There I was, sitting by the road as usual, begging. It was a good spot, as begging spots go. By a tree, so people wouldn’t run into me if they weren’t looking down; and also so I could get some shade when it got really hot at midday. The road got narrower there too, so people couldn’t avoid walking past me and hearing me cry out for their small change. It really was a good spot.
I’d been sitting there every day for as long as I could remember. The folks that went by there every day knew me as “Bar Timeaus,” Timeaus’s son. I lived down the alley just behind me, sleeping rough in a curve of the wall. Early every morning I’d grope my way over to my spot to make sure no-one else got there before me. It wasn’t much of an existence, but it kept body and soul together, and there’s not much else you can hope for when you’re blind in a place like this.
That day things were actually going pretty
well. It was almost the Passover and my spot was right on the main road through
So, there I was, sitting by the road, and I
hear this big crowd coming down the street. Ah, I thinks to myself, that’ll be
some rabbi or other on his way to
I reached out until I could grab someone’s cloak and get his attention to ask him who this rabbi was. That’s when everything changed.
He said it was Jesus, the rabbi from
That one! I’d heard about him. People were
saying he was different. He didn’t just talk about the
That changed everything! I started yelling, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” I don’t know why I called him that. It just seemed right. Like I said, the traditions said that the Son of David had healing power, and, according to the stories, this Jesus was able to heal people. So I shouted out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”
Folks started getting upset at me for shouting.
Maybe they thought I was a nuisance. That’s pretty common when you’re a beggar.
Maybe they thought that someone like me shouldn’t expect to attract the attention of somebody as important as Jesus. You know, he was an important rabbi with a big following, what would he want with someone like me, a beggar in old ragged clothes, someone who couldn’t even see, never mind follow him.
Maybe me calling Jesus “Son of David” got them spooked, worried about a riot starting or something. I was blind. I couldn’t see if there were any Roman soldiers around. They wouldn’t have taken very kindly to anybody being called “Son of David,” nor would anybody from the upper classes for that matter. They could easily think that calling someone “Son of David” meant I thought he was going to overthrow the government. I didn’t care about that. All I cared about was that the Son of David was supposed to be a healer. And that’s what I needed.
So I kept on shouting, even though people got on my case. – You don’t survive very long as a beggar without developing a thick skin, in more ways than one. People are always telling you to get lost or kicking you out of the way. I wasn’t about to give up on trying to attract Jesus’ attention just because some pilgrims got their noses out of joint.
Then, suddenly, they stopped telling me to shut up. Instead they said, “Cheer up, he’s calling you,” and started to lift me to my feet.
I hadn’t heard Jesus say anything, but apparently he had heard me. I was yelling at the top of my lungs and he was on the other side of the crowd. But he had turned to someone and said, “Call him,” and the message must have been passed back through the crowd until it got to me.
I don’t know who it was that finally delivered that message to me. Like I said, I was blind, and the voice wasn’t one I recognised. But whoever he was, I owe him.
Jesus, the rabbi, the healer, maybe even the Son of David, was calling me. I can’t begin to tell you what that felt like. When you’re a blind beggar people don’t call you to come to them. If you’re lucky they may toss a coin into your lap. If you’re unlucky they’ll kick you out of their way. But here was this Jesus, with hundreds of people following him down the street, stopping and calling me, ME, to come to him.
I didn’t think twice. I jumped up and started moving in the direction where I thought he was. I only had the vaguest idea of how to find him, (did I mention that I was blind?) but the crowd helped me, passing me from hand to hand until I arrived at Jesus.
Of course, in the process, I lost my cloak. I wasn’t thinking about anything except getting to Jesus, so I just flung it aside.
You folks all look pretty respectable so you probably don’t know just how important my cloak was to me. Apart from these clothes it was about the only thing I owned, my only asset. But it was amazingly versatile.
At night I slept under it.
When the sun beat down during the day I could tie an end up into the tree to give me some shade.
When I took the money I had begged and bought some food from the guy just down the road, I could use it to carry stuff back to my place in the alley.
When it was cold I could wrap it round me for warmth.
And for most of the day it sat across my lap, collecting the few coins that people threw into it.
Yep, it was pretty important. When I jumped up and groped my way towards Jesus I was leaving behind everything I had; my bed, my overcoat, my sunshade, my shopping bag, and my means of income. But that’s what I did. Left it lying there in the dirt under that tree and stumbled towards Jesus.
It seemed like an eternity; stumbling through the dark; surrounded by people I didn’t know. I could feel them moving me forwards. I could hear them saying, “Go on! He’s calling you.” (I could smell them too! It was a hot day!) If I had stopped to think about it, I would have been terrified. I had no way to get my bearings. If they were all playing some huge trick on me how would I ever find my way back to my alley, my tree, my spot by the road? I was adrift in a sea of bodies, hoping and praying that I would wash up on a rock.
And then, suddenly, it all went quiet. I felt that I was in an opening in the crowd. Nobody was jostling me anymore. Nobody was saying anything. Just an expectant silence. Then I heard his voice, asking, “What do you want me to do for you?”
All those years on the street developing a thick skin and a sharp tongue almost got the better of me. I almost blurted out, “Are you blind too? What do you think I want? I’m blind! I want to see!” But, on reflection, I realised that he was doing something no-one else had ever done. He was treating me like a person. Not a beggar, and assuming I wanted some money. Nor a blind man, and assuming that I wanted to see. He was giving me the dignity of asking me what I wanted instead of assuming that he knew. He asked me what I wanted as if it mattered to him, and I think it did.
So I said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
Then I heard him say, “Go, your faith has healed you,” and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I could see. And the first thing I saw was Jesus, standing right there in front of me. What a sight for new eyes!
…..
You know, sometimes I ask myself, “What if…?”
What if I hadn’t believed those stories I
heard about Jesus? What if I’d just written them off as old wives tales or
political propaganda? He and his followers would have been just one more noisy
crowd going down the road towards
What if…?
What if I hadn’t cried out? Not that I’m shy. You don’t get far as a beggar if you’re shy. You need to know how to be a nuisance if you want to eat regular. But, what if I hadn’t cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me?” I’m not even sure I knew what I was talking about when I did that. What if I had waited until I did know? Would Jesus have still been around?
What if…?
What if I hadn’t believed those guys next to me when they told me that Jesus was calling me? I didn’t hear anything. Mind you, I was yelling so loud it was hard for me to hear anything except my own voice. But still, I didn’t hear Jesus call me. When you’re blind, some people think it’s funny to play tricks on you. They could have been winding me up, making fun of me, getting a few laughs at my expense. I had to decide if I was going to believe what they told me, that Jesus was really calling me, and take a risk.
What if…?
What if I had been afraid to leave what I
had? It wasn’t much, I’ll grant you, but it was all I knew; my little corner by
the tree. One of the best begging spots on the
You know, one of the other people in the crowd was telling me that only a few days earlier Jesus had called someone else, a rich guy, to come and follow him, but he’d told him that first he had to give away everything he had. I didn’t have that much to lose, even if it was all I had. Maybe that was a good thing in the end.
And what if, having gone through all that, having got to Jesus, when he asked me what I wanted, what if I had said something stupid like; money, or a new cloak, or a better spot to beg from?
I’ll tell you what if! I’d still be blind,
groping around in the darkness. I’d still be there, under that tree in
But that isn’t what happened. I believed the stories about Jesus. I cried out to him and he called me. And I met Jesus and he healed me, and I can see.
Before I met Jesus I was helpless, blind, going nowhere.
Now I’ve been healed. I can see where I’m going. And I know where I’m going. I’m going to follow Jesus, wherever he leads.