Jasper Levi - Cast your cloak aside - Communion, Sunday, March 29, 2026

Good morning everyone.

Today I would like to talk to you about um the event of the time that blind Bartimeus was healed.

We'll get to how it ties into communion in about a minute.

So we all know the story of Bartimeus.

He was blind and Jesus was passing by, and Paul records this tiny but significant detail that a lot of us, myself included, we've read it and kind of didn't register it in the first go.

So Mark 10, 47 says, As Bartimius sat by the roadside begging, he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by.

He began to cry out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

The crowd, as usual, rebuked him, told him to be quiet, but he cried out all the more.

Jesus stopped.

And when Jesus called for him, Mark writes, So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.

That's in Mark 10, 50.

So if we look at this particular detail, it's very insignificant, but basically, Bartenus threw aside his cloak.

And uh now if we think about this guy, he's probably homeless, he's got precious few possessions, and um he's got some stuff that he hangs on to.

And we don't know, I I'm not sure what the weather must have been like out there, but he was like, he needed his cloak, and that cloak was something that he held on to, and uh it was important to him, it was valuable to him.

We see so many homeless people out on the streets, and they have this little shopping bag, uh shopping trolley typically, and they have bags full of stuff which they carry around with them.

And if we um reflect on this cloak, we as people today, we carry a lot of these as cloaks of our own, like um habits we may have, afflictions, addictions, suffering, achievements, everything.

And we tend to create cloaks of our own.

We tend to make that our identity and we tend to carry them around with us.

That becomes important for us when we enter a room, when we join gatherings, that's us, maybe this guy.

He's been going through something, so he kind of walks in with that burden on him.

Some guy has achieved something, he's he walks in with a proud bearing, but he's carrying that cloak.

And so over here, when Jesus called Bartimeus, he just flung it to one side and he just came.

Because what he was about to receive was so much bigger, and he did not even think for a moment to keep it, keep it on, or what would become of it, where it would go.

And so, as we take communion, as we enter into this significant thing that we do, where we partake of the body of Jesus and the blood of Jesus, the forgiveness and the healing that comes along with it, the redemption of sins, I think it is much, much more important, much bigger, much more significant than the things we make cloaks out of.

So I would urge each one of us, I would I would ask you to consider casting the cloak aside and come as you are and with everything left aside as we partake of communion.

Thank you.