The Rev. Charleston Wilson
At first glance, throwing away a blanket may not seem like much of a big deal to you and to me. In fact, this week I’ve been helping my mother move into her new house in Sarasota, and I bet we threw away half a dozen old useless tattered, thread-bare blankets. And she will never miss them. But to our blind, homeless, beggar, named Bartimaues, a blanket is everything.
Bartimaeus’s blanket, you see, is his very identity – it’s his home, his safe place, and perhaps his only worldly possession. It comforts him and keeps him warm. It shields him from wind and rain. It even allows him hide behind it, if he so chooses, so that people can’t see him and bother or mock him. More vital than a hat, gloves, socks and shoes – or even toothpaste – is this all-important blanket.
Do me a favour: Next time you’re on the web or watching television and the images from the tragic refugee crisis in the European Union pop up take a look at what each person is inevitably holding – in many cases more closely even than their loved ones – and you’ll see it: a blanket.
And yet when Jesus passed through town, Bartimaeus threw it away and St. Mark says he “sprang up.” He took that which represented all that he had and all that he was – literally his security blanket in every sense of the word – and he threw it away in order to seek out the face of Jesus.
Even when they told him to be quiet, St. Mark tells us he “cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” Seeking the Merciful One, seeking Jesus, He threw it away! He abandoned it! He left it behind!
Beloved in Christ, today we begin a season of renewal and prospect – a time dedicated to stewardship – as we consider what God is calling us to do as a parish family in 2016. And as we begin this season today, we have before us this timely story of Bartimaues’s blanket.
As I was thinking this week about the role of the blanket and all that it represents in this story, I quickly remembered that as a child my own most prized possession was in fact my baby blanket, which ended up being a toddler blanket, because I refused to let it go!
I called it “ba” for some reason, and it was everything to me. My Mom had to wrestle it from me just to wash the dirt and germs off of it. My dad still likes to talk about the time we left Disney World for the drive home, and, about 200 miles into the journey, I realized we left “ba” behind. Needless to say, they turned the car around and recovered it just to console me.
Looking back at my obsession from the vantage of psychoanalysis, I can see now how that blanket was an outward representation of all the felt comforting and safe to me as a child. Perhaps you had one, too.
As a side note, I better not do too much psychoanalysis today, because I saved that blessed blanket, and I won’t let Malacy throw it out!
Do you remember in the Peanuts comic strips how Lucy hates Linus’s famous blanket? She’s always trying to get him to throw it away. One time she buries it, and it makes Linus go absolutely crazy. Charlie Brown suggests to Linus that he could just use a dishtowel, but Linus quickly replies, “Would you give a starving dog a rubber bone?” Linus eventually solicits Snoopy to help him dig up the whole town, and eventually Snoopy finds it.
I believe that most of us – no, all of us – are a lot like Linus, clinging to blankets in some form or another.
Some cling to things like looks (fading though they may be), or jobs (shaky though they may be), or resources (abundant or scarce though they may be), and the list of possible blankets goes on and on.
But at some point we have to ask: what are we going to do with our blankets when Jesus comes to town and walks by?
Beloved, Christ is alive, and He is walking all around this parish – practically up and down the aisles.
I’m talking about more than our 100 active ministries and our outreach and so on – beyond the elevator pitch, if you will. You’ve told me, just this week, about two miraculous healings from cancer, one marriage that has been restored, a child who has been reconciled to a father through the power of forgiveness, and a daughter’s struggle with depression that has all of a sudden disappeared.
He is alive! He is here! “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
If you have experienced the power of the Living God in this parish, I invite you to join Malacy and me by responding accordingly – specifically, by investing in the work God has given us to do in 2016. Join us in trying to let a little bit of one blanket go.
Bishop Lindsay Urwin, my good friend (and hopefully soon to be yours when he visits in two weeks), often talks about “hard ground” and “soft ground.” Hard ground, he says, is the pavement of the world – the hustle and bustle and exhaustion of it all. The hardness of humanity and hard toil we all face. Soft ground, by contrast, is what you find here in this parish, where it’s not uncommon to see a grown man cry as he kneels before the Blessed Sacrament or a widow light a candle with a soft tear gently rolling down her face.
Soft ground is a place where we seek and find Christ – where our hearts are softened by the love, forgiveness, grace and boundless mercy of God. Yes, that “soft ground” is Redeemer in all that we do.
“Take heart,” the disciples told Bartimaeus – “He is calling you.”
Is He calling you? Think. Pray. Invest.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
22nd Sunday after Pentecost
25 October 2015