By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan

I have this suspicion that pretty much any time Jesus asks someone a direct question in the Gospels, those of us reading it today are supposed to hear it as a question that Jesus is asking us also. So, in today’s Gospel, when Jesus asks Bartimaeus the seemingly innocuous question, “What do you want me to do for you?” I hope we will sit with that a little bit, and hear it echoing through the centuries and down into our own lives.

What do you want Jesus to do for you? What do we, as a church and a community, want Jesus to do for us?

I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like the story of Bartimaeus. He’s the classic underdog, battling against the powers that be and the forces of order and respectability that are trying to keep him down. You almost want to cheer when he simply refuses to be silenced or turned away from the one thing he wants. Bartimaeus is someone who persists, who makes good trouble, shouting out to Jesus to have mercy on him.

So it always feels a little disconcerting to me that when Jesus and Bartimaeus finally come face to face, the question Jesus asks him is so basic. Shouldn’t it be obvious what Bartimaeus wants? He’s blind, and because he’s blind in that society at that time he has no choice but to be a beggar. He wants out of this cycle of poverty and oppression that has trapped him. He wants healing. He wants to see.

In a word, Bartimaeus wants change. He wants to change and his wants his life to change. And I think his story reminds us that it is often the most vulnerable people in a society who want change the most. If you are on the outside, the margins, then almost by definition the status quo is not working for you. Change is your best hope—maybe your only hope.

By contrast, those who most benefit from the way things are will likely be most resistant to change. Remember the rich man who asked Jesus what he had to do to have eternal life? In essence, Jesus asked him to change his relationship to wealth. He said something like, “Give up the security your riches provide you and follow me instead.” That was a change the man could not embrace, no matter how much he thought he wanted things to be different.

Even Bartimaeus, who so desperately wants to be healed, knows that change comes at a price. He must have had an inkling that once he was healed there would be more to the change than merely the restoration of his sight. We’ve all heard stories of people who have some significant change in their life circumstance who never quite adapt to it. It’s like the woman who wins the lottery but doesn’t stop working as a cashier at the local Safeway, or the man who keeps trying to relive his high school football glory days well into middle age. Some things become so much a part of who we are that adjusting to any change in their status is really hard work.

Bartimaeus doesn’t shrink from this work. After his sight is restored, he doesn’t go back to begging. He doesn’t even go back to the life that he led before he lost his vision. It turns out that physical healing is only the start of the change God has in store for him. The real change is what comes just after, when he immediately begins following Jesus. Change and following Jesus appear to be a package deal. Whether you have to cast away your nets and start fishing for people, or give up your riches, or be healed from your blindness or released from your demons, there is always change in store when you hear the voice that says, “Get up, take heart, he is calling you.”

Someone recently offered up a question that I can’t get out of my mind. She asked, “I wonder how many people come to church because they want to change?” It’s such a good question, one I’ll be pondering for a long time. Perhaps it can lead us back to that earlier question: what do we want Jesus to do for us?

I wonder if it is hard for any of you to answer that question, especially if you think of it in individual terms. I would guess that most of us here learned, in one way or another, that we shouldn’t need help. It might be almost a reflex to think something like, “Oh no, I don’t need Jesus to do anything for me! I just want an opportunity to do things on behalf of Jesus, to be his hands and feet in the world.” Which is a lovely sentiment, as far as it goes. After all, we have all heard that it is better to give than to receive, that we need to be of service to others.

Still, the truth is that we all need things. We all have wounds that need healing, tender spots that need extra care, fears or limitations or heartaches that keep us up at night that we need to release. In a word, we all need to change. Not because we’re wrong or bad the way we are, and not because we need to be more like anyone else, but because God made us to be creatures that change and grow throughout our lives.

Today, at the 10 o’clock service, we’ll be baptizing a beautiful infant named, appropriately, Grace. Baptism is a sacrament that marks a change—one becomes, in an intentional way, a member of the household of God. And although baptism began as a rite of initiation for adults, it’s still true that babies are a perfect illustration of why change matters and how necessary it is. Baby Grace, as perfect as she is, will inevitably change. And that is how it should be! Without change, there is no growth. Without change, there are no unexpected opportunities, no second chances, no healing, no new life.

“Get up, take heart, he is calling you.” So what would you like God to do for you, right now, in order that you might have a more abundant life?