The gatekeepers of this world stand proud, haughty, wielding power to keep their authority absolute. They keep people deemed unworthy, outside, marginalized, and unless you meet their strict criteria, you too become one of the shunned. Filled with ideas of propriety and decorum, the gatekeepers dictate when hoops you must jump through, what rules you must follow, and how you must act.
Don’t be too angry.
Don’t be too sad.
Don’t be too wounded.
These gatekeepers can appear anywhere, sometimes in our own mirrors. They police the tone with which we express our emotions, our needs, our dreams. They keep the status quo because it keeps them in power. “Don’t disrupt,” they seem to echo; after all, disruption just shows that their absolute authority is a sham.
One area these gatekeepers like to hang around is religion. In Christianity, this often manifests itself as the requirements put into place to get to Jesus.
You have to be converted.
You must be a part of our church.
Don’t question (our churches’) Orthodoxy.
Don’t dress that way.
Be documented.
Have a decent job.
Tithe consistently.
You can’t be LGBTQ+.
Read your bible.
Be a conservative.
Be a liberal.
Be this.
Do that.
The rules change with every gatekeeper. It’s exhausting just thinking about it. I don’t think anyone—especially the gatekeepers, who ironically have histories that are oftentimes exactly like those they are trying to keep out — can check all these boxes. So, we are left with disenfranchised people, hungry for the bread of heaven with no one willing to give them fish and loaves.
Bartimaeus was an outsider, and not just because he was a blind beggar in a wealthy city. He was an outsider to the large crowd that was following Jesus out of town. Jesus was on a journey to Jerusalem, a trip he started back in Mark 10.15. He’s on his way to the cross, yet as much as he has spoken plainly about it, no one gets it. They think him a revolutionary, maybe a zealot, perhaps a Pharisaic reformer. Whatever they think of him, they don’t expect this teacher with great authority to be on his way to intentionally embrace death.
Suddenly, there is a cry over the din of the crowd. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
This wasn’t simply a beggar asking for alms. This was a direct request of Jesus by someone who believed him to be the long-awaited Messiah. “Son of David” isn’t an arbitrary title. It’s not something that you would have simply called anyone you wanted to respect. No, it was tied up in the Davidic promise that God would establish David’s throne forever. People were looking for a messiah to fulfill this promise, to overthrow their oppressors and re-establish the monarchy, rebuild the temple, and make Israel strong and powerful among the nations.
Bartimaeus was calling Jesus the savior, God’s anointed Messiah, and he was doing it loudly.
The others in the crowd probably felt at least a bit of embarrassment for Bartimaeus. This crowd was all pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. They didn’t gather to hear Jesus. Hell, they may not have even known that Jesus the Nazarene was among them. There were whispers, though, hints, secret talk about it. Word got to this blind beggar, and he called out for the Messiah’s mercy.
And the people tried to shush him.
They shut him down, told him to be quiet; they told him to stay in his place. Some of them were probably wondering why this old beggar was calling out for the Son of David, so they treated him like someone out of his mind. “Be quiet. Stop with the crazy talk!” Others may have known Jesus was walking with them, and still, they ordered Bartimaeus to be silent; after all, who was he to be calling after the Rabbi Jesus… who was the Messiah?
Whatever their reason, this crowd, these gatekeepers, didn’t want Bartimaeus to speak. He had no right in their eyes. He had a place in society, and it wasn’t here. “Go back to begging,” they seem to say. “We’re not going to let you in.”
Then Jesus stops. In the middle of a hustling crowd, in the middle of a tide of people, in the middle of the gatekeepers keeping power and authority, wielding shame and rejection, Jesus stops. Fully. Completely. He no longer walks with them; he stands still.
“Call him here.”
Jesus’ words cut through the noise, the bustle, the movement, and the exclusion. He doesn’t call to the beggar. No. instead, Jesus speaks to the gatekeepers, the ones that are keeping Bartimaeus from Jesus. He tells the very people that would exclude this man to call him here.
Jesus forces the gatekeepers to repent with a call to action, a call to inclusion, a call to wide-open acceptance.
When we keep people out, Jesus tells us, “Call them here.” When we keep people away from the table of the Lord, Jesus stands at the altar and says, “Call them here.” When we decide who is in, who is out, and who we are going to keep out, Jesus stops everything – all our moving and rushing and actions to look good – and says, “Call them here.”
Jesus calls every gatekeeper to repent and to become the very instrument used to bring people to himself.
What’s funny is that we don’t hear this call to repent. Like the crowd, we tell those we’ve kept in the shadows, “Take heart! Get up! Jesus is calling to you!” But Jesus isn’t calling to them; Jesus is calling to us. He is giving us an imperative, a command. Jesus tells us to call them to him. Jesus calls us to repent and become active agents in bringing those we have ostracized to his side.
Bartimaeus may have been the one whose sight was restored, but the crowd was the one Jesus was trying to heal.
Jesus is going to restore the exiled. Jesus is going to gather the blind and the lame to himself. Jesus is going to bring all his children home from every corner of the earth. Those of us who would keep them out of the kingdom will be disappointed at best, and at worst, we will be ourselves pushed out of the gates. That is unless we repent and call those we kept out into Jesus. These gates we keep? Those are ours to fling open wide, to make room for others at our table, to invite everyone to the body and blood of Jesus, baptismal waters, and a life of love.
So, what gate are you keeping?
Where are you wielding authority to keep your power?
Is it in your family? Friendships? What about your job? Church? Where are you refusing to let go and open up to doors because you don’t want the wrong people, influences, thoughts, or feelings to creep in? Sit with this question. Be uncomfortable. Let Jesus’s word, his call to repentance, permeate you and change your thinking and actions.
There is no gate except Jesus. He is the door and the way. We may try and try and try to shut the door, silence the beggars yelling messianic promises, and keep the riff-raff out… but Jesus will blow those doors wide off because his arms are wide and nothing, nowhere, nohow can keep people from Jesus’ love.
Not even us.
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