Pretty much everyone in my family wears glasses. When I was a kid and went to the eye doctor one time, my mother figured out by watching me butcher the eye chart that she wasn’t much better at it – and ended up with reading glasses of her own. My dad has really bad vision and has had strong glasses from the time he was a little boy. As for me, a few years ago I was at the eye doctor – always an interesting experience, because I have this odd thing of one eye being quite nearsighted and the other being quite farsighted. Eye doctors are always exclaiming over this; apparently it’s somewhat unusual. Anyway, this one eye doctor had some fancy term for my nearsighted eye which translates into ‘can’t be brought up to normal with any correction.’ That is, no matter how strong a prescription of glasses I get, this one eye will always be substandard. When I found that out, I called up my dad and said thanks for the bad eye genes. Thankfully seeing encompasses more than just our physical vision, something we observe today in our scripture lessons, from the book of Job and in the gospel story of Baritmaeus.
Today we hear part of chapter 42 of the book of Job, which is the final chapter of this book. After the four weeks we’ve spent looking at Job, today we come to the end of the story. Job has spoken; God has spoken back; Job has spoken again, God has spoken back – and Job is at last satisfied. Job is in a very different place than where he started – literally but also spiritually and emotionally. After all that he has lost, after all of his grief and his anger, his rage and his agony, he tells God and he tells us that he has changed. His experiences – all of them, from having the plenty that he once had, to suffering all that he has suffered, to having this conversation with God – getting this God’s-eye view of things which we saw last week – all of this has shifted how Job sees the world. What he says to God is this: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” Now Job could mean that he has seen God from their conversation out of the whirlwind. But I don’t think this is it. Note that Job isn’t speaking in past tense. He doesn’t day, now my eye has seen you. He says, now my eye sees you. Present tense. Meaning, I’d say, now that I have experienced you. Now that I have gotten a glimpse of how things look from your point of view. Now I have a better idea of who you really are, Job is saying to God. Now I know that my perspective – what I used to think about you and about the way the world works – was limited. Now I see you in a new way. Job’s experiences, of human life and of God, have changed how he sees, and have given him a new understanding of God and the world.
But it’s also important to note that this isn’t the end of what Job says. There’s another part to what he has to say to God. Our text translates Job’s words as ‘therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ But Ellen Davis, a Hebrew scholar, suggests that an alternate translation, and perhaps a better one, is ‘therefore I recant and change my mind concerning dust and ashes.’ That is, Job has gotten this glimpse not only of how God sees, but has also realized how limited Job’s previous understanding of God, the world, and Job’s place in the world was. Ellen Davis points out that this phrase ‘dust and ashes’ is always used metaphorically in Scripture, and that it, as she says, ‘consistently designates the humbleness of the human condition, seen in light of God’s majesty.’ She argues that it is “highly unlikely that Job is abasing himself before God here, as the traditional translation suggests.” If Job now has little to say, she suggests, then this is the silence not of self-disgust, but of desire fulfilled. Because Job has gotten what he most wanted: he has seen God. And this seeing has led him to an entirely new way of seeing. I don’t know about you, but I find this a more helpful understanding of the end of the book of Job, because it makes clearer that Job doesn’t just go on with his life the way it was before. That may not be the impression we are left with, given that scripture tells us that God replaces all that Job had lost – more children, more animals, more property and wealth. This end of Job’s story – generally considered a later addition - is often troubling to readers, considered by some a ‘cheap parting shot,’ God making up for all of the grief Job has gone through. But that understanding is missing the point of Job’s story. Ellen Davis suggests that in evaluating whether Job does indeed see differently than he did before, we consider what it may have cost Job to enter into fatherhood again, having seen what he has seen and experienced what he has experienced. We’re told that Job does have more children, that he has seven sons and three daughters – and that he gives his three daughters wildly outlandish, even sensuous names. He also leaves his daughters an inheritance along with his sons – and this is not an insignificant detail, and may tell us something about the change in how Job sees. As Ellen Davis puts it, “In the male-dominated societies of the ancient world, it is an affront for a father blessed with many sons to give anything to daughters. So once-cautious Job is now overturning all the rules, and as for a reason – well, all we know is that they were exceptionally pretty women. Which is to say, Job does it for no reason at all.” He does it because he can; he does it because he wants to. Not unlike how God created all of those wildly outlandish animals we heard about last week, the ostrich, the Leviathan, the Behemoth. Job has seen the world from God’s point of view, and as a result he sees now with new eyes.
And of course seeing is also the topic of the story we hear from Mark’s gospel today. This is, at first glance, a healing/miracle story. A man who is blind is given sight. But if we look harder there is more going on in this story than just that. Bartimaeus, who is blind, hears that Jesus is passing by and Bartimaeus wants an audience with Jesus. He expresses this desire loudly, to which those around him react sternly, telling him, basically, to sit down and shut up. But he doesn’t listen, and Jesus hears him and responds, calling Bartimaeus to him and asking: What do you want me to do for you? This question may sound familiar to those of you who were here last Sunday, because this is just what Jesus asked James and John, the sons of Zebedee who come to Jesus asking a favor. Remember their request was for Jesus to have them sit, one on his right hand and one on his left, to share in Christ’s glory. This led Jesus to remind the disciples why he came and ‘the way’ that he models: ‘the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ Jesus also reminds the disciples what it means to be great: ‘whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.’ Of course, James and John, and the rest of the disciples, don’t really get it. They don’t see. They ask Jesus, when he asks them this question, to bestow on them places and positions of privilege. While Bartimaeus, on the other hand, responds differently. What do you want me to do for you? Jesus asks him. “The blind man said to him, ‘my teacher, let me see again.’ Bartimaeus asks for sight – maybe literal sight, but one could also make the argument he asks for a new way of seeing. Bartimaeus already has the vision to know what he needs, and the courage to lay that need before Jesus, face to face. Where the disciples consistently don’t see, Bartimaeus, reportedly blind, possesses more vision. And he tells Jesus that he wants to see again, and Jesus grants him his sight. And Bartimaeus, like Job, was changed; like Job, Bartimaeus is given new sight – on more than on level.
We know that Bartimaeus got new vision on this deeper level because of how the story ends – ‘Immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way.’ The way is what the life of discipleship is called, the life of service to Christ. In the gospel of John Thomas says to Jesus, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus tells them, I am the way. I am the way; follow me. Bartimaeus does just this, as he follows Jesus on the way. Ultimately, this is more of a call story than a healing or miracle story, because Bartimaeus is called to a new way of life and he responds. In both the gospel of Mark and the book of Job, for both Job and Bartimaeus, new vision equals a new life.
And what about us, today? How is your vision? How are you being challenged to a new way of seeing? Given that we have been thinking and talking about stewardship these past few weeks, and the wonderful conversation and dinner we had last night about this, I want to connect this new way of seeing with something that I think is key when it comes to our giving of our time, and our gifts and skills, and our money in support of this church community which supports us. I think we have at least a couple of ways we can choose to see both what we have and what we give. I think that we can choose to see what we have – as individuals or households, and as a parish – from a point of view of scarcity, or from a point of view of abundance. I’ve talked a lot about stewardship in my sermons these five Sundays of October – about generosity and giving, about love and gratitude, about a new way of seeing.
And now it finally comes down to this: if we see only that we have too little – we don’t make enough money to give any away; we don’t have enough time to share it with the community; we don’t know what gifts we have or we don’t think our gifts will be valued or we want to keep our gifts for ourselves, our jobs, or our families and not share them with the church – we are only seeing scarcity. We are only seeing lack of. We are only seeing not enough. But if we realize that no matter what we have, it is enough; if we realize that no matter how much money we make, we can give a percentage away; if we realize that we always have gifts to offer our church, our community, and our world, than we are seeing abundance. I don’t have to tell you which I think is a more faithful way of seeing.
I’m going to share a story about abundance and scarcity – a story about my grandmother, whom I loved dearly and whom I still miss very much, almost three years after she died. Now my grandmother didn’t have a lot of money. She was divorced from her alcoholic and abusive husband, and she had worked at a low-paying job later in her life, from which she had a tiny pension and a small social security benefit. She did have five grandchildren, my two brothers, my two cousins, and me. And she loved us all very much. When I was in college, and in graduate school, and even when I had graduated from seminary, during my intern year and then the time after that when I was still working my way through the ordination process – right up until I was ordained – my grandmother sent me ten dollars every month. She also sent any of my brothers and cousins who were in college or graduate school ten dollars a month. She had to wait for her Social Security check to have the money to do this, but she did it faithfully. She figured we could use the extra money, she told me. She’d write to all of us often, and every month one of those letters would include a ten-dollar bill. I would come to find out that my mother and my uncle would give her money sometimes so that she could make ends meet. But there was never a month that she didn’t send ten dollars to each of her grandchildren. I know it’s my grandmother and I’m hardly objective, but I believe that that’s seeing from a point of view of abundance, rather than from a position of scarcity. Last night our speaker put a box of girl scout cookies on the altar next to the icon of Jesus as an icon of giving that he had recently experienced. If I were to add my own icon of giving that I experienced, it would be a ten dollar bill. My grandmother knew how to see from abundance and not from scarcity. Job and Bartimaeus each found a new way of seeing, and the bible is full of characters who did the same. Today, it’s out turn to reflect on these things, and decide how we’re going to see.
Next Sunday is our ingathering. You are invited to bring in your pledge cards and your time tithe cards as we celebrate the abundance in our lives, the abundance God has so generously given to us. May each of us live out that abundance in return. Amen.