Miss Jesus Three Times-Mark 8:31-32; 9:31-34; 10:32-45

To Get Jesus Right (1/6/19) we need to See Jesus More Clearly (1/13/19), because like the disciples we can Miss Jesus Three Times (1/20/19) often without realizing it. “He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him” (Mk 8:32). “But they did not understand what he meant … he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” 34 …they kept quiet because … they had argued about who was the greatest” (Mk 9:32-34). “‘Teacher…we want you to do for us whatever we ask.’ 36 ‘What do you want me to do for you ?’ he asked. 37 They replied, ‘Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory‘” (Mk 10:35-37).

Jesus is a hero who became zero when he was crucified. Few people–myself included–think that our lives would be “zero” when we become Christians. Also, Jesus did not come to meet our (the disciples’) expectations. Therefore, expecting Jesus to fulfill our expectations is why we Christians miss and misunderstand Jesus–just like the disciples. Peter got it right and then he got it wrong almost in the same breath (Mk 8:29-33): “You are the Messiah (right). No way will you be killed (wrong).”

We’re started 2019 with what’s most important. First is to Get Jesus Right and second is to See Jesus More Clearly. This third sermon shows how Jesus’ own hand-picked disciples misunderstood and missed Jesus not once, not twice, but three times. Their misunderstanding had to do with Jesus’ most important teaching about his core identity and his ultimate purpose of life–which is to be rejected, suffer, be crucified and killed and after three days rise again (Mk 8:31; 9:31-32; 10:33-34). After these crucial teachings on three occasions the disciples completely misunderstood him, revealing that though they confessed him correctly as Messiah (Mk 8:29), yet they got him wrong and did not see him clearly, like the first blind man whose initial healing was partial (Mk 8:23-24).

The cross is the pattern for Christians to follow. Mark depicts Jesus’ death as a vicarious sacrifice (Mk 10:45) and stresses its exemplary character: Jesus’ death on the cross establishes a pattern for his disciples to follow. Jesus’ response to Peter at Caesarea Philippi discloses—for the first time in the story—that the call to discipleship is also a call to take up the cross (Mk 8:34). Mark hammers home this crucial theme repeatedly in a carefully composed central unit of the Gospel, from 8:27 to 10:45, structured around three passion predictions (Mk 8:31; 9:31; 10:32–34) and framed by two bookend stories of healing blind men (8:22–26, 10:46–52). Within this central unit, Jesus presses forward his teaching project of reshaping the disciples’ understanding of his mission and of theirs.

Resisting suffering discipleship. Each of the three passion predictions triggers a similar sequence: the disciples resist or failure to understand, and Jesus in turn provides corrective teaching that focuses attention on the call to suffering discipleship. These sequences, which constitute the structural backbone of Mark 8:27–10:45, may be represented diagrammatically as follows:

1. PASSION PREDICTION (Mk 8:31; 9:31; 10:32–34).
2. MISUNDERSTANDING (Mk 8:32–33; 9:33–34; 10:35-41).
3. CORRECTIVE TEACHING (Mk 8:34–9:1; 9:35–37; 10:42-45).

FIRST miss or sequence is after Peter’s declaration of Jesus’ Messiahship (8:27-30). Jesus began teaching his disciples about his upcoming death, which Peter resisted and rejected (8:31-33). This passage is the center-point, the turning-point of Mark’s Gospel. Mark put together side by side the story of the blind man receiving his sight (8:22-26) and of the blind disciples gaining their insight (8:27-30). Both stories tell of a two-stage process of illumination.

SECOND miss or sequence shows that the disciples were still concerned about their own status, about what’s in it for them (Mk 9:35). If we think that by following Jesus we will enhance our own prestige and honor, our sense of self-worth and accomplishment (in the world, or at least in the church), then we’r very unlikely to be able to hear what God is actually saying. Jesus must have been frustrated and disappointed that the disciples could only worry about their own relative status. That’s the trouble with understanding half the message — the half we want to understand: if Jesus is Messiah, then we will receive much benefits! The disciples will spend the next few chapters with the same idea in their heads, until the shocking truth dawns.

The cross completely turns things upside down. To try to jolt them out of their fixed thinking, Jesus uses a child as a teaching aid (Mk 9:36). Why? In the ancient world, children had no status or prestige. Jesus’ point is that his disciples should not be seeking particular social standing or special favor by being his followers (Mk 9:35, 37). This resonates throughout the centuries of church history in which so many have thought that being close to Jesus, even working full-time in ministry or going out as missionaries to unknown lands, somehow made them special. Christians who truly understand Jesus’ message of the cross know that things aren’t like that at all.

THIRD miss or sequence offers the most detailed prediction of Jesus’ suffering and provides the most explicit commentary on Jesuss’ fate and the vocation of the disciples. Apparently trying to shock the disciples into hearing the warning, Jesus gruesomely details his coming suffering (Mk 10:34). Then the brothers James and John approach Jesus with a request that suggests they have hardly been listening (Mk 10:37). Jesus, startled at their boldness, replies, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink (Mk 10:38; 14:36), or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” With naive bravado, they answer flatly, “We can” (Mk 10:39a). Jesus, knowing they will flee when his hour of crisis arrives (Mk 14:27, 50), informs them, still employing the metaphors of cup and baptism, that they will indeed undergo suffering with him but that there are no guarantees of special honor to be had; that is a matter for God to decide.

Not surprisingly, the other ten disciples resent the attempt of James and John to hustle their way into the places of honor. Jesus seizes the moment to make one final attempt at teaching them explicitly what discipleship entails (Mk 10:42–45).

The disciples scramble for positions in a pecking order instead of renouncing the world’s lust for power (Mk 9:33–34, 10:35–37) show that they have not yet grasped the nature of God’s kingdom or of their calling. Why? The world, says Jesus, practices leadership from a model of dominance, authority, and the effective uses of power and position (Mk 10:42). It’s the way–even for Christians–to “save” oneself. Rulers rule with a heavy hand. “Exercise authority” in the Greek is “to gain mastery or power over others,” “to subdue,” “to function as a despot,” to overpower others (Ac 19:16). This is the model Jesus categorically rejects (Mk 10:43-44). At no place do the ethics of the kingdom of God clash more vigorously with the ethics of the world than in the matters of power and service. What Jesus presents regarding rule and service finds no obvious precedent in either the OT or Jewish tradition. In a decisive reversal of values, Jesus speaks of greatness in service rather than greatness of power, prestige and authority (Mk 9:35; Lk 22:24-27). The preeminent virtue of God’s kingdom is not power, not even freedom, but service. Ironically, greatness belongs to the one who is not great. He is the one waiting on tables (diakonos). Service grows out of Jesus’ teaching on love for one’s neighbor, for service is love made tangible.

To truly be a servant requires relinquishing power, position, prestige, pedigree, which is unnatural even for Christians. Those who are called into the community of Jesus’ disciples are to be servants, and the pattern for this servanthood is definitively shown by Jesus, who came to give up his own life for the sake of others (Mk 10:45). The full impact of this pattern will become apparent only in the detailed account of his passion and death, but his teaching about discipleship has now been set forth with all possible clarity: to be Jesus’ follower is to share his vocation of suffering servanthood and renouncing the world’s lust for power–which is impossible with daily dying and self-denial (Mk 8:34). Among “Gentiles,” domination and self-assertion are the rule (Mk 10:42), but NOT in the new community of Jesus’ followers. (Shepherding Sheep – sermon from 2013.)

The flesh is still weak. With the character of discipleship now firmly established, Jesus’ fundamental teaching project has reached its conclusion. To be sure, the disciples will still fail and fall away, but no more will they challenge or misunderstand Jesus’ conception of their mission. When Jesus speaks again of his impending demise on his last evening with the disciples, Peter and all the rest declare their determination not to fall away (Mk 14:27–31). The determination proves empty, but their failure is a failure of nerve rather than understanding: “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mk 14:38b).

Chapter 10 concludes with the story of the healing of the blind man Bartimaeus, who pointedly addresses Jesus as “Son of David,” a messianic title. This time, in contrast to the earlier two-stage healing, the healing is immediate and complete: “Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way” (Mk 10:52).

Just as the first healing symbolized the beginning of a process of the disciples’ reorientation, so the second healing symbolizes the sealing of that process. The phrase “followed him on the way” suggests faithful discipleship, echoing the same verb (akolouthein) that Jesus had used in his call to take up the cross at the beginning of this narrative unit (Mk 8:34). Those who are willing to follow Jesus on his way can rightly call him Son of David, Messiah. Now the narrative can move forward to the climactic confrontation in Jerusalem.

Even insiders fail badly. Because that climactic confrontation involves the disciples’ desertion of Jesus at the time of his arrest, most vividly enacted in Peter’s threefold denial, we cannot avoid considering the significance of discipleship failure in Mark’s Gospel. Mark’s portrayal of the disciples discloses a sober view of human impotence. In Mark’s Gospel, even Jesus’ closest followers–the insiders who have been given the secret of the kingdom of God–fall away in time of trial! At the moment of Jesus’ final struggle in prayer to accept his vocation of suffering, the disciples comically nap rather than keep watch while Jesus prays (14:32–42). Peter’s declaration of uncompromising allegiance to Jesus (Mk 14:31) proves empty, and Peter must finally break down and weep at his own faithlessness (Mk 14:72). In short, Mark is hardly a cheerful optimist about the human capacity to fulfill the will of God. He knows well the weakness of the flesh (Mk 14:30), the deceitfulness of the heart (Jer 17:9) and the darkness of the mind.

The call to discipleship is given repeatedly again and again (Mk 8:34; 9:35-37; 10:42-45). There is not the slightest hint in this Gospel that the requirements of God must be prudentially tailored or “realistically” limited because of human weakness. Rather, the demand for self-sacrificial discipleship is uncompromising. Just as the sower in Mark’s parable of the sower (4:3–9) sows seed indiscriminately on good soil and bad, so Mark’s call to discipleship is for anyone who has “ears to hear” (Mk 4:9). The seed may be wasted on many, but those who “hear the word and accept it” will in the end yield a rich harvest, “thirty and sixty and a hundredfold” (Mk 4:8, 20).

Discipleship is NOT for gaining blessing. Mark presents a rigorously challenging account of the life of discipleship. One may be called upon to give up possessions, honor, and security, but participation in the community of the faithful is itself a blessing (Mk 10:30). The community of disciples becomes one’s new family; those who do the will of God are Jesus’ “brother and sister and mother” (Mk 3:35). Also, a reward is promised to those who endure faithfully; those who follow Jesus are assured that they will find life by losing their lives for the sake of the gospel (Mk 8:35). In the meantime, however, there are no easy roads, for the life of faithfulness leads to the cross. The story insists repeatedly that discipleship should never be a means to the end of gaining glory or blessing. Each time the disciples lapse into calculating their future rewards, they appear stupid, and needed firm correction by Jesus (Mk 9:33–35, 10:35–45). One follows Jesus not because of some promised good result but simply because of who he is (Mk 1:1). He also brings “a new teaching—with authority” (Mk 1:27). The way that Jesus teaches—the way of the cross—is one that appears to make no sense. Yet it is to be followed without deviation. The promised vindication must be left in the hands of God.

The mystery of obedience. Mark focuses (in contrast to Matthew) on simple external obedience rather than on motivation or the intention of the heart. There is no visible concern with the problem of how it is possible to obey. Unlike Paul, Mark places no emphasis at all on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit as a necessary condition for obedience. His single reference to the Spirit’s empowerment appears in Jesus’ teaching to the disciples about the apocalyptic birthpangs of the coming kingdom (Mk 13:9, 11). The Spirit will inspire the testimony of Jesus’ followers under persecution, but nowhere else in Mark is there any reference to a “gift” of the Holy Spirit or to the Holy Spirit as a continuing presence that will comfort and guide the community or facilitate its obedience. Instead, we encounter the stark call to suffering discipleship and the simple expectation that those who hear will follow. How? It remains a mystery.

The way of the cross–as expressed by Mark–is simply the way of obedience to the will of God, and discipleship requires following that way regardless of cost or consequences.

Reference:

1. Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: community, cross, new creation: a contemporary introduction to New Testament ethics. Part One, 3. The Gospel of Mark: Taking Up the Cross. 1996. HarperCollins Publishers, NY.
2. Wright, N.T. Mark for Everyone. 2001, 2004. Westminister John Knox Press, Louisville, KY.
3. Edwards, James R. The Gospel according to Mark. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. 2002. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI.