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 or we fully grasp in the moment. We have here the incarnated Son of God – incarnated God who presumably could have simply snapped His fingers and started over from scratch.
He doesn’t.
Instead, Mark uses these three chapters to tell us something. That something isn’t easy to understand given the way we presume the world works. At every turn, Jesus reverses our expectations of what Divine power is all about. We like them are looking for a Messiah, the promised Scion of David, the promised king of Israel who would gather the nation back together, defeat her foes, and set the entire world aright.
That isn’t what Jesus does in these passages.
Three times in this section, Jesus tells His disciples that He is going to Jerusalem to die, and they all make themselves look foolish. Pete starts off pretty good, with his confession but then he completely blows it by trying to reassure Jesus that He wouldn’t die. Well, if Pete had anything do with it. Jesus’s response to Pete’s enthusiasm is swift, but only after noticing the other disciples. To keep Pete’s ignorance from spreading, Jesus says “get behind me, Satan!” Imagine you’re Pete at this point – you've just pretty much declared your undying devotion to Jesus and He dismisses you with an allusion to the Evil One.
In addition to those three declarations of His intent to die, Mark brackets this section with two blind man stories. The first blind man is brought to Jesus – he doesn’t come on his own. When Jesus heals him, the healing comes in two steps. The first results in the man seeing, but he describes people as trees walking around. Well, that isn’t quite what we wanted and so the second step is taken and the man can now see. Commentator after commentator has realized that this is a literary device that points to the realization that the disciples know some of what is going on, but they really have no clear idea of what is really happening. The second blind man story is a bit different in that the healing only takes one step. There are differences though. The second man wants to “regain his sight,” and instead of being brought by his friends to Jesus, has to yell for Jesus to help him, all the while being told to shut up by the crowd, and presumably the disciples. Notice the difference here – this man knows he has lost his sight and he wants it back so badly that he is willing to withstand ridicule through persistence to get Jesus’s attention. He knows that if he can just get to Jesus, he will be able to see clearly.
Other commentators will equate Bartimaeus [son of Timaeus] with Plato’s apologist – using sight imagery to buttress the argument, with the idea that this is Mark’s attempt at saying that Platonic philosophy isn’t truth – that those who rely on Plato’s ideas are blind guides and will only be able to see clearly through the Christian system. Perhaps.
So those are the bookends – two blind men healed.
The substance though is an ongoing teaching about the kingdom of God and the way power is used in that kingdom. Within this section of the Gospel, the disciples jockey for position, argue with each other about who will be the greatest, try to subvert Jesus’s intent to die, and try to block those who are less-than from coming to Jesus. These are children and this blind man. Jesus tells them eventually that the power of the kingdom is found in humility and service – love in fact, rather than raw power wielded to get one’s way. After this final healing, Jesus enters Jerusalem and the story unfolds over the next six chapters as Jesus is arrested, beaten, crucified – and then wondrously raised.
We rely on other Gospels to help us understand these two blind man stories and the teaching on kingdom power that pervades these three travel chapters. Even or perhaps especially after the crucifixion, the disciples hide, they distrust each other, and they are considerably downcast and dumbfounded. They continue to see as one seeing trees walking around rather than those who come to Christ and see clearly. Their hopes remain with the idea of human power rather than Divine power in the kingdom of God.
And this is our challenge too. Do we rely on “making things work,” on manipulating our workspaces and relations to get ahead of others, on waiting for God to destroy those we think are appropriate targets? What Jesus tells us in this section is that the power of the kingdom of God is to serve and love. Those who would be first He says, will be last and the last, first. Jesus welcomes those on the fringes – the children who should be seen and not heard, and those with physical maladies too often assumed to be the effect of God’s disapproval. Jesus chastises the power and social standing arguments of the disciples, reminding them three times that He is intentionally going to die in Jerusalem to give Life to the world.
He who would be first, shall be last and the Son of Man didn’t come to be served, but to serve.
How is your eyesight?
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