms of God, and to his own everlasting surprise Newton became a Christian. John Newton converted to Christianity in 1747, but Newton’s discipleship wasn’t over –in fact, it had hardly begun.

Now, the churchwarden of my sponsoring parish in Watertown, Massachusetts, was blind from birth; he too was named Jeff (though with a ‘J’) and used to proudly sing the last line of Newton’s hymn as:

“was blind, and still can’t see”

Well, John Newton had been spiritually blind, and though in that storm off Donegal he God in a flash of despair and hope, lightning and enlightenment, for many years he still couldn’t see. For although Newton now considered himself a Christian, he continued to work for years as a slave-trader, eventually becoming captain himself of slave ships.  I doubt it was much comfort to the men and women stacked as living cargo to know that the Captain considered himself a Christian…

Newton eventually stopped working as a trafficker in human beings, but at first only because poor health led him to landlocked jobs – including ordination in 1764. It wasn’t until 1788 — forty one years after his rescue and conversion —before John Newton publicly condemned slavery and became an abolitionist.

Conversion isn’t a momentary experience, begun and ended at our baptism started and completed in one life-changing prayer or moment of spiritual epiphany.  It is an experience of a lifetime, walking closer and closer to God — but sometimes also failing, and losing our way. And all that time, Jesus keeps calling to us, dreaming for us more than we can even imagine, loving us far better than we can love ourselves or love our neighbour.

In so many ways, old blind Bartimeus was already walking down that road when he met Jesus. He is the first person, after all, to get away with calling Jesus “Son of David” – up until then, only the demons had used that title, and Jesus had silenced them.

Bartimeus hadn't let his lack of physical vision impair his soul, nor define his humanity, nor obscure his spiritual insight. He was blind, but not isolated – he had family, a name, and he knew about Jesus, this rabbi from Nazareth; he was as in-touch as anyone else in that crowd outside of Jericho.

He had learned to manage his blindness without fear – when he hears Jesus calling to him, he runs across a crowded road, rather than having someone else lead him. And he certainly wasn't quiet and retreating: he was embarrassingly loud! He was the sort of noisy troublemaker the disciples kept trying to keep away from Jesus.

But most importantly, he knew what he wanted. Not just to be able to see with his eyes (and notice – Jesus doesn’t make that assumption either! What do you want me to do for you, he asks):  Bartimaeus wanted to become a disciple

Unlike most in the Gospels who are healed, Bartimaeus follows Jesus. “Go,” Jesus tells him, and Bartimaeus, never one to be driven away,  instead follows Jesus on the way to Jerusalem. A sort of wonderful holy disobedience.

What God is looking for in us is not that we simply call ourselves by the name “Christian.” The kind of folks God is looking for are people like Bartimaeus –

loud, badly behaved, courageous, unashamed of who we are, willing to ask, to demand for what we need.

And the kind of folks God is looking for are people like John Newton – imperfect, immoral, intemperate, but still open to God, still willing to change our lives not once in a moment, but again and again and again, until we begin to get it right. No matter how old we’ve gotten; no matter how set in our ways we’ve become.

Today — not just for Gabriella, but for William, Zoe, Patrick, Camila, Antonia, for each one of us here in church today — this is the start of the journey. Today. This Sunday, this first day of the week, this Last Sunday after Trinity, this Now.   This day in your life, this is the start of the road from Jericho to Jerusalem.

Through many dangers, toils and snares,

I have already come;

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.