Friday: Week 4 in Lent Year B

Lent for Everyone
Mark Year B
WEEK 4 FRIDAY...

...One of the best sermons I have heard for a long time was an exposition of this passage. It took the theme of the blind man’s cloak. The cloak, the preacher pointed out, was the man’s security. Shade in summer, warmth in winter, it functioned as the outer shell, like a small tent, in which the few possessions the man had could be kept in such relative security as a blind man could expect.

All the more startling, then, that when they told Bartimaeus that Jesus was calling him, ‘he flung his cloak aside’, jumped up, and came to Jesus. This stands (so the preacher pointed out) as a signpost to all of us. It takes time, perhaps, for us to acquire enough self-knowledge to see what the ‘cloak’ is in which we sit, huddled but relatively secure. There may be many things, not just possessions (though those are likely to be high on our lists), which function for us as the cloak functioned for the blind man. And when Jesus calls, the sign that we are ready to do business with him is that we fling it aside. ‘It’s time to shed the cloak,’ the preacher repeated...

Taken from Lent for Everyone Mark Year B by Tom Wright