When Nancy and I were boarding a shuttle bus to ride from the hotel to the Convention Center in Corpus Christi this past week an older man was getting on right behind us.  I never met this man before in my life but that didn’t stop him.  He took one look at us, turned to Nancy and said, “It’s sure nice of you to escort your grandfather around the convention.”  I suppose it was his backhanded way of complimenting my wife.  But, as though I actually said to him what I was only thinking I’d like to say, he finished off what was left of my ego by saying to her, “I guess we have to take care of these Baptist preachers.”  Finally, I asked, “How do you know I’m a Baptist preacher?  Do I look like one or something?”  To which he said, “You sure do.” 

I’ve tried my entire career not to look like one of what I am.  It’s not that I am in any way ashamed of what I do.  It’s just that there is something about looking like I got pressed out of anyone’s mold that rankles me.  For reasons I don’t claim are all holy, I’ve just resisted surrendering my personal identity to anyone else’s idea of a proper image for preachers.  (Maybe if preachers had selected a less polyester image it wouldn’t be so bothersome to me.)  I don’t have any need to look like someone else to feel significant in this world.  I’d be lying if I said to you that I don’t have ambitions.  But, I’d also be dishonest if I didn’t tell you that I’ve never understood people who need some particular position or identity in life to think they’ve arrived at significance.  I have a name and a face that must have been good enough for God to create the way he did and I’m really trying to learn to accept all that I am as the gift of God. 

In the scripture text prior to the one we read this morning, Jesus and the disciples were walking down the road toward Jerusalem.  Jesus began to tell them that, when he got there, he would suffer and die.  But, it doesn’t appear that they were listening very well.  No sooner had Jesus shared with them his ambition to get on with what God had called him to do than they begin to share their personal ambitions, too, for something more than what they had at that moment in his presence.  They wanted a place, a position of real significance in God’s kingdom.  Jesus went on to try and tell them that they really didn’t know what they’re asking for.  That the only pathway to greatness in his kingdom, a greatness over which his Father in heaven alone held total control, was through suffering servanthood and death.  (Mark 10:32-45)

You have to admire the disciples’ honesty.  They told Jesus what they really wanted.  They wanted prominence and position and power.   At least they didn’t disguise personal ambition with superficial spirituality by claiming that every next step they took up the ladder of social or career prominence was simply their response to “the will of God.”  The disciples wanted the biggest “church” in town and they weren’t ashamed to admit it.  They were looking up.  But, what redeemed this whole situation was that, while the disciples were setting their sights high, Jesus was keeping his focus low, on the human level.  And, that is when he saw a man who couldn’t see him but knew who he was.  A man with a face and the name, Bartimaeus.  The disciples wanted to see what the view from the top would look like.  Bartimaeus just wanted to see what any view looked like.  So, in simple faith, he called out to Jesus and Jesus healed him. 

There are at least two things happening here.  First, Mark recorded a witness of how Jesus dealt with hurting people.  Jesus was not in such a hurry to save the world that he didn’t have time for one person who was hurting.  Remember, he was on his way to Jerusalem to die for and redeem the whole world.  No one in this room has ever had an agenda that busy or that important.  But, Jesus is never so busy saving a world that one person’s pain escapes his attention.

Every time I preach a sermon, like I did last Sunday, that deals with the pain of marital strife and divorce, I am amazed at the response.  We always get more requests for copies of those sermons than any others I preach.  What that should tell us is that, behind the façade of competence and success that most of us are good at fronting for others, there are a lot of hurting people filling these pews.  People who are hurting and who have come to church not because they want to know whether the moderates beat the fundamentalists in the big showdown but how to get from this day to the next with all the pain they are carrying.  They’ve come to church because they believe Jesus is here and that he cares and because they’ve realized that they have no place else to turn.

Here is the good news.  That’s all you need to know.  Bartimaeus had not one thing to offer Jesus.  His blindness had reduced him to the social status of a “beggar.”  All he had to offer Jesus was the strength of voice to cry, “‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’”  All the disciples had was ambition.  All Bartimaeus had was faith.  And, that is all Jesus wants from you or me when we are hurting.  Stoic determination and ruthless ambition will you get you a lot in this world.  Only faith will get you what you need from God.

Weston Ware emailed me the story of an elderly lady who was walking through a grocery store parking lot when she noticed a young man getting into her car.  Fully believing he intend to hijack it, she pulled a pistol out of her purse she carried for protection and, drawing a bead on this bandit, ordered him away from her car.  He protested, of course, but she had the gun and the gumption.  So, he finally gave up, and ran off.  But, when she got in the car her key wouldn’t fit the ignition.  She tried and tried but it just wouldn’t work.  Exasperated, she got out to walk back to the store and ask for help.  And, it was then that she spotted another car that looked exactly like her own.  In fact, it had her license plate.  It finally dawned on her that she just ordered a man at gunpoint out of his own car.  Her determination got her what she wanted but not what she needed.Again, determination and ruthless ambition may get you what you want in this world.  Only faith in God will get you what you need.

Please take careful note that faith is determined, too.  When Bartimaeus first cried out to Jesus, “Many sternly warned him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’”  Faith, by its nature, doesn’t give up.  But, the difference between determined faith and determination stripped of everything but a self-centered drive to get what you want is that faith releases control to God whereas determination without faith keeps trying to get control.  This story gives witness to the fact that Jesus always has time for those who are hurting and who won’t quit believing that he cares.

There is more here, however.  While this is a witness to us of how Jesus cares, Jesus is also modeling for us how we should care.  Jesus, for the ambition driven disciples, was trying to put a face and a name on human suffering.  When suffering has a name and a face, everything changes about the way you see the world and your place in it.  This isn’t the only evidence in scripture that, to Jesus, mercy was always personal long before it was social.  Suffering always had a name and a face to Jesus.  On the way to die for the whole world, he stopped to care about “Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus.”  That puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it?  Every soul that suffers is not just some statistic.  They are someone’s little girl or little boy.  Most of all, they are God’s child.

The Dallas Independent School District, in partnership with Mission Oak Cliff, offers English as a second language and family literacy classes for folks in our area.  Every weekday those classes meet in our own Mead hall.  While moms are studying upstairs, their infants, toddlers and preschoolers are downstairs being taught and cared for as well.  While Luci Wayman was taking me on a tour this past week, we stepped into a classroom full of three-year-olds.  One little girl just seemed to freeze in her tracks, about three feet away, and stare up at me with her big, beautiful brown eyes locked on mine.  No matter where I turned to look in the room, when I came back to her she was just staring.  She wasn’t saying a word but her face said it all.  She was putting a face on something for me.  And, her face put all that we do and all that we should do around here in perspective.  That little girl is some mother’s daughter and some father’s dream.  They surely want every bit as much for her as we do for our sons and daughters.

It was when I saw her that I remembered something Jim Denison, pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church, said in his convention sermon this past week.  The name most commonly given to new babies this past year in Texas was – Jose.  All week long we were reminded of how our lily-white middle-class world is changing.  In the next twenty years, the border of our state with Mexico is going to become one of the most crowded corridors of human population on the planet with some 30 million people moving there.  Very few will speak a language that gives them access to the wealth and prosperity that drives our economy.  Many will languish in poverty.  Most have never heard the saving gospel of Christ.  And, I think Jesus wanted me to see that little girl the other day to remind me that suffering has a name and a face and that I can’t ever see it any other way or I’ll always be too busy trying to finish my agenda to surrender myself to God’s.  And, here is the really interesting thing.  What is going to happen to our state over the next two decades has already happened around our church.  And, that’s not all.

I’ve been reading Jimmy Allen’s 1995 book, Burden of a Secret.  It’s the story of how he lost three of his family members to AIDS that was initially contracted by his daughter-in-law through a blood transfusion during the birth of her first child.  Until it hit his family, he confesses, AIDS was just a statistic he read about.  When it was his grandchildren and his daughter-in-law who were dying, AIDS had a name and a face.  I have found it that way myself.  When homosexuality, for example, is an “issue,” it’s one thing.  It becomes something else altogether different when it’s a person.  Divorce is an “issue” until it’s someone you know who is suffering through one.  And, we can take any stance we choose on the moral side of any given matter.  But, if we are children of Jesus, when we actually encounter suffering or human pain in any form with a name and a face, we better take the side of compassion.

So, here is what this story in scripture is saying to us.  Jesus is never too busy on his way to save the world that he doesn’t have time for someone who is hurting.  And, the Jesus who died to save the world is always going to be bringing big brown-eyed Hispanic girls from poverty-stricken homes, little boys named Jose, people suffering with AIDS and people going through divorces into the very middle of our busy church-growth agendas in order to put a name and face on human suffering for us.  Because, when suffering has a face all our talk about love has to become genuine compassion or we are not the children of God we claim to be.

Back when no one confused me for my grandfather, my grandfather made sidewalk scooters for my sisters and me when we’d go visit him in the summer.  A pair of metal roller skates nailed to a board with an upturned apple case and half a broomstick for handlebars, they didn’t cost near as much as these fancy Sharper Image razors that go for a hundred dollars a pop.  But, the fundamentals are still the same.  One foot on the scooter for balance, one on the ground for steam and both hands on the handlebars for control will get you from here to there no matter how classy the act. 

Our world is changing faster than any one can imagine.  But, the fundamentals are still the same.  What still drives this old and new world is the grace of God expressed through his children for every child that suffers.  It’s one foot solidly placed on his word for balance, one foot on the ground for steam in this community God has given us and, as always, both hands on some hurting soul’s back trying to help lift the load.  That’s what Jesus did.  That’s what Jesus will still do for you.  And, that’s exactly what Jesus wants us to do, too.  To see and live in response to this world the way he did, not with ambition to conquer it but with the kind of compassion that helps transform it.  To see what this world looks like when suffering has a name.