Jesus said to him, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

I went to college in the late 1960’s and the early 1970’s.

For those of you above or below a certain age, let me explain something about the nature of higher education in America between 1968 and 1972. We learned a lot about crowds and how they form and the often widely mixed motives of the participants. I was a part of certain crowds, in that era, as we protested against the war, for civil rights and enthusiastically in favor of just about anything that would get classes cancelled. I always noticed that we protested in the largest numbers in the springtime when either the causes were more urgent and noble or the weather was better and, as Springsteen would sing decades later, the girls wore summer clothes.

I think about those years and those protests each time we come around to Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

It was a great time for a parade, that Sunday afternoon, a great time for a demonstration in old Jerusalem. The city was full of tourists for the Holy Days that were at hand; the tension and intrigue between the Roman Governor, Pilate, and the Jewish King, Herod, and the faith leaders of the temple was deep and thick. And it was into this crucible that Jesus of Nazareth led his followers, setting so many things in motion.

There is a tendency to portray Palm Sunday as a spontaneous eruption in the streets, but I’ve never bought that theory.

Too many plans were carefully prepared and in place.

Jesus was ready to make his grand entrance into Jerusalem and he knew that the pain and the suffering and the glory lay ahead of him.

If we were to read ahead into the next chapter we would find him sending his disciples to collect a colt, one that had never been ridden, that was stashed away for him to use. And the upper room, that would become a shrine in the days that followed the Resurrection, was sitting empty and waiting for him. Now the moment had come when he would call their bluff, now they would see what the prophecies were speaking of, now he would step out of the back country towns, away from the fishing villages and march into the Holy City as a king, summoning up the old traditional visions of a king of peace riding a colt, not a king of war riding a stallion.

The plans were all in place that day, as they passed through Jericho, and began the final 15 mile trek, through the Jordan Valley, to Jerusalem.

Bartimaeus was not part of the plan.

Bartimaeus was a blind beggar sitting, as the youth group sang two weeks ago, on the side of the road.

It was the same road that Jesus traveled that day with a great crowd. They had come in from the towns and villages, where they had heard him and seen him and learned to love him, and now they would strike at the heart of their faith and their religion, now the Priests and the Pharisees, Pilate and Herod, would all learn what all the fuss was about.

And on the side of the road, as they passed with a growing number and a growing enthusiasm, was Bartimaeus, a single figure on the edge of the crowd, as low on the social totem pole as you could get.

And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he cried out and asked for mercy.

People told him to be quiet, but he didn’t, he kept calling out to Jesus for mercy.

Stop the story for a moment.

Isn’t this a needed reminder for us, in our age, in this Springtime of our discontent?

It isn’t often that you will hear me, in the pulpit, taking open swipes at our government, it usually isn’t worth the trouble. But whether you listen to the current administration or the last one you will realize that they live by a code that deeply values those who are “too big to fail”, banks and automakers and politicians. They have protected those who receive annual bonuses that could fund this Church for a decade, while they toss to the side of the road and plot to break their contracts with retired autoworkers.

And maybe that’s OK in the world they inhabit, maybe that’s needed in the world of finance and politics, I don’t know much about that world and what I do know I don’t like. Quantities are more important in that world than qualities; opinion polls define right and wrong in that world, promises are only valid when they are convenient in that world.

That was the world of Herod and Pilate, Chief Priests and Pharisees, but there was a different reality at work in their world, a different reality that is still at work in our world.

So I can tell you this today, and you can believe this today, neither Herod nor Pilate, nor the priests nor the Pharisees, would have stopped for Bartimaeus. Jesus did. This was a real life enactment of the parable he told about the Good Samaritan. This was the proclamation that in God’s world people count, in God’s world promises count, in God’s world no one is ever too small, in God’s world the cry for mercy never gets drowned out.

You know what? I didn’t have to tell you to stop the story, the story is that Jesus stopped the story that day.

He stopped it all, he delayed the parade, he postponed the plans and the challenge that he would offer to the Jews and the Romans, he stopped and he said “call him”.

And by stopping he gave all of his attention, not to the crowds, not to the perils that were ahead, but to the blind beggar. And by stopping he said “you count, you are too important to be ignored.”

That is one of the deepest and most significant of all human needs, the need of respect, the need for acknowledgement and it is the one that God meets, in abundance when we call out to him.

Jesus stopped.

Boy do we need to learn how to do that.

We live in motion, just as the crowd was in motion that day, people swirl around us and we brag, wearily but proudly, about our busy schedules and we let anyone and everyone write on our calendars as we rush from one place to the next. It is not easy for us to learn the art of how to stop.

But this pre-parade passage carries with it the reminder that we can do no good for God, we can receive no healing in our hearts or in our relationships, we can provide no healing for others, strangers or loved ones, if we don’t stop.

Jesus never healed anyone on the run.

There are people in your life right now, your home or your workplace or your school or this room, people who need you to stop, to pay attention to them, to respect them, to heal them.

You can’t do it if you don’t stop.

So Jesus stopped that day and he healed Bartimaeus, he gave vision to the blind man.

It was the last healing recorded by Mark, and let me be clear, it had no impact upon what was to follow, it didn’t change the love shared at the Last Supper, it didn’t lesson the pain of Judas’ betrayal or Peter’s denial, it didn’t remove the cross and its agony. It was just a person and a need, which makes it all the more precious.

It was a casual moment of grace along the way of life.

And it is just those casual moments of grace which we so often ignore or omit, whether we are in position to receive them or to provide them.

We are too busy for casual grace, we get so caught up in our plans and our dreams and our tasks that we don’t stop for a person and a need, we are so intent on the large good that we are doing that we race right by the small great and holy opportunity that God gives to us.

Jesus didn’t work like that. One more blind man healed was going to make absolutely no difference at all to the great culmination of his life and ministry in this final week.

But it would have been one more blind man healed and that was worth stopping for.

You see, a work of love was never a small thing to the one who looked upon everyone he met with the compassion of God.

My answer to those who tell me that what we do here, as a Church, for those in need is just a drop in the bucket has always been that it is a drop in the bucket and that Jesus Christ puts a high value on drops in buckets.

Which brings me to a final point that I have today.

What occurred to me this week was that Bartimaeus didn’t do what Christ told him to do.

Jesus said to him, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way. He followed him on the way.

Let’s try that this week, this Holy Week of ours.

He followed him on the way.

Bartemaeus joined the parade and, this is speculation now, there is no evidence of this, but I believe that Bartemaeus stuck around with his new vision and his deep, personal awareness that no request was too bold and no life was too insignificant.

I believe that Bartemaeus was there, not only for the parade of palms, but again on Friday when Jesus was paraded through the city and hung to die as a criminal and again on and after Easter when everyone stopped, when the whole world stopped. Mark not only tells us his name, but also his father’s name, how did he know that, unless it was one of those details that emerged as Bartemaeus followed him on the way?

Take what has been healed, your soul, your heart, your identity, your respect, your relationships, your talents, take those things and follow Christ into the city, follow him to the upper room and the cross when we gather to worship on Thursday night, follow him to light of Sunday morning and the impossible reality that death, and everything like it, has been defeated forever.

And as you go through this week, don’t forget, don’t ever forget to stop for the people around you, the people who need you, and you will heal them and they will heal you.

Jesus said to him, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.