Mark’s travel narrative, or the central section of his Gospel, stretches from chapter 8 through chapter 10. In this section, Jesus is traveling, after the Transfiguration to Jerusalem to be killed. During this trip, we get some of the most interesting and frustrating passages – for Jesus no doubt, and us as we almost groan at the lack of perception of the disciples. We can’t dump too much on them though, because we have the whole story and they didn’t - they’re just trying to make this up as they go – and they seemingly trip over their own feet almost with every step. For Mark, these guys must have seemed clueless but he wouldn’t have called them that. This section is a tour de force of the central part of Jesus’s teaching – that the kingdom of God isn’t run along the same lines as the world is. And so here we have a series of vignettes telling us that the power of God isn’t in the flash-bang, in your face raw power that Israel was expecting and that neither the disciples o...
Ramblings and observations