A Strange Miracle

For the last couple of months we've been going, verse by verse, through Mark's Gospel. On Wednesday we were in 8:22-9:1, the pinnacle of Mark's thought and theology and message. The high point and low point of Peter's early ministry, and home to one of the oddest stories we find in Mark's Gospel.

The halfway point is the transition from action to talk, more or less. Chapter 1-8 has Jesus healing, exorcising and raising, 9-16 has Jesus explaining. Those are broad brush strokes, but close enough to the truth.

So why this odd half miracle, this miracle in two parts to set the stage?

Jesus is back in the Jewish area in the town of Bethsaida. They bring a blind man to Him, and Jesus laid His hands on him, but the blind man couldn’t see properly. He told Jesus that he saw men, but they looked like trees walking around. Then Jesus laid His hands on this man again, and his sight was fully restored. What’s happening here, why couldn’t Jesus heal him the first time? Because Jesus is acting out a parable.

This event really happened, Jesus really did heal a blind man in Bethsaida, but it was also a parable. What’s a parable? A short story designed to show a truth. So what truth was Jesus trying to show here? Why does Mark, include this incident when no one else does? Because he wants to make us think about how we see. What was the disciples’ problem at the moment? They couldn’t see Jesus very clearly; He looked like a tree walking. That’s why they could see Him feeding 25,000 and then 20,000 people with a few loaves, and still worry about getting hungry on a boat with Him. Just like this man, they couldn’t see Jesus clearly.

So of us are like this as well. We don’t see Jesus clearly. When we look at Him, we see a walking tree, our spiritual eyes are blurred. We see Jesus, we know Jesus, but not very well. This is why some of us struggle with Bible reading. We see other things more clearly. This is why some of us struggle to make it to church on Sunday, just one day a week (!) other things are just more important than Him. This is why we struggle with sin. If we could see the beauty, the riches, the satisfaction that springs only from Christ, we'd never take a second glance at the pigsty of sin. But we can't, so we do.

Although this is without precedent in Mark, it's not without repetition. Isn't this why Mark places the cleansing of the Temple in between the cursing of the fig tree and it's withering? So we might learn the lesson?

So how do we solve this problem? What do we do when we wake up and don't want to read the Bible. When we see Facebook, or the news, or anything more clearly than we see Jesus? When we don't want to sing, when we don't want to worship? What did the man do? He didn’t pretend everything was ok, and then stumble off. He was honest, and he asked Jesus for help. If you struggle to be seriously, regularly committed to Jesus, then ask Him for help. Ask Him to help you see clearly, ask Him to help you get more excited about your faith, more excited about the Bible and more excited about your faith. This man asked Jesus, and he saw everything clearly.