son of David | Janie B. Cheaney

But he said to them, “How can they say that the Christ is David’s son?” Luke 20:41

These few days are laced with music. Roving bands of singers and musicians are not uncommon during Passover week, but the mood this year is uncommonly light. The city fizzes with anticipation, knowing something momentous is in the works. He may wait until after the Passover feast to declare himself—or why not during? Passover means deliverance, and behold, it is at hand; who could keep from singing?

The Lord declared to my Lord,

‘Sit at my right hand

Until I make your enemies your footstool.’*

A cobbled-up children’s choir, blown in like blossoms and led by someone’s older sister, sing in his presence:

Rule over your enemies, call up your people on the day of battle;

In holy splendor, from the womb of dawn,

Rise up in the dew of your youth—

For the Blessed One has sworn, and will never disavow,

‘You are a priest forever, in the line of Melchizedek,

The LORD stands at your right hand

Ready to crush kings, judge nations, pile up the dead.

Refresh yourself from sparkling springs

And lift up your head!*

Their order breaks down as the song ends. Giggling and blushing, they stammer out, “Blessings on you, Son of David!” before running away in all directions.

Charming, think the followers. Disturbing, think the scribes, who have sung the identical psalm any crown number of times with no more than a theoretical understanding. But now it is looking at them—or is it?

“Tell me,” The Nazarene asks his audience: “why do they say Messiah is the son of David?”

His followers merely gaze at him dumbly, like sheep.

“Well,” one of the scribes begin (with some hesitation, suspecting a trap), “David was promised a successor who would reign forever, and . . .”

“How can David himself call him ‘my Lord,’ as you just heard in the Psalm, if Messiah is his son?”

The people keep on grinning, delighted with this rhetorical flourish, but the scribes know it isn’t a flourish. He claims to be greater than David, their greatest king. This can lead to no good. Irksome as the Pharisees are, insufferable as the Sadducees, they all must align in a common cause.

The teacher is clever, they’ll give him that, and more than that—the teacher is profound and wise and infuriating and attractive and repulsive and . . . something entirely outside their experience.

Ultimately though, he’s a great trouble. He is on a collision course with reality. Real kings crush pretend kings every time and the collateral damage is horrendous: often counted, as every son of Israel has reason to know, in the multiples of crosses strung along the roads. Better one casualty than dozens, or hundreds. For the sake of many, one must die.

*Psalm 110, commonly understood as a Messianic prediction

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And taking the twelve, he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished . . .” Luke 18:31-32

They are getting close to Jericho, as far south as their journey would take them. Jerusalem is close, just over the horizon. Anticipation glows like an ember in the pulsing, gripping moment before it bursts into flame. Then he says,

“Let me tell you one last time what will happen when we get there. The prophets wrote of it, Isaiah foretold it: the Son of Man will be delivered to Gentiles, mocked, scorned, slapped and spat upon. After whips have drained the vitality from him they will take his life, but not for good—on the third day he’ll rise to life again.”

The words fell like rocks, hard and smooth and impermeable. Their minds turned rocky, slow and dense.

They did not understand.

His words made no sense.

They could not see. Comprehension reached out, fingered the hard surface, fell away.

By morning it seemed like a bad dream, and the journey was back on course. When you live through many days that are governed by the same routine, your mind accepts it as habit, half-consciously expecting that all future days will continue like these. First sunrise, then breakfast, after which they gather their few possessions. Then on the road again, followed by the hangers-on and joined by the passers-by. By the time the walls of Jericho (fabled in song and story) rise before them, the usual “great crowd” has developed.

Meanwhile, outside the city another routine day is going on as usual—hot and crowded. And for Bartimaeus, dark. Always dark. The blind beggar had felt his way to this same spot outside the wall ever since he was a child. His parents used to bring him, but they are long gone. Most of his childhood friends, too; they’re either dead or living on outside his comprehension. His beggar friends come and go, because begging is a short-lived trade. As for a wife–who would have him? The only stable presence in his life is his alms box.

For him days pass like beads on a string, rounded and sullen and mostly alike–but this morning he feels a crackle in the air. It isn’t just the noise. Wedding crowds and funeral crowds and the occasional stoning crowd have their recognizable character, but this is different: a rush, as though the day were breaking loose from the frame it is stretched upon and curling toward the center. “What is it?” he asks the crowded air. “What’s going on?”

The voices come back, overstepping each other like excited children: “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by!”

Who hasn’t heard of Jesus of Nazareth? They say he’s Messiah, coming in a triumphant procession of healings and preachings and signs and wonders. Oh, the things they say! The news bubbles up in Bartimaeus like a fountain. His voice, so long wrung dry of things to say, breaks out feebly.

“Son of David! Son of David! Jesus, Son of David, wait!”

Where does that come from? They say he’s Messiah, the great King, the restoration of the glorious throne of Israel, heir to the giant-slayer, the sweet singer, the man after God’s own heart—“Son of David, stop!”

Hush, they’re saying. You’re making a scene. People are staring at you.

That doesn’t matter. He’s been crowded into silence all his life by the fault of not seeing. He is a turd in the road, a blot on the landscape, an occasion for charity from more fortunate men. But now everything inside of him gathers itself up, hopelessly, desperately—he is Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, standing now on unsteady feet, his voice ringing out, “Have mercy on me!”

The tumult collapses from those words like scaffolding. In the sudden quiet, voices that had previously hushed him now come back, passed hand over hand from the center of the crowd. He’s calling for you. Get up. Come forward.

He takes one uncertain step, then a blind man nother and another, belatedly realizing he’s left his stick behind. And his alms-box. Step after step, hands outstretched and fingers spread, he feels the crow both pulling back from and directing him, with a nudge here, a touch of the shoulder there. Until he finally comes to the glowing, living center.

“What do you want me to do for you?” says the center.

“Lord–” For there is no other way to address him—“I want to see.”

“Then see,” says he. No touch, no breath, just words. As simple as, Let there be light. This is what it takes to see: his words. And his open, empty eyes flood with light.

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Tag: son of David

David’s Son

What It Takes to See