For this Sunday, with the kids present for Thinking Day, I tried to take a more dialogical approach to the sermon. We talked our way through the text together, thinking about it as we went along, before I drew things together at the end.
Hard to work this up into something bloggable, so I’d suggest you read the passage for yourself (Mark 8:22-26) and then engage with the questions as I put them to the congregation.
22 They came to Bethsaida, where some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him.
WHO’S ‘THEY’? – (Jesus and his disciples)
WHERE’S BETHSAIDA? – (North eastern corner of Galilee)
“Some people brought a blind man to Jesus”
DO YOU THINK HE CAME WILLINGLY?
(Hard to say. Stigma associated with disability in ancient world, couldn’t work, so possibly very keen.
Then again he might well have been asking “What will this mean? What if it doesn’t work?)
“and they begged him to touch him”.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE AND SOUND LIKE WHEN SOMEONE BEGS FOR SOMETHING?
The kids in the congregation know all about begging for things! The Greek is parakaleo which means ‘along or beside’ and ‘call out’. They would have been imploring Jesus to do something.
WHAT WERE THEY BEGGING JESUS TO DO? Touch him.
WHY? They knew there was healing in his touch.
It could be they were genuine friends with the man, but it’s equally possible they’d just collared the first blind guy they found in the marketplace and brought him to Jesus to see what he’d do. Curiosity value.
WHAT’S THE NEXT THING JESUS DOES?
23 Jesus took the blind man by the hand
SO JESUS TOUCHES HIM! DOES HE GET HEALED STRAIGHT AWAY?
No. And there’s something important for us in this.
For Jesus, it wasn’t all about the healing. It was about the person who needed to be healed.
His power didn’t just spill over like magic on anyone who happened to be close to him.
Plenty of people touched Jesus over his lifetime. They cradled him as a baby, they gave him piggy backs as a child. They shook his hand and embraced him as a man; they punched him in the face and held his arms and legs down as they nailed him to a cross. None of them, to the best of our knowledge, were magically healed.
It didn’t work that way. His power to heal was never impersonal. It always flowed in the context of a relationship of faith. When people came to him, genuinely seeking help and open to God, that’s when things would happen.
Perhaps that’s why he made the next move “and led him out of the village”.
If Jesus were just looking to impress people, to make a name for himself, he’d have stayed there. But he went to the other extreme – tried to get him away from the hungry, inquisitive eyes of the villagers. He didn’t want to turn this poor man into a circus sideshow. This happens a lot in Mark – it’s called the Messianic Secret. It seems at times that Jesus was wanting to keep his identity quiet from the masses.
23 After spitting on the man's eyes,
That’s a strange thing to do– only mentioned three times in gospels.
Sounds weird to us, but it you cut finger in all likelihood the first thing you’d do is stick it in your mouth.
In the ancient world people believed there were healing properties in spittle. Jesus could clearly heal without this, so maybe he was doing it for the blind man’s sake to fulfil his expectations of what a ‘healer’ would do?
23 Jesus placed his hands on him and asked him, “Can you see anything?” 24 The man looked up and said, “Yes, I can see people, but they look like trees walking about.”
NOTICE ANYTHING STRANGE ABOUT THAT? How would he know what trees looked like? This suggests had probably had sight at some point. Maybe it was a cataract-type problem?
25 Jesus again placed his hands on the man's eyes. This time the man looked intently, his eyesight returned, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus then sent him home with the order, “Don't go back into the village.”
Told to avoid village presumably for the same reasons Jesus led him out of the village to perform the healing…….
That’s our story for this morning, as we find it in Mark – and in fact, Mark is the only gospel writer who includes this particular story. None of the others record it, though they would almost certainly have known about it.
So why did Mark keep it in?
Well at this point in his telling of Jesus’ story, this is exactly the story Mark needs. In the chapters leading up to chapter 8, he’s spent a lot of time showing how blind the Pharisees were to who Jesus was, and even how blind the disciples were to who he was. No-one seems to understand.
But in the verses just after the ones we read this morning, Peter finally gets it. He begins to see. “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks him, and Peter replies “you are the Messiah, the son of the Living God”.
Finally, after weeks and months and years in his company, Peter is beginning to understand just who this man is.
Like Peter; like the man healed of his blindness, the light dawns on us slowly. We move from not seeing, to seeing poorly, to clear-sightedness as we journey with Jesus: but it all takes time. Time, and presence: and anyone who tells you otherwise is pulling your leg.
There’s good news and bad news for us in today’s reading – and that’s the double-edged nature of this thing we call the gospel.
The bad news is that to a greater or lesser degree, we’re all partially blind.
Not pleasant to hear that, is it? But even a moment’s reflection confirms that it’s true.
We’re blind to our own faults most of the time. We can spot a speck of dust in someone else’s eye at twenty paces, but we rarely notice the plank that’s hanging out of our own.
Burns knew what he was on about when he wrote: O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
We’re partially blind to our faults; but we fail to see to our true nature as well. The Bible tells us some amazing things about who we are – that we’re made in the image of God; that we’re chosen and precious in his sight; that we’re made just a little lower than the angels; that he loved us enough to send his son to the cross for our sake. Things that give each one of us a monumental worth. But we’re blind to it, most of the time, and end up scrabbling around for worth among the scraps that the world has to offer.
We’re partially blind to one another, of course. If we struggle to recognise God’s image in ourselves, how much harder is it to see God in anyone else? We ‘see people moving around’, but they ‘look rather like trees’ sometimes. Objects rather than persons. We find it almost incomprehensible that behind every human face their lives a human consciousness every bit as unique and valuable as our own. Every bit as easily hurt and wounded as we are. And from this blindness comes most of the ills human beings do to one another.
And we’re partially blind to God too. Seeing and yet unseeing, Believing, and at the very same time, filled with unbelief. But enough of the bad news.
There is a healing to be found. Some old friends have brought us to this man, Jesus. Abraham has grabbed one arm, Jacob the other. Moses raises his staff and parts the crowds. Joshua pushes us on, while David makes a few jottings for a Psalm he’ll write about it later. Isaiah promises that it will all turn out for the best.
They stop, mid-flow, and a man’s hand, a carpenter’s hand, grasps ours and leads us away from the hubbub and the noise, beyond the limits of the village. We keep going ‘til even the last of the stragglers falls behind, too embarrassed to keep up the chase, and at last we are alone.
We’ve spoken little, but enough for him to know that this is what we want. We want to be able to see. To see our faults and not be broken by the sight of them. To see our true nature, and aspire to become it. To see our neighbour, and recognise God’s image within them. To see God for ourselves and be able to return his loving gaze.
We know these things take time. Some miracles are slow burners, and this one will take a lifetime and more to run its course. But we want to see – to see things how they really are.
He spits and presses two wet fingers against our clenched eyes, blood pulsing through them as he holds the pressure on and murmurs a prayer.
And then it’s over.
"Can you see anything?" He asks, peeling away his hands. “Yes Lord”, we reply. “Enough to know that we want to see more”.
Amen and thanks be to God for his word.
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