Liberating Grace

46 They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Mark 10:46-52 (NRSVue)

One stark example of the ideological capture of grace is the abuse of the doctrine of election by the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) in apartheid South Africa. This is why during the anti-apartheid struggle, the doctrine of God’s gracious election became a site of struggle between the DRC and the anti-apartheid theologians wherein the former group deployed the doctrine to ground and legitimate the white supremacist ideology of apartheid. Meanwhile, the latter group rightly argued that the doctrine of election is to be perceived in relation to the idea of God’s preferential option for the poor. They contended that election, the message of divine unconditional grace, is a source of hope even for the most wretched of this world.

It is this conviction about the all-embracing scope of God’s grace that motivates Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed theologian, to criticize the Protestant Reformation which, in his estimation, regrettably overlooks the miracles of Jesus in relation to the doctrine of grace. Barth rightly laments this oversight because he understands the miracles as paradigms of God’s unconditional mercy toward people who find themselves in desperate situations. In neglecting this aspect of Jesus’ ministry, the Protestant Reformers are deprived of a critical resource that could help them gain crucial insights about God’s gracious dealings with humanity, particularly the afflicted and the downtrodden. This results in an impoverished doctrine of grace and consequently to a soteriology devoid of corporeal and political liberation. In order to ameliorate this deficit, it is pertinent to engage in a political – better still liberationist – hermeneutics of the gospels.

In this regard Ched Myers, proposing a political reading of the Gospel of Mark, insightfully argues that the Markan Jesus is a revolutionary figure who confronts the existing unjust socio-political order on behalf of the marginalized making the gospel “a story about and for the poor and the common folk” (Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 4). This enables Myers to draw the implicit politics present in the gospel and make it a politically relevant source of theology. It is in the light of this hermeneutical stance that I will reflect on the radical nature of God’s boundless mercy and delineate its political consequences. The title of this post, “liberating grace,” is intentionally ambiguous: God’s grace is inherently liberating; yet there is also a need to liberate grace from its captivity to hegemonic ideologies and actors.

The passage under consideration tells the story of a blind beggar named Bartimaeus at the roadside in Jericho, most likely near one of the several gates leading into and out of the city. This is one of the few instances where the recipient of Jesus’ miraculous work is named and not left anonymous. As Jesus, his disciples, and the crowd following him were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus heard of the commotion and pleaded Jesus to have mercy on him. Now, disability is often theologically understood as having a causal relationship with sin. This is clearly evinced in the question asked by Jesus’ disciples regarding a man born blind (John 9:1-12). The theological tradition the disciples were nurtured in led them to assume that the man’s blindness owes either to his or his parents’ sins. But Jesus told them that the man’s blindness is neither due to his sin nor that of his parents. Rather, it was for the manifestation of God’s glory. So, considering the prevalent theology of the day, it is not unthinkable that Bartimaeus could have the same theological understanding regarding his blindness, and therefore, the mercy he sought for from Jesus encompassed both mercy for recovery of sight and for forgiveness of sins.

In ancient Israel blindness, be it because of birth defect or disease or injury, is a physical infirmity that often reduces people to begging. The blind are pushed to the margins of society with no social and economic welfare program in place to alleviate their suffering, hence, leaving them at the mercy of others. So, in Bartimaeus we encounter a man desperately in need of deliverance. But as he shouted to Jesus for healing the crowd rebuked him and tried to silence him for having the audacity to call on the wonder-working, who at this point had become a celebrity rabbi and potential Messiah from Nazareth. Nonetheless, Bartimaeus was determined and was not to be easily dissuaded. So he kept shouting for help. And Jesus heard him.

This story reminds us how easy it is to miss the cries of Bartimaeuses of this world amidst the din and frenzy of our success-driven, materialistic society. Their voices often get shut down because they could disrupt the everyday functioning of religious programs and inconvenience the life of priests (not unlike the one we encounter in the parable of the Good Samaritan). These Bartimaeuses are often perceived as nuisance in a society, including the church, that measures divine blessings through physical well-being and material prosperity. But Jesus is not deaf to such cries because it is for the likes of Bartimaeus – the damned and the forgotten folks of this world – that Son of God assumed flesh and pitched God’s tent on earth.

To be sure, not only was Bartimaeus heard, Mark tells us that on hearing his cry Jesus “called” him. God incarnate was stopped in his tracks by the hail arising out of the depth of this tormented soul. The afflicted man living on the margins of society was heard, accorded recognition, and healed. In recognizing his entreaty, Jesus humanizes and dignifies Bartimaeus and affirms his worth as full human. And in responding to his call Jesus made visible who was rendered invisible by religion and society.

Also worth noting is that Jesus did not stop to inquire about the moral standing of Bartimaeus or his parents. He is not concerned about his past. What concerned Jesus and moved him is Bartimaeus’ present condition of misery and to open up a new future for him. This is why the South African theologian Jaap Durand characterizes Jesus’ miracles as “paradigms of grace” (Durand, cited in Dirk Smit, 33-34). In the miracles we are presented with God’s grace in its sheer gratuitousness. And in the miracles we meet the God-man whose eyes and ears are steadfastly trained toward the plight of the destitute. The Belhar Confession succinctly and beautifully puts it when it declares that God is in a special way the God of the poor and the oppressed. God sets himself at the side of the suffering man, and “it is to the help of the sufferers that he comes,” remarks Dirk Smit (Smit, 30-32), one of the authors of the Belhar Confession.

It is, therefore, imperative for Christians to pay close attention to stories like that of Bartimaeus and the numerous accounts of Jesus’ miracles that abound in the gospels in order to have a deeper and fuller understanding of God’s free, unconditional, and radical grace. Besides, as symbolic enactments of the message of the kingdom of God, it is difficult to grasp (if not impossible) the true nature of God’s kingdom without sustained attention to and understanding of the miracles of Jesus as examples of God’s unmerited grace. Furthermore, we risk unwarranted spiritualizing of the gospel of Christ – to the point that it no longer bears any concrete relevance for the here and the now. So, in the miracle stories we are offered a window to have a glimpse into the kingdom of God, to see the connection between salvation and the kingdom, and to take steps toward tearing down the false dichotomy between the spiritual and the corporeal.

As stated at the outset of this reflection, the political consequences of the miracles – God’s gracious dealing with the needy – is not lost on the ruling class. They are fully cognizant that Jesus’ – the kingdom’s – is a movement of and for the disenfranchised and outcasts, and therefore correctly perceived as a threat to their social privilege and status. By undermining and unsettling the social order, the miracles of Jesus become a threat to the reigning political ideologies and to those who deploy such ideologies for oppressive purposes.

To reiterate by way of conclusion, the story of the recovery of sight to Bartimaeus tells us that God’s free and unconditional grace is liberating and this liberation encompasses every dimension of human existence. It also alerts us to the fact that grace could be held captive by hegemonic ideologies and systems, and therefore, it often needs liberating. It is also a story that seeks to sharpen our eyes and ears to the suffering of the oppressed and the disenfranchised. Unfettered grace is alarming and offensive to the so-called guardians of faith and the powerful. So, in pleading Jesus, Bartimaeus hails us all to look at his misery, to turn, and do the necessary work of liberation. The divine indicative – what God did in and through Jesus Christ – bestows an ethico-theological imperative to those of us professing to follow in his path.