Jesus takes the twelve aside for the third time in this Gospel and tells them plainly what waits in Jerusalem: 32"he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon," and after flogging him they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise (verse 33). It is the most detailed account he has given, a specific sequence spoken by the man it will happen to. Luke tells us how it landed: 34"they understood none of these things." Luke adds that the saying was hidden from them (verse 34). The same word of hiddenness returns when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and says the things that make for peace are hidden from the city's eyes (Luke 19:42). Twelve men who have walked with him, watched him heal, and heard him teach cannot process the clearest statement he has made about his own death.
Right after that failure of perception, Luke places a man who cannot see at all. A blind beggar sits by the roadside outside Jericho, dependent on the noise of a passing crowd to tell him what is happening. When he learns that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, he cries out 38"Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Son of David is a messianic title. A man who cannot see Jesus knows who he is.
Those in front rebuke him, telling him to be silent (verse 39), treating his cry as an interruption, as the disciples treated the children a few verses earlier (Luke 18:15). He refuses: 39"he cried out all the more." His blindness has taught him something that the crowd's sight has not, that this interruption is worth every ounce of persistence he has.
The crowd's attention is on the procession, and the procession is moving toward a cross. Jesus stops. He is walking toward the suffering he has just described, along a road crowded with people who want his attention, and he stops for one blind, shouting beggar and asks him a strikingly open question, with no assumptions about what the man needs. The answer is immediate and specific: 41"Lord, let me recover my sight." Jesus grants it in the same breath: 42"your faith has made you well." Immediately the man sees, and he follows Jesus, glorifying God (verse 43).
Set beside the Twelve, the contrast is plain, and this chapter has drawn it more than once. A Pharisee who recited his righteousness went home unjustified, while a tax collector who would not lift his eyes went home right with God (Luke 18:9-14). A rich ruler who had kept every commandment walked away sorrowful (Luke 18:18-23). Now twelve men with working eyes cannot perceive what Jesus said in plain words, while a blind man perceives who Jesus is the moment he hears his name. Physical sight and spiritual sight are different gifts, and neither one guarantees the other.
Jesus asks you the beggar's question today. Say your answer aloud, specifically, the way the beggar did.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a Son who stops on the road to ask each of us plainly what we want him to do for us. Forgive the blindness the Twelve carried even with working eyes, the plain truths we have heard and failed to grasp. Give us the beggar's persistence, undeterred by any crowd that wants us quiet, and his readiness to answer honestly when you ask what we need. In Jesus' name, amen.