A couple of weeks ago we had a family supper to celebrate a birthday. Not everyone could be there, but two of my sons and my grandchildren were. While we were enjoying birthday cake, the conversation somehow ended up on saving birds from mass destruction. I can’t recall why. Myah, my 9-year old granddaughter asked why? “Why do we need birds,” she asked. “What do they do for us?”

In asking that question, Myah was reflecting one of the principle errors of our culture; living beings, including birds and humans, need to be of use in order to justify their existence. Specifically, they need to contribute in some concrete, recognizable way to the economy of human beings. A close neighbour to this is the question of what gives a life value, what makes a life worth living, or paying attention to. Again, this is determined by function – a minimum level of physical or intellectual ability, the capacity to be independent and self-determining.

The reading from Jeremiah shows us that God works by a different economy. In this reading, the prophet is relaying a message to a people in exile. When God restores the remnant of Israel to the Land, that remnant will include the blind and the lame, the vulnerable and those weighed down with sorrow. God does not select the most useful or the strongest of the exiled. Nor does he pick those most capable of independent, autonomous living. He chooses an interdependent family, people who will need each other and who know they need God.

Today’s gospel also speaks of God’s economy, God’s sense of what gives value to a human life. Last week, Tapiwa talked about the request James and John made of Jesus. As he did so, he set the context for this week’s reading as well: Jesus was travelling to Jerusalem and he knew what would happen when he got there. Three times he told the disciples about his impending death and resurrection, the last time directly before James and John asked their question Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory. You will remember that Tapiwa talked about asking rightly, choosing not the privilege of the inner circle, but sometimes costly servanthood.

This week’s reading, which comes directly after, provides a different question and response. The two episodes go together, running parallel to one another in places. Jesus and the disciples had just left Jericho, on the road to Jerusalem. Among the people lined up on the side of the road, was a blind man.

Now, there are a couple of things we should notice about this man. Unlike James and John, he was clearly not part of Jesus’s inner circle. He was so far outside any circle that he didn’t even get a name of his own. His name, Bartimaeus, literally means son of Timaeus. His identity was defined by the fact that a) he was blind and b) he was Timaeus’s son. And to make his value even lower to those around him, he was a beggar – unable to work and with no safe niche in society to protect him. So, when Bartimaeus began to call out “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!”, those around him tried to silence him, sternly ordering him to be quiet.

James and John got Jesus’ attention by saying Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. Bartimaeus, by crying out in his need, asking Jesus to have mercy. One of the biggest clues that these two interactions are connected is the question Jesus responded with in each case: What do you want me to do for you? But, where James and John wanted to get in on the glory, Bartimaeus simply wanted his sight back. Unlike the two brothers, he knew what handicapped him, and he wasn’t interested in lording it over anybody.

But it is Jesus’s response to Bartimaeus that I especially want to pay attention to here. Because it is his response that says “Look, this is what following me looks like. This is what being a servant to all looks like”. Jesus was on the final leg of his journey to Jerusalem where he would face a horrible death. It would be understandable if he was preoccupied with the ordeal to come, leaning on his disciples for support. But, upon hearing Bartimaeus cry out to him, Jesus stopped, called him forward and asked, "What do you want me to do for you?" Bartimaeus had been heard and seen. He was spoken to directly and taken seriously. He was given the same thoughtful attention as Jesus’s nearest disciples.

The world has always had hierarchies, people who lord it over other people. It has always had the invisible masses who were treated as tools or possessions of those in power. And it has always had the invisible people on the margins, the most vulnerable in a society, the ones who have no voice, the ones who have no use. Those people are far more likely to die by violence, neglect, or lack of treatment for curable conditions. Like Brian Sinclair, who died in an emergency waiting room in Winnipeg, or Joyce Echaquan in a hospital in Quebec.

This past Wednesday, clergy in Rupert’s Land were invited to a meeting with an epidemiologist and Anglican priest in Ottawa. The meeting was to give us some practical information about COVID, particularly in the context of reopening churches. But what really stuck out for me was a graph that showed by continent, how many doses of vaccine had been administered per 100 people. The highest was Europe at 102. Next was North America at 98. Far below any other was the African continent at 9.1 doses of vaccine administered per 100 people. While he talked about the changing efficacy of vaccines over time, the speaker questioned the ethic of providing boosters to fully vaccinated people when other people had access to none and their vaccine rates were so low.

I recalled back while vaccines were still being developed, countries, including ours, talked about vaccine equity, about ensuring that everyone worldwide had access to vaccines and how wealthier countries had a responsibility to make this happen. That talk seemed to weaken considerably over time and almost disappeared as governments scrambled to get vaccines for their people and the race was on to see who could get the most people vaccinated the quickest. Once again, those with the most resources available to them, fail to see who is left behind as we rush to the head of the line.

But this must not be so with disciples of Jesus. We are to see and hear those who are at risk of being left behind, and those who are at risk of being silenced. We are not to assess and value people by their usefulness, or their wealth, or their capacity for independence. We are to be servants of all, to notice those that the world is overlooking and to do something about it.

We’ve talked a few times over the last year and a half about our responsibility to model a right response to the pandemic, one that is rooted in the command to love our neighbours as ourselves. This same responsibility applies whether that neighbour has a physical disability like Bartimaeus, an intellectual disability, a mental illness or addiction, whether they are homeless or lonely or just having a really bad time. And it applies when that neighbour needs something that we have easy access to.

Our culture has a distorted notion of what gives value to human life, with an emphasis on needing to be useful in order to justify one’s existence. God shows us the real value of human life by sending his Son to be servant of all, even at great cost to himself, and showing us how to go and do likewise. The question we ask is not to be “what use are you to me?” but “what do you want me to do for you?” It is a risky step to take; we never know what will be asked of us, but we can do this together as the body of Christ in this place.

Thanks be to God. Amen