“And they came to Jericho; and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great multitude, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.”

(Mark 10:46)

Do you know how to draw the graph, or diagram, of life? It’s very simple. This story of Jesus and the disciples and blind Bartimaeus is one place where it is made plain.

Here’s how we draw the graph of life: one heavy, straight line drawn diagonally upward. Then a lighter line, drawn beneath the heavy line, but strictly parallel with it, upward. Then, beneath, just one dot, almost non-existent, barely distinguishable. Now, that’s the graph of life, the diagram of personality, for your life, my life, all life. Think about it and take it in: One heavy, straight line drawn diagonally upward — a second line, lighter, but strictly parallel to the heavy line — and beneath, a tiny dot.

The gospel story of Bartimaeus furnishes the commentary for this graph. The heavy, straight line is Jesus, with His face set steadfastly to go to Jerusalem to suffer all things in fulfilling the counsels of God for Him and thereby to save all men from their sin. Jesus is the perfect life blazed across the trail of history, mounting up to God by the road to Jerusalem.

The second line drawn parallel, but lighter, represents the disciples and all others who travel the road with Jesus. One of the favorite ways of teaching, employed by the rabbis in Jesus’ day, was that of talking with their pupils or followers as they walked the road to religious festivals. The disciples of Jesus and the crowd travelling with Him from Jericho to Jerusalem were on their way to the Passover. As they walked Jesus taught them. Eagerly they listened to catch from Him not only the direction they should take, but also the power to push on toward their appointed goal.

Phillips Brooks once said: “Every true life has its Jerusalem to which it is always going up: it’s goal or purpose. One person’s Jerusalem is fame, another — wealth, another — family, another — profession. To each you say, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Why all the fluster?’ And each responds: ‘Behold, we go up to Jerusalem.’”

The third mark on the graph of life is the dot — the almost indistinguishable speck. This is the uncommitted life. In the gospel story it is blind Bartimaeus, “sitting by the roadside” begging. Here is life’s lowest social cipher — not a part of any movement or motion in life — a castaway, an immovable, unmotivated speck of protoplasm.

Matthew Arnold once wrote:

“Most men eddy about

Here and there — eat and drink,

Chatter and love and hate,

Gather and squander, are raised

Aloft, are hurled in the dust.

Striving blindly, achieving

Nothing; and then they die —

Perish; — and no one asks

Who or what they have been,

More than he asks what waves,

In the moonlit solitudes mild

Of the midmost ocean, have swelled,

Foamed for a moment, and gone.” (Rugby Chapel)

This is the graph of life — two parallel lines and a dot. That’s all there is to it, before the drama starts.

The action begins with the cry of the castaway: “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” How did blind Bartimaeus know that Jesus was passing by? How did he get the notion that the carpenter of Nazareth should be addressed with the Messianic title — “Son of David”? Undoubtedly, he had been listening to the rumors of the crowds. He had grasped in his despair and desolation the fragments of hope that had fallen on his ears from the expressed notions and convictions of those who had seen and heard Jesus, though he had never seen nor heard Him. “Jesus, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.” Insistent, raucous, shamelessly, the blind beggar cried. The non-descript, immobile dot, the castaway by life’s highway begins to make a loud noise.

What makes the tiny dots, the homeless multitudes, the worthless castaways, the blind beggars, the desperate souls of all the centuries and cultures and countries clamor with noise and racket unspeakable: “Jesus, Thou son of David, have mercy on me?” Why, hearing the gospel, the proclaiming of the good news, the presence of the Holy Spirit — this gives hope to the hopeless. It makes the most rejected and beaten of men and women cry out in faith, “Lord, have mercy.”

But the reaction of the disciples and the crowd to the interruption of Bartimaeus is one big SHUSH. “Be quiet,” they tell the beggar. “We are listening to the teaching of the Master. Don’t disturb Him. The crowd on the road with Jesus chided the beggar for bringing his troubles to Jesus. To their massive ignorance such things as poverty and affliction had nothing to do with Jesus.

Crowds on the highways and in the big cities today still make the same rebuff about the homeless, hungry and destitute. “Be quiet, there is no use to cry to Jesus. Poverty and need are not his business. Let the church stay out of economic questions. Be still.” The complete answer to that is what Jesus did. He stopped and said: “Call him.” He demonstrated that all human need is His business.

Who are the castaways by our highway of life calling, “Christ, have mercy?” Are they the inmates of nursing homes day by day decaying in mind and soul as well as body for want of some sign that someone genuinely cares? Are they the young frequenters of those drug dens and crack houses and honky-tonks wasting away in unmotivated passions of youth? Are they the cast-off spirits of a society who have come to feel there is no hope for them really to belong — like that rebellious young author who wrote that it was not any violent act or word of rejection that blighted his soul — just the “ritual insensitivity of the clean, the white, the well-fed?”

But the decisive act in the drama of life is Jesus’ immediate response to the cry of faith asking for mercy. “It is tremendously impressive to see how Jesus turns his attention from the many to the one. He gave priority to persons — to any person at the point of need. On His agenda one beggar, single-handed could put a thousand to flight.” (Halford Luccock)

“And Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And the blind man said to him, ‘Master, let me receive my sight.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well.’” (Mark 10:49-52)

As important as teaching is — important as truth-spoken is — to Jesus, more important is action — saving action. When the need arises and the call for help comes from life’s castaways, Jesus stops everything and rushes to the side of the suppliant.

A telephone magazine advertisement some time ago told the story of Pedro Rodriguez, a resourceful eight-year-old boy who lived in New York. When his Easter vacation rolled round, Pedro went to visit relatives in Boonton, N.Y. But Pedro grew homesick and slipped away on his bicycle he had with him and started for New York City. After seven hours of pedaling through strange streets and towns, Pedro realized that he was hopelessly lost. It was ten o’clock at night and he had only a quarter in his pocket. Through the darkness Pedro saw the light of an outdoor public telephone booth. He dropped his quarter in the slot and dialed, “Operator.”

Mrs. Anna Appleton, Night Chief Operator in Bloomfield, N.J., took over the handling of his call. Pedro knew few English words and Mrs. Appleton couldn’t understand his frantic Spanish, but her calm voice reassured him and she held the little lost boy on the line while she enlisted the help of a Spanish speaking student in a nearby college. Patiently they pieced together Pedro’s story.

But how do you find a boy in a booth who has no idea where he is? Mrs. Appleton knew only that the call must be coming from one of five adjacent communities. In quick succession, she called the police in each town and asked them to check. The Fairfield police found Pedro in a booth only a block from their headquarters. His mother came to get him and the story had a happy ending — thanks to a boy who knew enough to dial an operator who lived up to the Bell System’s long tradition of serving and helping — whatever the need.

Now and then some hard-pressed soul, crying for mercy along life’s highway is shushed by the cynical scoff: “You are surely too smart to believe that whoever it is that is running this universe has time in his busy schedule to pay any attention to your frantic calls to do just what you ask him.” The response of Jesus to Bartimaeus should silence forever that cynical shush. Are we to believe that the Bell Telephone System is more responsive and capable in answering calls of the lost for mercy and salvation than is the Lord Jesus Christ?

Finally, notice the conclusion to the whole drama. When Jesus responded to the cry of the castaway for mercy and restored his sight, then Bartimaeus responded by joining the procession to Jerusalem and the way of the cross. Healed and helped, he did not “go his own way,” as Jesus said he was free to do, but “he followed Jesus in the way.” He joined the way of purpose, the way of hearing Jesus’ teaching, the way of readiness to respond to human need in his turn along the way of life.

What about us? Have we, as Bartimaeus, cried for mercy from the roadside? Has our cry of faith been miraculously answered? Have we then gone our own way, or followed Jesus on the way to Jerusalem and the cross?

This is the point for the church — for Christ’s people to ponder. We get concerned about many things. Sometimes we get concerned about what the church is doing, or what the church is not doing. This is fine, just so sure as we remember who the church is. The church is not the denominational leaders; it is not Presbytery or the General Assembly. It is not even the Church Session or the minister. The church is all of us — the disciples of Christ.

And what should be the concern of the church? What we as individuals decide, or what the session, or the General Assembly or the Presbytery determines? Ultimately, our concern should parallel Christ’s concern — if we are truly His. If at some point in time and by some low-bending of the divine mercy we have been lifted from the immobile dot along the roadside of life which we were, and incorporated in that lower line that moves parallel to Jesus’ path to Jerusalem and the cross — we ought to share His concern. And that concern we can learn only as we watch Him and listen to Him and go on with Him on the road that leads to Jerusalem, and about which the crowds press in all their despairing conditions of physical and spiritual need — their castaway conditions.

When Christian people get so concerned with jockeying for ecclesiastical power and scrutinizing one another’s soundness in the faith, and examining each other’s birth certificates and street addresses and bank books and social status, they are carrying concerns not of Christ, but of the Devil.

A well-known parody of the famous hymn runs like this: “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as of yore — With the cross of Jesus left behind the door.” It is pathetically possible to sound loud calls to the colors in the flag and march off in a procession that repudiates Christ’s spirit and departs from His mission.

God grant us the grace to stay so close to our Savior that we may with increasing sensitivity share His concern for all of life’s castaways.