Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I have discovered in my life and in my experience with others that the joy of incompetence is that an incompetent person does not know that he or she is incompetent. When we accuse someone of being incompetent, the problem is not their lack of skill or expertise. It’s more about that person’s blindness to their lack of talent, expertise or skill.

For instance, I cannot do equations in Calculus, but I know that I cannot use the Calculus. I, therefore, am not incompetent. I am simply unskilled or ignorant, and I am not blind to my inability.

What happens when someone enters a situation claiming to have talent or a particular knowledge or skill when in reality they do not have such ability? The first thing that happens is that the people involved are disturbed and troubled by the disruption caused by someone who attempts to do things that he or she simply cannot do. The blindness of the incompetent one also makes it difficult for the others involved. If they criticize the incompetent, that is, blind one, they encounter incredulity and often are rejected as malicious attackers. The situation can escalate rapidly into insult and shame, anger and conflict.

On this Reformation Sunday it is good for us to remember that the reformers were highly aware of the human propensity toward incompetency, especially when we try to put ourselves in the place of God. Luther saw his struggle with the Medieval Church as a call back to the First of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods.” Not only were the kings not God, but the one holding the highest office of the Church was not God. Therefore, the Christian is not bound to unquestioning obedience to the pope. The Reformation was a call to put one’s faith in God.

Luther saw the Church Hierarchy’s claim to absolute truth as yet one more example of hubris, an arrogant claim to be able to do more than one is able. In fact, the claim to speak with absolute authority on behalf of God resulted in the Vatican’s breaking the First Commandment. Such claims led to blindness toward one’s true status. Those who opposed were subjected to persecution, intimidation, fear-mongering, and the threat of death, all of which Luther experienced.

The Vatican was incompetent to fulfill its claims of certainty and absolute authority. After all it had been only 100 years since there was chaos in the split between popes and anti-popes who headquartered in Rome and in Avignon, France respectively. After the Avignon period ended, the magisterium in Rome had become blind to its own limitations as a human institution. To this day the main point of division between Lutherans and Roman Catholics is the question regarding the authority of the Bishop of Rome. Is the papal office divinely instituted by God or is it a human institution which has the potential of serving God? Luther and Melanchthon answered that it was a human institution capable of evil as so much of good. And they were willing to suffer for asserting such a view.

Now we come to the Gospel reading today, the story of blind Bartimaeus. As a blind man Bartimaeus is an outsider, an outcast. There are some commentators who suggest that Bartimaeus in its Aramaic form means, “Son of the unclean.” Bartimaeus is blind, but Bartimaeus knows that he is blind. He is not incompetent.

The disciples, on the other hand, are blind but they do not know they are blind. The mission travels of Jesus with his disciples led from Jewish territory to Gentile territory. The Gospel of Mark refers to this journey as “on the way.”

Jesus was teaching and proclaiming that the kingdom of God was drawing near. His actions showed clearly that Jesus saw the kingdom in its universal scope. The kingdom was coming to Jew and Gentile alike. No matter what Jesus taught, no matter what territories Jesus led them through, the disciples remained blind to the meaning of Jesus’s words and deeds. He turns to his disciples and asks, “Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?” (Mark 8:18)

It gets worse. As Jesus continues his journey along the way, he begins to teach the ethical lessons of God’s kingdom and Jesus’ role in its coming. Three times Jesus predicts that the Son of Man would suffer, die and rise again from the dead. Each time the prediction is made, the disciples reject Jesus’ teaching. Peter rejects it outright so that Jesus calls him Satan because he is thinking like humans and not in the manner of God. Following the second passion prediction, Jesus catches the disciples arguing who will be greatest in the kingdom.

After the third prediction two disciples—unable to see the heavenly vision of the kingdom—go to Jesus. Without hesitation they ask him to give them power when he enters his glory. Of course, the reader is beginning to understand that the glory of Jesus is not his earthly power, but rather his divine power made manifest through his obedience to the non-violent, suffering model of Isaiah’s suffering servant. The Son of Man comes not to be served, but to serve and offer his life, a ransom for many.

The disciples are excited. They are on the way to the capital city, the City of David, Jerusalem. They think they are on the road to political power. Jesus has been teaching them that the road to godly power is the way of faithfulness to God’s will. This path will of necessity lead to suffering because those who are in power are unnerved by those who reject their excessive claims and their abusive, violent ways.

Jesus leaves Jericho and takes the road for Jerusalem. Along the way he passes by a blind beggar names Bartimaeus. The blind man calls out, “Son of David, Jesus, have mercy on me.” (Mark 8:47) The disciples had just been warned not to hinder the children from coming to Jesus. Now the crowd shushes the blind man, who cries out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” (Vs. 48) Jesus commands them to let Bartimaeus approach. When he does, Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you.”

Now Jesus had asked this same question of the Zebedee brothers, James and John. Their answer was, “Lord, grant that we may sit at your right hand and your left when you come into your glory.” Jesus’ answer is striking. “You do not know what you are asking.” They are blind to the meaning of Jesus’ glory and power. When Jesus comes into his glory, it is on a cross with two insurrectionists, one on his right and one on his left. The two disciples are exposed as incompetent.

Jesus asks blind man Bartimaeus, “What do you want that I do for you?” He answers, “Rabbi, let me see again.” Jesus says, “you’re good to go” and Jesus sends him on his way, but the gospel tells us that the blind man who can now see follows Jesus “on the way.”

Dear congregation, how many times in our lives do we face the limitations of our talents and abilities. There is no judgment in our acknowledgment of our finitude. We are free to be who we are.

How often in life do we struggle to admit that we have made greater claims for ourselves than we, in fact, merit. How often do we clamber in the admission that we are incompetent and are not gods. Where the church encounters the use of intimidation, force, violence and death, the church must stand and declare, “you shall have no other gods.”

This is what happened under the Stalinist, atheistic, dictatorship of East Germany. For forty years, the church was subjected to persecution. Families were bullied. Their children were excluded from the highest schools. They were disadvantaged with respect to those who took up the atheistic mantel of Stalinism.

But the church—forming a small remnant in East German communist society—sensed instinctively that the official establishment of atheism in society meant that the state had assumed the role of God. We now know that the state for all its propaganda was incompetent. It was incapable of running an economy. It refused to establish justice, and its effort at peace was to use the threat of nuclear arms.

The Christians declared, “you shall have no other gods.” They also took seriously the teaching of Jesus that renounced violence as a means of achieving a good and just society. They were also willing to suffer persecution when they opened the church doors to all to come in and to pray for peace. And they took the risk with thousands of other citizens to go to the streets in peaceful demonstration for change.

For this reason one member of the Parliament of the European Union representing Germany, declared, “The Peaceful Revolution was a Protestant revolution.” It was Protestant in so far as it proclaimed that there is one God and the way of Jesus represents God well. Violence was to be shunned in any attempt to form a good and just society. And the people were willing to suffer in order to bring about the transformation that happened twenty years ago in Leipzig and in Berlin and in many cities throughout East Germany.

Would that the church in America could grasp the meaning of a Protestant Revolution. Let us abandon our incompetence and acknowledge the gifts that are ours from God, putting them to peaceful use while willing to suffer rather than to cause suffering in order to faithfully witness to the Lordship of Christ over all creation.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.