Blind Bartimaeus Sits Astride the Keystone XL Pipeline (Mark 10:46-52)
Climate Bible Study: June 2021
This month brought two bits of important news. The first, on June 9, was that TransCanada—the company which was seeking to build the Keystone XL pipeline from the oil sands of Northern Alberta to the refineries of Houston, TX—was finally scrapping its project, a project that would have helped lock dirty energy development in for another fifty years. The other news came from Cornwall: the leaders of the G7 nations concluded their summit with grand commitments and promises, but with no details about the phasing out of coal.
Prayer. I had prayed with others back in 2014 in a campaign called #PrayNoKXL. I am now praying with you in a campaign called Climate Intercessors. Details. Details signify not only in our plans, but apparently also in our prayers, as the man that history calls “Blind Bartimaeus” once found out (Mark 10:46-52).
In August 2018, a federal judge in Montana ordered a new environmental assessment report for the pipeline’s altered route, effectively delaying President Trump’s attempt to greenlight the project. But that was not the first time a judge stepped in with such a delay. On February 18, 2014, I was out walking along the Kansas River in my old hometown. I was praying about climate change—I mean, praying for this and that, for grand sweeping things. Sometimes I can pray as grandiosely in my mind when all alone as I am tempted to do publicly after preaching an adrenaline-filled sermon. Suddenly though, I was stopped in mid-sentence. I felt like the Lord was telling me, “Okay Lowell, what is it you exactly want? Ask for me for something.”
I prayed, “Please block the Keystone XL pipeline.”
The rest of the walk home, I wasn’t praying. Instead, I was meditating on the story of Blind Bartimaeus, the man who sat by the roadside begging. He heard Jesus was passing by, so he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” When the crowd began to tell him to shut up, I wondered whether Bartimaeus felt as badly as I did when trying to testify against the KXL pipeline in public hearings in Topeka, KS. Jesus had Bartimaeus called over and instead of just healing the man outright, Jesus asked him a question: “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus’ previous prayer had been “have mercy on me,” now apparently, Jesus wanted some specifics.
The next morning, February 19, 2014, I woke up and listened to the news on the radio during breakfast. NPR reported that the previous day, state judge Stephanie Stacy had issued her findings that the Nebraska governor’s previous approval of the Keystone XL pipeline was unconstitutional. She issued an injunction blocking the governor’ office from “taking any action on the governor’s Jan. 22, 2013, approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline route.”
Nothing is said of whether Bartimaeus whooped and hollered. Instead, all we hear from the passage is that “immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.” I can’t remember whooping and hollering either about Stacy’s ruling; instead, I felt called further down the road with Jesus in the mystery of prayer. I had prayed specifically yesterday and seemed to get an answer the next day. But Judge Stacy would have written up her ruling a week earlier for a trial that had been held in September. Meanwhile, a single delay for a reassessment of the pipeline’s route through a single state hardly seemed like immediately blocking the Keystone XL pipeline. For that matter, here it is, seven years later before KXL is fully shut down. And how did my prayers (that day, and in the weeks that followed of our #PrayNoKXL campaign) contribute to the outcome compared to the tireless and brilliant activism of people and groups like Jane Kleeb and Bold Nebraska? Prayer. It is following Jesus along the road that we once sat aside and begged.
The great writer on prayer, Andrew Murray of South Africa, uses the story of Bartimaeus in his book With Christ in the School of Prayer for his “Tenth Lesson” which is entitled “Prayer Must Be Definite.” Murray writes,
Our prayers must not be a vague appeal to His mercy, an indefinite cry for blessing, but the distinct expression of definite need. Not that His loving heart does not understand our cry, or is not ready to hear. But He desires it for our own sakes. Such definite prayer teaches us to know our own needs better. It demands time, and thought, and self-scrutiny to find out what really is our greatest need. It searches us and puts us to the test as to whether our desires are honest and real, such as we are ready to persevere in.
And he writes that to all vague praying:
the Lord says: And what is it now you really want and expect Me to do? Every Christian has but limited powers, and as he must have his own special field of labour in which he works, so with his prayers too. Each believer has his own circle, his family, his friends, his neighbours. If he were to take one or more of these by name, he would find that this really brings him into the training-school of faith, and leads to personal and pointed dealing with his God.
Climate activist Bill McKibben met with our #PrayNoKXL group over the phone in 2014. He reassured us of two things: first, that it is good and right to give priority to the struggle over this one lone pipeline, symbolic as it was of dirty energy infrastructure; and secondly, this was a struggle we could win. “All we have to do is to delay, and delay, and delay KXL until such time as the economics are no longer tenable for TransCanada.” Seven years later, that’s exactly what happened. One of the most remarkable parts of Bartimaeus’s story is what Jesus says to him at the moment of receiving his sight: “Go, your faith has healed you.” Surely Jesus is the one who heals, but for him to point his finger at his faith, at your faith, at my faith, at our faith, and to say that we participated with him, that it is privilege worth whooping and hollering about.
You are praying for COP26 and for climate action. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”
You are very dear to God,
Lowell Bliss
On behalf of the Climate Intercessors leadership team