Fr. Tom McKenna offers a reflection entitled A Christian Code: The Way                   (Mk 10: 46-52; Jeremiah 31:7-9)

In one place or other, most all of us have come across the phrase “code word.” It means some word or phrase that at first seems unimportant, but if you’re in the know, you recognize it’s pointing to something more. So the phrase in a housing contract, “no children or pets” lets you know this is a place for young un-marrieds and seniors.

Often enough in the Scriptures, you come across code words, phrases that seem pretty straightforward but which if looked at again open up onto something bigger and deeper.

We’ve got one today in this Gospel story about Jesus curing Bartimaeus. This blind man breaks his way through the crowd, throws down his only cloak, and yells out to Jesus calling him Son of David (Messiah). And Jesus turns, sees him, and cures him.

But a key is in that last line. “Immediately after receiving his sight, Bartimaeus followed him on The Way.” That expression, “The Way. It’s innocuous sounding enough on first bounce, but for the Christians of the early church, it was one of those loaded code words.

“The Way” brought up for them the whole process and style of following the Lord Jesus. It was an inside word, a catch phrase for discipleship and faithful following.  It referred not just to the Jerusalem roadway Jesus was walking, but to the much more extensive living Way which is the life of the committed believer. As in “The Way” understood in Jesus’ own words as his self-identification, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  (Jn. 14:6). So The Way is where and how and why Jesus is walking. It’s a symbol for Jesus’ words and deeds and attitudes and instincts, coupled together with his invitation to all of us now to walk just that same way. Martin Sheen’s film, The Way, about a person’s long and halting pilgrimage to forgiveness and holiness echoed the theme.

But Bartimeaus teaches us further about what it means to walk that “Gospel Way.”

His first and main lesson is be more perceptive in spotting that Way when it shows up in life. If anyone in that crowd should have been able to see who it really was walking down that Jericho-to-Jerusalem road, you’d guess it would have been one of the twelve, a club member of the “official” disciples. But they miss it – and at least on two scores.

Obviously, they don’t “see the Messiah in their midst,” as the saying goes. By contrast Bartimeaus calls Jesus “Son of David,” another one of those code words this time connoting the long awaited Messiah. In fact, this is the very first time this title is used in Mark’s gospel. And it’s coming not from any of the “professional” disciples, but from the mouth and heart of a beggar on the side of the road.

Why is Bartimeaus able to spot the Messiah in his midst? One reason is what he does just as he runs up to Jesus, he drops his cloak. He gives away what he’s been holding onto, this in contrast to that rich young man of recent memory who can’t follow Jesus because he can’t give up all he’s been holding onto.

But there’s a second lesson here and it is by the person who notices the beggar.

For sure, this person is not one of the disciples; they want to push Bartimeaus off to the side. One commentator compares them to the handlers of a rising political candidate. They walk in front to screen out the undesirables, to push aside anyone who on the face of it isn’t “somebody” in society. In doing this they think they themselves are running on the inside track and will ride the candidate’s train all the way into office. They might well be on that inside track, but for sure they’re not on “The Way.”

The one who is walking this way is Jesus, the only one in the band who notices Bartimaeus, the one who says “let that shouting man through.” And here Jesus is reaching out not only to this poor, non-sighted beggar but to all people in need and up against it. And so for instance, the ragged people of Israel in Jeremiah today, owning only what’s on their backs, refugees streaming down the road to go back to their home and looking for any help along the way.

Again the contrast and the irony. The Twelve “regular” disciples don’t see the Messiah there in their midst; Bartimeaus does. They don’t see who’s special to that Messiah; i.e.,  the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind off to the side of the road. Jesus is the one who does.

Such lessons are not to be lost on Jesus’s followers since, neither on those first generations nor on us today.

How do we get better at noticing that Messiah in our midst? How do we not miss that messenger of God when he or she walks through our lives? How to become more perceptive of the voice of God when it’s being spoken today, both in my private life and on the world stage?

And of course, that “how” takes in so many things:

• the praying and coming together in Jesus’ name that you’re doing right now this morning;
• the efforts you make every day to be honest and faithful and above board;
• your going beyond your own self-interest for the sake of the interests of others;
• the daily time you spend with The Lord in prayer;
• the forgiveness you work to extend to those who’ve hurt you.

All these and more are the kinds of things that over time came to open the disciples’ eyes to that Messiah walking through their lives. Doing – and being –these things today opens the eyes of us successors to those Twelve.

But these readings also fix on a privileged path onto this Way, a favored access road as it were. And that is the Way of noticing the beggar off to the side of that road. If there ever was a practice that shown a light onto The Way, it was this: seeing and paying attention to the suffering beggar. This is a piece with Jesus’ attentiveness to the little children whom the disciples wanted to shoo out of the way, his care for the crippled and the lame, his solicitude for the confused and suffering, the possessed and out of control. Setting inside a headline we can all too easily imagine these days, it’s Jesus’ healing attention to all the refugees streaming along the roads of this world, seeing and comforting the women and children standing by the side of the road to Calvary and all Calvary roads since.

This practice of bringing good news to people who have had so much bad news has been the eye opener for so many disciples since, letting them spot that Messiah walking in their midst, letting them hear God’s voice coming through all the other voices coming across the airwaves. It is nothing less than the Way of Jesus himself, that path along which he’s asking Bartimeaus and ourselves to walk with Him.

Bartimeaus calls out:  “Master I want to see.”

Jesus responds: “Go on your Way, now my Way. Your faith has saved you.”

It finishes: “Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, on the way. “The Way,” a Christian code word calling all of us to go and follow likewise.