"Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" The blind man shouts again and again. "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Bartimaeus was so out of control it was embarrassing and possibly annoying to everyone around him. "Many sternly ordered him to be quiet," Mark tells us. I can think of the many times I've encountered mentally disordered people shouting in the streets and wishing with all my heart, "if only he would just stop!" There is something visceral in this reaction, I think. On the one hand there is always the lingering thought and fear that, there but for the grace of God, go I. That could be me! But, it's more than that. Like the person on the street, we too have our inner burdens, fears, and difficulties. They run deep and they run silent. So much so, we are at times afraid that if we ever gave them voice and truly let go, we too could be like that crazy person shouting out to the air. We long to be free, but don't know the way out.

But, despite the opinion of the crowd, Bartimaeus is not just wildly shouting. He is addressing Jesus by name and calling with all his strength for mercy. They tell him to stop and he cries out even more loudly, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!" This is not mere raving, but a deep cry of the heart. He cries out to Jesus with all his heart and soul not caring how he appears or what others think. In the gospel he isn't anonymous. He is a person, Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus. He is known, an individual, perhaps a beloved son. But here he is, blind, and so, a beggar by the roadside. His burdens can only be imagined.

He calls out to Jesus begging for the mercy of God. We tend to think of mercy as a form of forgiveness, which it is. But, on a more fundamental level, it's more than that. It is the gift of God's love, and our acceptance of that love. That is the ultimate gift of divine mercy.

So, holding back nothing, and with nothing left but a sense of his entire dependance on God, Bartimaeus calls out for God, his sole desire. And amid the noise and confusion of the large crowd of disciples, followers, the curious, and various hangers on, all setting out from Jericho, Jesus hears this lone voice. He stops right in his tracks. Completely present to Bartimaeus's call, Jesus asks for him. And Bartimaeus, on his part, unmindful of what may have been his only possession, his cloak, leaps up to Jesus. It's a twofold action, letting go of everything but desire for God, and God's ready gift. And in that gift there is renewed sight and wholeness. All at once Bartimaeus is free and free to follow Jesus on a new road into a new life.

We are accustomed to reaching out to God, be it in prayer, in worship, in our love of others, or just the inclination of our heart to God. And, so we often experience and know the presence of God in our lives. And yet, we hold back. We are beset by all the many troubles and turmoils that seem so integral to human existence. Our work and responsibilities cause us stress and anxiety. We are by turns judgmental, fearful, sad, angry, depressed, joyful, what have you. The list is endless. It seems we're never free.

But, calling out for mercy is something different, something hard for us. It would mean bringing everything to God. It would mean facing our situation and the truth about ourselves as it really is. It would mean really letting it all go. It would mean a faith in our radical dependence on God's mercy, on God's love.

Perhaps it would be different if we were there watching Jesus pass by. He calls you. You come before him, the Divine Beloved. He asks, "What would you like me to do for you?" His voice like a mellow scented honey pouring over you, rich and sweet, dissolving you so in love that you can know and be in that moment, nothing else. And his eyes, there to loose yourself, completely merged in a limitless sea, itself the pure state of being where there is no time, just the now that is eternal, and at long last you are One, divine mercy complete. But, while we sometimes in life are given glimpses of the divine reality, we are for the most part more aware of the disjunction than the union. (Pause)

There are a few of you here who know me well enough to know that, while I am deeply grateful for the many gifts God has given me, musical talent is not among them. Not at all. I don't play an instrument and am an indifferent singer. I try to learn to read music, but it just won't click somehow. I am a serious music lover, but without the slightest capacity for performance. Even in pre-school here in Woodstock this was the case. There she would be, dear, smiling, MaryDee, playing a record and asking us to clap in a joyful unity with the wonderful sounds. And there I would be, just slightly off. And knowing it too, and just not able to really do much about it.

And so last spring I thought now is the time to tackle my musical problem. I decided to take an Introduction of Music class at Yale where I am in seminary. This would get me over my bad self and have the added advantage of being at long last the gut class I so richly deserved, But, nothing could have proved farther from the case. I stumbled, fell behind, tried to catch up, and never quite got it. The whole thing ended up in a highly subjective nightmare in which incapacity, heretofore largely theoretical because so seldom explored, was to find full expression before an audience, the entire Divinity School, no less. In the end I was somehow able to warble out an accapella chant, that was, I am more happy to say than you can know, at least adequate.

A few weeks later in my summer work as a chaplain in a nursing home I and a colleague were conducting three mid-day services a week. My new friend, David, played the gitar and we both sang three hymns together. I found myself enjoying it more and more and the audience was forgiving and receptive. Actually they were desperate. In fact it soon became clear that music had a transformative effect. It brought spark to the lifeless, peace to the agonized, and created a human warmth where there had been a collection of suffering individuals bearing a burden of depersonalization, caught in an institution that, by necessity, put its own needs first. Our signature number was Amazing Grace, but we began to take hymn requests. We would learn the ones we didn't know and soon people began to join in the singing.

I decided to bring some of the patients together to form a choir. It was a rag tag group, as you might imagine. There were about six core members. Lois, an African American woman in her late 70's was raised in the South and her spirituality was centered in her hymns. She was the group leader. Of the others, some could sing and some could barely make a sound. But when they made music together they reached new levels of individual and collective capacity. And, most importantly, here was joy. Delores, was the most remarkable of all. For forty years she had been in the choir of her church. She knew every hymn. She spent her days strapped to a chair in a semi-upright position, half sitting and standing so she wouldn't drown in her own pulmonary fluid. She was indebated, a tube down her throat strapped to her neck. The only sound she could make was an occasional uncontrollable gurgle. The ravages of Diabetes had required repeated amputations at her extremities. She was trapped in a body that could not really support life and yet would not die. But, she never missed choir time, not once.

I decided it would be fun if the group would give a concert for the entire nursing home. The group leapt at the idea. We rehearsed for weeks. The big day was to be our last day of work, our farewell. It was to be an EVENT. But, it was touch and go for a while. Capacities came and went, some were in and out of the hospital. Some were in an out of functional consciousness. But, a core group hung on. The big day came at last.

The group was great. Better than ever before. It was overwhelming. As we sang Amazing Grace, our final number, I looked up at Delores. There she was strapped to her tortuous chair, her mouth moving as she could, a faint emulation of speech. But she made music the only way she could with the one finger left on her single functioning hand moving like this to the beat of the music (I raise my hand level with my face, my index finger pointing upward, flexing it to an imaginary tempo).

Her face was radiant. I looked at her eyes. She was far away, transfixed. She was enraptured in the limitless sea of the Divine Beloved. I could see its reflection and knew what it was. While the rest of us were inching our way along with our partial answers and qualified acceptance, Dolores begged, "Jesus have mercy on me!" In the depth and sincerity of that plea, Jesus answered, "Your faith has made you well." And so, Delores was set free.