Tuesdays with Mark (8:22-25)

We dealt with two stories yesterday, two stories that I didn’t see were connected until yesterday. Funny how you can look at scripture for so many years and not see things.

Anyway, the first story is about Jesus healing a man who was blind (see verses 22-25). What is interesting about this particular healing is that Jesus needs to lay his hands on the man twice. The first time he does so that man only receives partial sight. Jesus needs to repeat the laying on of hands in order for the man to see clearly. Hold onto to that “double touch.”

Jesus moves from this healing to Caesarea Philippi. As he is walking along with his disciples he asks them who do people say that he is. After they give him several answers he turns the question on them and asks, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter responds with “You are the Messiah.” Peter has it right; Peter has it wrong.
Before we proceeded to talk about how Peter had it both right and wrong, I began to call out individual men by asking them who Jesus was for them. If you are reading these words right now, I would ask you to pause and ask yourself that question: Who is Jesus for you? How do you think about him, talk about him, visualize him, feel him? As three men shared the room became very quiet and this was a tender and personal time. As you ponder who Jesus is for you, I would also ask you to think and pray about who you are for Jesus.
Back to Peter. He had the title “Messiah” right; but he was wrong about what he thought the Messiah was going to do. Peter thought that Jesus was going to be a second David, a warrior king, a savior to defeat the Romans and to vanquish all other enemies. (Please note that before savior was a theological term it was a military one.) But this is not what Jesus came to do—he didn’t come to fight, to conquer, to pick up arms, to lead people into battle. He came to give his life. He came to show us how to live. He came to help us not to fight; to befriend and not conquer, to embrace and not to pick up arms, to join in the battle for—for justice, for peace, for love, and not against. With Jesus there are no foes—or to be a bit more precise, all people are God’s children and he came for one and all, and his way to conquer sin and death—that was his battle, those were his foes—was through giving his life. Not by picking up arms, but by laying his arms down on the cross—that was Jesus’ way.

Peter is not pleased when Jesus tells him that he has to be persecuted and suffer and be rejected and die. Peter is not pleased because Jesus is not living into the script. So he rebukes Jesus. He is here not acting like a disciple, but a patron; not like a follower, but like a boss. Jesus, though, will not be bossed or patronized. Instead he rebukes Peter with the strongest language possible: “Get behind me, Satan!” Who is Satan? He is the betrayer, the accuser, the adversary, the liar, the bully, the imposter, the tempter, the “rebuker.” Many of us know the voice of Satan in our own lives.

I asked the guys why Jesus reacted so strongly, and one fellow said, “Because Jesus was indeed tempted to walk away from the cross.” I think there is something for us to think about in this fellow’s reflection. Jesus was human—yes, he was divine, too; but, again, let us not forget his humanity. Even at the very end of his life at the Garden of Gethsamane Jesus is asking, pleading, praying for another way, another way to be the Messiah, another way to live into his mission.

In this scripture Jesus is talking about what it means for him to be the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. From his understanding he will then tell us what it means to follow him as his disciples.

More on all this next week. Again, though, please think and pray about who Jesus is for you. The question that he asked those disciples he asks us.