24 October 2021

This past week I spent three days in the desert at a continuing education event for pastors, deacon, and church leaders. Thank you for the opportunity to go! Our keynote speaker was pastor Wilk Miller who had served in downtown San Diego. The theme of his presentations was the tradition of the Holy Fool. A Holy Fool and by the way it is from Russia that this tradition comes, is someone who the world sees as a crazy, insane maybe mentally ill, and unreasonable person. Such a person incessantly talks and mumbles about Jesus. A great example from history is St. Basil who is buried under the cathedral in Moscow with the colorful and gorgeous Onion Shaped domes. The Tsar Ivan who was known to be terrible for how he ruthlessly punished cities that did not obey him was confronted by Basil. Basil offered the Tsar raw meat to eat. He told Ivan, “Why not eat raw meat on a fast day since he was so accustomed to eating raw human flesh anyway.” Ivan was so shamed by this fool that he spared Basil’s town nor did he harm Basil. The irony is that Basil wished to die a humiliated death like Christ and the cross, but instead became venerated and buried as a hero of the people. 

The point of all of this; is that Pastor Wilk was encouraging us to embrace the calling to be Holy Fools, because being a Holy Fool might be the most appropriate way to serve God during such a time as this. Pastor Wilk retired right before Covid, and he reminded us a number of times how lucky he felt about being able to do so, and at the same time how utterly useless he felt at the same time. His favorite part of Zoom worship was being able to work on the NY Times crossword puzzle during worship! So the truth comes out. 

Pastor Wilk told us about churches he had served. Churches that had once been buzzing with life, organization, activity, vibrancy, and that now in some cases, didn’t even exist. They have been replaced with high rise apartments and condos. They are gone from the face of the earth. The point in telling such stories is to bring to light that a group of people can dedicate their whole lives to building something, to making something great, and in a few short years it can all fall apart. 

One response would be to redouble our efforts, to reshape our strategies and to set out to keep build back better. Another response would be to ask a deeper and more foolish question. Is this what God wants us to do in the first place? Are we to builders of buildings, activities, groups, and organizations? Is that what this is all about? It gets to the heart of the question about mission. What is the reason we are here? 

What if our purpose and calling is to be Holy Fools? What if your calling is to be a Holy Fool? What if our only purpose is to ramble on about God, not worrying so much about the outcome, but to simply embody a foolish disposition about God? Bartimaeus, who we learn about in the Gospel according to St. Mark chapter 10 could have been a Holy Fool.

You are saved by grace through faith, and not by your works.

What happened at Jericho? Jesus presumably went there for some reason. But we hear absolutely nothing about what he did there. They came to Jericho. As they were leaving Jericho with the disciples and a large crowd, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus was outside; on the way out. What Jesus did in Jericho had to be impressive because this large crowd is going with him. Bartimaeus heard that it was Jesus. How did a blind man know that it was Jesus? Obviously he had to listen. Did he know what Jesus sounded like or did he hear people talking about Jesus? It says that he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth. This makes it sound like Bartimaeus already had heard about Jesus. Jesus had a reputation that had reached Bartimaeus before this encounter. That’s really something because this was before “social media.” This was back when people talked to each other; back in