About Bartimaeus
In choosing the name of Mark's blind man for our cooperative we are signalling that we are part of an old, wise story that, as Quakers say, "speaks to our condition." We understand that our relative affluence cannot mask our spiritual poverty. We, like Bartimaeus, desire to shed our blindness and denial in order to embrace the journey of discipleship. The excerpt below gives some context for the gospel story. The image that accompanies it is a relief sculpture of the scene by Charles McCullough, a Boston artist who rendered it in conversation with Ched's commentary on Mark's gospel. Thanks to Charles for his permission to use this piece.
"Bartimaeus: The
Archetypal Disciple"
by Ched Myers
This is the last and most specific of three "portents" that anticipate the Passion drama (see 8:31; 9:31). The Human One will be "handed over" by his community to the Sanhedrin, then to the Roman authorities, and after torture and ridicule, will be executed (10:33). Again Jesus promises that "after three days he will rise," the meaning of which remains a mystery to the disciples (see 9:10). Do they yet comprehend the Way? The next episode demonstrates that they do not, as Mark's caricature turns sharp.
James now joins Peter (8:32; 9:5) and John (9:38) in rejecting Jesus' Way (10:35ff). Mark has implicated the whole inner circle! The Zebedee boys look forward to a Messianic coup, and aspire to "first and second Cabinet positions" in the new regime (10:37; see Ps 110:1). After two cycles of teaching about solidarity with the "least," we can feel Jesus' exasperation. In characteristic fashion he turns the question back on them: Can they embrace his "baptism" and "cup," symbols in this story of the via crucis (10:38)? "No problem," they gush cluelessly (10:39a).
Jesus explains wearily that leadership under the sovereignty of God is not appointed executively; it is achieved only through an apprenticeship of the cross (10:39f). The dialectic between power and powerlessness here is ironic. Jesus can guarantee that his disciples will suffer, but cannot grant their request to rule (10:40). Indeed in this story it will not be disciples who end up on Jesus' "right and left hand," but two rebels -- at the crucifixion (see 15:27). Mark's caustic tone peaks in Jesus' sarcastic observation: “You know how it is among the ‘so-called‘ ruling class: their practice of domination, the tyranny of the ‘great ones.’ Oh, but this is not so among you!” (10:42f)
Now comes the cetachism's final invitation to "whosoever would follow" (issued similarly in 8:35; 9:37ff; 10:15; 10:29). Jesus is imagining a new style of leadership "from the bottom up" (10:43f). This role-reversal between the "great" one and the "slave" is a direct attack on the status hierarchy in the ancient world. It completes Jesus' challenge to conventional understandings of power throughout this catechism: personal, social, economic and now political. The alternative Way is embodied by the Human One, who proposes to overturn the Debt system once and for all by giving his life: he is a slave who will "buy back" the lives of all who are truly enslaved (10:45).
The dimwittedness of the male disciples throughout this section makes it all the more significant that at the beginning (1:31) and end (15:41) of Mark's story it is women who practice the servanthood advocated here by Jesus. Is Mark implying that in a patriarchal system only women are fit to exercise leadership? This would be the most subversive proposition of all -- for antiquity and modernity alike!
There is, however, one more story of polemical role reversal to shock our propriety, and one more blind man healed to give us hope (see 8:22-26). On the outskirts of Jericho, the last stop on the pilgrim's journey up to Jerusalem, we encounter a poor, blind beggar sitting "beside the Way" (10:46). Bartimaeus will provide a dramatic contrast to the previous two stories of "non-discipleship" -- the rich man (10:17-22) and the ambitious disciples. And he will symbolize for Mark the "true disciple."
In sharp contrast to the rich man, Bartimaeus is landless and disabled -- a victim of the system, not its beneficiary. Unlike the disciples, he dares not approach Jesus directly with his request; indeed, he is silenced (10:47f). He inquires not after the mysteries of eternal life (10:17) or the top posts in the new administration (10:37); he solicits only mercy. While the rich man walked away from the call to discipleship because of his many posessions (10:22), Bartimaeus gives up what little he has (the cloak he casts off represents the tool of his panhandler's trade; 10:49). Mark intentionally parallels his petition with that of the disciples:
Jesus said to the disciples, "What do you want me to do for you?"They answered, "Grant us to sit on your right and left hand in glory!" (10:36f)
Jesus said to the blind man, "What do you want me to do for you?"He answered, "Master, that I might see again!" (10:51)
Jesus cannot answer the rich man's question because he will not make economic reparation. Jesus cannot grant the disciples' request because it is based on delusions of grandiosity. But Jesus can help the beggar because Bartimaeus knows he is blind.
At the beginning of Mark's discipleship catechism, Peter called Jesus by the "correct" name but resisted the Way of the cross (8:29ff). At the end, Bartimaeus "follows Jesus on the Way" (10:52) even though he calls him by the "wrong" name (10:47f; the title "Son of David" will be repudiated by Jesus in 12:35-37). The first have become last, and the last first. The moral of the catechism: Only faith-as-discipleship can "makes us well."
(This is an edited excerpt from Ched Myers, et al, Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, Orbis Books, 1996, chapter 15.)