Read

Mark 10:46-52 “Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means ‘son of Timaeus’), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’ So they called to the blind man, ‘Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.’ Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Jesus asked him. The blind man said, ‘Rabbi, I want to see.’ ‘Go,’ said Jesus, ‘your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.”

Think

Yesterday morning I was eating at a little hole-in-the-wall diner for breakfast. I’m sitting at the bar, had my notes spread out, studying. The place was busy. Waitresses moving fast, regulars laughing, plates clanking. Nobody was paying much attention to anybody else. Everybody had somewhere to be.

And I remember sitting there thinking about Jesus. About the way he moved through crowds. Because Jesus lived in a world just as noisy and distracted as ours, and yet he did something no one else seemed to do. He stopped. He noticed. He asked.

Look at this scene in Mark 10. Jesus is leaving Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd. This is a packed road. People pressing in. Noise everywhere. And sitting off to the side is a blind man named Bartimaeus, begging. He’s invisible to almost everyone. The crowd has been walking past him for years.

But when Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is passing by, he starts shouting. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And the crowd does what crowds do. They tell him to be quiet. They shush him. They try to push him back to the margins where he belongs.

And then Jesus stops.

Right there. In the middle of the noise and the pressing crowd and the schedule and the agenda. He stops. And he says two words that change Bartimaeus’s life. “Call him.”

But he doesn’t stop there. When Bartimaeus reaches him, Jesus asks a question that, on the surface, seems unnecessary. The man is blind. It’s obvious what he needs. But Jesus asks anyway. “What do you want me to do for you?”

That question is one of the most mannerly things anyone has ever said. Jesus didn’t assume. He didn’t prescribe. He didn’t talk over Bartimaeus or talk about him to the disciples. He looked at a man the rest of the world had been ignoring and gave him the dignity of being asked.

That’s the manner of our Maker. Not efficiency. Not productivity. Dignity. He gave Bartimaeus the chance to name his own need, to be a participant in his own healing rather than a passive recipient. That is courtesy at its deepest level.

All week we’ve been talking about manners, about rudeness and respect, about formulas and details and deposits of courtesy. But this is where it all comes from. It comes from him. Manners aren’t surfacy. They’re not just social skills we pick up to make life run smoother. The essence of manners is divine. We are reflecting the manner of our Maker, or we’re not.

And when you look at Jesus, you see perfect manners lived out in every direction. He turned water into wine at a wedding so the host wouldn’t be embarrassed. He washed his disciples’ feet, the job of the lowest servant in the house. He cooked breakfast on the beach for the men who had abandoned him three days earlier. He looked down from the cross, in the middle of his own agony, and made sure his mother would be cared for.

He noticed. He served. He asked. He gave. Over and over again, in every setting, with every kind of person, Jesus treated people with a courtesy that flowed from the deepest possible source. Not social convention. Not cultural expectation. Love.

And notice who he extended that courtesy to. Not just the powerful. Not just the popular. Not just the people who could return the favor. Bartimaeus was a blind beggar on the side of the road. The woman at the well was an outcast. The leper was untouchable. The children the disciples tried to send away were insignificant by every cultural measure. And Jesus stopped for every single one of them. His manners weren’t selective. They were standard. The same dignity he gave to Nicodemus, a leader and a scholar, he gave to the nameless, the forgotten, and the dismissed.

Sitting in that diner with my notes spread out, surrounded by people rushing through their mornings, I was struck by how countercultural Jesus is. We live in a world that rewards speed, efficiency, and self-promotion. Jesus lived at a pace that allowed him to see the person on the side of the road. He moved through crowds without being swept up by them. He had an agenda, and he consistently set it aside for the person right in front of him. He wasn’t in a hurry. He wasn’t distracted. He wasn’t calculating whether the interruption was worth his time. He was fully available. And that availability was, itself, a form of courtesy that most of us have never practiced.

“What do you want me to do for you?” That question is available to every one of us, every single day. To the spouse across the table. To the coworker in the next cubicle. To the stranger in the checkout line. The manner of our Maker is to stop, see, and ask. And when we do the same, we’re not just being polite. We’re being like him.

Apply

Stop and ask – At some point today, pause in the middle of your routine and ask someone, “What do you need from me right now?” Not in passing. Not as a formality. Stop moving, make eye contact, and ask with the genuine intention to listen. That’s the manner of Jesus.

Pray

Jesus, you stopped for Bartimaeus when everyone else walked past. You asked when you could have assumed. You gave dignity to the invisible. Teach me to move through my day the way you moved through yours, with eyes that see, ears that listen, and a heart that asks before it acts. In Jesus’ name. Amen.