People Ignored: Read Matt 20:29-34
Contemplation
And here we sit, at the roadside, as always. Dust in our noses, smells and sounds of the road – people, animals, all passing back and forth and ignoring the people on the side. There’s a crowd coming, we can hear the shouts from far away, and the whispers from closer by. “Jesus is coming, Jesus, Jesus!” He’s a holy man, a king even, they say. He’s helped people from all over.
Perhaps we could get up and ask whether he can help get our sight back. Since the accident that blinded us, we have been thrown out of the community and left to live off what we can. No one wants to look after a burden – and since the accident, that’s all we have been to others. Here he comes! We can hear the voice of the man himself talking to the others – the ones who matter – crowded round him. “Help! Help! Have mercy! Enter our lives, too!” “Go away, sit down, shut up, you don’t count!”
All the voices of the crowd – the ones we have heard for years - tell us we are worthless. Jesus is different. He stops. “What is it that you want?,” he says gently. Shock! No-one has asked that since the accident! “To see again. To matter again to others.” A touch. A forgotten world swims back. A new community and a new world opens up as we follow the One who loves us.
Talk to Jesus, the crowds, the men healed.
Am I cut off from people because of something about who I am?
Who is Jesus … and can he help me find a sense of worth that doesn’t depend on others?