Sermons

---

What Do You Want?
June 1, 2003
Jeff Van Duzer
Sermon Series on Matthew
Matthew 20:29-34

This morning we are going to finish our little mini-series looking at questions Jesus asked. You may remember that a couple of weeks ago we looked at the question Jesus posed to his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” And then last week we looked at a question that he also asked his disciples: “Why do you doubt?” But today we come to a third question. This one is actually not posed to his disciples; rather it is posed to a couple of blind men along the side of the road. It is, to my way of thinking, one of the most haunting questions in all of the Gospels. Jesus asks: “What do you want me to do for you?”

It is a very simple question and it comes in the middle of a very simple text found in the 20th chapter of Matthew starting with the 29th verse.

“As they were leaving Jericho a large crowd followed him. And there were two blind men sitting by the roadside. And when they heard Jesus was passing by they shouted, ‘Lord have mercy on us Son of David.’ The crowd sternly ordered them to be quiet but they shouted even more loudly, ‘Have mercy on us Lord, Son of David.’ And Jesus stood still and called them saying, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Lord let our eyes be opened.’ And moved with compassion Jesus touched their eyes and immediately they regained their sight and followed him.”
-- Matthew 20:29-34 NRSV

It’s a very short, simple story. It takes place as Jesus and his disciples are leaving Jericho. Jericho is the last stop on Jesus’ walk to Jerusalem. You remember that Jesus did most of his ministry in the north end of Israel, in Galilee. At some point, however, he became convinced that it was his time to go to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. And so he starts the long walk toward the City of David and Jericho is the last stop before he gets there –- it’s a day’s walk from Jericho to Jerusalem. So as he is leaving Jericho he knows that that night he will arrive in Jerusalem. Jesus knows that Jerusalem is the place he is going to celebrate the Passover but also, as he has told his disciples, he knows it is the place where he will be arrested and killed. The day is now at hand to go into the city of Jerusalem.

The text says that there is a large crowd following him. This is probably true for a variety of reasons. There would have been a large crowd on this road even if Jesus weren’t there. Jews were, and in fact still are, encouraged to go to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Not every Jew could make it every year, but the population of Jerusalem would swell at Passover time and one of the most popular routes to Jerusalem was on this road through Jericho. There would have been a lot of people on this road whether or not Jesus was there. In some sense you could think of this as streams of pilgrims coming from all over Israel gathering in Jericho and now becoming a virtual river of humanity flowing on to Jerusalem.

But the text says the people were following Jesus, and these are no doubt people interested in him –- both brought from Galilee and picked up along the way. He continues to work miracles. He continues to be a very attractive personality. He speaks with authority. People are drawn to him. Moreover there was probably also a kind of messianic buzz about this. There was a sense that perhaps the long awaited Messiah –- that this Jesus just might be this person –- and that maybe, just maybe, in Jerusalem Jesus would take the wraps off and people could really see him for who he was. So perhaps this was something very important that was taking place -- a large crowd follows him.

There are two blind men sitting on the sides of the road. We don’t know very much about them. It seems likely, because of the last verse in which it says, “they regained their sight,” that these men had not been blind from birth but had somewhere along the line lost their sight. In the parallel passage in Luke we are told that they were beggars. This would be quite typical for a blind person in that society. There was no easy way for a blind person to be integrated into the active economy of the day. They were economically marginalized. They didn’t have many of the ways that now exist to make it easier for blind folks to be more fully integrated with the rest of society. They didn’t have Braille. They didn’t have seeing-eye dogs. They didn’t have traffic lights that went ‘bing.’ They didn’t have computers that could read text to them. And so in many cases the blind were relegated to scratching out an existence sitting by the sides of roads and crying out for alms. And that’s what these two blind men were doing.

Not only were the blind economically marginalized but they were also socially marginalized. The teaching of the day was that if you were a blind person, your blindness was because God had punished you for sin. You were not only blind but you were bad. In the religious ceremonies of the day you were excluded. Remember that Jewish males could go into the inner court of the temple. They couldn’t go into the Holy of Holies where God’s presence was to dwell, but they could go close, in the inner court. Except that they couldn’t do so if they were blind or lame. Such people were deemed defective. You remember from the Old Testament that it was an abomination to God to bring a blemished animal as a sacrifice. Well a blind person was deemed blemished and therefore an abomination to God. He was to be excluded from God’s presence.

And so in every way –- economically, socially, spiritually -– these men had been marginalized and pushed to the side of the road. And this great river of humanity flowing from Jericho to Jerusalem was flowing past them; they were stuck sitting on the banks.

They cry out, “Have mercy on us.” Now we don’t actually know what they’re asking for. Most commentators talk as if they are asking to be healed. They’ve heard about Jesus and they’re hoping that Jesus will heal them. But actually, we don’t know that for sure because the “have mercy on us” would also be a typical phrase used to ask for alms. “Have mercy” would be “could you make a donation?” It would be a kind of first century equivalent of the cardboard signs under the Ballard Bridge: “No work. Need everything. God bless. Have mercy.”
And so these blind men may have just been shouting for alms.

According to the scripture, as they shouted, the crowd “sternly ordered them to stop speaking.” Probably a more modern translation would be, “told them to shut up.” “Shut up!” Maybe because the crowds were trying to listen to Jesus and it was hard to hear, but more likely just because they were annoyed. These people were shouting and screaming; they were always doing this on the sidelines; and something important was happening here on this road and these people were carrying on like always.

“Shut up! You don’t have anything to do with what is going on here. Just, shut up.”

But they keep shouting, because they’ve learned over the years that they will be abused when they cry out for alms, and if they shut up every time they are told to they won’t receive the alms they need. And so they shout all the louder.

Now in one sense, up to this point in the story nothing unusual has really happened. Two blind men are at their usual place shouting for alms. By the side of the road. The flow of traffic is a little heavier than normal but that happens just before every Passover. They’re being abused, but that happens all the time. But then there’s a sense in which something most extraordinary, something most dramatic happens. We are told that “Jesus stood still, and called out to them saying, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And they said, ‘Lord we would like to receive our sight.’ And he’s filled with compassion, and he touches their eyes and they see.” And then with their renewed sight they come down from the banks and into the river of humanity –- they come to where Jesus is -– and they follow him -- on into Jerusalem and on into all the events that will unfold over the next week.

So, that’s the story. It’s a simple story. But simple stories like this always invite us to ask “so what?” What could this little story have to say to us, 2000 years later, half way around the world? And I’d like to make three observations about this story that I think may help answer that question.

First, this passage reminds us that Jesus never works from a base of strength. He never works out of power. Think about it. Jesus, at this point of the story, is at the absolute height of his popularity. This is the very last episode recorded in the Gospel of Matthew before Palm Sunday. Later this same day the crowds that came with him from Jericho are going to be met by crowds coming out from Jerusalem and there’s going to be this almost spontaneous eruption of shouts of Hosanna and other messianic assertions. Nowhere else in the Gospels are we closer to hearing a public acclamation of Jesus as king than will occur on this day. And the momentum for it is building in Jericho.

He is at his highest moment of popularity and anybody with a strategic bone in his body would recognize that this is the moment to be leveraged. This is the moment where one would leverage popularity and momentum to build alliances with the powerful people of the community. If it were one of us, we would have found those that had the power, that had the wealth, had the resources that could support us as we began to unfold our kingdom.

But Jesus never does that. He never looks to build that kind of base of power and strength. In fact in the two chapters (19 and 20) that Matthew uses to describe Jesus’ walk from Galilee to Jerusalem, the only people that Jesus seems to reach out to are two blind men sitting by the side of a road. Jesus consistently moves to the margins.

This is a message that comes through these two chapters over and over. Matthew has a whole series of little episodes that he puts together. Earlier in chapter 19 there are people trying to bring children to Jesus. They want him to lay hands on them and bless them. And the disciples, recognizing that children in that society were meaningless and without significance and that Jesus was important and on his way to do something very important, drove the kids away. In fact the language used is the same: “They sternly rebuke” the parents for having brought the children. And Jesus says, “no, no, no, no, no”: “Let the children come to me, for to such as these the kingdom of heaven is to be given.”

And then in the very next passage comes the rich young ruler. Now here’s a person with resources, with connections. Here’s a person with real capacity to help mobilize resources and significant people when they’re needed and, in effect, Jesus drives him away (or at least will accept him only on the condition that he dispossess himself of the very resources that make him such a valuable ally). Twice in these chapters Jesus uses the phrase, “the first will be last; the last will be first.” In the passage immediately preceding the one we are looking at today Jesus is talking with his disciples and he says, “if any of you wants to be great you need to be a servant.” If you want to be number one you need to be a slave. Over and over these passages talk about this reversal to remind us that Jesus never works from a base of power.

If you want to know where Jesus is at work in our world today and you read the gospels, what they will suggest is this: He is at work among the children, among the poor, among the unemployed, the chronically sick, the powerless, the economically displaced, and the religious and social misfits. That’s where Jesus is. He’s always moving to the margins. And that’s where we’re invited to go.

But it’s not just that he deals with powerless people. It’s also how he deals with them. You think about this (even as he has moved to the margin and is relating to these blind men along the side of the road) -- at the beginning of this exchange, he still has all the power. They’re the ones shouting out “pay attention to us, pay attention to us.” If Jesus just walks on by, they have no capacity to put themselves into the spotlight. It’s just Jesus who can bring them in. They’re the beggars. They are the supplicants. “O give us, please give us something.”’ Jesus is the one that has everything. That’s the power relationship at the beginning. But Jesus changes everything with this one question: What do you want me to do for you?

This is a great reversal. For years, these blind beggars had been told that they counted for nothing. They were at best an annoyance. Their desires were completely inconsequential. But by asking the question, Jesus elevates their status -– he says, in effect, “Oh no -- what you want counts for a great deal. I need to know what you want.” And at the same time that he elevates their dignity, he changes his position. Instead of being the one who is going to come and fix everything he puts himself in the position of a humble, vulnerable servant; he says to them, “How can I help? What do you want? What can I do to help you?” He turns it upside down.

Probably my favorite picture of what the opposite of this looks like came from a time when Margie and I went to Nicaragua to visit Lori when she was working down there a few years ago. Lori took us out to this very hot, dry, dusty village where she had been working on a number of projects. While she was showing us the different projects she had been working on, we kept noticing, on the top of a little hill, an asphalt basketball court. The asphalt was all buckled, with grass coming up and cracks all over; it looked to be in terrible disrepair. The basketball hoops were also bent and the nets were long gone. It just looked awful. And so I asked Lori, “What’s that? What’s supposed to be happening? It doesn’t look like it’s been getting a lot of use.”

“Well,” Lori explained, “a government relief agency came in a few years ago and felt like this community really needed a community gathering place -- a place where kids would come together and the families could gather around. So they thought that if they could build this basketball court, at the end of the day, when it was a little cooler, kids would come down and shoot hoops, and it would serve that function.”

And I said, “Well it doesn’t look like much is happening there. It’s not working. Why not?”

She said, “Well, actually people in Nicaragua don’t really like basketball very much. They love baseball, but they just don’t play basketball. And so nobody’s ever really used that court.”

This is what happened: Somebody from the outside with all the resources, all the power, came in and said, “I see the problem. I can fix it.” No one ever asked, “What do you want us to do for you?”

You see -- you and I are called not only to go to the margins of society, but when we get there, we are called to come not as saviors but as servants. Jesus never works from a base of power and strength.

A second observation about this text: This text reminds us that God loves and desires relationship. It’s a relational passage.

A few years ago I went to a PGA golf tournament over on the Eastside. I know nothing about golf. I don’t play golf. I don’t follow golf. But I was told this was a big deal because the PGA doesn’t come to the Northwest very often. So when a client gave me a couple tickets I went on over. I was told that there were a lot of famous golfers there. I recognized Tiger Woods, but the rest of them just looked like men with metal sticks.

But there were, apparently, a bunch of them that were famous, and you could tell this because people were trying to get their autographs. There were a lot of people trying to get autographs. I quickly learned that it was not proper etiquette to try to get an autograph while the golfers are teeing off or hitting a putt. Rather autographs were to be obtained between holes when the golfers would walk down paths often marked, or set apart, by ropes on either side. The crowds could come in to the ropes and then reach in and try to hand the golfers visors, caps, or programs for them to sign.

I remember one golfer who walked pretty steadily down through one of these paths as people would stick in things for him to sign. And he would grab their things to autograph, but never stop. He would take his pen and he would sign, as he walked and then throw the autographed items back over his shoulder to the people who had given them to him in the first place. And as I thought about that, I thought on the one hand a lot of people who wanted autographs got their autographs. But they never had even a moment of contact with this golfer. There was never a moment of relationship. They got something, but not relationship.

Now I suppose that Jesus could have walked down the middle of that road and hearing these people cry out, could have simply shouted as he walked by: “You’re healed. Eyes open.” But Jesus never does that. The most amazing thing that Jesus does here is that he stops. He stops.

You could hardly imagine a person being more focused than Jesus was at this point. We are told earlier in the Gospels, “He had set his face on Jerusalem.” He knew that Jerusalem was to be the place where his whole life was to gather in a single point of meaning. He knew that in less than a week he would be dead in the city of Jerusalem. And he was one day away. You could hardly imagine anyone being more focused.

In my job as the Dean of the School of Business I get to read various books on leadership and management. I also find many people wanting a piece of my time or needing this or needing that. I often feel pulled in lots of different directions. And what these books will tell you is that a good leader will pick out two or three key goals and then will pursue them at all costs. “Figure out the hill you want to take” (it’s always military terms –- ‘take the hill’) and anything that helps you get there you can embrace, but anything that gets in the way is a distraction and should be pushed aside. And I will tell you that a few times I have tried this strategy but what I have always found is that in pushing aside distractions, I’m pushing aside people. And Jesus never did that. As focused as he was, Jesus never seemed to have too little time to be interrupted. I always perceive interruptions as things that are keeping me from getting to where I’m supposed to go. And Jesus always perceives of interruptions as opportunities to build a relationship. And so he stops.

Now he doesn’t just stop. He goes over, or they come to him -- it’s not clear from the text. But they get close and he asks this question, “What do you want me to do for you?” I think one of the reasons Jesus asks that question is because when you ask a question you invite an answer. And a question and an answer is the beginning of a conversation. You see, I think Jesus could have gone over and just healed their eyes. But he wants -- even more than their healing -- the relationship, the conversation, the fellowship. And so he asks the question and invites the answer.

And then when they tell him they want their eyes healed it says he’s “filled with compassion.” This word compassion is intensely relational. Com – passion. To suffer with. It’s a strong word in the Greek. It means from the guts. And so as these beggars said please open our eyes Jesus feels the agony of having been blind for all those years. He is filled with compassion. And then he does this most intimate thing -- to total strangers -- he reaches over and he touches their eyes. Their eyesight comes back. But that doesn’t end the encounter because they use their renewed vision to follow him, to draw closer to him. The whole episode is built around deepening the relationships. It’s not that Jesus doesn’t care just about their problems, about their eyesight. He does. But he uses the healing as an occasion to deepen relationship.

And this made me think about prayer. A lot of times people will ask, “Why do we have to pray? Doesn’t God know what we need even before we ask?” And the answer is yes, God knows. But God isn’t just interested in just answering your request or making things better. He’s interested in the relationship. So when you ask and He answers, you start the conversation. And that’s what prayer is really about. Building that relationship with God. I tend to think of my prayer time more like that golfer. I submit my petition to God, and He can just walk right by and say, “Yes. No. Ask three more times. In another week.” And then just throw it back over the shoulder for me to catch. But that’s not the way God thinks of prayer. God sees in prayer an opportunity for relationship. He’s intensely interested in relationship.

Third observation. This question, “What do you want me to do for you?’, if approached honestly, is always a very hard question. I think it is easy to read this text and think, wow, how dumb. People come up to Jesus, blind, and he says, ”What do you want me to do for you?” Hello Jesus, kind of obvious isn’t it?

But I don’t think it was anywhere near that simple. I think that when these blind folks asked for their eyesight, that was a scary request. You see, up to this point they were scratching out an existence. It wasn’t a particularly nice existence, but they were making it work and they had a routine. It was familiar. If Jesus were to change that, to give them their eyesight back, it would throw everything up in the air. It was a scary stretch. I wonder if they weren’t tempted to say, “Well how about a particularly large donation?” “How about a small sermon to your disciples about the importance of being generous to those on the sidelines?” There might have been some safer requests, but something about the way Jesus asks invites them to stretch to the edge of what they know they really want, and they ask for it. This question always makes you stretch.

I had a good friend who was a wonderful, giving person. She would do almost anything for anybody. And she could see God’s hand at work in other peoples’ lives in amazing ways. One time I was taking a walk with her and I said to her, “What do you think you would say if God said to you, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” And she thought for a while and then she said, “This question makes me tremble.” And I could actually see her trembling. “I don’t know how to answer this question. I feel bad thinking in terms of God asking me what I want. I shouldn’t want things.” And it made her realize, and it made me realize, how deeply inside she didn’t feel loved by God. She didn’t feel important. This is a hard question. It takes you to hard places.

My strongest encounter with this passage came in a prayer time. In our home group we were using a guided meditation as an aid to our prayers. For those of you who don’t know, a guided meditation is a way of praying with your imagination. It includes your imagination into your prayer life. The way it works is that a leader will tell a story, usually, but not always, a Biblical story. She will invite you to imagine yourself into the story as a character. Often she will fill in the story with details to make it easier to imagine you are there. And then as the story unfolds and you’re imagining yourself in it, the leader stops talking and says, “Let your imagination and prayer take you the rest of the way.” And so we were using this blind men story, and I was seeing myself as one of the blind men, and the leader led us up to the point where Jesus looked at me and said, “What do you want me to do for you?” And then the leader stopped talking and said, “Now in your imagination see what happens.”

This is very unusual for me –- it’s probably only happened twice in my life but for probably 10 to 15 minutes I could hear a conversation between me and Jesus take place. Distinctly hear back and forth. In this conversation I tried an answer. I said, “Jesus, I guess what I really want is to walk closely with you all the days of my life.” And Jesus said to me, “No. Nice try. Nice religious answer. But that is not what you really want.” Oh, OK. I tried something else. Still something sounding pretty good. And Jesus said, “Nope, sorry. Try again. I need to know what you want.”

This went on and on. And Jesus was NOT gentle. Jesus was not nice. Jesus was, “NO, that’s not IT!” Finally, at the end of this time, in tears I said, “I don’t know what I want.” And Jesus said, “That’s right. But I do, and I’ll take you there.”

This is a hard question. It’s a question, if you really deal with it seriously, that threatens to stir things up and to burrow down. But it’s a good question for that reason.

This morning we get to celebrate Communion. And Communion is a place that brings all this together. At the Communion table we celebrate the victory over sin and death but we’re reminded that this victory happened not because Jesus dealt from strength, but because he dealt from weakness. It’s his “broken body” and his “poured out blood” that made victory possible.

At communion we don’t come to a big stone or even to the foot of a cross. We come to a table. And we come to a table because a table is a place of fellowship. A table is a place where we gather together in fellowship, where the host of the table wants to fellowship - to be in relationship with us. And we’re reminded of that in Communion.

But we’re also invited to come to Communion just as we are. And so I would encourage you, as you prepare for Communion today, to let this question roll around inside of you. Let Jesus ask you, “What do you want me to do for you?” And then as that stirs things up, bring whatever that stirs up to this table. Because it’s that place -– that really authentic place in you -– that’s invited to this table. You don’t need any religious superficial persona to put on over that. It is ‘that person’ that is invited. It is ‘that person’ that the host loves. It is ‘that person’ that the host is waiting to serve. So bring that person to the table.

Let’s pray.

Jesus thanks so much for the way you do everything differently. Thank you that you care more about weakness than about power. Thank you that you care more about relationship than in producing something. And thank you that you love us, genuinely, for who we are. We pray that you would enable us to know ourselves, and our walks with you, more clearly and more openly with each passing day. We pray this in your name. Amen.