We have been talking about this Gospel passage for weeks now. Not directly. But indirectly. Since September, we have been in this middle section of Mark's Gospel, in which Jesus has been trying to heal the spiritual blindness of his disciples, his followers, us. And as we have been noting, this middle section of Mark's Gospel has been bookended by two stories of the healing of physical blindness. The first was the healing of the blind man in Bethsaid and the second is today's Gospel about Bartimaeus.