Of course, it's an odd question - asked because it's obvious that nobody is serving you! It makes a bit more sense when the question is a polite "Can I help you?" If we are nearing a decision - or if we are lost and need to be pointed somewhere else! - we are glad of help. But if we are on a non-committal browse, we simply reply, "No, thanks!"
When someone rings Life Line, it is a different matter. "Life Line, can I help you?" is the expected response. The question is the cue to begin pouring out the problem. The person has phoned Life Line because they know they need help. The telephone counsellor has been waiting for the phone to ring with some such need. The counsellor has been trained and ready to respond to such a call.
Just before today's reading, Mark has recounted that James and John came to Jesus with a bold request, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask" (Mk 10.35). In reply, Jesus asked with a direct question, "What do you want me to do for you?" (v. 36)
Their request was, "Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory" (v. 37). It was an audacious request, but they had no idea really what was involved in what they were asking. They believed that Jesus would enter Jerusalem, become king - and they would like the top places in his "cabinet".
They still didn't understand that Jesus would suffer and die, that on the cross he would be flanked by two criminals - one cursing, the other repentant. As Jesus would say to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world…" (Jn 18.36).
Both James and John would suffer and die for their faith, but Jesus wouldn't be allocating the places of honour on his right and left hand - "These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared" (Mk 10.40).
Yes, Jesus the Son of God had limitations on what he could do. Throughout his ministry he lived and acted in response to the Father. He insisted, "By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me" (Jn 5.20). He was doing "the works that my Father has given me to finish" (v. 36; 10.32,37). He had come to speak, not his own words, but words from the Father (14.10).
Now in today's reading about Bartimaeus we hear Jesus asking exactly the same question.
Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, are coming out of Jericho. They are on their way to Jerusalem. A blind beggar, Bartimaeus, hears that Jesus of Nazareth is passing through and starts calling out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" And when embarrassed bystanders try to quieten him down, he becomes even more insistent, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" (Mk 10.47-48)
He was, by the way, saying more about Jesus than the crowd at this point. Jesus, was, of course, from Nazareth - a place of little significance. To have come from Nazareth protected his identity. There were good reasons for him to be brought up in Nazareth instead of Bethlehem, his place of birth. But to call him "Son of David" is to affirm him as the Messiah. In the next chapter we hear this title being given to him by the Palm Sunday crowd as he enters Jerusalem.
But in the present reading we hear that same question again - the question to James and John - "What do you want me to do for you?"
Theodore Monod was once telling a little friend about Christ healing blind Bartimaeus. "And what," he said to the boy, "would you have asked from Jesus if you had been blind?" "Oh," the child said, with glowing face and sparkling eyes, "I would have asked him for a nice little dog with a collar and chain, to lead me about!"
Bartimaeus doesn't ask for a guide dog, but for seeing eyes - "Rabbi, I want to see" (v. 51). Obvious? And yet he needs to say it. It may seem strange to us, but there was something secure and comfortable in being a beggar. It was the life he knew, the situation he had long since come to terms with. Regaining his sight, he would have to relate to everybody in a different way altogether - and he would have to work for a living.
Jesus? Is this Jesus? Is this Jesus of Nazareth? Is this the one everyone has been talking about? Then I must meet him too! Is that all there was to it? No, already he speaks of his need, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" "What do you want me to do for you?" "Rabbi, I want to see!"
"Go," says Jesus, "your faith has healed you." Immediately he receives his sight and follows Jesus along the road (v. 52) - he becomes part of the crowd that is identifying with Jesus as he comes towards Jerusalem.
Do we have a personal "wish list"? What sort of things do we want Jesus to do for us?
Jesus put it so simply in the Sermon on the Mount, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" (Mt. 7.7-11)
James comments, "You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (Jas 4.2d,3).
God always answers our prayers. But his answer isn't always "Yes" - the answer was "No" for James and John. Sometimes his answer is "Wait" - and in "seeking" and "knocking" our motives and even our request may need to change.
Yes… No… Wait… What do we want Jesus to do for us? He asks us to make our request - even when, like Bartimaeus, our need seems obvious! There are areas where our life is comfortable but unsatisfactory. Making our request may lead to radical changes.
What do we want Jesus to do for us? Is our underlying request selfish, self-centred, self-exalting? Or do we come asking that we may see - see his love, see his forgiving redeeming grace, see his compassion for others? Are we ready for the complete transformation that will be involved in allowing Jesus to heal us, bringing sight and light, love and grace?
We pride ourselves in our wholeness, yet too often act like beggars - extracting from society all that we possibly can, believing that the country and the government somehow "owe it to us". In a way James and John were like that in their relationship with Jesus - seeking to draw from him all the personal advantages they could. Their request was very inward, self-seeking, self-exalting. By contrast, we see Bartimaeus reaching out, prepared for change, ready to follow this one who has offered him healing and life.
With eyes wide open, we too can follow him along the road - no longer one of society's beggars, but one of those who know we have received freely and are now free to give.
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