"Mark 8-12"
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In Monday’s reading in Mark 8, there’s a striking story about Jesus healing a blind man (Mark 8:22-26). Jesus takes the blind man’s hand and leads him out of town, spits in his eyes and asks, “Do you see anything?” (Mark 8:23).
And he does — Jesus has given a blind man sight. But he doesn’t see clearly yet, everything is blurry. He says, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking” (Mark 8:24). But when Jesus laid his hands on him again, “he saw everything clearly” (Mark 8:25).
This story kicks off the middle act of the gospel of Mark, a unit that ends with the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). In a way, this whole section is about going from blind, to blurry, to seeing clearly.
Blurry
After healing the blind man, Jesus gets to work healing the spiritual blindness (Mark 8:17-21) of the disciples. Like the blind man he healed, it’s a process. Peter’s confession (Mark 8:29) shows that he sees Jesus’ true identity, yet Peter’s next conversation with the Lord (Mark 8:31-38) reveals that he still doesn’t see clearly what that means. The two stories of blind men receiving sight form bookends to the heart of Mark’s gospel, in which we’ll find the book’s three predictions of Christ’s coming death (Mark 8:31; 9:30-31; 10:33-34) and three challenges for disciples to humble themselves and serve others (Mark 8:33-38; 9:33-50; 10:38-45). In this way, our readings on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (Mark 8-10) will reveal the surprising future of the Messiah and his followers. Anyone who would consider being the Lord’s disciple needs to wrestle with what that means.
- Are you ready to take up a cross, deny yourself, and follow the Lord? Are you willing to walk the Lord’s counterintuitive path to greatness, by becoming the servant of everyone around you?
- What do you think the three disciples who witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration (Mark 9:1-13) took away from the event?
Blind
We’ll begin the third and final section of Mark on Thursday (Mark 11). The happy fanfare of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Mark 11:7-10) quickly turns into a clash with religious leaders too blind to understand who Jesus is.
- What is the message of the cursed fig tree (Mark 11:12-14, 20-25)? How does it parallel the cleansing of the temple?
- What do you think the cleansing of the temple (Mark 11:15-19) is all about? How might Jesus’ actions relate to the coming destruction of the temple in the judgment on Jerusalem (cf. Mark 13)? What’s the meaning of the temple? Why do the chief priests and scribes want to kill him?
- Who are the tenants in Jesus’ vineyard parable (Mark 12:1-12)?
- What do you learn from the Lord’s exchanges with religious leaders in Mark 12:13-37?
