Last Monday was a national holiday in which Americans—both white AND black--honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.- a day in which we were reminded again how the struggle for human dignity and equal rights for ALL is a never-ending battle. As we learned in our fight against Great Britain in the Revolutionary War and against slavery during the Civil War, no one is ever going to HAND you your freedoms- they must ALWAYS be fought for. Well this morning, we are going to investigate one of the EARLIEST civil rights cases on record and how the persistence of one blind beggar eventually paid off. Our New Testament lesson involves a man named Bartimaeus- a poor, sightless social outcast blessed with nothing but great determination and a large voice; a pariah and outsider who was asked to shut up, sit down, and move, not to “the back of the bus” but to “the back of the pack,” to “the rear of the crowd” as Jesus was passing by. 

Here in Luke, we find our Lord on his final journey- one which will culminate in his grand entrance into Jerusalem on an ass. However, along the way, he arrives at the ancient city of Jericho where he encounters a blind beggar. Next to leprosy, blindness was among the cruelest of disabilities in the ancient world. Blind persons usually occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder where they were forced to earn a living the only way they COULD- by begging. Furthermore, the blind were often relegated to the same place ALL beggars were in that day- to the outskirts of the city, which is where Jesus encounters him in this story. Thus with Bartimaeus, we find a poor blind man who not only remains marginalized by being confined to the entrance of Jericho, he is forced to plead for whatever scraps of kindness people might toss his way in order to survive. 

According to Luke, although he can't SEE anything, Bartimaeus can still HEAR as he is alerted to a great commotion arising off in the distance. When he asks what is happening, he is told that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. Whether he had heard of Jesus or not, we don’t know but it was a fact that Jesus's reputation had grown far and wide over the previous three and a half years. He was regarded as a prophet of sorts, a wise teacher full of compassion, one who held broad sympathies for persons such as himself. It was said he could cast out demons, cleanse the lepers, make the lame walk, and enable the blind to see. Some said that he could even raise the dead. When Bartimaeus hears that such a man who is no less a miracle worker is entering the town, he does what only a blind beggar CAN do, he begs for any speck of pity this Jesus might have for him. With a loud voice, he hollers "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"

But because Bartimaeus is largely considered a non-person, he is shoved into the back of the crowd by those much LARGER and more POWERFUL than himself. It seems the only way he will ever reach Jesus is with the only thing he DOES possess- his voice. However, when he cries out, those in front who block his way start to protest. They tell him to quit making a spectacle of himself, insisting that he SHUT UP, SIT DOWN, and GET BEHIND EVERYONE ELSE, that it’s his place to STAY IN THE BACK OF THE PACK where he can’t be seen and DEFINITELY can’t be heard.

What those who seek to obstruct him don’t realize is that they suffer from their OWN form of blindness by failing to recognize it is for persons such as Bartimaeus that Jesus has come in the FIRST place. Rather than giving in to the demands of the crowd and quietly retreating to the rear, this blind beggar REFUSES to shut up and instead cries out even LOUDER, "Jesus, Son of David, PLEASE have mercy on me!" It seems the more they try to muzzle him, the LOUDER he calls out. The only question is whether amid all the noise and raucousness of this spectacle, Jesus can hear him? 

As the procession wends toward the center of town, Jesus suddenly stops, sensing something nobody ELSE seems able to. Inquiring as to who it is that is calling his name, his followers haven't a clue because EVERYONE seems to be calling out to him, EVERYONE is competing for his attention. But Jesus doesn’t hear all the others- he only hears this one solitary voice. Commanding this caller to be brought to him, his disciples reluctantly and with great difficulty locate the man. "What do you want me to do for you?" asks Jesus. It seems that for the first time in his life, someone has addressed him as a human being, as a whole person deserving of dignity and respect. "Lord,” he says, “let me receive my sight." 

What is amazing about this request is that he doesn’t ask for anything simple or customary like a few alms just to get him through the week. Instead, his request is BOLD as he asks for something that would seem IMPOSSIBLE from any OTHER person- he wants to be able to see like everyone else, see for perhaps the first time in his LIFE. Interestingly, Bartimaeus no longer addresses him as “Jesus, son of David” but now calls him “LORD!” Jesus's response is, "Receive your sight; your faith has made you well." We’re told that at once, this blind beggar was healed and could now see. However, as anyone who has ever suffered from a severe disability will tell you, more important than receiving his sight, Jesus has made him a PERSON, a HUMAN BEING once again- the MOST IMPORTANT kind of cure ANYONE can receive!

Now I think we know this story concerns much more than a blind beggar receiving his sight, that it serves as a parable about OURSELVES. It shows us how although we may be able to see with the two eyes in our head, we can still be blind where our heart and spirit are concerned, that we can lack moral and spiritual vision and still be oblivious to what is right and true and good. As Christ and the scriptures so often testify, the loss of such sight is the worst sort of blindness one can possibly have. It is a condition that afflicts us when we CHOOSE to remain ignorant for reasons of fear or moral complacency. 

Less than two weeks ago, Edgar Ray Killen died at the age of 92, an inmate at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. In 2005, Killen, a racial segregationist AND PART-TIME PREACHER, was convicted of manslaughter for masterminding the 1964 slayings of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman- three names etched into history for one of the most shameful atrocities of the Civil Rights era and later dramatized in the movie Mississippi Burning. Known by most as Preacher Killen, his conviction came forty-one years to the day after the three were mobbed and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen. Back in 1967, Killen was acquitted by an all-white jury for their murders when one of the jurors refused to convict him. She said she could not believe “a man of God” would EVER do such a thing. Of course, the irony here was that the same man who on Sunday mornings would ascend a Christian pulpit to proclaim the wondrous love of Jesus could on MONDAY night plot the murders of three young men whose ONLY crime had been to help register black voters in the state. In other words, one may think of oneself as a good Christian and EVEN WORK AS A MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL and yet be every bit as blind and lost as to what is right and true and good as the religious leaders of Jesus’ OWN DAY were.

In 2005, the same year Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced to life in prison, federal authorities exhumed the body of Emmett Till, a fourteen year-old Afro-American boy murdered more than a half century earlier in Mississippi. Till, who at the time was visiting relatives from his hometown of Chicago, made the innocent mistake of whistling at a white woman in a small country convenience store. That simple mistake would cost him his life. In the dead of night, two white men dragged him from his bed, beat him senseless, shot him through the head, and then threw his weighted body into the Tallahatchie River. The story might have ended there like so many other lynchings in the South had it not been for the extraordinary decision made by MAMIE TILL, Emmett's mother. At the urging of civil rights leaders, Mrs. Till decided to leave the casket open at her son's funeral. She told the mortician not to "fix" her son's face, or at least what was left of it. "I want the WHOLE WORLD to see what those men did to my little boy!" she cried.

For four long days, tens of thousands of people viewed Emmett Till's body as it lay on display in a church on Chicago's South Side. Gruesome photos of his maimed and distorted face flooded the national and international press. For the first time, America was shocked out of her comfortable complacency over the treatment of Afro-Americans in this country. People now knew that if change was ever going to come, they would have to put THEMSELVES on the line. Till's murder was a catalyst that gave ordinary black people not just COURAGE but instilled within them a sense of ANGER- ANGER at white supremacy and ANGER at a justice system which would eventually exonerate the two men who had committed the deed even though they bragged about it afterward in an interview for LOOK magazine. That anger would shortly be transformed into a stirring social crusade we now know as the Civil Rights Movement. But it all began with the courageous act of a grieving mother who refused to be quieted, one who in the interest of justice raised the ONLY thing she had at her disposal- her God-given VOICE.

In 1962, Fanny Lou Hamer, the youngest of twenty children born to sharecropper parents, tried to register to vote in Mississippi. At that time, the threat of organized racist violence along with unfair literacy requirements made voting IMPOSSIBLE for most blacks in that state. Three times she attempted to register and each time she was denied until one day, she finally succeeded. A few months later, she was arrested for being an "agitator" and brutally beaten by two black prison inmates on orders from white police officers. The painful effects of that severe beating never left her. The Justice Department later filed charges against the officials but the men were acquitted by an all-white jury. 

Two years later, in 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was organized in that state as an alternative to the regular Democratic party which then excluded blacks. Although the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party got more votes than the REGULAR Democratic party, they were refused seating privileges at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Hamer spoke on behalf of the Freedom delegation and described her beating before the entire convention, asking, "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we are threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings?" When the Democratic Party offered to seat only TWO of her party’s delegates, Hamer said, "We didn't come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired." If the challengers were not seated, she told a national television audience, "I question America." President Lyndon Johnson refused to support the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party because he was afraid of losing white southern support and so the delegation was not seated. However, Fannie Lou Hamer's voice had earned her support from all over the nation and was largely responsible for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965--the most important piece of civil rights legislation in more than half a century--making it illegal to deny ANY U.S. citizen the right to vote.

Two weeks ago at the Golden Globes Awards ceremony, Oprah Winfrey was presented with the Cecil B. Demille award for her lifetime contribution to the television and film industry. After being handed her statuette, she gave one of the most stirring speeches EVER at such a venue, one that not only brought the audience to their feet but even had people the next day clamoring for her to run for President. During her remarks, she referenced a black woman named Recy Taylor who had died only the week before at the age of 97. Well Recy Taylor had quite a story. You see, she was a young wife and mother of a two-year old daughter back in 1944. While walking home from church one evening, she was suddenly abducted, blindfolded, and then gang-raped by six men. Afterwards, they threw her out of the car and left her on the side of the road like a piece of trash. They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone but they weren’t TOO concerned for who would believe the word of a poor small black girl over that of six large and powerful white men, ESPECIALLY in Alabama. 

But Recy responded the only way she COULD- she used her voice. Refusing to be intimidated, she went to the local police and reported what had happened. After some investigation, the sheriff was able to identify her assailants. One of them even admitted they had sex with her, but he claimed it had been consensual and they had even paid her for it, implying she was no more than a prostitute. The next evening, vigilantes set her front porch on fire. For the next year, her father spent every night perched in a chinaberry tree overlooking the street with a shotgun in his hand. In addition to the emotional scars she suffered, the attack left her unable to have any more children.

As word of the crime spread throughout Alabama’s black community, the N.A.A.C.P.’s Montgomery chapter sent one of their own members down to represent her- a woman named Rosa Parks. Because none of the men were arrested and there was no lineup, the grand jury refused to indict anyone and the case was closed. But the injustice done to Recy Talor would NOT die and activists from all over the country continued to herald her cause. While the furor in the community and local press eventually subsided, the outrage among blacks across this nation only festered and grew, especially after most of the men admitted they had lied to the police as to what had happened that night.

At the conclusion of Oprah’s remarks, a speech intentionally aimed at men in positions of power and influence who for years sexually victimized much younger and more vulnerable women, she said this of Recy Taylor:

She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up. Their time is up. And I just hope--I just hope that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth, like the truth of so many other women who were tormented in those years, and even now tormented, goes marching on. It was somewhere in Rosa Parks' heart almost 11 years later, when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, and it's here with every woman who chooses to say, "Me too." And every man -- every man who chooses to listen.

And so we see how in such instances, God will often raise up a blind Bartimaeus to teach us how to see again- someone who when Jesus was passing by REFUSES to be kept down, REFUSES to keep quiet, REFUSES to have his or her identity and dignity stripped from them by others. If I seem overly-passionate about this issue it is not just because I served predominately Afro-American and immigrant congregations in and around Newark, N.J. for a decade but it is because those parishioners taught me something their history and their faith had long taught THEM. They said, "Pastor, we refuse to let ANYONE ever tell us that we're worthless and no good, to TELL us to sit down and shut up, to ORDER us to be quiet and to know our place for bigger and stronger and richer and more powerful people have been saying that to smaller and weaker and poorer people far too long. We won’t EVER be afraid to STAND UP AND SPEAK OUT AND CLAIM WHAT IS RIGHTFULLY OURS! We want our voices to be HEARD, David, because GOD AND JUSTICE is on our side!"

Well that’s precisely what we learn from our scripture text this morning, that Christ and justice is ALWAYS on our side, that NO ONE ever has to remain poor or powerless, blind or forgotten so long as JESUS is passing by. For all those who may be gay or lesbian and have been told they’re terrible sinners for simply loving another person of the same sex; for all those who suffer from disabilities which compel people to point and stare wherever they go; for all who may be Muslim or simply of Middle Eastern descent whom others may irrationally suspect as having terrorist ties; for every African-American who is denied housing or a job simply due to the color of his skin; for all those women who are told their place is in the home or are repeatedly denied advancement at their jobs because a glass ceiling is in place, or who are used and abused as sexual objects by more powerful men, believe me when I say that they have an advocate in Jesus Christ. For in spite of all the barriers and interference others may throw up in their way, they STILL have a voice, and if they muster the courage to call out to him as he passes by--and passing by he IS every moment of every day--they can be assured that their voice WILL be heard with the result that they will be marginalized and forgotten no longer. Amen and amen.