October 24, 2021 (30th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

“I was blind, but now I see.”

by Deacon John Kerrigan

[This is the text composed by the homilist prior to delivering the homily.]

This troubling headline appeared recently on the front page of the Wall Street Journal: “Desperate to feed her family of six, Saleha, a housecleaner in western Afghanistan earning 70 cents a day, incurred such an insurmountable debt that the only way she saw out of her situation was to hand over her three-year-old daughter, Najiba, to the man who lent her the money.” Her debt? $550.

Now, let’s take a moment for these words to sink in. Unable to pay her debt, this mother of six, a house cleaner earning seventy cents a day, could see no other way out of her dilemma other than to hand over her three-year-old daughter to the man who had let her incur the debt.

When I first read that story, Saleha’s desperation overwhelmed me. What mother, what father would ever want to be faced with her dilemma?

In today’s gospel, the blind beggar also feels desperate, but his desperation is of a different kind. After years of personal suffering and misunderstanding on the part of others, he calls out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”

Just as you and I put ourselves in the place of the Afghan mother of six, now let’s take a moment and assume the role of the blind beggar. Here is a man who not only has lost his sight, he has also been reduced to begging for his livelihood. Thrust out of the way, he has had to deal continually with people who tell him to be quiet when he pleads for help. However, when he finally finds the faith and courage to call out to Jesus for assistance, he is received, healed, and vindicated.

OK, now. You and I have heard the story of Saleha and also that of the blind beggar. We have also seen Jesus, once again, as a healer, helper, and friend of the poor, suffering and oppressed, a champion of those who “don’t count” in the eyes of many. But what about you and me?

Quite frankly, it’s not enough to hear these stories and feel sympathetic. Hearing is one thing, taking action is another. And, believe me, the stakes are high here. Elsewhere in Mark’s Gospel, and that of the other evangelists, there have been blind persons healed. The expression, “I was blind but now I see” is also a fixture in our language and music. So this expression is more of a challenge than we might at first realize. We might say that even those who witnessed Jesus’ healings were blind to the deeper meaning of what he was about.

The theme of blindness in Scripture is often a metaphor for our failure to recognize and understand. Looking at blindness through this prism, we realize quickly that our blindness might cause us not to be outraged at the possibility that the life of a three-year-old child could be reduced to payment to settle a debt of $550.

Today’s Gospel calls on you and me to make some changes in our lives. Not one time only, but time and again. How else can we be converted to Jesus and his way of looking at life? What do we do? First of all, like the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, we need to be persistent. He refused to be silent; he was intent on causing a fuss. He cried out despite the fact that others discouraged him from doing so.

And when the Lord finally recognizes Bartimaeus and calls him over, what is the first thing that the blind man does? He gets rid of his cloak, throws it off and starts a new life. Like Bartimaeus, you and I need to be persistent in our efforts to change, to be converted to Jesus and his way of life, to throw off the ways of the past.

I must confess, though, that I often find it easier to talk about a continuous change of heart than to practice it. This is a trivial example but it supports my point. A couple of Fridays ago, my wife Elizabeth and I visited our daughter, Claire, in Boston for parent’s weekend at Boston College. While in town the first evening there, we quickly realized that we were but three among thousands of other parents and college students looking for that rare 8 PM dinner reservation at the same set of restaurants in Boston’s North End.

Waiting on a long line to enter the restaurant of our choice, I had to admit to Elizabeth and Claire that I have been spoiled rotten. For my expectation of a night out is to walk into a restaurant and have the maître d’ greet me with, “Welcome, Mr. Kerrigan, right this way to your table.” Yes, I know what some of you are thinking, “He’s so shallow; all about him…” So I guess I would grade myself C to C- on this “change your life continuously” business. But, like everyone else here this morning, I’ll keep on trying.

There’s another element in today’s readings, however, that might present more of a challenge for many of us, given the circumstance in which we live in today’s world. In our first reading, Jeremiah describes what will happen when the chosen people begin to return from exile. They have been away from the Promised Land for over 80 years. They were forced out of their homes by violence. Now God is making ready their return. Recall also the desperation of Mary and Joseph, and their exile from Bethlehem to Egypt. It seems that one form of exile or another is part of our ancestral DNA. 

What about those in “exile” today? I shared the plight of an ordinary Afghan woman, a pawn in a war not of her making. Like so many others, she is so desperate that she is ready to sell her baby to provide food for her other children. And she is not alone. There are countless other people who share her plight, tens of millions, in fact.

In the face of all these realities, what are you and I prepared to do? How do we translate into action the phrase, “God welcomes the stranger”? How are we to be faithful to the message of Jesus, to witness to his Good News, to be living examples of what it means to love one another?

Perhaps we can start in small ways. As I mentioned, our first step on the journey of personal change and conversion is to emulate Bartimaeus and throw off whatever it is that is that gets in the way of you and me loving the Lord with our heart, mind, and spirit. We can also agree to avoid, at all costs, dehumanizing each other at those times when we disagree profoundly about one topic or another. Our president here at Stanford, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, recently challenged all who make up this university to model a community in which disagreement is welcomed, dialogue is rigorous and respectful, and any attempts to dehumanize those who think differently are put aside. How else will we be able to find solutions to those problems that exist beyond this campus?

As we approach the table of the Lord this morning, then, let’s pray that like Bartimaeus, God’s Spirit will aid us in our personal transformation. And may our encounters with each other be respectful and thoughtful so that together we can fulfill our personal calling as well as the mission of this university: to bend upward the curve of justice and human progress; always upward.