Second Sunday in Lent (Year 2, NL)

There is a tearing at the social fabric when Bartimaeus cries to Jesus.

Jesus moves in the same direction as other pilgrims but at a pace and purpose that is his own.

Erin Raffety’s ethnographic study calls churches to repentance.

Like the disciples, we’ve missed the point here.

More than a miracle story, this is a story of a call.

The crowd's proximity to Jesus does not make them attentive to his priorities.

James and John don’t want power; they want a special level of intimacy with Jesus.

Why does the crowd demand that Bartimaeus be silent?

Bumbling along in the footsteps of Melchizedek

For there to be a heresy about the cross, there would have to be an orthodoxy about it. Michael Gorman argues that contentions over how Jesus saves lead to an inadequate grasp of what the Passion means and does.

Academics may find no theological breakthrough in Brian McLaren's latest book, but the ones who care about church life may still do a double take.

On a recent afternoon, I skimmed from page to page in the newspaper, glancing at headlines about environmental deregulation, an increase in the state murder rate, schools that aren’t educating their students, massacres in Syria and other grim realities. My reaction? I’m embarrassed to confess: “Not my problem, not my problem, not my problem, and not my problem.” Then I turned to the sports section.

We see in Bartimaeus's story the same basic elements that are present in the calling of Jesus’ first disciples.

James and John McZebedee matriculated at my seminary again this fall. The “Sons of Entitlement,” I call them. They are usually—but not always—young and white in addition to being male. They have typically grown up in the church, attended Christian colleges and majored in religion. They like to refer to their mental index of Theologians Worth Reading and readily scoff at those theologians they have not read (and so are not worth reading).

This portion of the narrative is a continuation and expansion of what has just preceded. The other ten disciples are jealous, are angry with James and John because they have pushed Jesus—successfully—to give them a preeminent share in his destiny. Jesus has not criticized or dismissed their insistent demand but has lovingly transformed it from a desire for glory into a willingness to suffer. Still, why should some of the disciples be granted privileges over the rest?

We disciples of Jesus have vision problems. We sometimes describe our blindness as an inability to see the forest for the trees, but that’s a benign analysis. More worrisome is the inherited blindness of each generation, which so often assumes it is the best generation of all, with no lessons left to learn, only an inheritance to enjoy. We still need the miracle of restored sight.