Downside Up, Outside In
I want to start by practicing the title for today’s sermon with you all. I found it to be a fascinating brain workout while I was writing this week.
Downside up, outside in.
Say it with me?
Downside up, outside in.
Again.
Downside up, outside in.
That is really really hard. It is not how our brains are wired to order those sounds.
Downside up, outside in.
Downside up, outside in.
Can you hold onto that sensation for a bit? Downside up, outside in.
Hold onto that slightly mind-boggling feeling.
Our journey over the past couple of months with Mark’s gospel has revealed in me a great appreciation for this text. It is brilliantly constructed, multilayered and beautifully complex. I think that in seasons past, I have found it confounding, disconnected, jarring. But as we’ve followed the road together in this text, I have found a rhythm, and I hope you have too. I see more and more themes revealed, more connections from verse to verse and episode to episode, and a whole lot of practical wisdom here in Mark’s gospel.
Today, we heard an episode that is the last in a series of encounters as Jesus travels from Galilee to Jerusalem. The series is bookended by two stories about blind men seeking sight.
In the first, from chapter 8, a blind man by a pool of Bethsaida is brought to Jesus by a crowd asking for his healing. Jesus touches him in earthy ways – with spit and mud – before his sight is restored. In fact, Jesus’ first effort to restore the man’s sight isn’t fully effective and he has to touch him a second time to finish the work. Jesus then sends the restored man away and asks him not to return through the village from which he’s come.
In today’s text there are key differences, and they all matter. First, Bartimaeus is named, and he is sitting along the “roadside.” It is important to note that an alternate translation of the original language would be that he is “sitting along the way.” In fact that is how the same word is translated later in the text – as “the way” rather than roadside.
Bartimaeus himself shouts to get Jesus’ attention rather than the crowd bringing him to Jesus. And in fact, the crowd spends some time trying to order Bartimaeus to be quiet, but he refuses. “Son of David, have mercy on me.” He names Jesus as Son of David twice in his pleas. This is the first time in Mark’s gospel that this language is used to describe Jesus.
To name Jesus as Son of David put him in solidly in the line of political leaders – and let’s remember that Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem, the co-mingled political and religious epicenter. In just the next scenes, we will hear about Jesus entering Jerusalem on a colt to shouts of praise and hope for a revolution.
Jesus hears Bartimaeus’ cries and asks for him to be brought near. It is only at that point that the crowd following Jesus invites or helps or encourages the man rather than hushing him.
The text says Bartimaeus threw off his cloak and sprang up to come to Jesus. As a blind beggar, his cloak would have been a vital and valuable possession, perhaps his only worldly possession, and he lets go of it in order to meet Jesus and ask for healing. Unlike the man who could not let go of his possessions to follow Jesus, here is one who doesn’t even have to be asked but spontaneously gives up what he has.
In this particular miracle, Jesus asks what the blind man wants, and Bartimaeus replies, “my teacher, let me see again.”
Without having to touch him, without spit and mud and touch, Jesus proclaims his faith has made him well, and Bartimaeus immediately regains his site. With is new sight, the text indicates that he followed Jesus “on the way.”
With this encounter itself unpacked a bit, lets now look at its place in the arc of the story we’ve heard over the past weeks.
In truth, we’ve been through a series of encounters in Mark that examine a kind of blindness.
First there is the man who comes and asks Jesus to tell him how to inherit eternal life. He’s completely discouraged by the news that he will have to give up all of his possessions to do that. So discouraged that he walks away grieving. The man cannot “see” achieving eternal life because he cannot “see” giving up what he has.
In that same text, Jesus turns from that conversation and explains for the kind of suffering and rejection he will encounter. Upon hearing this, faithful Peter pulls Jesus away from the crowd and scolds him. In response, Jesus notes that Peter has his eyes on human things – human understandings of power, glory, status – rather than divine things. You might say Jesus points out Peter’s failure to “see” the divine truth right in front of him.
And then, we have James and John walking behind Jesus on the road quibbling about who should be most important … Jesus points out something they fail to see: “you know among the Gentiles those whom they recognize (or see?) as their rulers lord over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But is not so among you – whoever wishes to be great must be a servant. Whoever wishes to be first, must be a slave to all.”
Again, Jesus is pointing out a failure to “see.” Power and greatness by Jesus’ definition are not about being on top, but rather about being among the last.
And by that series of stories, we arrive in today’s text.
It is a series of events in which Jesus tries so very hard to point out how upside down the Kin-dom of God really is… And those who claim to be the very closest to his teaching and work are the ones who fail miserably to see it.
But Bartimaeus sees. And when he sees, he joins on the way.
Throughout this series of stories, in addition to “seeing,” Jesus has been describing “the way.” He has been describing “the way” as one of suffering and servanthood.
But have his disciples understood it? Have those considered “insiders” in the Jesus movement understood what it really means to follow Jesus?
Will you try repeating that title with me again?
Downside up. Outside in.
Downside up. Outside in.
It’s so hard to rewire our brains.
I wonder…
Are you having any feelings about this story? Or this series of stories now tied together?
Do you hear any whispers about what it might mean to be downside up and outside in?
What might it mean to us in our personal journey of discipleship?
And what might it mean to us as a community seeking to follow The Way?
In March of 2020, the congregation of Faith United Methodist Church, along with congregations of many faiths and denominations all over the place, were forced outside the walls that had held us – and in some cases – defined us. We lost touch with a lot of traditions and habits that we had poured time and effort and resources into, we lost traditions and habits that we loved, that we had grown to think defined us.
And I think it is tempting to look at our experiences of disorientation and loss over the past 18 months and think it is all about a dreaded pandemic.
But what if something different is going on? What if it is not about the pandemic? What if it is about how we follow Jesus?
Sometimes when we talk about the future of the church, I hear people say, “We just need to get more people to come worship with us. We need people to sit in our pews and join our committees.”
I wonder…did we ever hear Jesus say that?
Is it possible that we are so “inside” that we no longer really know “the way” of Jesus that is about the last being first? The way of Jesus that is about those on the margins who get that they have to cast off their precious belongings – their comfort even – to walk in the way of Jesus? Is it possible that we are stuck inside the church? With insider mindset?
Is it possible we are individually concerned with our own salvation, our own personal relationship with Jesus (a little like James and John, worried about our own position relative to Jesus, the right or left hand), that we can’t see how to put ourselves on the margins so that we might be in relationship with others along The Way?
Maybe it possible we’ve just gotten used to things being a certain way. The way that feels familiar and comfortable, enjoyable and ours…
Nothing malicious there, just that as human beings, we are wired to seek our own safety and comfort…we are wired for familiarity and for control.
But, right now, there are “outsiders” who are close to Jesus’ heart and nowhere near the church doors. The body of Christ is well-beyond our table.
It is just hard for us to “see.”
And if we can’t “see,” it is hard for us to move along the way of Jesus.
I wonder…
How might we cry out from along the roadside? What is it that we need to get on the way?
Or…how do we respond when we hear others cry out?
Are we quick to hush the voice that doesn’t quite fit in our mix?
Do we wait for Jesus to tell us to bring another to him?
What are we throwing off in order to put ourselves before Jesus with our need?
And do we really want to see?
And if we see, are we willing to follow the way?
Downside up. Outside in.
It’s awkward, isn’t it? It just doesn’t come out of our mouths easily.
Downside up. Outside in.
This is the Kin-dom and it is happening all around even now.
Downside up. Outside in.
May it be so.
Amen.
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