A Sermon
Presented by Rev. Merlin T. Batt,
Interim Pastor of St. Matthew’s U.C.C.
At Maiden, North Carolina,
On the 30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time,
Reformation Sunday,
October 29, 2006 

Scripture Lesson: Mark 10:46-52
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He sat alone, his back resting against the stone wall adjoining the city gate. It was midday; it was hot; and with the sun high overhead there was no shade for shelter from its unrelenting heat and glare. While others walking by shielded their eyes, he was not bothered by glare. In fact, he saw nothing, nothing he could make out, that is. Sometime a shadow moved across his field of vision; unaccountably sometimes streaks of color appeared and disappeared.  But he was blind, totally blind, but not from birth. It wasn’t as if he had never seen a flower, or watched a sunset, or looked upon the face of a woman, or watched children at play in the streets.  No, when he was a young man, blindness came on suddenly, robbing him not only of his vision, but also of life.

He was reduced to begging as a means of survival. At sunrise he would slowly, carefully make his way to his spot by the gate into Jericho. A cloth was spread out in front of where he sat day after day, week after week, month upon month for as long as he could remember. He would place a few coins on the cloth as a reminder to passers-by that he needed their help if he were to survive, a beggar’s strategy, a kind of priming the pump. By begging he gathered enough to eat each day, most of the time, but at the cost of his self-respect.

Those who paused long enough to throw a coin or two his way were generally pilgrims, travelers, or merchants who came to Jericho on their way to or from nearby Jerusalem. The townspeople of Jericho were not particularly sympathetic to his situation. It was rare when one of them stopped to help the blind man. After all, beggars were a common sight in Jericho and the other towns of Judea. Medical care as we know it was non-existent; wages were ridiculously low; and taxes were unbearably high. Yes, there were some rich people, very rich in fact, but most folks were poor, and a goodly number of them so poor they couldn’t survive apart from begging; often they would send their children into the streets. And to those who were economically better off, it was, well, irritating and embarrassing to watch adults (and pitiful to watch hungry children) begging for coins on the streets of Jericho.

It was especially so when the beggar was blind or suffered from some obvious physical or mental problem. You see, deeply ingrained in the popular beliefs of people in those days was the assumption that misfortune came only to those who somehow deserved it. They took it for granted that only good things happened to good people and only bad things happened to bad people. So it was naturally assumed that men like this blind beggar must have done something to bring on their suffering, and therefore kin and neighbors alike looked upon them, not so much with pity as with scorn. If the townspeople had their way, these blind beggars would be kept out of sight, especially when important people came to town!

That’s why, when Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, came through town with his followers, there were folks in the crowd who sternly told the son of Timaeus to shut up when he called out for mercy to Jesus who was nearby. The son of Timaeus might not have been able to see, but his hearing was keen, and he had been hearing people talk about this Jesus for days. The word on the street was that Jesus had the power to heal the lame and the blind, to free people from demonic forces, and even to forgive their sins. His reputation had definitely preceded him.

The son of Timaeus was aware of the commotion surrounding Jesus’ visit, and he could tell that the prophet from Nazareth and his men were now leaving Jericho bound for Jerusalem. They were passing him by at the town gate. It was his last and best chance, so he risked ignoring the contempt of his neighbors and their attempts to silence him. This time he shouted even louder, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!

With that, the impossible happened! Observers said later that, when he heard the man’s shout, Jesus stopped dead in his tracks, that he stood still scanning the crowd for the source of that insistent, plaintive cry for mercy. When Jesus spotted the son of Timaeus sitting against the city wall near the gate, and it became obvious that he was the man who called out to him, Jesus told one of his disciples, Call him here.

Well, the son of Timaeus couldn’t believe his ears. When told that Jesus was calling him, he got up like a shot; and taking the arm of the man who had come to him, he went straight to Jesus. Someone standing close enough to hear what they said to each other reported that Jesus asked the blind man what he wanted done for him. There was some murmuring among the bystanders at that point. They wondered why the Rabbi asked such a question when it was obvious that the man was blind.  In any case, it didn’t take long for the man to answer Jesus’ question. He said, Rabbi, let me see again.

A hush came over the crowd as the bystanders waited for what would come next. The two men, Jesus and the son of Timaeus, stood facing each other in silence. Jesus didn’t reach out to touch the man, didn’t make a paste out of dirt and saliva and rub it on the blind man’s eyes, didn’t pray aloud, and didn’t gesture as if to God in Heaven. He simply said to the man, Go; your faith has made you well.

To the astonishment of the crowd, not to mention the blind man himself, the son of Timaeus regained his sight! And the first thing he saw when his eyes became accustomed to the light and he could see again, was Jesus looking him squarely in the eye. Imagine that! Just imagine yourself not be able to see for most of your life, then your sight is miraculously restored, and the first thing you see is Jesus looking at you!

Oh, one more thing – it was said that the once-blind man didn’t even once look back toward Jericho or re-enter his home town. As Jesus and his men started up the road to Jerusalem, the healed son of Timaeus yelled to them, “Hey, wait for me!” And, right there and then with no hesitation, the son of Timaeus joined Jesus on the way, on the way to Jerusalem, on the way to the Cross, on the way to a new life.

It turns out that the son of Timaeus wasn’t the first person, nor would he be the last, to be saved by God’s grace through faith. Truth is: no one is saved by anything other than God’s grace. In his case there was nothing in his past or present which qualified him for Jesus’ loving, saving action. We know nothing of his morality or his religious behavior. All we’re told is: he had faith in Jesus. In this instance, what that means is: he recognized who Jesus was, and he trusted that Jesus had the power to save him. Apparently that was enough. By faith, the son of Timaeus was saved by God’s grace alone.

That’s our story, too, isn’t it? We are saved not by our own efforts, not on the basis of our accomplishments, not because of our admirable behavior, our religious activities, or our reputation. Rather, we are saved - rescued from spiritual peril - by God’s grace alone, working through our faith, through our believing who Jesus is and trusting that He has the power to save us.

Every year on the Sunday nearest to October 31^st, Reformation Sunday, we Protestant Christians remember, lift up, and celebrate this central aspect of Christian belief: salvation by God’s grace alone through faith. We remember the action of a bold, young, headstrong Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther, who, reacting to the abuses of the Church in his day, put together a list of theological challenges and tacked them to the front door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. The year was 1517, nearly 500 years ago.

What resulted from Luther’s act of conscience has come to be known as the Protestant Reformation, and we, in the Reformed tradition, are the direct spiritual heirs of that historical event which splintered the unity of the Christian Church into Roman Catholic and Protestant expressions (something which Luther never intended), and which set loose a revolutionary force which would transform church and society for generations to come.

I remember a time not long ago when being a Protestant was understood primarily in terms of what one was not, that is, a Roman Catholic. Reformation Sundays in those years of my growing up in Baltimore (and after, in other places) were barely veiled expressions of Protestant distrust, dislike, and animosity toward Catholics and their church. I don’t know if it was like that in this part of North Carolina where Catholics represents a small minority of Christians, but it certainly was where I grew up.

However, in the relatively brief span of my lifetime, thank God, I have witnessed a relaxation in the tensions that once existed between Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians, and even a growing measure of Protestant appreciation for the unique strengths and value of the Roman Catholic Church. We’re a long way from the 16^th century Reformation. And we’re moving away from the days of Protestant-Catholic sniping at each other.

So what does it mean to be a Protestant today? Robert McAfee Brown, as long ago as 1961, then a professor at Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley, California, wrote a visionary book entitled The Spirit of Protestantism. I still have a copy of it in my library. It’s well-worn, the pages turning brown around the edges, and the corners dog-eared because I frequently take it off the shelf to look through, as I did this week. Dr. Brown claims that the spirit of Protestantism is (in his words) “an openness to the judging and renewing activity of the living God made known in Jesus Christ.” He says that we human beings have a very deep-seated tendency to hold on to what is established and traditional, and to look for our ultimate security in the institutions we have developed and the traditions we follow. No one is exempt from this aspect of human behavior.

However, as spiritual heirs of the Reformation, we Protestants (when we’re operating at our best, at our most faithful) are willing to be shaken up and radically challenged, and then willing to submit to the process of being remade into something closer to God’s purpose. But, then, with the passage of time, we need once again to be shaken up, challenged, and refashioned. The Reformers of the 16^th century referred to this rhythm as “the church reformed but always to be reformed). That’s worth committing to memory. Say it with me: “the church reformed/ but always to be reformed.”

In other words, like all churches in all denominations and traditions, we are a church made up of sinners (there are no exceptions!), a church getting it wrong more often than we get it right, a church constantly failing to fulfill our high calling in Christ. We need to be renewed, but not merely by our own efforts to improve things, as that will ultimately make no difference. You see, we Protestant Christians, heirs of the Reformation, recognize that the church, at it stands, is never what it should be and therefore can not serve as the object of our faith, and that it always needs to be renewed by the hand of God – “the church reformed but always to be reformed.”

And God’s renewal of His church doesn’t happen without a good shaking up, without God’s having to dislodge us from false securities, unhealthy practices, and persistent idolatries. Historically speaking, the Holy Spirit’s work of renewal is never an easy process.

Could it be that God is at work right here in our midst renewing the life of St. Matthew’s Church? Remember, it’s His church, not yours, and God has the right to renew what belongs to Him! Many of you have told me that recent years have been difficult for the church. It makes me think that God is at work here amidst this congregation of His people, shaking up, challenging, and refashioning it into a better, more faithful instrument for living and proclaiming the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have a hunch that’s what’s going on here. And that’s all the more reason for us to give our best efforts to do the work of this interim time in St. Matthew’s life.

Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch, but I’m thinking that the son of Timaeus, the once-blind beggar from Jericho, may have been a “Protestant” after all! I mean, in his distress he boldly called out to Christ for mercy, believing not in his own righteousness, but in Jesus, and trusting that Jesus could save him. The son of Timaeus showed a willingness to submit himself to the corrective and renewing activity of God. He boldly took a risk in calling out to Jesus because he believed that, through the power of God at work in Christ, his life would be renewed and refashioned for the purposes of God. And when he was saved by the mercy of the Master, he set out to follow Jesus on the Way!

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, in your mercy hear our cry and come to each of us as you did to the son of Timaeus. Heal, renew, and refashion us for your holy purposes. And complete your work of reformation in this congregation, so that it can follow more faithfully on your Way. Amen.