Blessed to Be Heard

Every human relationship requires us to listen to each other. Really listen. Face to face. Make eye contact. Focus, not letting yourself be distracted. Breathe and stay relaxed. Keep an open mind and not try to fill in the rest of the sentence or jump in with solution or questions. Try to feel what the other person is feeling. Listen to what is being said, and what is not being said and notice body language.

Really listening requires time and energy. It takes caring and empathy; it is expensive, but it is worth it. Paul Tillich is quoted as having said, “The first duty of love is to listen.” To be fair, Paul Tillich never said anything that Tweetable. He actually was writing about justice and said “In order to know what is just in a person-to-person encounter, love listens. It is its first task to listen. No human relation, especially no intimate one, is possible without mutual listening…. All things and all [humanity], …, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen, they want us to understand …. They want justice from us. But we can give it to them only through the love which listens.”

“Son of David, have mercy on me!” he shouted as he sat by the roadside. The crowds were headed to Jerusalem. Many had stopped for the night there in Jericho and gotten up to complete the last 15 miles of the journey for Passover. He had gotten up early and gotten his place, spread out his cloak, perhaps some would take pity on him begging there. Maybe he would be able to buy some food and save a little for the times there weren’t travelers who would drop a coin.

But then he heard that Jesus was among the crowd, and he was begging for more than a coin. Jesus could heal. Jesus could heal him. His heart pounded in his chest, the energy of hope. He wouldn’t have to sit in the dirt day after day, in the scorching sun, hoarsely begging for enough to stave off the hunger. He would be able to see! Then he would be able to be seen, people passed him everyday and acted like he wasn’t even there. They got really quiet as they passed by, like he couldn’t hear their footsteps, didn’t know they were there. No one even called him by his name. They just called him Bar Timaeus, son of Timaeus. But when he went blind, even his father rejected him. All he had was his cloak to keep him warm and dry and faith that God cared about him, and God heard his cries and somehow, some way, someday, he would be made whole, his dignity would be restored.

He had to get Jesus’ attention, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” He would be able to see with his eyes if Jesus healed him, but he already could see with his heart. He saw Jesus’ compassion. He saw Jesus’ power. He saw Jesus for who he was, the promised Son of David, the Messiah, sent by God. And Bartimaeus didn’t care what people thought of him, if people looked at him, if he drew attention to himself. The crowd around him, mostly people from Jericho who had known him his whole life, tried to quiet him. “Stop making a scene!” “Hush up, boy!” “If you don’t shut your trap!” “Pipe down!” But he wouldn’t stop.

The crowds travelling to Jerusalem and the people packing the roadway were loud – like being on the 50 yard line at a college football game, tied, and your team has the ball at the 10 with 7 seconds left, loud. But Jesus heard him. Through all the shouting and the noise, through the crowd, he heard him. And he stopped.

Several weeks ago on Facebook, someone who was moving to Germantown asked about the train tracks. She asked whether there was a train every day. Yes, close to one an hour, actually. She wondered how far away she needed to live to not hear the train’s whistle. “I only live a few blocks away from the train track, and I rarely hear the train whistle,” I thought. Then I wondered if I just didn’t notice anymore. But Tuesday morning, awake at 4am, I heard the rhythm of the wheels, and the train whistle loud and clear cutting through the night air. Everything else was quiet.

Picture yourself in the crowd that day. Excitement in the air. Jesus is teaching along the way up to Jerusalem. The buzz is that he may lead a revolution on Passover, some say he is Elijah returned, others say he is the Messiah. Timaeus’s kid is wailing by the roadside.

Do you, like the woman looking for a home beyond the sound of the train’s whistle, wish you were farther away so you didn’t have to hear his cries?

Do you wonder, like her wondering how frequently trains come through, how to minimize your contact with those who sit at the bottom of the crowd and beg?

Surely there were some in the crowd who just didn’t hear his cries, who had stopped noticing.

But at 4am, when everything is still and the world is quiet, you can hear the rhythm of the wheels and the whistle of the train loud and clear cutting through the night air. Jesus stops.

When I imagine the scene, everything is suddenly quiet as Bartimaeus throws off his cloak, leaves behind all that he has, and runs to Jesus. Jesus heard him! Love listens! Face to face, eye to eye, Jesus focuses on him. “What do you want me to do for you?” It is as though time is standing still. Jesus is listening, unhurried, attentive. “Rabbi, I want to see.”

He doesn’t care about worldly possessions; surely someone in the crowd had already snatched up his cloak and the coins he had collected as they dropped to the dirt.

He doesn’t care what people think of him yelling for Jesus. He doesn’t care if they don’t think he is worthy of Jesus’ attention or if they believe he is blind as punishment for some unknown sin he must have committed.

He has faith. Not just that Jesus is a miracle worker. He has faith that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s agent, and he believes “the world is not as it should be and that God can, and will, do something about it” (Harmon, Chelsey, Center for Excellence in Preaching).
People of faith, the world is not as it should be. Do you believe that God can, and will, do something about it? Cry out! Don’t be hushed or embarrassed or cautious. “Lord, have mercy on me!” Jesus hears you and Jesus wants to know “What do you want me to do for you?” Love is listening to you. How will you respond? “Lord, I want…. “ In the quiet, let us share the cries of our hearts with him. (Pause)
You are heard. Amen.