A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Lent 1B + 2B
The text: Mark 1:16-8:30
After taking up the mission from John the Baptizer, Jesus immediately gets to work healing, exorcizing demons, and proclaiming the Good News. The depth of the events that follow is significant, as each brings more to what we learn about Jesus and the mission of God.
There is a way we treat the different events—healings and teachings mostly—as markers or parts of a relatively static pattern rather than landmarks on a longer journey. We see a healing story and go Yeah, Jesus heals people. But what we learn from each healing paints a more distinct portrait over time.
By the time we get to chapter 8, we’ve already had the feeding of the multitudes and the stilling of the storm. He has already pulled 1000 demons out of a man and compelled them into pigs. And his followers have made miracles themselves.
Jesus has also warned them about their religious leaders. He has been confronted by the Syrophoenician woman for bigotry and exclusion. He cured a deaf man, astounding even the most stubborn of critics. And all the while, he has attempted to hold back the fame an notoriety.
Chapter 8
What strikes me about jumping from chapter 1 to 8 is not just the volume of material we aren’t experiencing by reading it all. Its the story development; the insight we gleam from these middle events.
Before we get to Jesus’s first Passion prediction, we have what may be the disciples most fascinating teaching.
The Feeding and the Pharisees
After Jesus feeds the mulititudes a second time (feeding four thousand), he departs for Dalmanutha, where some Pharisees demand from him a sign. Jesus huffs with disdain, rejects the demand and goes back over the sea.
This moment is small and seemingly insignificant, but it sets up the matter of witness and responsibility. Jesus is performing signs. All. The. Time. But the Pharisees in this moment can’t see them that way. And they further insult with demanding one that they can see. It is selfish to expect and insulting to God to ask. And worst of all—is a matter of power and control. Whether they get it or not, the Pharisees are trying to control God.
The Bread
On their way back, the disciples start to freak out. They are down to a single loaf of bread. Because they’ve forgotten to bring more. Jesus chides them for their fear. For they just fed thousands of people and collected seven baskets of pieces and earlier fed thousands and collected twelve baskets of pieces.
Jesus doesn’t go any further except to incredulously ask if they do not understand.
The truth is: they probably don’t. Nor do we. But Jesus thinks we should. Which means it probably isn’t as complicated as we think. We think something’s missing, but its just that we’re missing the point. Or, more importantly, afraid to reach for it ourselves. We want him to spell it out so we can be sure (hello, control!).
The numbers 12 and 7 are obviously symbols—ones that everyone knew as such. The twelve tribes encompassed the whole and variety of the people. And seven is the number of completion and wholeness.
Are we still missing something?
There is that whole part of Jesus literally feeding thousands of people on five loaves twice. The idea that these few might fret over one loaf is so clearly ignoring the most obvious part of the story. And from mere hours or days before.
I don’t think we are so much missing something so much as refusing to connect our own witness with our lives.
Jesus says
“Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember?”
For the disciples, they have literally seen the miracles and participated in them. They collected those baskets. The food was literally in their hands. It isn’t a question of the presence of information or truth or understanding. It is their lack of connecting that to themselves.
They are refusing to trust that he will provide.
It is similarly telling that our own struggles (perhaps even with this text!) reveal what is missing from our faith. Not that the truth isn’t present or that we cannot understand; that we refuse to consider what it is that Jesus is even doing here.
The Blind Man at Bethsaida
Jesus heals one more person before confronting his disciples about his identity—to see if they know who he is yet. Some people brought a blind man to Jesus. And this is, perhaps the most curious story yet.
This man is brought to Jesus and Jesus takes him out of the village. And after healing him, he sends him home saying
‘Do not even go into the village.’
And the healing itself is strange. He can’t heal the man right off—he gives him some sight, but not clear sight. It takes a second dose of healing power.
Coming off the chiding about our lack of understanding, this curious story offers a great opportunity for imagination. We are invited to wonder why the healing wasn’t so simple and why the man must avoid the village.
There are simple reasons for avoiding the village—Jesus doesn’t want people to notice that the man is healed! This is the most obvious, given how hard Jesus works to keep his divinity secret. But I think the evangelist would have said as such if that’s the only takeaway.
There are places where Jesus’s power doesn’t work at all. Perhaps this is a “weak zone” where faith is low or skepticism is high. Or is it manifesting from the disciples themselves as they are being thrown by the changing nature of the journey?
Perhaps the village itself reflects a problem for the man. Or that he doesn’t want him so exposed. This contrasts mightily with the man saved from a legion of demons who sought to be a disciple but was sent home to do the work there. I suspect that this man himself isn’t eager to be such a disciple.
Peter’s declaration
Seeing all of this build up to what feels like Jesus’s midterm exam for his students changes how we enter into it, doesn’t it? When Jesus asks these two questions:
- Who do people say that I am?
- Who do you say that I am?
the whole thing is colored by the journey, the encounters, the confusion, and the doubts.
This is one of the beloved stories to preach on and is rich with possibility.
But if nothing else is taken from it, we see Peter naming Jesus Messiah, even as Jesus has tried to hide it. We see a recognition of the scope of their mission, even if they can’t see it all—or more importantly, can see it all but are afraid to process it all.
Peter does take a leap in calling Jesus the Messiah. It is a kind of intellectual and spiritual bravery that he failed to display in the boat before.
Perhaps the better way to cast it is not in the overtones of either/or. Of bravery or cowardice. But in willingness to risk. That our use of imagination is so little encouraged by our world that we scarcely know how to use it with Jesus any more than Peter. I dare say far less so!
Our certainty that Jesus is Messiah and Son of God does most of the heavy lifting of our faith. We risk almost nothing in naming him so. We’re in the boat that Peter made.
Our imaginations are tested in other ways. Such as in seeing grace in the world and our own part in it.
Understanding that we might have daily bread isn’t something Jesus can spell out for us. We have to see it. And together, with him, make it happen.