have as a blind beggar, so that he too could take his rightful place in the community. He might have wanted to ask for revenge for those who might have mistreated him as he lived his days by the roadside. However, he didn’t ask for any of those. Jesus had come to gift his brothers and sisters with the fullness of life (cf. John 10:10). Bartimeus recognized this fact, and it is this that he asked of Jesus.
Whereas Bartimeus might have simply wanted Jesus to gift him with physical sight, for Mark the evangelist, his healing was both symbolic and significant. Mark portrays those who heard and witnessed Jesus' teaching and mighty deeds as deaf and blind because of their slowness to understand and recognize the person that Jesus was. The rich young man, who might have had the advantage of learning the prophets and the prophesies about the Christ, refused to be led by Jesus to that eternal life that he had enquired about. James and John (and the other disciples, for that matter), who were privileged to hear and walk beside Jesus, were slow to understand who he was. It was the unlikely poor Bartimeus who did recognize in Jesus the path to fullness of life (eternal life). He recognized that Jesus had the power to lead him to the fullness of life by restoring him to wholeness. And this is what he went for.
Together with those who had accompanied Jesus, witnessed his mighty deeds, but were still slow to fully recognize him, Bartimeus becomes for us an “eye-opener.” Like him, we too need to recognize our blindness and approach Jesus with a request to have our sights restored. For it is only with our sights restored that we can clearly see Jesus and be moved to follow him just as the healed Bartimeus did.