Mark 8:22-38. A healing of two halves

“And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see men, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”  Mark 8:22-38

“Having eyes do you not see…?”  Mark 8:18

 “Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter”  John 1:44

 We’ve just had a longish section dealing with Jesus’ messianic mission to both Jews and Gentiles. He has come to the Jews as the new David; as the shepherd who cares for his sheep, who feeds them, teaches them, and has compassion on them; and also as the king who commands the army of Israel.

He has come to the Gentiles also, and fed them- his sheep are not limited to Jewish men. Jesus is the saviour for all Israel, and for all the four corners of the earth. There is no other saviour.

 We come this week to the start of the passage right at the middle of the book- the account of Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah.

 

1.      Mark has 16 chapters. This is at the midpoint of the book in that sense. Are there any other ways in which this is a turning point or central point for the book as a whole?

 2.      The healing of the blind man is the only healing done in two stages, and the only one where Jesus asks whether the “patient” is healed. Why is this?

 3.      The healing of the blind man is unique to Mark. None of the other Gospel writers record it. Why is this?

 4.      Why is the man told not even to enter the village?

 5.      Peter is called “Satan”. This is hard language. Why does Jesus use it?

 6.      What does it mean in practise to “take up your cross” and “lose your life”?

 1.      Mark has 16 chapters. This is at the midpoint of the book in that sense. Are there any other ways in which this is a turning point or central point for the book as a whole?

You may recall that we said at the start that this Gospel is divided into two parts. The division is seen both in the location of Jesus ministry, and in the themes of his teaching.

The first half is set in Galilee and the Northern areas, and there Jesus teaches that the kingdom of God has come, and that he is the king, the Messiah. Mark summarises Jesus’ teaching in 1:15- “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” This is the thrust of Jesus’ teaching to his disciples and to everyone else at this point. At the centre of Jesus’ teaching, are the themes of the coming of the kingdom of heaven to earth, and his identity as the king. So he speaks of himself as the bridegroom and speaks about the new wine in chapter 2. And in Ch.4, he says that he has come as the light into the world, and that the kingdom of God has been planted like a seed that will grow.

The second half is different both in geographical location and in content. Events here are set on the road to Jerusalem and in the city itself. Jesus is travelling to that city in order to die there, and his teaching reflects that awareness. In the second half of the Gospel, Jesus teaches about who Messiah is, and what his role must be. The disciples have understood that God’s kingdom has come and that Jesus is the king- and they are ready to follow the great king. But Jesus has some further teaching for them. The king must die as a ransom for his people. Though he is the hope of Israel, Israel will reject Messiah. Jesus has come to suffer and be humiliated.

This is the midpoint of the book, both geographically and theologically

 2.      The healing of the blind man is the only healing done in two stages, and the only one where Jesus asks whether the “patient” is healed. Why is this?

3.      The healing of the blind man is unique to Mark. None of the other Gospel writers record it. Why is this?

So this incident is unique to Mark, and is also the only healing that falls into two phases. Reading through the few verses dealing with the 2-stage healing of the blind man, we’re left with some obvious questions.  Why isn’t the man healed immediately? Why aren’t his eyes opened all at once? Jesus heals plenty of other people in one step- is he not able to do the same for this man? Is it that this man is an especially difficult case? Is he really really blind, blinder than “normal” blind, blinder than all the other blind men Jesus met, so that Jesus just can’t summon up the power to heal him all at once?

And given that this is an unusual miracle, why is it that only Mark records it? Why didn’t Matthew or Luke or John think it added anything to their Gospels? Or to put the question the other way, why does Mark think it’s important?

Those two questions are bound up together, and are also linked to the answer to question 1 above. Mark’s Gospel makes clear the way the disciples understood, and didn’t understand, Jesus. The two-stage nature of the Gospel reflects the disciples’ experience. Jesus came to them preaching the good news of the kingdom of God, and they followed him. They understood that he was the Messiah, and the only hope for Israel. They understood that he was the Son of God. But they didn’t understand how his ministry on earth would end. They didn’t understand that the crucifixion was necessary. They understood the first half of Mark’s Gospel, but not the second. They identified Jesus’ messianic office correctly, but did not yet understand what that office meant for the holder and his followers.

We see this theme writ large across the next few chapters- Jesus repeatedly predicts his own death, and the disciples repeatedly don’t get it. Jesus repeatedly says that his kingdom is about suffering and humility and victory through weakness. The disciples repeatedly show that their hopes and values are very different.

This healing of the blind man is part of that theme. It is a kind of acted parable. There is a deliberate parallel to be drawn between the blind man and Peter, who stands as an example of all the disciples. Peter and the blind man both came from Bethsaida. Both men were led out of Bethsaida. Both men were genuinely given light. Both men were asked by Jesus what they could see.

Jesus laid hands on the blind man twice. After the first touch, Jesus asks what he sees, and he tells Jesus that he can see. But he can only see in part. He does see true things, a lot more than he could see before, but he does not yet see fully. In the same way, the disciples were blind- Jesus says so himself in 8:18 “Do you have eyes, but fail to see”. They have been given genuine light- enough to recognise Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus asks them what they see (“who do you say that I am?”), just as he asks the blind man what he can see. And both the disciples and the blind man are yet to see clearly.

At first glance, when reading Peter’s confession in v29, it would appear that Peter and the others have been cured of their dullness and have perceived who Jesus really is, but to make the point that they do not yet see clearly, we are immediately shown that Peter has a very distorted view of what Messiahship means. They do now see more clearly than they did before, but the opening of their eyes is not yet finished. Jesus has patiently revealed to them that he is the Messiah, and they have understood that much. They have asked themselves the question before in bewilderment- “Who is this man?” (4:41)- but now they know a true answer- “You are the Christ”. What they don’t know is what being the Christ means. They haven’t grasped that it means death before victory.

The inference we can draw from seeing this 2-stage healing here at the centre of the gospel, is that just as Jesus finishes the job for the blind man, so he will also finish the job of opening the disciples’ eyes.

 4.      Why is the man told not even to enter the village?

This instruction is part of a much larger set of verses in Mark’s Gospel. Again and again, we find Jesus ensuring a level of “secrecy” about who he is. Right at the start, in chapter 1, Jesus commanded a demon he cast out in the synagogue to keep silent (1:25). He refused to allow other demons to speak, and Mark tells us explicitly that this was because the demons knew who Jesus was (1:34). Jesus repeatedly tells demons, people he heals, and even his own disciples, not to speak of certain things publicly (1.43-45; 3.12; 5.43; 7.36; 8.26; 8.30; 9.9). He takes his disciples away from the crowds, to teach them in private (4.34; 7.17-23; 9.28; 8.31; 9.31; 10.32-34; 13.3). His public teaching is often in parables, given deliberately so that outsiders may not understand (4.10-13). Here, we can see that the command for secrecy is strong. This man is not simply told not to tell others about what has happened to him; he is told not even to show himself to those who know him as a blind man- not even to enter the village.

“Why all this secrecy?” one wonders. Why does Jesus’ identity have to be hidden? Why shouldn’t it be shouted from the rooftops? And especially now that the disciples have understood who Jesus is- couldn’t this be the launching pad for a new evangelistic initiative? Send the 12 out again to proclaim openly that the Messiah is here, doing signs and wonders?

The secrecy all fits in with the point made about the disciples’ understanding. The Twelve still don’t understand something very important. They do now see, whereas before they were utterly blind, but they see fuzzily. They see the truth as clearly as a man sees who looks at other men, blinks a few times, and says, “Wow! Walking trees! Who’da thought it?”

They haven’t understood that Jesus will go quietly to his death, not raising an army and fighting for the throne of Israel. The idea of the cross, and the grave, and the resurrection, is just not part of their scheme for the future. And when those things do happen, the disciples will be taken by surprise. So Jesus’ identity must remain a secret for now. Only after the Son of Man has risen from the dead, will it be safe to declare to all men who he is.

Here, where this miracle mirrors the understanding of the disciples, the command must be a strong one. If even the disciples draw the wrong conclusions from their true understanding of Jesus’ identity, then those who don’t know Jesus at all will go further wrong.

 5.      Peter is called “Satan”. This is hard language. Why does Jesus use it?

Jesus does now begin to teach them about his death. For the first time in the Gospel, he mentions it- and in fact, he does more then merely mention it. He teaches plainly about it, not in parables or using ambiguous language. He states it openly, so that they must grasp what he is saying.

And they do grasp it, but they don’t believe it. Peter thinks he knows what the Messiah is supposed to be like, and the Messiah can’t possibly be rejected and die- so he takes Jesus aside and says, “No, this can’t happen to you. You have got to save Israel. You are the Christ, God’s anointed one. You mustn’t talk like that.” He hadn’t seen that Jesus’ Messiahship had sacrifice at its heart. He had never brought together the Old Testament teaching on the Messiah who would bring in the kingdom of God, and the Suffering servant who would forgive sins, bearing the iniquity of God’s people. He expected Jesus to bring God’s kingdom in with power, majesty, and glory. Probably, he saw that this meant more than merely defeating the Romans- but it certainly included that. And Jesus now says to Peter that he will be the Messiah through rejection, shame, and death. Peter is shocked, and tries to rebuke Jesus.

Jesus response to Peter is very severe. Nobody else is spoken to so harshly. Even the scribes and Pharisees are not called “Satan” by Jesus. But Jesus could hear Satan’s voice in Peter’s words. Satanism isn’t about goats’ skulls and midnight ceremonies involving candles and pentagrams. It’s about trying to edit the cross out of things. It’s about seeing no point in a suffering sacrifice for sin.

We know that Jesus did feel strongly about the cross. When he thought of it in the garden of Gethsemane, sweat ran from his forehead like drops of blood. He was a real man, and he feared pain and death. And more than that, he dreaded bearing the load of sin, and knowing his Father’s wrath. He got all churned up inside when he thought about the terrible things that awaited him. We have never known anything like it. We get anxious over tiny little things. A difficult situation at work, a possible conflict… We can sweat over those things. Jesus knew he was going to be tortured to death, abandoned in the darkness- and he prayed beforehand “Abba Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will but what you will.” It was a strong temptation for Jesus to refuse the cross. Only his obedience was stronger.

Satan had already played on this fear when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. He took Jesus up onto a high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and said to him “All this can be yours, if you will bow down and worship me”. Satan offered a crown without the cross, telling Jesus he could still be king, but could just skip the dying in agony part. And Satan again tries that tactic here, using Peter’s lack of understanding to test Jesus. Peter really is speaking as Satan speaks. And Jesus again resisted temptation, and again submitted to his Father’s will.

 6.      What does it mean in practise to “take up your cross” and “lose your life”?

The phrase has passed into common usage- incidentally just one small evidence of the influence the Bible has had on the English language. “We all have our crosses to bear”, is something you hear people say, meaning that we should put up with irritations of life graciously, because life isn’t perfect, and everyone has to put up with things they don’t like, and there’s no point complaining. Jesus also spoke of “losing your life” as well, and often that is made to mean “not being selfish, losing your self-centredness, being so generous that you care about others, not about yourself”. But those things aren’t what Jesus meant when he spoke of bearing the cross or losing your life. To the people who heard Jesus, and to the people who first heard Mark’s Gospel read, a cross was not a minor annoyance of life. It was a brutal instrument of very real, very painful death. “Losing your life” is meant quite literally. Mark’s readers could fully expect to lose their lives for Jesus’ sake and for the gospel’s, and not metaphorically.

Jesus wanted everybody to hear this. Peter had taken him aside, but he now calls the other disciples, and the crowd as well (v34) to tell them that following him means suffering as he will suffer. He makes it clear that just as he will have the cross before the crown, so too will those who serve him. Because of the passing of time, and because of the frequent spiritualization of this passage, we need to be careful to hear it as the group Jesus spoke to would have heard it, and as Mark’s readers, the Gentile Christians would have heard it. By this warning Jesus gives about carrying the cross, they would certainly have understood that Jesus expected them to die for his sake.

 Jesus’ point is exactly that- that if you are his disciple- then you will see him as the most important one. If you have to die for being a Christian, then you’ll do it, because being a Christian is more important than living. The Christian believes that Jesus died for him, to save him- forever. So losing all that this world has to offer is a small thing, insignificant. Whoever would seek to preserve his life, whoever is too scared to follow Jesus, knowing that it will get him killed- he is the one who will lose his life in the end. He will die eventually no matter what, and who will care after death whether they’ve had 70 years alive and died in bed, or 30 years alive followed by execution? Following Jesus might get people killed in the short term-and it did for plenty of the early disciples. There was persecution from the Jews in Jerusalem in the early days, Paul going around making widows left right and centre- and then there was official Roman persecution later, after the great fire of Rome, which Nero conveniently blamed on the Christians. But it’s worth it. The people of this world strike a bargain whereby they sell their souls for the things this world has to offer. And most men don’t drive a very hard bargain. But the followers of Jesus Christ don’t try to gain what they cannot keep. They are ready to die- knowing they dying, they shall live.

 Just as Jesus will be rejected by this generation, so will his followers be. But just as Jesus will be raised from the dead, and will sit in glory, enthroned in heaven, so also will his followers be. Why does Jesus refer to the Son of Man, and the glory of holy angels? Because they are reminders of his eternal glory. Jesus might appear to human eyes as a man, and might be soon battered and broken on the cross, but he will be raised, and he will come again in power and majesty. Into his hands will be given the judgement on the last day. He will honour those who have followed him faithfully, and will reject those who have not been willing to follow him even unto death.

 Peter, in later life, seems to have meditated upon the idea of Jesus as the rock. He preaches to the priests and scribes in Acts 4, quoting Psalm 118, saying that the stone that the builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone, and there is salvation in no-one else. And he quotes it again in his first letter, adding a couple of quotes from Isaiah about the cornerstone chosen and precious, and about the Lord being a rock of stumbling (Read I Peter 2:6-9).

Perhaps Peter dwells on the theme because he knew that he himself had come close to stumbling at Jesus. The Jews did stumble, because Jesus died rejected, and therefore didn’t fit the mould of the sort of powerful glorious king they wanted. He was as offence to them, and they hated him.

He still is an offence to many today. Read again his words to the disciples and to the crowd. They are still offensive to many. People want to make Jesus out to be a gentle teacher. His violent eand was a tragedy, cutting short a promising career in gentle teaching. Well, even if we forget the fact that Jesus could be far from gentle at times- he could throw tables around in the temple- even if we assume he was a gentle teacher, surely those who want to say he was only a gentle teacher are missing the point. The violent death he suffered was not an afterthought, it was the goal of his whole life. People find that hard to swallow. It isn’t pleasant to them- the idea of redemption and sacrifice. They’d rather have a moral teacher than a saviour. They stumble at Jesus. They reject the cornerstone.

Again, Jesus makes absolute claims here. That is very offensive to some people. Jesus says that those who want to follow him, must be ready to lose their lives for his sake and the gospel’s. He demands absolute allegiance. He doesn’t want half-hearted followers. He refuses to recognise them as followers at all. Anybody who isn’t willing to lose his life for Jesus now, will lose his life forever when Jesus returns. It is a claim at which many stumble. How arrogant, they say- because they don’t really want to acknowledge that Jesus does have an absolute right to treat them as they deserve. There is no life except with Jesus. Only those who follow him will find life. Anything else leads only to death. It couldn’t be more plain.

Mark 8:1-21. All the world inherits the promise.

In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.” And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” And he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away.

 And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha. The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side. Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”

 

 1.      Why are there two feeding accounts in Mark’s Gospel? Did this really happen twice?

 2.      What is the difference between them?

 3.      Jesus makes remarks about the numbers involved, and seems to imply that the disciples ought to understand the significance of these numbers. Is he talking in some secret code?

 4.      The Pharisees seek a sign from heaven. They would doubtless defend this as sensible and prudent. Jesus clearly thinks it is neither. Why? And how does it fit in with the feeding miracle?

 5.      What is the “leaven” of the Pharisees and Herod, and why do the disciples need to be warned against it?

   

1.      Why are there two feeding accounts in Mark’s Gospel? Did this really happen twice?

 As we read Mark 8, it will be helpful to have at the forefront of our minds, recent events of Mark’s Gospel.  We’ll spot some rather striking similarities between this passage and the passage from 6:31-7:37. Perhaps most striking is the similarity between the two feeding accounts. Not only is it striking that the miracle of multiplying bread is repeated, but many of the incidental details are the same. In both accounts, a “great crowd” comes to a “desolate place”, and there is no food. Jesus mentions the problem to the disciples. They don’t know what to do. Jesus takes bread, says a blessing, breaks it, gives it to the disciples to distribute, and there is enough to feed many thousands, and there are baskets of fragments gathered up afterwards.

In fact, the two accounts are so similar that nobody familiar with unbelieving Bible commentary will be surprised to learn that any number of commentators suggest that there was really only one occurrence of the miracle. They argue that the story of the miracle was told and retold, and some of the details got a bit changed in the repeated retelling, and by the time Mark is writing, there are any number of different but similar versions of the same story floating around. Poor old Mark has heard at least two versions of the story, and he thinks the thing must have happened twice!

Why such commentators think it so vanishingly unlikely that Jesus could actually have done the same thing more than once, they don’t say. In any case, their thesis doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny.

 In the first place, Mark is no dimwit. This is a man who has written a work of literary genius, which ha become one of the best-selling, most translated, and most influential books ever. This is especially true if you take the view that Mark’s was the seminal Gospel- the first of the four to be written- and that Matthew and Luke drew heavily on Mark as source material. But even if not, Mark has had an influence greater than all but a small handful of all the other men ever to have put pen to paper in the entire history of the world. He is not a thicko who needs to be corrected by scholars who, despite living some 2000 years after the events they read about, reckon themselves capable of reading between the lines and supplying the insight Mark lacks as to what really happened.

Secondly, we know from Peter’s letters that he viewed Mark as a son. Mark was an intimate friend of at least one eyewitness of the events. It seems unlikely that a miracle on this scale is the sort of thing that Peter would get so mixed up about as to accidentally duplicate in his re-telling, however dull he might have been in comprehending the meaning of the miracles.

And thirdly, take a look at Jesus’ words in the boat, talking to his disciples about both miracles. Jesus obviously knows that he did this miracle twice. So the liberal commentators either have to say that Jesus himself was confused at this point about what he had been doing in recent months, or that the whole section recording Jesus’ teaching in the boat is pure fabrication (the latter option is unsurprisingly more popular).

 Those who want to maintain that the feeding of a multitude only happened once are not just left saying that the Gospel writers are more than a bit mixed up about events, they are saying that the Gospel writers made up chunks of dialogue, putting words into Jesus’ mouth which they knew he never said. It is just an example of unbelief for unbelief’s sake. Some of these people have a desperate desire to find errors, resulting in making errors up when they can’t find any. Others are cowardly, and desire to appear respectable in the eyes of the academy.

 2.      What is the difference between the two accounts? 

 So then, this miracle happened twice- which leaves us with a question, does it not? John says in the very last verse of his Gospel, that if all that Jesus did was written down, the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. All the Gospel writers have been very selective with their material. And Mark’s is the shortest Gospel. Mark has been superlatively selective about what went into his book. He isn’t about to waste space saying the exact same thing in the exact same way- not when there are hundreds of things to say and hundreds of different ways to say the same thing. The mere fact that Mark gives space to two accounts shows us that neither could be omitted without losing something vital. Mark saw both miracles as important revelations of Jesus’ significance. So what does this one tell us, that the other one didn’t?

 To answer that question, we need to look at the differences between the two miracles. The most obvious differences are to do with the numbers- 5000 men versus 4000, 5 loaves versus 7, and 12 baskets of fragments versus 7. We will consider those shortly. There are also other significant differences.

 Look at the key themes in the first account. There we noted that Jesus was acting as the shepherd of Israel, and as the commander of the army of Israel (see notes on Mark 6:30-44). Mark used language reminiscent of several OT passages, and the first miracle was crammed full of implicit references (Sheep without a shepherd, green grass, David’s five loaves, companies of 100 and 50…). There are not the same allusions here to the messianic hope for Israel. All of the above connotations are notable for their absence from the second account.

 Look at the context surrounding this second miracle. It is placed just after a section where Jesus defines what makes a man unclean- contra the Pharisees’ definition- and then goes to Gentile territory in the North and blesses a Gentile woman, and then to Gentile territory in the East and heals a deaf mute man. It is placed just before a rejection of the Pharisees, and a warning to the disciples about the Pharisees and Herod.

 Look especially at one theme which is carried over from the first miracle; that of the “Edenification” of the wilderness. It is pointed out on both occasions that the feeding occurs in a desolate place. This is language used especially in Isaiah…

“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus…”

“For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water…”

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people…”

“For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song…”

 (Isa 35:1,6-7; 43:19-20; 51:3).

Isaiah speaks of the complete alteration of the desolate place. There will come a day when God will make even the desert into a garden. The coming of Jesus’ kingdom brings about the fulfilment of these prophecies. Jesus can offer food even in the desolate places. The promises here are broader in scope than promises of a new David or a new Moses. David was a child of Abraham and a king of Israel. Adam was the father of all men, and given dominion over all the world. These prophecies of a new Eden-in-the-desert were given to Israel, but they are much less specifically Jewish than themes of the shepherd and commander of Israel.

 And there is a new theme in this second feeding miracle, harking back to the OT again. Some of these people are said to come to Jesus “from far away”. Isaiah (60:4) and Jeremiah (46:27) also thought of people coming from afar. The were thinking primarily of a return of scattered Jews from exile, but Jesus sees a wider ingathering, not just a gathering of the sons of Abraham from among the Gentiles, but an ingathering of the Gentiles themselves as they become God’s people. And these people will gather to Jesus as the focal point.

 Both context and themes point to the first miracle as exclusively Jewish in character, and the second as inclusive of the Gentiles. That is the reason why both must be included in Mark. They come as a pair. The Jew first, and then the Gentile.

 3.      Jesus makes remarks about the numbers involved, and seems to imply that the disciples ought to understand the significance of these numbers. Is he talking in some secret code?

 With the answer to question 2 in view, we are not surprised to find that the differences in numbers tell a similar story. In a way, Jesus is talking in code, but it is a code that will be familiar to the disciples, and to anyone else conversant with the Old Testament. 5 and 5000 are Israelitish numbers. Not only is there a link to David, the great king of Israel, with the 5 loaves; but 5 is the number of books of Moses, the Torah. In the first miracle, there are 5000 Jews, forming an army of Israel, God’s nation under their true shepherd. 12, the number of baskets of fragments, is yet more obviously the number of Israel- the correlation with the tribes of Israel is hard not to spot (the disciples will surely be aware that they are 12 in number because they are to be the foundation of the new Israel).

 So in the first miracle, Jesus feeds the army of those Jews willing to receive his teaching, and there are 12 baskets left over. So why 5000 men and not 12,000? Because not all Israel are gathered before Jesus to be fed by him. 12 is the number of the complete Israel. And why 12 baskets rather than 5? Because Jesus lays claim to a greater authority and responsibility than that over the army before him. Jesus can feed not only those who are his followers in some sense, but he can feed them and have enough left over to feed all Israel.

 In the second miracle, there are 4000 people, probably mostly Gentiles. This miracle happens in the region of the Decapolis, a Gentile dominated area. These numbers are full of Gentile symbolism.

How many corners does the earth have- not geographically, but conceptually? (Isaiah 11:12; Revelation 7:1; 20:8) How many rivers go out from the mountain of God to water the whole earth? (Genesis 2:10-14) How many points do we have on a compass? The number 4 is concerned with the whole earth. Jesus makes the point that some of the crowd have come from afar off. These people are definitely not all Israelites. They could be from anywhere. They are, as it were, from the 4 corners of the earth.

The crowd consume bread from 7 loaves, and there are 7 baskets of fragments left over. 7 is a number of completeness. How many days are there in a full week, before you complete the circle and start again? Which day is the final day, the day of rest when work is finished for the week? (“Sabbath” means “seventh”) How many is the standard tally of all the nations in Gen 10? When Joshua went to Jericho, for how many days did he circle the city? How many times did they walk round on the final day? How many priests led them with how many trumpets? (Joshua 6).

If you want to completely and fully forgive your brother, how many times should you forgive him? Peter thought that seven would be a good number, but Jesus tells him seventy times seven. Both men are working in a mental framework of seven pointing to fullness, but Peter thinks that a literal 7 forgivenesses would be more than generous, and Jesus tells him he’s not even close. (Matt 18:21).

If the 12 baskets were a statement that Jesus brought blessing to all Israel, then this is a wider statement still. Jesus is the saviour of Israel, and the nations of the whole earth, and everything. He is the only saviour, and he is the saviour for all. There is enough left over for everyone ever created to be fed.

 4.      The Pharisees seek a sign from heaven. They would doubtless defend this as sensible and prudent. Jesus clearly thinks it is neither. Why? And how does it fit in with the feeding miracle?

 The Pharisees demand a sign. They want some sort of authentication. Some proof that Jesus is a prophet from God- a sign from heaven, is what they ask for. But Mark tells us that they’re testing Jesus. The choice of word “testing” is meant to remind us of many OT passages that speak of Israel testing God by doubting what he’d already done for them, and always demanding more e.g. Pss 95:9-10, 78:17-20, 40-43, 56, 106:13-14, Num 14:1-10, 20-25.

Remember Jesus quoting scripture to Satan- “you shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Jesus quoting from Deut 6:16). The demand of the Pharisees is an act of disobedience. They are like Israel in the wilderness years. They have had plenty of signs. The scribes from Jerusalem have seen miracles a-plenty, and what effect has it had on them? They said “He is possessed by Beelzebub, and by the prince of demons he casts out demons”. Jesus is doing signs all the time, but they’re blind. They account these things to be of the devil. And of course, as teachers of Israel, they should know that signs were not absolute proof in any case (Deut 13:1-5). These Pharisees have seen signs more than enough to convince them, if signs had been what they needed.

Having just described Jesus as the one saviour sent to all the earth, Mark moves back to the rejection of Jesus by those who should have recognised him, the teachers of Israel. The Gentiles are brought in as inheritors of the promises, but at the same time, some of the Jews cut themselves off by their unbelief.

 5.      What is the “leaven” of the Pharisees and Herod, and why do the disciples need to be warned against it?

 The problem the Pharisees have isn’t lack of evidence. Their problem is wickedness in their hearts. These men ask for a sign, but that’s just a lame excuse. They are already dead set against Jesus. Even if a man came back from the grave to testify to them about Jesus, they wouldn’t believe him (see Luke 16:30, also spoken to the Pharisees). We meet people like this, who are determined not to believe. The hatred for God in their hearts hasn’t been put there by the weight of evidence, and so no amount of evidence will convince them to give that hatred up. Their arguments are just rationalisations of what they want to think.

 Jesus will not be tested- he’d continue to perform works of compassion, so that those prepared to believe would see the reign of God come to earth, but he would not do miracles on demand for a wicked and hardhearted generation. More significant than the Pharisees rejection of him, is his rejection of them. Jesus turned his back on them, got into the boat, and put some water between them.

 The “leaven”, or “yeast” in some translations, of the Pharisees is blind unbelief, a hypocritical claim to be oh-so-faithful to God, with a real determination to resist God. These men saw God come in the flesh, and hated him. Why does Herod get a mention here as well? He wanted to kill Jesus too (Luke 13:31). And the Herodians and Pharisees have plotted together to kill Jesus. Both groups are dead set against Jesus. No matter what he does now, they will not recognise him as Messiah. They’d rather die. When Jesus tells his disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. He is talking about the attitude they exemplify and teach. A little yeast has huge effect. You only put a sprinkling into your bread mix, and it is alive, it grows, it changes the whole lump of dough. So this refusal to see, this wilful blindness, will affect the whole life of a man. It doesn’t matter how law-abiding and pious the Pharisees are, they have this cancer in their hearts.

 The mention of the leaven of the Pharisees leads into a discussion about bread. The disciples have not brought enough bread for the journey, and as soon as Jesus mentions yeast, they think “Oh, he’s talking about breakfast, and we’ve messed it up.” It’s the way conscience works, isn’t it. You do something wrong, and it preys on your mind and colours all your interactions with other people.

 But Jesus isn’t at all worried about food. What worries him is that the disciples don’t understand the miracles he has done. How can they be discussing the lack of bread, when they’ve just seen that he can multiply bread enough for all Israel, and enough for all the world? Are they really that boneheaded as to think that they Jesus will let them go hungry?

Jesus fires 8 questions at them in a row. We should be familiar by now with the passage he references- or rather the passages, since it was a favourite idea of the prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all use similar phrases. Jesus has already quoted Isaiah 6 as his reason for teaching in parables- that seeing, they may not perceive, and hearing, may not understand. Jer 5:21 is the passage directly quoted here, a condemnation of Israel for failing to recognise their God. (also Isa 6:9, Ezk 12:2), and a prediction of God’s judgement upon Israel for failure to acknowledge God as God, especially referring to her wicked leaders- the seriousness of rejecting Jesus.

The disciples themselves are in danger of failing to see who Jesus is. They see the miracles and do not reflect upon the meaning of them. They are almost as bad as the Pharisees. They follow Jesus, and obey him, but they haven’t really seen who he is. They know he’s special, but do they know why? Again and again, Jesus has had to rebuke them for their lack of understanding. They don’t understand the parable of the sower, and therefore how will they understand any of the parables? (4:13). They are afraid on the lake, and so… have they still no faith? (4:40). They did not understand about the loaves but their hearts were hardened (6:52). They have to ask what Jesus was speaking about when he said that the things that come out of a person are what makes him unclean, and Jesus says “Are you also without understanding? (7:18)”

 Jesus is the saviour of the world, and the provider of all good things for all men. He brings healing and nourishment to both Jews and Gentiles. He is the leader, the shepherd, the commander the world needs. It is vital to understand the fact. It is vital to understand that the world needs a saviour, that the whole creation groans against the burden of sin upon it since the fall- and that Jesus is the one who can deliver from sin. He has the power to save anybody, Jew or Gentile. Come to him, be fed by him.

Mark 7:24-37. Deforestation.

 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” (Mark 7:5-8 )

And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder;
and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.” 

Ah, you who hide deep from the LORD your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?” You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, “He did not make me”; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, ”He has no understanding”? Is it not yet a very little while until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest? In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 29:13-19) 

And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syro-Phoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her little daughter. And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he said “Ephphatha”, that is, “Be opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” (Mark 7:24-37)

Jesus has been teaching and doing miracles in Galilee, and has just once again confronted the Pharisees and teachers of the law. They ask him, “Why do you disregard the tradition of the elders?” He replies, “Why do you leave the commandments of God and hold to the tradition of men?” That exchange encapsulates one of the great errors of the Pharisees.

The Pharisees had sought to define the law given to Moses, but they looked at their extra traditions being of equal authority to the law. In practise, they would rather obey their traditions than keep the law- and Jesus gave an example of an occasion when they would break the law in order to keep their traditions. Jesus called people back to the law. He said the law would not pass away until heaven and earth passed away. But he accused the Pharisees of adding to the law.

The other great error of the Pharisees was pin-pointed by Jesus to all the people when he spoke to them about where evil comes from. The Pharisees thought that they could actually become righteous by the law. They thought that they could keep the law, and satisfy God. They were mistaken.

The law is like a medical consultant who can tell you whether you’re ill, and what diseases you have. But it can’t cure you. The law can tell you you’re a sinner. It can’t make you holy. The regulations deal with the outside of things, but real cleanness comes from inside, and more to the point, real uncleanness comes from inside also. The human heart is a factory of evil, producing evil thoughts, evil desires, and evil actions. The law does not change the heart, it only tells you that your heart needs to be changed.

Looking at the outside is helpful. Seeing the spots and blemishes on the outside tell you that the inside is filthy. But tinkering with the outside won’t heal the inside.

 Questions:

1)      Why did Jesus go up to Tyre and Sidon, and does it have anything to do with Isaiah 29?

2)      How would a typical Jewish rabbi have looked on the request from the woman, and why does she even approach him?

3)      What is the exchange between Jesus and the woman about? Why do they speak of children and dogs?

4)      Why does Jesus tell the woman he can’t help her?

5)      Why is the passage about the deaf man who is healed here?

 

1) Why did Jesus go up to Tyre and Sidon, and does it have anything to do with Isaiah 29?

After confronting the Pharisees, Jesus went into the regions North of Galilee; the Gentile lands there. Jesus generally confined his work to Jewish territory. There are only a very few exceptions we know about. It wasn’t until ch.5 of this Gospel- a Gospel written to Gentile believers- that Jesus crossed to Gentile territory. And even then, the area he went to was historically under Israelite control (when Jesus healed the demonised man who lived among the tombs). This Jew-Gentile land distinction is important.

In the Old Testament, the land of Israel is a holy bubble. God lived among men in the garden of Eden. Adam sinned, and was thrown out of Eden, down from the mountain of God. And when God came to rest on the top of Mt. Sinai, there was fire on the top of the mountain, God’s reaction against the cursed earth, purifying and destroying. The whole mountain was cordoned off, and no man was allowed to go on it except at God’s invitation. The tabernacle in the wilderness, and later the Temple in Jerusalem, were smaller and more elaborate versions of Sinai. In the Temple, there were boundaries, layers of increasing holiness, bubbles within bubbles. In the centre, there was the most holy place, God’s footstool on earth, with the Ark of the Covenant there. Only one man was allowed to enter in, and that only once a year. The high priest on the day of atonement, with plenty of innocent blood sprinkled around. Then surrounding that there was a holy place, where only priests could go. Then around that a court where Israelite males could go, if they were ceremonially clean. Then there was a court for women and Gentiles. And this was all on Mount Zion, the holy mountain, in Jerusalem the holy city, in the Land of Israel, the holy land. Outside Israel were the dogs, the Gentiles.

This visit to the region of Tyre and Sidon is a rare excursion beyond the ancient boundaries of Israel. Jesus did everything on purpose. Why did he do this?

Jesus is working his way through Isaiah 29. The passage is on his mind- he has just quoted it to the Pharisees, casting them in the role of the hypocritical Israelites who professed to love God, but really still loved their idols. They do their deeds in the dark, and hide their counsel from their God. Isaiah then goes on to talk about Lebanon, a Gentile land, becoming a fruitful field; while the fruitful field of Israel is becoming an unfruitful forest. Lebanon was a forest, quite literally (the cedars of Lebanon are famous in the Bible); and Canaan was a fruitful land, flowing with milk and honey. But Isaiah is using metaphor. He is talking about fruitfulness toward God, and saying that there will come a day when there will be those who worship God in Gentile lands, while in Israel, among God’s chosen people, there will be tangled undergrowth and trees, and no good harvest.

So Jesus has already seen the first half of the prophecy. The fruitful field is a forest. The spiritual leaders and guides of Israel are hypocrites who devour widow’s houses, love money, envy the attention Jesus gets, and spitefully look for opportunities to condemn him. If that’s religion, then we don’t want any, thanks. So Jesus quotes Isaiah 29 at them, and then heads North to the region of Tyre and Sidon- to Lebanon- to minister there.

Mark has told us in an editorial note in (7:19) that that Jesus actually declared all foods clean. He legitimised those who do not adhere to the food laws in the way that Jews did. The food and the land are the same issue at the bottom. The food laws were given to insulate Israel from the Gentiles around them. The land was given as a place for Israel to dwell, not among the Gentile tribes. The logical outworking of what Jesus says and does is that the Jews are not special any more. The day Isaiah spoke of has come, and Messiah has brought blessing for Gentile as well as Jew. The Gentiles are declared clean, because Jesus transforms the categories of clean and unclean. They are included within the circle of those to whom the kingdom of God can come.

Both of the miracles of chapter 7 occur in lands seen as unclean in Jewish eyes. The bulk of the Jews would not expect their Messiah to be going out spreading sweetness and light among the Gentiles. The Gentiles are sinners, dogs, unworthy. The Gentiles are the enemy. Messiah will sort them out, once and for all. But Jesus comes, and he does signs of the kingdom among the Gentiles! Not only that, he declares Israel to be unclean- think of Jesus’ earlier command to the Twelve to shake Jewish dust from their feet in judgement when a town didn’t accept them. The clean/ unclean distinction has not been abolished. It still exists. But now cleanness is through the Messiah. Believing in him makes you clean. Rejecting him means you are unclean, no matter where you live.

(Digression on the “Messianic Secret” of Mark)

Why did Jesus not want anyone to know he was there, even in Gentile ground?

We’ve thought of Jesus’ desire for secrecy before, that he tells people not to speak of the miracles he has done- he tells the demon (1:23), and more demons (1:34) to keep silent. He doesn’t stay where he is famous already, but goes on to new villages before he gathers a large following (1:37-38). He tells the leper not to tell anybody (1:44), and unclean spirits not to make him known (3:12). He teaches in parables so that people won’t understand the secret of the kingdom of God (4:11)., not teaching without a parable, and only explaining to the disciples privately (4:34) He strictly charges Jairus and his wife that no one should know of the resurrection of their daughter (5:43). The one exception is in Gadara, where the man who was possessed is told to tell his family and friends- and that was in a Gentile dominated area. We’ve pointed to 9:9 as telling us the reason for all this: That Jesus’ power could only be properly understood in the light of his death and resurrection. When he had died, and risen, then nobody could misunderstand what sort of Messiah he was. Nobody could expect him to lead an army of Israel against the Gentiles. It would be plain that he had come to fight Satan, to defeat sin and death.

But this is different. Here he is not in territory where this is likely. He is outside Israel.  And furthermore, unlike the other references, this secrecy is not linked to any demonstration of Jesus’ power. Here, it is simply that Jesus and the disciples are trying to get the rest they had had interrupted in the wilderness (6:30-34) and in Gennesaret (6:53-56). The house was their retreat, for them to lay back and catch a breather.

However, it proves impossible to get any rest. Even though they hide away, wishing to escape notice, a woman does come to find them.

 

2) How would a typical Jewish rabbi have looked on the request from the woman, and why does she even approach him?

The woman he meets is Gentile, and this is stressed- “a Gentile, a Syro-Phoenician by birth”.

Your typical Jewish rabbi would look with great disfavour on a request like this. The woman is on the wrong side of two of the most important divisions for Israelites.

First off, she is a Gentile. She doesn’t worship the true God, the God of Israel, but is a filthy idolater. How dare she come to the Jewish religious leader asking for help?

Second, she is a female, a second-class citizen in Israel. Israelite women share their temple court with Gentiles. Israelite women are unclean, and contaminate other things, for several days in the month because they bleed. Does this woman think that Jesus hasn’t got more important things to do than to help women? And worse, she’s asking healing for a daughter, not a son.

Third, her daughter is afflicted by unclean spirits. Short of giving her with leprosy and having her live among the tombs, this woman couldn’t be much more unclean.

But the fact remains that she obviously does have hopes of Jesus helping her. She does come to him asking for help. She doesn’t assume that Jesus will just rebuff her, and tell her to stop wasting his valuable Jewish time.

It is not wholly clear how much the woman understands about Jesus. His fame had spread to those parts; Tyre and Sidon are mentioned in 3:8 as some of the places from which crowds gathered to hear Jesus by the Sea of Galilee. Plenty of Jews lived there as well as Gentiles. She may even have heard one of the twelve preaching in a nearby village. Certainly, she understands that he has power over evil spirits, and can help her child. Jesus is evidently not a typical rabbi in that- other rabbis did not have this power. If she’s heard preaching about him, she might know that Jesus eats with sinners, that he’s called a tax collector to follow him; and then there’s the fact that he actually is out here, beyond the borders of Israel. Surely that isn’t typical behaviour for a rabbi- to hang about in the unclean lands? She is willing to walk into the house where there are 13 Jewish men, because she needs help, and thinks she will get it here.

 

3) What is the exchange between Jesus and the woman about? Why do they speak of children and dogs?

Jesus promises nothing, but instead develops a comparison of dogs and children. This comparison amounts to a blunt refusal to help.

Jesus is likening his coming to a meal. The Jews are the children of God, there at the table, hungry, and waiting for food. Jesus has come to feed them. That is exactly what he has done so far, and especially in the previous chapter. He has looked on Israel as sheep without a shepherd (6:34), and has taken up the role of shepherd, and provided food for them- spiritually, and even physically, multiplying the bread for 5000 men. But the Gentiles are not God’s children. They are dogs.

Dogs in the ancient world were not pets. They were dirty. The diminutive form is used here, but that is not as a term of affection along the lines of “Oo’s a sweet little doggie-woggie den?”. The diminutive is perhaps used because big dogs are not permitted under the table at all. The English have an unusual love of domestic animals, but to this woman, dogs would not be cute furry friends. They would be flea-bitten dirty scavengers, kept only to bite burglars. They are unclean animals according to the law, and they were despised throughout the ancient world. Dogs were proverbially disgusting in Israel- think of the dog returning to his own vomit. But outside Israel also, Goliath the Philistine (1 Samuel 17:43) and Hazael the Syrian (2 Kings 8:13) both think of the dog as an animal to be despised.

Jesus acknowledges the privilege of Israel, and affirms that the time has not yet come for blessing the Gentiles, even if it will one day.  Jesus says that the children’s food is not for her- it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. Jesus is saying “Sorry, but I have a conscientious objection to blessing you. You’re a worthless dog, and I’ve come to tend to the children. Should their meal be interrupted so that you can be fed? I don’t think so.”

Even if the woman didn’t grasp this, she could at see that Jesus and the disciples are clearly there for a break, not out with the crowds. He is spending time apart with them, close friends together. The woman at least understood that she was intruding on this, and could understand Jesus as saying “Why should I help you now? I’m busy. I might look like I’m not doing much, but this is important. Come back later”.

Whichever way she took it- and both meanings are there to be taken- it is a rebuff.

 

4) Why does Jesus tell the woman he can’t help her?

Jesus response has often puzzled people. It sounds harsh, cruel, and out of character. Several times so far, we’ve read that Jesus was the sort of man who would exhaust himself helping others. The crowds pressed around him, and he healed their sick, and didn’t even find time to eat; we’ve read that twice. So why here, when there seems not to be anything else pressing for his attention, does he seem to put this woman down?

Jesus knows very well that he is regarded as a popular healer, crowds pressed him about (3:7-10, 6:53-56), but God’s power is not given in an atmosphere of superstition, but in response to faith. Jesus tests the woman, draws her out.

And he is right. He has not come to the Gentiles fully yet. The restriction of Jesus ministry to the Jews, not going outside Israel except to get away for a while, was proper. The time had not come yet for the events of Acts, when the Holy Spirit comes first on Israel, and then out to the Samaritans, and then even to Romans like Cornelius, and then right out into all the Gentile empire of Rome.

But Jesus does not mean to reject the woman’s request outright. His statement recognises future possibility. He says that the children are to be fed “first”. There can still be a later feeding for the dogs. His comparison is meant to invite renewed appeal.

And the woman does appeal. She is humble, and accepts the designation of a dog. But she uses it to her advantage. The dogs under the table do eat crumbs from the meal. They are blessed before their time in that sense. Before it is the proper time for the dogs to be fed, the dogs can pick up crumbs from the children. The meal does not have to be interrupted at all, for Jesus to heal her daughter. It can be a special case. She is just one. She is not asking for the whole loaf to be given the Gentiles, but just a crumb.

Jesus is delighted by her confidence in him. She shows submission to his authority. She accepts his teaching, and is told to go home, to find her daughter well.. Her faith contrasts dramatically with the unbelief of the Pharisees. Her reply shows a degree of trust which puts the disciples to shame. Mark’s readers in Rome would have seen themselves in the woman, and been encouraged. They knew that they lived in an age when the grace of God was poured out on the Gentiles. If Jesus was willing to bless this woman before the proper time, would he not now feed them with all they needed now that their time to be fed had come?

 

5) Why is the passage about the deaf man who is healed here?

Jesus returns back into slightly more Jewish territory. He performs another sign there. A deaf and mute man is hurried along by his friends to see Jesus. Maybe the man can’t understand why he’s being taken, or where he’s going. He can’t hear a thing, and his friends are excited, and maybe in too much of a hurry to stop and explain carefully. They beg Jesus to heal their friend. Jesus doesn’t heal him immediately, and doesn’t heal with only a word. He draws the man aside, and acts out to him what he intends to do- removing the blockages in the ears and the mouth, and looking up to heaven as if to say “this is God’s power at work here.” Jesus is upset at the ravages of the fall. It sorrows him to see a man, made to hear the wonderful sounds of God’s creation and to give him praise, able to do neither. He enters into the man’s world, using sign language of a sort, and heals him. It is in some ways a parable of the incarnation.

But why is this here? Don’t we already have plenty of signs of the kingdom like this? Why is it here, where it is in the Gospel?

Going back to Isaiah 29 again, Jesus is still working through it. Isaiah said, 

“Is it not yet a very little while until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest? In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.”

So the flowering of Lebanon is followed by the deaf being able to hear. Which is exactly what we have here. Although a very different character to the woman- he is a Jewish man, not a Gentile woman- the deaf mute is healed in fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy. And we are still in contaminated ground, continuing the idea we touched on at the start, that Jesus is implicitly declaring that all lands are clean though him.

Although in unclean ground, the man himself is probably not a Gentile. This is strongly hinted at by the facts that Jesus speaks to him in Aramaic- which has to be translated for Mark’s Gentile readers- and that his community seem to have some expectation of the Messiah. They even allude to Isaiah in their statement about even the deaf hearing, and the mute speaking, at the end (Isaiah 35:5).

As an aside, you might think it is a little far-fetched, this OT connection to Isaiah.

Sometimes in the NT, people directly quotes of the OT, like “as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, ‘Behold I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way…’”

Or “to those outside, everything is in parables, so that ‘they may indeed see, but not perceive, and may indeed hear, but not understand…’”,

Then there are fairly obvious references, like the Holy Spirit coming down as a dove to rest on Jesus at his baptism, and the dove coming to rest on Noah at the new beginning of humanity after the flood, and the dove resting over the waters at creation.

Then there are references about which you might think “well, that’s a bit tenuous, isn’t it? I mean, maybe they weren’t actually thinking of that OT reference at all. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.” But I think we misunderstand how deeply the OT had penetrated Jewish consciousness. It was read constantly. It would be the only textbook in the synagogue schools. Jewish boys would learn to read and write using the law and the prophets. Imagine if there was only one TV show in the world. Eastenders. Or Coronation Street if you’d rather. Imagine that everybody watched the TV as much as they do currently, but that all they ever saw was this show. They’d see literally hundreds of repeats of every episode. The storyline would embed itself in their heads. They’d be able to quote huge chunks of dialogue verbatim. Die-hard Monty Python fans can quote, word for word, sketch after sketch, doing the funny voices and everything. Tell them a joke from Python, and they’ll spot it straight away. The Jews’ knowledge of the words of the OT would be a little like that. The men here would definitely be aware that their words were similar to those of Isaiah, and Jesus would be aware that he was following Isaiah’s pattern.

Mark 7:1-23. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.

Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches. And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honour your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, ‘Whatever you would have gained from me is quorban” that is, given to God- then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” Thus he declared all foods clean. And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

 

1. Who are the Pharisees and teachers of the law generally? More particularly, have Jesus and the twelve already met these individuals?

 2. What is “the tradition of the elders“? How does it relate to the law? What sort of authority did the Pharisees ascribe to law and to tradition?

 3. What does it mean for something to be “quorban”? Was this a Pharisaic invention?

 4. Thinking of the categories of clean and unclean in the Old Testament, is Jesus…

a) Abolishing them for his followers. They were an Old Testament thing, which we don’t need to worry about any more. We’re New Testament believers.

b) Leaving them as they stand. He’s dealing with Pharisaic additions to the law, not the law itself.

c) Authoritatively redefining them.

 5. Accusations of “legalism” are sometimes thrown around in Christian circles. What is an accurate definition of legalism? When is it an accurate perjoration, and when is it false? Were the Pharisees legalists?

 6. People sometimes appeal to the distinction between visible actions and the invisible motives in order to justify behaviour which others think to be wrong.

Have you ever said or thought or heard others say things like… 

• “You can’t see my heart. How can you stand in judgement over me?”
• You don’t know whether God is displeased with what I am doing. He can see that my heart is in the right place”
• “I’ve prayed about this, and I feel peace”?

Are these appeals valid?

 7. Is it right to be concerned about external conformity to a set of behavioural standards?

1. Who are the Pharisees and teachers of the law generally? More particularly, have Jesus and the twelve already met these individuals?

The Pharisees were a group who arose in Israel in the inter-testamental period- during what is known as “Second-temple Judaism”. A brief history lesson follows…

If you remember, Israel went off after other gods, and God raised up the Babylonians to cut Israel off from the land. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem, and dragged most of the populace off into exile, and other peoples re-settled the land of Canaan. When the Jews no longer had a land, and the temple was in ruins, things were desperate. Judaism is a religion centred around a holy land and a holy city, and a holy temple within it. The return from exile, and the rebuilding of the Temple (hence “Second-temple Judaism”) in the era of Nehemiah and Ezra, made things better- but Israel was never quite the same again. Things weren’t as they had been in the golden age of the Davidic kings. Israel wasn’t really a sovereign nation any longer. God’s people only obeyed God’s laws by permission of the uncircumcised heathen. David would have been mortified if he’d been alive. Israel was always a vassal-state of some great foreign empire. The Persian emperor, Cyrus, had to give his permission for the exiles to return and for the temple to be rebuilt. A later emperor, Darius, had to ratify this decision. When the Greek Empire expanded aggressively under Alexander the Great, Israel was among her conquered possessions. After Alexander’s death, there were power struggles at the top and the empire was split among his generals. Israel was ruled by the Seleucid dynasty, one of whom was the infamous Antiochus Epiphanes, who attempted to eradicate Judaism. His measures included execution of those caught in possession of scripture, and killing infants who were circumcised along with their mothers. Circumcision was outlawed, and so were Sabbaths and Jewish feast days. Some Jews didn’t really mind being Hellenised- they built gymnasia, competed in the Olympic games, even worshipped Greek gods. Others objected strongly- you had the Maccabean revolt at this time.

The domination by pagans brought about new problems with the law given to Moses. For a long time, Israel had been able to implement the law as an independent nation. The whole point of some of the laws had been to prevent Israel from mixing with the pagans and taking on pagan ideas. But now, contact was forced because the pagans were in charge. New social circumstances gave rise to new questions about life in the covenant. Should a faithful Jew obey his foreign overlords? Should he mix with them or try to isolate himself from them? Should he rebel and try to overthrow them? Everybody was looking for answers, and when there’s a market for answers, there are always plausible men who seem to have a plentiful supply of them.

The Pharisees were one of many groups who thought they had the answers. There were lots of different Jewish groups forming around common concerns and interests, and the Pharisees were one group who gained a more formal structure and code. They’d have looked back over history and said “We were destroyed as a judgement of God for our unfaithfulness”, which was true. They’d have wanted to make sure that this would never happen again, and so they determined to be ultra-faithful. The Pharisees were Jews who remained zealously faithful to “Judaism” despite pressures from Greek culture, and despite religious persecution. They tried to make the Torah applicable to “modern” life. The Pharisees were in many respects an admirable group of men. They read the law and the prophets, and they saw very clearly that Israel did not keep the law properly. They themselves took very seriously their responsibility to keep the law personally. They also saw themselves as partly responsible to uphold the law in the nation at large. The people looked up to them as righteous men. All very good.

That said, I’d like to be clear that we can’t rehabilitate the reputation of the Pharisees. That reputation was authoritatively wrecked by Jesus, who said that Pharisees were whitewashed tombs. They devoured widow’s houses. They loved money. They hated the attention Jesus got and envied him. They were full of self-indulgence. They were full of all uncleanness. They were hypocrites. Though their concern for the law looked good on the outside, it was all a sham. They did wicked things, and they didn’t do these wicked things out of a grateful concern to keep God’s law. Maybe Jesus was generalising. Maybe some Pharisees were decent men. But if he is, then it’s an authoritative generalisation.

 Jesus and the Twelve may already have met these men personally. Back in chapter 2, Jesus and the disciples clashed with Pharisees who criticised them for “working” on the Sabbath. They had been picking grains as they walked through a field- which was “work” only in the way that the size of a “fun-size” Mars bar is “fun”[1]. But Jesus didn’t defend his disciples by arguing about the details of definitions. Instead, he compared himself to David, and said that as God’s appointed king, he got to define what the Sabbath was all about. It is quite possible that some of those men are still following Jesus around and hassling him.

 2. What is “the tradition of the elders“? How does it relate to the law? What sort of authority did the Pharisees ascribe to law and to tradition?

Firstly, what was law? Which things came under the heading “Law”, and which things didn’t? How did you know whether any given principle was a law, or just a piece of advice, a guideline?

Obviously, the teaching of the Pentateuch was law. God spoke to Moses, saying “Tell Israel this: Law 1, law 2, law 3… thus saith the LORD”. The bulk of the text of Leviticus and Deuteronomy is simply transcripts of God’s words to Moses- and these were indisputably law. On that point, Jesus would have no disagreement with the Pharisees. The Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, gave similar authority to the prophets (the Old Testament being divided into “the law” and “the prophets”). Again, Jesus would agree with the Pharisees about that.

But the Pharisees also elevated Rabbinic tradition to a level where it was effectively as authoritative as the law. Teaching in the synagogues would go along the lines of “Rabbi x says this, and rabbi y says that. You should hear and obey.”

The motives for this were possibly noble at the outset. The Pharisees saw acutely the dangers of lawlessness, and so wanted to hedge themselves and others about with a proliferation of extra regulations, to make sure that God’s law was properly kept. Take the Sabbath law as an example. The law actually says “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. On six days shall you labour and do all your work, but the seventh day shall be a Sabbath. On it you shall do no work, neither you nor your manservant nor your maidservant, nor your ox, nor your ass. You shall keep it as a Sabbath to the Lord your God.” (Deuteronomy 5)

Seems clear enough, doesn’t it? Well, the Pharisees rightly wanted to obey it thoroughly. So they set about defining precisely what work was. If you went on a long arduous hike on the Sabbath, was that work? How about a short stroll? How long did a walk have to be before it counted as “work”? How many steps should you be allowed to take? Some Pharisees actually set limits on the number of steps they could take. It was stupid, over the top. Counting your steps made more work, made the Sabbath a burden rather than a rest. They started by trying to uphold the law, but finished up undermining it, unable to see the wood for the trees.

In the example we had in Chapter 2- what about gathering in the harvest? Reaping was definitely work, wasn’t it? Of course it was. At harvest time, Israelites would sweat in the fields all day. This was exactly what work was all about, eating food by the sweat of the face, wrestling crops out of the cursed earth. So then, no reaping on the Sabbath. Good, that’s clear.

But then, if we’re going to keep the law properly, we need to know exactly when we are reaping and when we aren’t. The urge then was to define reaping very tightly, leaving no room for doubt or ambiguity. So reaping is defined as picking grain from the stalk. And that means that if a man strolling through his field on his way to the synagogue on a sunny Sabbath morning should pick a few grains from his wheat crop and rub the husks off and pop them in his mouth- then he was a lawbreaker.

The Pharisees’ problem wasn’t that they were concerned with the minute details of the law- it was that in their concern, they forgot the broader sweep of it. Jesus does not criticise them for tithing the mint and cumin in their gardens, but for doing it so myopically that they forgot the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23). They were right to be careful about law keeping. They had gone wrong in that they had over-inflated the importance of their extra regulations. If a Pharisee wanted to define what was reaping and what was not, then all power to his elbow. It would be a good and profitable exercise… provided of course that his reason for so doing was to glorify the thrice holy God by striving to please him in obedience. But the Pharisee must always remember that his definition, though it may be a help to the law, is only a help to the law. It is not the law itself. It does not carry the full weight of the law in itself.

And the Pharisee needs to retain the larger perspective- when enforcing the help to the law would actually violate a part of the law, then of course the help is a help no longer, and must be abandoned. The Pharisees went wrong in that they had forgotten this. Their view of what was law had extended to include their own traditions. They no longer thought of their traditions as commentaries on the law, but as authoritative, like the law itself. They were adding to the law.

 Secondly, the Pharisaic view of what law was, of how far the obedience it demanded went. This is one of Paul’s sharpest points of difference with 1^st century Judaism. Paul insisted that law is law. It is absolute, unalterable, demanding obedience in every point. Break one point of the law, and you are a lawbreaker. It doesn’t matter that you’ve kept 99% of it while your fellow men have kept a miserable 40%. Law is law. The pass-mark is 100%. You must keep it all to be reckoned righteous according to the law. Break the smallest part, and you’ve failed. The Pharisees, at the same time as upgrading their own traditions to the level of the law, also downgraded the law to the point where it was keepable. Instead of looking at the great command- “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6), and saying with David and Isaiah, “there is nobody righteous, not even one” and, “all we, like sheep, are gone astray” (Psalm 14, Isaiah 53), they would, had they read Romans 3, have fumed inwardly, and contradicted Paul- “Of course there are those who are righteous. I’m righteous. Haven’t I kept all the law since my childhood? Who can charge me with fault?” Paul himself, in his days as a Pharisee, thought himself blameless under the law. Of course he didn’t love the Lord with all his heart. But he still thought he had kept the law. Law became something purely external.

Jesus then argues against both of these abuses. On the one hand, he is firm that the law is from God, and additions of men are not authoritative. On the other, he is firm that righteousness must come from within. The law must be applied to the heart first.

 3. What does it mean for something to be “quorban”? Was this a Pharisaic invention?

Jesus gives a concrete example of a situation in which the Pharisees actually contradicted the law with their traditions. The Old Testament introduces a practice of devoting things to God (Quorban). When Joshua took the cities of Ai and Jericho, they were declared quorban, and everything in them was to be devoted to God. The Israelites were not to plunder those cities for gold and silver, or wear the garments of their defeated enemies, or add their livestock to the Israelite herds- everything in those cities is to be devoted to God. In this case, it was to be burnt up, so that the Israelites could not use it for themselves. Their invasion was a holy war, carried out for God’s honour, not primarily for their own earthly gain. The Pharisees had developed this principle, and as teachers of the law, religious authorities, they took it seriously. If a man declared something quorban, then he should not be allowed to change his mind and get the goods back again. Thus saith the Pharisee. Again, doubtless this was a good and useful principle in many cases. It would prevent many wrongs. It would mean that people didn’t declare quorban lightly, didn’t declare it, then decide they wanted a nice holiday after all, and took the money back to pay for a few weeks off work. But the Pharisees had lost sight of the biggest, underlying principle- to please God. They gave their codification the authority of God’s law, and this led to serious error.

Jesus gives them an example. Imagine a fairly well-to-do young Jewish man, born of fairly well-to-do parents. He has a young family, and he is looking to take on his father’s large farm in over the coming decade, as his father ages. He sees no need to scrimp and save for the future- and he’s right. He has plenty. His parents have plenty. He is more than able to supply for himself and all his dependants in the foreseeable future. And he is grateful to God for all this, so he puts aside a large part of his estate, and declares it quorban. It is now for God’s use exclusively. But seven years later, disaster strikes. The rains are dry for three years in a row. Crops on the family farm fail and income gets very low, and he has to sell the land. His wife falls ill, and the medical expenses eat a large hole in his emergency funds. Suddenly he’s not so flush anymore. Then, just as his wife is on the mend, his mother goes down with the same illness. What should he do? He can’t let her die. He has a responsibility to her. The law says “Honour your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving you”. It is his clear duty under God to care for his parents. They are old, and need his support- but the money he’d hoped would be more than enough to support them is all spent, he has no prospect of booming income in the years ahead. What should he do? Well, he goes to the local teachers of the law and says to them “Rabbi, there is a portion of wealth which I declared quorban many years ago. I now need to support my aged parents, can I make use of it?” And they say “No chance, sonny. You should have thought of that, before you made your vow, shouldn’t you. It’s too late now. Tough”.

 They are saying that the responsibilities of the man to his parents- responsibilities backed up by God’s law- come second to obeying their regulations about quorban. Doubtless they would attempt to justify themselves by spiritual-sounding appeals to the absolute first place of God, but Jesus clearly sees this as an impious blasphemy. If they were so concerned about God, they’d let the man please God and obey God’s law. His point is that the Pharisees are not concerned for the law at all, they just want to look like they are. These men are hypocrites, their hearts far from God.

 All this was primarily for the ears of the Pharisees. Jesus then gathers the crowd around him, and teaches them the wider principle of what he has said. The law must be concerned with externals only insofaras they show what is internal. The Lord looks at the heart. God’s laws do deal with externals- ritual washings for priests, for example. But those externals are supposed to flow from an internal desire to serve the Lord. Of course it is wrong to commit adultery, to murder, to do those visible actions- but the actions flow from a sinful heart, a heart full of lust, full of hatred.

Jesus elaborates the idea further when his disciples question him about it (note, by the way, that again the disciples’ lack of understanding is pointed out). It is from the heart that evil actions come. The law was never meant as a ladder to perfect righteousness in the way the Pharisees attempted to use it. It was meant to restrain wickedness, and to teach Israel that the heart is unteachable. They were supposed to recognise their inability to keep the law, and to look for something better. They were supposed to react as John’s disciples reacted to his teaching- to recognise their transgressions of the law as being serious, to repent, and to look for Messiah- for the one who would baptise with the Holy Spirit. Jesus came to deliver from the curse of the law. The law still stands as an expression of God’s righteousness, and of what is good and pleasing to him. The law is good, says Paul (Romans 7). But man is evil. He needs to be changed. Dipping the body in water cannot change him. He needs to have the heart dipped in the Holy Spirit- to be born again, given new life, regenerated.

 4. Thinking of the categories of clean and unclean in the Old Testament, is Jesus…

a) Abolishing them for his followers. They were an Old Testament thing, which we don’t need to worry about any more. We’re New Testament believers.

b) Leaving them as they stand. He’s dealing with Pharisaic additions to the law, not the law itself.

c) Authoritatively redefining them.

In verse 19, we have an editorial note to tell us that Jesus declared all foods to be clean. We know from a cursory reading of Leviticus that plenty of foods were unclean, and made a man unclean if he ate them. Is Mark saying that Jesus swept away those laws?

No. Mark doesn’t say that Jesus did away with the clean/unclean thing. Mark actually says something very different. He says that Jesus declared all foods to be clean. While leaving the clean/unclean distinction standing, Jesus is redefining the boundaries of clean and unclean. Everything is now moved into the “clean” category. And if it is all “clean” then “clean” must still exist as a category. Jesus gets to do this because he is the King of God’s kingdom. Other kings have done vaguely similar things in the past. David was God’s king, and so it was OK for him to give his men the priest’s bread to eat. Solomon was God’s king, and so he could update the whole pattern of worship in Israel and build a temple. But Jesus is the fulfilment of all the types. He is the reality, the solid presence who cast the shadows of the Old Testament. Before, it would have been wrong to eat certain foods. It would have made an Israelite unclean, and unfit to worship God. But when Jesus comes, he makes the unclean things clean. Unclean people are made clean when they are joined to Jesus. People made clean in that way can eat lobster wrapped in bacon, and it won’t defile them. The law is still relevant and necessary in every point. Not the least stroke of a pen of it shall pass away until heaven and earth pass away, said Jesus. As long as you can look out of your window and see the sunrise in the morning, the law still stands. But God’s people A.D. will keep the law differently from the way they did B.C. The food laws were given to keep Israel separate from the Gentiles around them. We still need to keep ourselves separate from evil and unbelief, but cuisine is no longer a marker of who is clean and who isn’t.

 5. Accusations of “legalism” are sometimes thrown around in Christian circles. What is an accurate definition of legalism? When is it an accurate perjoration, and when is it false? Were the Pharisees legalists?

Legalism properly defined is an attempt at merit theology. It is the belief that you earn your salvation by keeping God’s law.

Legalism isn’t the same thing as a careful regard to do righteousness, and it isn’t the same thing as a willingness to condemn others for doing wickedness. When I hear one Christian describe another as “legalistic”, I’m often reluctant to give the allegation much weight. It usually means “He’s more bothered about right and wrong than I am. I want to let this sin slide, and he keeps picking up on it.”

Were the Pharisees legalists, proper bona-fide “I’ve kept the law and so I’ll get into God’s kingdom” legalists? Well, maybe some of them were. But there’s more than one way of being a legalist.

Look at the parable Jesus told about the Pharisee and the tax-collector who went to pray (Luke 19). The Pharisee’s prayer was thoroughly orthodox in one sense. “Thank you God, that I am not like other men.” What he actually said gave God the credit for any goodness he had. There’s no problem with thanking God that you’re not a murderer or an adulterer. If you’re not, then God be praised indeed. But this man was a hypocrite. It wasn’t what he said that was the problem- it was what he thought. He had a mouth full of grace, and a heart full of works, and so he went down to his house unjustified.

Jesus also said that the Pharisees sat in Moses’ seat, and that the disciples should obey their teaching, but not copy their actions (Matt 23). The Pharisees weren’t necessarily theological legalists, but they were practical ones.

 6) People sometimes appeal to the distinction between visible actions and the invisible motives in order to justify behaviour which others think to be wrong. Are these appeals valid?

There is some truth in such appeals. We all know that appearances can be misleading. “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is common wisdom. And the motives really do matter. But still, the law is good. Jesus interpreted the law authoritatively for us. When Jesus explained how the law was going to function in his kingdom (Matthew 5), the examples he gave called for real heart righteousness, and also called for more stringent external standards of righteousness than were operative in Israel. We need to bear in mind that the heart of the law is to do with the heart; that all the law can be boiled down to “Love the Lord your God with all you have, and love your neighbour as yourself”. But we need to have our notions of what love looks like dictated to us by the Bible. We are naïve if we think that people aren’t going to want to break the law and then excuse themselves by telling us their heart was in the right place all along. If a man tells us (for example) that he left his wife because he wasn’t able to care for her properly, and leaving her was the most loving thing he could do for her, and so he was obeying the law when he walked out- then we ought to be able to spot the hypocrisy going on there. It is not legalism to tell him that his duty is to go back, repent, ask her forgiveness, and start working hard at being a better husband if she’ll have him. If he tells us that he’s prayed about the matter, and he is sure that he’s doing the right thing, then we should question the identity of the god to whom he prays- because it doesn’t look like the God of the Bible.

 7) Is it right to be concerned about external conformity to a set of behavioural standards?

Short answer: Yes. Looking at the outside is how we tell what is on the inside. We might get it wrong, and we need to do it with wisdom, but the caveats don’t mean that we shouldn’t do it.

Jesus says that out of the heart come a lot of evil things. The heart is the wellspring, and the heart is what matters before any external actions. But the external actions do matter too. They tell us whether the well is polluted or not. A man whose heart is clean won’t be prey to evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.

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[1] It’s smaller. What’s fun about that?

Mark 6:45-56. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm

Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.

 1) Why did Jesus send the disciples away and dismiss the crowds? Does it seem a little sudden? And why did Jesus wait so long before helping the disciples? He saw them struggling “when evening came”, but it was “about the fourth watch of the night” before he walked out to them on the sea.

 

2) Is Jesus is walking out in response to his disciples’ distress, to help them? If so, why does he “intend to pass them by”?

 

3) Why does Jesus tell the disciples not to be afraid?

 

4) How is this miracle like the miracle of Ch 4, when Jesus spoke to the wind and sea?

 

 

Discussion:

1) Why did Jesus send the disciples away and dismiss the crowds? Does it seem a little sudden? And then why did Jesus wait so long before helping the disciples? He saw them struggling “when evening came”, but it was “about the fourth watch of the night” before he walked out to them on the sea.

 

Look at what Jesus did with the time, and you see the answer. Jesus wanted to be alone with his Father, and to pray. Having sent the crowd and the disciples away, he went up the mountain to meet with God. He could see the disciples making little progress against a strong wind as evening fell, but it was hours before he walked out to them. Mark is writing for Roman believers, and uses the Roman method of reckoning watches in the night. The Romans had four watches to the night, the Jews had three, so the “fourth watch” here would be 3 o’clock until 6 by our time. We can’t be entirely sure how long Jesus spent on the mountain. The Internet says that daylight time lengths in Jerusalem currently vary from about 10 hours in winter to 14 hrs in summer (sunlight hours in Manchester vary from 7 ¹/₂-17hrs). From dusk until 3 a.m. probably equated to around 8 hours in Galilee. Why would Jesus spend so much time alone in prayer?

 

Consider the events which have just happened. There is Messianic tension in the air. This miracle has been a sign of the kingdom- and we looked last time at how it pointed to the kingdom of God. By feeding these men in the way that he did, Jesus has taken upon himself the role of God’s king. He has shown himself to be the shepherd of the sheep, promised by Ezekiel. He has cast himself in the role of the new David, the shepherd-warrior-king of Israel. He able to feed those who want him as their king from the towns by the lakeside, and there are still 12 baskets left over- enough for all Israel. This crowd are ready to put Jesus at the head of a rebellion (compare John 6:15). Jesus would have had a lot on his mind that evening. Maybe he feared that the disciples would be tempted to join the crowds in adopting him as their leader for an uprising there and then. The Twelve still understand so imperfectly, and could be led astray by the crowds. Maybe Jesus himself also was pulled in that direction- after all, that was one of the temptations from Satan in the wilderness, to forget about the cross, and just to have the kingdoms of the world without going through pain and suffering. It was a realistic option. History tells us that when men see the opportunity to become king and wield power, they often take it, killing those who stand in their way. Jesus here is in a position to become the head of a rebellion. He could easily win any battles ensuing. He could march on Jerusalem, and reign in righteousness and justice. He could be the best king Israel had ever had. Temptations that don’t tug at our hearts aren’t really temptations. Surely this is a real temptation. But Jesus mustn’t be the warrior-Messiah the people want. The cross must come before the crown, and Jesus knows it- even if the disciples don’t.

 

If you look at the times when Jesus withdraws to pray throughout Mark- 1:35-39, 6:45f, 14:26-42- in each case, it is night, and Jesus is facing a crisis of some sort. In response, he feels the need to pray. He wants to speak to his Father, and find the certainty and strength to be obedient. As at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus’ time in the wilderness provoked temptation. Now perhaps he faces temptation in the wilderness again (note the repeated emphasis in v32-35 that this was a deserted place). He needs to spend time in prayer, to gain strength to resist temptation.

 

Bear in mind that Jesus is tired. He has just fed 5000 men late in the evening by the side of the Sea of Galilee. If you remember from last time, Jesus had wanted to get away with the Twelve for a break (6:31). The Twelve had just come back from preaching and teaching and doing signs and wonders, proclaiming the kingdom of God and showing that it had arrived. Perhaps also during this period, John the Baptist, Jesus’ support worker and cousin, was killed by Herod. Jesus wanted to take some time with the disciples, to rest with them for a while. So they got into the boat, and went across the lake to a deserted spot. They never got any time alone though, because men from the nearby towns ran around the lake to meet Jesus and the disciples at the other side, and when Jesus saw them, he had compassion on them as sheep without a shepherd, and he taught them all day long. When it was getting too late for these men to make the journey back home, Jesus fed them. Jesus was trying to get some time away with the disciples, but the crowd followed him- you know what it’s like when you promise yourself some rest, a bit of time to relax, and then the phone rings and you have to deal with some crisis or other, and your quiet afternoon evaporates away. Jesus is weary, but he still gives prayer the priority, rather than sleep.

We hear so many sermons about the importance of prayer, and how we need to spend time laying out our concerns before God. We know that stuff. But do we get on with it and do it?

 

 

2) Is Jesus is walking out in response to his disciples’ distress, to help them? If so, why does he “intend to pass them by”? How might this “intending to pass them by” fit with other elements of the passage?

 

Some argue that the words of 6:48 record the impression the disciples had of Jesus, and not Jesus’ actual intent. That is a well-intentioned cop-out; the passage doesn’t say that.

Others argue that the translations obscure Mark’s meaning. They claim that a more accurate translation would be “for he intended to pass their way”- the whole thing is a subordinate clause which is intended to clarify Jesus’ motivation, and not intended to denote that he wasn’t going out to see them. Perhaps that is true- I don’t have enough Greek to judge.

 

In any case, the language draws our attention to the fact that the event is a theophany. This is a manifestation of God. Jesus is exhibiting his divine power to his disciples. It is likely that when Jesus “intends to pass by” his disciples, this is a re-enactment of those occasions when God “passed by” Elijah at Horeb (I Kg 19:11), and “passed by” Moses at Sinai (Ex 33:19, 22).

 

Jesus doing as his Father did would fit perfectly into the thrust of the passage. The point of the miracles on Galilee is that mastery of the sea is a divine attribute and quieting of the sea is a feature of God’s kingdom. By calming the storm and walking on the waters, Jesus demonstrates that he is God, and he has brought God’s kingdom to earth. In the OT, it is God who walks on the seas. We looked when we studied chapter 4 at the idea of the sea being uncontrollable and chaotic throughout scripture, until we reach the final state of God’s kingdom, where (variously) the sea is as glass, or there is no sea. Jesus brings God’s kingdom with him into the fallen world. At his command, the seas are like glass. He can walk on the waters- they are under his authority. This incident ranks with Ch 4 in showing Jesus as God. The earlier event emphasised Jesus’ authoritative words- he commanded the wind and waves. This time, Jesus walked on the sea, as God is said to do in the OT.

 

“Who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8)- note also the reference in v.11 to God’s passing Job by.

 

“Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen.”  (Psalm 77:19)

 

“The LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters.”  (Isaiah 43:16)

 

The reference in Job seems to be to the creation of the world. The later references are to God’s parting of the Red Sea for Israel to walk through. In both, it is God who walks on or through the waters, and Jesus is doing what only God does. God has power over wind and waves.

 

3) Why does Jesus tell the disciples not to be afraid?

 

Going back to the references to walking on or through the waters; in those references, the supreme power of God is a cause for God’s people to rejoice. He is the LORD, and those who trust him need not fear. He subdues and treads down the waters. Jesus walks on Galilee, proclaiming that the hostility of the sea against man must now cease, for the Lord has come among men. It is a pledge of his aid for those who trust him.  

 

Also, the words Jesus says are a claim to be God. We can see him taking God’s words on his lips. The words of reassurance are significantly the words of God to his people in Isaiah.

“Fear not” can be found in Isaiah 41:10, 13f; 43:1; 44:2. And “It is I” (literally, “I am”)  (v. 50) although it may just be self-identification, is probably also a deliberate echo of Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah 41:4; 43:10; 52:6.

 

If we look at the miracle in context, we see strong similarities to God’s actions towards Israel at the time of the Exodus. The two outstanding miracles of that time- the two which are referred to most often in the psalms and the prophets- were the way God fed the people with manna, and the way he parted the Red Sea to deliver them from the armies of Pharaoh. Jesus has just fed the 5000 with miraculous bread. Now he walks through the sea to reassure his disciples. Like Father, like Son.

 

Perhaps the passage from Isaiah 43 was on Jesus’ mind at the time, given that it contains reference to God’s walking a path in the mighty waves, and also contains reassurances to Israel that Jesus echoes to the disciples- the new Israel.

 

4) How is this miracle like the miracle of Ch 4, when Jesus spoke to the wind and sea?

 

In chapter 4, Jesus slept in the boat as the disciples crossed the sea with him. A storm blew up, and they were afraid, and woke Jesus. Jesus spoke to the elements, and calmed the storm, and the disciples were terrified. We thought at that time about the idea of the Sea in the Bible as being chaotic and uncontrolled. Jesus, God’s king, brings in the kingdom and controls the water. In the kingdom of God, there is no sea, or the sea is smooth as glass- both of those pictures are there in Revelation.

Similarities (apart from the facts that these are both miracles to do with water, and both occur on the Sea of Galilee) include Jesus being absent/asleep, and the Twelve being in trouble because of lack of faith/ hardness of heart. Whenever the disciples are alone, they struggle. And they do so because they lack faith. (4:35; 6:45; 9:14).

Here, the disciples’ physical exhaustion- they’ve been up all night, and rowing (in shifts?) for eight hours solid- is compounded by terror at what they think to be a phantom. In Jewish thought, based on the Old Testament, the sea was a demonic place. The Talmud- the Jewish rabbinic discussion of the Law- talks about water-spirits bringing destruction. The disciples see Jesus coming to them, but don’t recognise him, and are afraid. They think Jesus can’t be real, he’s an apparition, maybe a sea-demon. Then, when he gets into the boat and they see who he is, they are astounded.

 

In both miracles, the disciples fail to understand. In both miracles, they are more terrified than helped by what Jesus does. Jesus is disclosed as divine, commanding the waves or walking over them. In chapter 4, the disciples are terrified, and say to each other, “Who is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?” The disciples ought to see it, but they don’t. In this chapter, the disciples still don’t seem to understand.

Mark says that they hadn’t understood about the loaves, and that is why they don’t understand this either. What is the connection here? What is it that they don’t understand about the loaves, which means they can’t understand the walking on the sea?

 

The disciples knew Jesus had fed 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish, but they didn’t grasp that this pointed to Jesus as God himself, feeding a new people of God as with manna. They saw a marvel, but saw not the shepherd of the sheep. And so also here, they think they see a ghost, and then when they realise that it is a real flesh-and-blood man who is able to make the sea support his weight, they react with fear when they should be reassured.

 

We can close with a hymn which refers to this passage, among many others, speaking of God’s planting his footsteps on the sea. Cowper suffered from mental illness, and agonising doubt about his state before God. He wrote a hymn encouraging trust in God when providences seem dark and incomprehensible to us.

“God moves in a mysterious way/ His wonders to perform/ He plants His footsteps in the sea/ And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines/ Of never failing skill/ He treasures up His bright designs/ And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take/ The clouds ye so much dread/ Are big with mercy and shall break/ In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense/ But trust Him for His grace/ Behind a frowning providence/ He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast/ Unfolding every hour/ The bud may have a bitter taste/ But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err/ And scan His work in vain/ God is His own interpreter/ And He will make it plain.”

Mark 6:30-44. An army of sheep.

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.

 

We looked recently at the sending out of the Twelve. In this passage, the Twelve return to Jesus. In between the sending and the return, Mark has given us an account of John’s ministry, and its gruesome end.

When the Twelve return, Jesus planned to spend some time with them, quietly. Maybe he wanted to hear a bit more about what they’d been up to. Certainly all of them felt like they needed a break from the hectic pace of the life they led with Jesus. They have gone out to exercise Jesus’ power on his behalf, as his messengers. They have preached, healed and driven out demons. They haven’t even been able to eat, so constant have been the demands of the people on them. Now they have the chance to relax a little and to spend a day- or at least half a day- unwinding, away from the crowds…

Except they don’t. The crowds recognise the band of men getting into the boat, and they race around the Sea of Galilee to head them off. When Jesus and the disciples arrive at the other side of the Sea, Jesus sees the crowds and has compassion on them, and he and the weary disciples take up the burden once again and care for the people.

After Jesus has taught the people for what seems to be most of the day, the disciples voice a thoroughly sensible concern, “There are lots of men here, we’re in the middle of nowhere, and it’s getting late. Maybe these guys can sleep under the stars, but even if they don’t need a bed for the night, they still need something to eat. If we leave it much later, they won’t be able to buy any food in nearby towns. We have got to call a break here.”

Jesus says, “Well, why don’t you find them something to eat?” The disciples are his under-shepherds. They share in his ministry. If he has the responsibility to care for the people, then by extension, so do the disciples. But this is beyond human resources. The disciples reply that it would take a man more than half a year to earn the money needed to feed this crowd. And the disciples have left everything to follow Jesus. They don’t have money to throw around.

Jesus responds by miraculously multiplying bread and fish to feed the 5000 men who have followed him across the Sea and listened to his teaching all day. As with all the miracles, this is a sign of the kingdom. We will consider at least 2 ways in which this demonstrates the character of God’s kingdom.

 

The shepherd of the sheep

1) Jesus sees the people as being like “sheep without a shepherd”. Israel are described as being “like sheep without a shepherd” several times in the Old Testament (Numbers 26:16-17; 1 Kings 22:17; Ezekiel 34). How do these passages link in to Mark 6?

We know what sheep are like, how they are proverbially stupid and prone to wander, how they follow other sheep and stumble into ditches. Sheep without a shepherd are leaderless, directionless, aimless. They wander around with no idea of where they’re going or what they’re doing. They have little chance of finding pasture and water.

In one sense, these people are not like shepherdless sheep. They have a clear purpose. They are not scattered. They form one flock, and they have direction and coherence. They’ve all come as one body around the Sea of Galilee, and they have done so because they want to see Jesus.

But in another sense, they are shepherdless, and their common desire to see Jesus only shows that that they are searching for a shepherd. If we look back into the Old Testament passages behind Mark’s choice of language to describe Jesus’ view of the crowd, we can see why they are accurately described as shepherdless sheep.

In Numbers 27:16-17, Moses, that great leader of God’s flock, is praying. Moses is nearing the end of his life. He knows that he won’t lead Israel much longer. He knows that he has been such a central figure in the life of the nation, that they will find it hard to get by without him. He has given them the law. He has settled their disputes. He has led them through the desert for decades and decades. We may think that Thatcher and Blair have had long premierships in recent years. But Moses led Israel for more than twice as long as both Thatcher and Blair rolled together. And he was subject to no Parliament, no Queen, and no House of Lords. Moses can see a danger that the people will be left without leadership when he is gone. If there is no figure with Moses’ stature and authority (and how could there be?), then the nation may disintegrate into tribes. Factions may form, each supporting a different candidate to fill Moses’ sandals. This is a real danger. So Moses groomed a successor- Joshua, and Moses prayed that God would not leave the people to be sheep without a shepherd. 

In I Kings 22:17 (and II Chronicles 18:16), Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, wants to go to war against Aram. He desires to make an alliance with the king of Judah, Jehoshaphat. As the two kings talk war policy, Jehoshaphat insists (against Ahab’s inclination) on asking God’s counsel. So Ahab gathers together his pet prophets- 400 men in total- to tickle his ears with the advice he wants to hear. They all say “Oh yes, go to war. God will certainly give you the victory, no question about it.” One of them does some supposedly prophetic play-acting with iron horns, saying, “This is how you will gore the Arameans”. Jehoshaphat isn’t convinced by this display, and he asks to see a real prophet. Ahab reluctantly sends for the man he says is the only real prophet in town- Micaiah, son of Imlah. As an aside, we know very well that Elijah is both alive, and a real prophet; and we may wonder why Ahab doesn’t mention him. Either Ahab thinks he’ll get an even worse prophecy from Elijah than he will from Micaiah and he doesn’t want to hear it, or Ahab is scared of Elijah and he doesn’t dare to call him, or Elijah has no permanent home, and Ahab wouldn’t know where to send a messenger to reach him.

In any case it is Micaiah who is sent for, and the messenger who is sent warns Micaiah about predicting defeat and tells him that only nice happy prophecies are allowed around Ahab. So when Micaiah arrives at court, he starts off by sarcastically predicting victory for Ahab, echoing the words of the tame prophets. When Ahab is not amused by the mockery and tells Micaiah to prophesy accurately and stop fooling around (note the incongruity), Micaiah says that he sees the armies of Israel on the battlefield, “like sheep without a shepherd”, and accuses the lying prophets of having a lying spirit putting words in their mouths. Ahab realises that Micaiah is telling him that if he goes to war, he is going to die in battle. To cut a long story short, Ahab won’t call the war off, but is scared enough to disguise himself on the day of battle in an attempt to avoid his predicted death by not making himself a target. God is not mocked by this attempt to disobey and dodge the consequences. In fact, Ahab is mocked when a stray arrow hits the apparently unimportant soldier. Ahab dies, and leaves his armies leaderless.

In Ezekiel 34:5, Israel are described as sheep who have been scattered because there was no shepherd. Taking that chapter as a whole, we see that it is an extended polemic against those who ought to have been the shepherds of Israel. The men in charge of the nation have been bad shepherds, clothing themselves with wool, and slaughtering the choice animals, but not caring for the flock. The leaders of Israel have been wicked, irresponsible, selfish and greedy. They have been bad kings, false prophets, and corrupt officials. They have lined their own pockets and led the nation to destruction. Under their charge, God’s people have abandoned God, and the promised curses have come upon them to punish them. Ezekiel prophesies to a people with no land of their own and a foreign king to rule them- a people in exile in Babylon.

Through Ezekiel, God proclaims his solution to this problem. He has one solution, but it sounds like two solutions. First, God says that he himself will shepherd his people, Israel. He will gather them out of the far countries to their own home. He will lead them to good pasture. He will strengthen the weak and bind up the injured. He will dispense justice and punish the guilty. He will hold the bad shepherds, and the greedy sheep accountable for what they have done. “For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from” (v11)

But then, God says that he will raise up another shepherd for them. “I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd.” (v23).

Ezekiel is speaking some 500 years after David’s death. He is talking about great David’s greater son- the one of whom even David was merely a shadow.

By describing the crowds as sheep without a shepherd, and then showing us how Jesus took on the role of shepherd to them, Mark is telling us that Jesus is the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy. God’s kingdom is like a flock of sheep with Jesus as their shepherd-king, providing for them in every way. Jesus stands in the line of Moses and David, as the pinnacle of that line. Jesus stands over against all the bad shepherds like Ahab who abandoned the flock. Jesus is the true shepherd, the greater than David, the one who cares for God’s people and supplies their needs. He is the Lord who leads his flock to green pastures.

There is also an implicit criticism of those who ought to have been shepherding Israel. “King” Herod is too busy feeding his own lusts to feed his sheep. The Pharisees and teachers of the law are robbing widows and oppressing the poor. The priests are manoeuvring for political influence and coming to arrangements with Rome. All of them are willing to sacrifice the sheep for themselves. Jesus alone is willing to sacrifice his own wants for his sheep.

 

2) What is the most pressing need of these abandoned sheep?

The question is answered by Jesus’ actions. In response to their obvious need, Jesus teaches them. Here are this crowd of sheep, looking for a shepherd, and Jesus is willing to be that shepherd. He fulfils the role by filling their mouths with good things in the miracle of the multiplied food- but before that, he fills their minds with good things. Their most pressing need is to be taught.

Jesus spends a long time teaching them- he teaches them many things, and he keeps going until it begins to get dark and too late for them to find their way back around the lake and home. They don’t appear to mind this. They are obviously hungry for teaching. We begin to get fidgety if the preacher goes on for longer than 45 minutes. An hour is reckoned to be much too long for a sermon. Perhaps if we were more earnest about spiritual realities, we would want to spend hours listening to good teaching, and if we couldn’t find it in the church we usually attend, we’d look elsewhere. We need to be taught. If a man doesn’t eat, he wastes away, grows sick, and dies. If a man is not nourishing his spiritual life, the same thing happens.

3) Who else does miracles with food in the Bible? Is Mark making deliberate reference to those occasions? If so, why? Is there a parallelism between Moses/Joshua, Elijah/Elisha, and John/Jesus?

There are a few feeding miracles in the Old Testament. Moses strikes the rock and provides water for Israel. Under Moses, there is also the miraculous provision of manna and quails in the wilderness. Elijah was fed by ravens when the whole land was a wilderness around him, and he fed the Gentile widow of Zarephath in Sidon with miraculously renewing oil and flour. Elisha made the bad water of Jericho wholesome, multiplied oil for a Jewish widow, purified a poisonous stew for the prophets, and (in perhaps the closest parallel to the feeding of the 5000) multiplied the firstfruits brought to him by a man from Baal-Shalishah to feed a hundred men.

There is a parallelism between the three sets of men in the question. Moses, Elijah, and John all come to a disobedient people and call them to follow the Lord.

Before Moses, Israel are not really a nation. They are a large tribe living in Egypt. Moses calls them out of Egypt, gives them the law, and leads them to a land of their own. They are now God’s nation in a way that they weren’t before.

In Elijah’s day, that is nearly lost. The king and queen are Baalists, and Baalism is the all-but-official religion of the land. God’s people are whisker-close to breaking covenant with their God. Elijah calls the people to repent, to seek the Lord, and to destroy Baalism root and branch. And he leads the way, confronting, humiliating, and then butchering the prophets of Baal in holy violence.

Moses was the man God used to found his nation. Elijah was the man God used to preserve his nation. Both men have a show-down with idolaters, and have many of them killed (the Golden Calf, and the Mount Carmel episodes). Both die on the East side of the Jordan, symbolically ending their ministries in the wilderness outside the promised land.

Both die mysteriously. Both gave their lives to God’s promises, without ever seeing those promises fulfilled in their lifetimes. Both appear on the mount of transfiguration.

In John’s day, the people are not Baalists, but they still need to be called to repentance. They need to be pulled back from the brink of being “not God’s people” yet again. Messiah is coming, and they are not ready to receive him. They still need preparation before the Lord comes among them. John is a figure in the mould of Moses and Elijah. We looked last time at the more detailed parallels between Elijah/Ahab/Jezebel, and John/Herod/Herodias.

Joshua inherits a nation from Moses, and leads them into the land of promise. Elisha inherits a more obedient people from Elijah, and sees the destruction of the house of Ahab, and Jezebel eaten by dogs. Both men cross the Jordan into the promised land on dry ground. God promised them both that he will be with them as he was with their predecessors. Their names mean the same thing.

Jesus comes to bring blessing greater than that brought by Joshua or Elisha. He appears as the saviour to John’s disciples. He is able to baptise with the Holy Spirit, and actually work effectual change within the heart.

 

4) Are there other echoes of pastoral metaphor here? Why would there be?

In Hebrew minds, if you want to emphasise something, you don’t put it in italics or in bold. You don’t even underline it. You repeat it, and repeat it. Sometimes you repeat it and repeat it again. And maybe you repeat it one more time. Mark here repeats a phrase several times. Jesus asked the disciples to come away to a “desolate place” (v31). They went away to a “desolate place” (v32). The disciples came to Jesus and said, “This is a desolate place” (v35). The wilderness motif is here in these verses, and is in contrast to the “green grass” on which the people are seated.

Rest for God’s people in places of safety and plenty is a common theme of the Bible- Deuteronomy 3:20, 12:9f; 25:19; Joshua 1:13,15; 21:44; Psalm 95:7-11; Isaiah 63:14; Jeremiah 31:2; Hebrews 3:7-4:13. The literal rest sought by the wilderness generation under Moses may have become semi-typological in the preaching about a second exodus given by Isaiah and Jeremiah- but the idea is that of a haven from strife and trouble, a haven guaranteed by God for his people. There are echoes of the green pastures of Psalm 23 here.

 

The Lord of Hosts

4) Only men are mentioned here. Assuming that we’re not going to be so foolish as to take a “feminist reading” of Mark, why is this?

For your information, most feminist readings of Mark- and of any other male-authored book you care to mention- go along the lines of, “Mark only mentions men in this passage. There must have been lots of women there, but Mark didn’t mention them because he thought that they were unimportant. This is because Mark was an evil sexist who unthinkingly accepted the oppressive patriarchal cultural norms of his society, and he was writing to other evil sexists in the corrupt male-dominated early church. This proves that men are bad.“

If you think I’m joking, or even exaggerating, just search Google books for feminist interpretations of the Bible, and you’ll find that, sadly, I’m not. I shan’t dwell on the feminist reading, for fear of being tempted to sarcastic mockery. I don’t think that sarcastic mockery would be a wrong response- Micaiah did it in I Kings 22, and it was both good and funny- but it would divert us from getting to grips with what Mark actually says.

The common evangelical interpretation – the one you’re most likely to hear coming soon to a sermon near you- is, “Well, Mark only mentions the men here. Just think of how many people there must have been if you count all the women and children as well! Jesus was really feeding tens of thousands!” That sounds very nice, and it seems to make the miracle more impressive- the food is multiplied even further. (If the version coming soon to a sermon near you is instead, “Well, of course, the real miracle here is about sharing. The crowd were all moved deeply by the example of the dear little boy, and they all got out the lunches they’d been hiding, and shared them around in a spirit of love and generosity”, then you should start looking for a different church.)

But this gloss on the passage dodges the difficult question, “Why does Mark only mention men?” The feminists might be out of their tree, but at least they give an answer to that question. If we want to assume the presence of a whole crowd of women and children, we need to give a coherent reason for their absence from Mark’s account. “Mark was a sexist” won’t cut it; Mark mentions women and children in plenty of other places. Come to that, were Matthew, Luke, and John all sexists too? This miracle is unusual in that it appears in all four Gospels- but none of the authors thought it fit to mention the presence of women, while all of them state that 5000 men were there. If women were there, surely at least Luke would mention the fact, wouldn’t he? And for all four writers, the men are “αυδρες”- the Greek word denoting “males” rather than the word denoting “mankind”.

John has “and the men sat down, about five thousand of them”.

Luke has “About five thousand men were there”.

Mark we can read above.

Matthew has “The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children”

I know what you’re thinking – “Hey, wait a minute. Matthew says there were women and children there. He says he’s only counting the men”. That looks to be true- but it’s not. The Greek word which has been (poorly) translated “besides” is “χωρις”. This more frequently means “without” than it means “besides”. So though Matthew seems to be supporting the idea that there were women there after all, he’s actually the most definite witness to tell us that there were no women there. I’d read Matthew 14:21 literally as  “5000 men, without women and children”. I think the weight of evidence is strongly in favour of this being an exclusively male crowd.

That fits with the context- how many women and children are likely to keep up with their menfolk as they run halfway round a sizeable lake? How many women, with their children, would stay on a hillside in the middle of nowhere until it became too late to return home? To run round the lake to meet the boat, and then to drop everything to listen to this teacher/healer/Messiah into the night seems like a very blokeish thing to do.

How many people do you know who sit up on election night and watch the coverage until all the results are in? And what proportion of them are male?

And it fits thematically, as I hope we shall see in the next section…

 

5) Jesus “commands” these men to sit down in companies, so they sit in companies by 100s and 50s (see Exodus 18, Numbers 31, and Deuteronomy 1). Why does Jesus seat the crowd like this? Why can’t they sit down in groups of whatever size they fancy?

This seems odd if we take it literally. It is very easy not to take it at face value, but instead to filter it through our own preconceptions about what went on. When we imagine the feeding of the 5000, most of us probably have a picture of a kind of amorphous mass of folk sitting on the grass to eat. That’s what our church picnics are like- people sit wherever they want, with whomever they want. Families might sit together, friends might sit together, and the groups of people are of all shapes and sizes. There are 6 in a group here, 23 in a group there, an isolated couple over there… People wouldn’t count themselves off into exact groups of 50 and 100, and sit in that regimented fashion. But Mark says that this is what happened, and unless we’ve a very good reason to interpret his words “So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties” to mean “So they sat down in groups, and some of the groups were somewhere around 50, or somewhere around 100, or something like that”, we shouldn’t do so.

There is (as you might have guessed) some Old Testament background to this. But the key thing is the psychology of the men present, and why they would arrange themselves into the formations they did.

In the wilderness, when Moses divided up the people into governable units, he did so by “thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens” (Exodus 18:21;25). If you look in a concordance for “hundreds” or “fifties”, you will see that the bulk of the references are to the army of Israel. Israel’s military was organised into units, and one such division was into hundreds and fifties.

Either Jesus tells these Jewish men to sit in groups of hundreds and fifties, or they do it spontaneously, en masse. I’m not sure which I find more likely. In either case, these are men, and they are thinking of themselves as an army. Note also here that the “sheep without a shepherd” reference above to 1 Kg 22:17, refers in context to an army which has lost its general.

Imagine for a moment that you are a Roman commander, flying over Israel in a plane that won’t be invented for another 1870 years or so. That’s the beauty of imagination- you can do that sort of thing. You are looking down over your conquered country, and you happen to be flying over the Sea of Galilee, just as this miracle is taking place. What do you see? Does it worry you?

You see 5000 Jewish men. It is beginning to get dark, but they are still all out on the hills. Why? What are they doing? There is one man at the front who appears to be addressing the crowd. After a while, they all split off into evenly sized groups, and sit down. Surely, you would be worried that this was a rebellion. You’d think Israel had found a leader, and he had organised them into a rebel military force.  No wonder John tells us that at this point, the 5000 were about to try to make Jesus king by force (John 6:15).

 

6) Why are there 5 loaves of bread? Who else fed his men with 5 loaves of bread? Is this relevant?

Everything in Mark is relevant. He is the most economical writer I can think of. There are no extraneous details. Jesus fed the men with 5 loaves, and the numbers seem important, don’t they? Jesus will refer specifically to the numbers of men, loaves, and baskets in the boat (Mark 8:19-20).

And as ever, we go to the Old Testament to see where the significance lies. 5 loaves are mentioned in a passage to which Jesus has already directly referred earlier in the Gospel. When accused of doing what wasn’t lawful on the Sabbath, back in Mark 2, Jesus reminded the Pharisees that David had taken the bread of the presence, holy bread only to be eaten by priests, to feed his fighting men when they were on the run from Saul. In Mark 2, Jesus was in effect claiming to be the new David. David was the anointed but unrecognised king, and his men were the only faithful Israelites, and they were on a holy mission to install God’s king on the throne. They were the ones worthy of the holy bread anyway. So Jesus was the king in truth, and his followers were holy in the way that matters. The Pharisees were opposing God’s king, just like Saul. But in the passage, which is in I Samuel 21, you find that when David goes to the priests begging for food (and for a weapon), he says to them, “give me 5 loaves of bread, or whatever you have”. The food for David’s band of men- the army such as he had then- was 5 loaves.

So there is this military theme to the feeding of the 5000, Jesus not only as shepherd, but as commander of the army (like David).

 

7) Where does the rubber hit the road with all of this in the church?

Discuss.

Mark 6:12-30. But she got eaten by dogs in the end.

So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some said, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.” But others said, “He is Elijah.” And others said, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” For it was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because he had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he kept him safe. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his nobles and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. For when Herodias’ daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. And the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you.” And he vowed to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, up to half of my kingdom.” And she went out and said to her mother, “For what should I ask?” And she said, “The head of John the Baptist.” And she came in immediately with haste to the king and asked, saying, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” And the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her. And immediately the king sent an executioner with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard of it, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.

 

We looked last week at the sending out of the 12- and at the implications that the way they are to behave- going out two by two, taking nothing for the journey, staying in one house in each place, and shaking the dust from their feet when rejected- has for our evangelism.

We turn now to the account Mark gives of John the Baptist and his death, which he places between the sending and the return of the Twelve.

 

1) First we are told what the current pundits in the village synagogues all over Israel make of Jesus- he is either John the Baptist back from the dead, or he is Elijah, or he is “A prophet, just like in the olden days”. Why do people identify Jesus with John, or with Elijah?

2) The people identify Jesus to be John or Elijah, but Mark and Jesus himself identify John as Elijah (1:1-3, 9:13). Why is this, and how do we see the likeness in this particular passage?

3) Mark is using his split-screen technique again here, placing John’s death between the sending out of the Twelve, and their return. Why would he do this?

Discussion

1) Jesus is famous. Everyone is talking about him. It is a guaranteed conversation starter in the local market place, “So… what do you make of this Jesus guy then?” People hope that he might be the Messiah. He has certainly attracted a lot of attention with his miracles and his teaching. Mark tells us what the current pundits in the village synagogues all over Israel make of Jesus. There seem to be several opinions on the matter.

Some of them reckon that he is John the Baptist back from the dead, in a different body and able to do miracles. Others think that he is Elijah.  A third group are less willing to pin their colours to the mast quite so definitely, merely affirming that he is “A prophet, just like in the olden days”.

Why do people identify Jesus with John, or with Elijah, or with a prophet?

Some people think that Jesus is John the Baptist, risen from the grave. John had been a sensation himself- crowds had flocked to hear him in the wilderness. They had wondered whether John might be the Messiah (Luke 3:15). And John had been similar to Jesus in some ways. Both men were evidently men of God. Both men spoke with an authority which couldn’t be ignored.

John had stood outside all the religious structures of Israel. John’s father had been a priest, and had served in the temple, but John himself abandoned that and lived outside in the wilderness. Rather than taking part in the temple system, he stood outside it and taught that good Jews needed to repent and be baptised. He condemned Israel as faithless  and prophesied speedy destruction for them. Jesus too seemed to be outside the religious mainstream of Israel. The Pharisees disapproved of him. Like John, he didn’t base himself in Jerusalem, but in “Galilee of the Gentiles”- a relative wilderness.

Others see Jesus as Elijah, and all those similarities Jesus had to John were also similarities to Elijah. Moreover, the Jews had Scriptural reason to expect Elijah to come back to them. The prophet Malachi spoke of an Elijah who was to come- in the closing words of the Old Testament…

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” (Malachi 4:5-6)

Elijah himself had not been seen to die. He had been separated from Elisha by heavenly chariots and horses, and had been taken up in a whirlwind. The sons of the prophets, his followers, had wanted to go and search for him after that, thinking he might be alive somewhere out there. Elisha initially forbade it, then relented and allowed them to go, knowing that they would find nothing. And the Jews rightly expected Elijah to come back before the day of the Lord. Maybe Jesus was this Elijah- maybe the day of the Lord was just around the corner. Jesus was going around teaching that the kingdom of God was at hand, wasn’t he?

 

2) The people identify Jesus to be John or Elijah, but Jesus himself identifies John as Elijah (1:1-3, 9:13). Why is this, and how do we see the likeness in this particular passage?

Elijah and John are very similar indeed. They dress alike. Both come from the wilderness, eating wilderness food and wearing wilderness clothes. John “was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey” (Mark 1:6), and Elijah was recognisable because “he wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather about his waist” (2 Kings 1:8), and he hid in the wilderness and was fed by wild birds for a time.

But the similarity is more than cosmetic. They both occupied similar prophetic roles. Both of them were sent to call a wicked nation to repentance. To some extent, all the prophets did this, but John and Elijah have a deeper similarity. Both of them expected God to break out in wrath against Israel immediately, and yet neither of them saw the day of wrath they predicted.

Elijah was sent to a near-Baalist people. Ahab had imported the religious practises of his pagan wife, Jezebel, and his court was full of Baalist prophets. The people had all but abandoned their covenant with the living God. Elijah comes to urgently force repentance upon the people. He does miracles and brings blessing- but only outside Israel. Israel deserved no blessing, and so though there were many widows in Israel, it was the widow of Zarephath to whom he went. Elijah called down covenant curses (a three-year drought in this case) on the land, and then confronted the false religion of the king head-on.

Perhaps the clearest look inside Elijah’s head comes just after that though. He has just won an amazing victory. He has proven publicly that Baal is an empty idol, and that his God is real. He has slaughtered all the 450 prophets of Baal. The people have fallen on their faces and said “The Lord, he is God”. It looks as though Elijah is seeing fantastic results from his preaching. It looks as though the nation are returning to their God. So Elijah has prayed for the drought to be lifted, and rain has fallen- all that in 1 Kings 18.

But in the next chapter, reality bites. In the very first verse, we realise that nothing much has changed, Jezebel’s name is mentioned- she is still around. If Ahab had been truly repentant, he’d have put her away as an evil woman. If the people had been truly repentant, they’d have risen up against her and killed her for her crimes. But not only is she still there- she is even still powerful enough to make threats to Elijah which he found wholly believeable. Elijah expects no protection from the people, or from Ahab. He feels that the repentance shown on Mount Carmel was about as deep as a puddle. He runs away. Elijah thinks that the people are still wicked, and that he is the only faithful Israelite there is. Given that, his request to God is shocking. “And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers” (1 Kings 19:4). In effect, Elijah is asking for God to end his covenant with Israel- to kill the last remaining faithful man. He has tried to bring Israel to repentance, and he thought he’d done it- but now he sees that he is no better, and no more successful than his fathers. He despairs of the nation. He wants only wrath for them now.

John’s appearance calls to mind Elijah, but so do John’s words-

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:7-10)

Both men see very clearly that wrath is on the way for a disobedient and God-fearless people.

In this particular passage, there is a strong similarity. Elijah fought against Ahab and Jezebel- a wicked king and the pagan wife he should never have married. John too had his Ahab and his Jezebel. Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and he had married the wife of his brother, Philip. John spoke out clearly against this, and earned the undying enmity of Herodias. As our American cousins say, “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard”, and it is easy to get mixed up with the many Herods in the Bible. The Herod of Jesus’ early life- the man the wise men visited, and who tried to have the infant Jesus killed- was Herod the Great. The Herod here in Mark 6 is Herod Antipas. The Herod who will appear in Acts and speak to the apostle Paul is Herod Agrippa. Antipas and Herodias, like Ahab and Jezebel, are wicked rulers rebuked by a faithful prophet.

The similarity goes further than that, however. Ahab just might have listened to Elijah, had it not been for his wife. He was an evil man, but he hadn’t the strength and determination she had. We see this in several situations; Ahab was willing to take orders from Elijah just after Carmel. Had Jezebel been there, she would rather have died. In the case of Naboth’s vineyard, Ahab was sulky about Naboth’s refusal to sell him the land- but he wasn’t willing to flout the law and take it by force. It was Jezebel who trampled all over the Israelite concern for ancestral lands (not to mention the sanctity of life), and killed Naboth in cold blood to take his land.

And so it was with Herod and Herodias. Herod is evil, and he is quite willing to lock John up because it doesn’t suit him to have a prophet going around issuing condemnations of his sins. But he can see some sense in John’s critiques of Israel. He is strangely drawn to listen to John’s calls for repentance, and they worry him. He is also afraid of God. He doesn’t dare kill John, because he knows that John is righteous and holy. A man who had no fear of God would not let such a thing stop him, whereas Herod not only won’t kill John without the influence of wine and pride, but he is wracked by guilt after the event. When he hears of Jesus’ miracles, he jumps to the conclusion that John has come back from the dead to haunt him.

Herodias was a harder case. She harboured a long grudge against John, and would kill him in a heartbeat if she got the chance. She seems to have made her plans, waited for the opportunity, and seized her chance when it appeared. Herod made a rash vow to Herodias’ daughter (Josephus tells us that her name was Salome), and she went to see her mother who was ready with her answer.

This pattern of a strong evil woman standing behind a weaker evil man is a recurring one in the Bible. It was Adam’s sin that caused the exodus from Eden, but he was weak before Eve’s desire to eat the fruit. Samson was the strongest man in the world, but was putty in the hands of the scheming Delilah. Though Ahab was an evil man, he crumbled in the face of Elijah. It was Jezebel who was able to make Elijah crumble. And so it was with Herod and Herodias. John stands as the new Elijah. Patterns set in the Old Testament reach fulfilment when Jesus comes.

 

3) Mark is using his split-screen technique again here, placing John’s death between the sending out of the Twelve, and their return. Why would he do this?

If John’s life is meant to be like Elijah’s, then John’s death is almost counter-intuitive; Elijah had faced great opposition, but had never actually been killed by Jezebel, only threatened with death. In fact, Elijah never died at all. John is his New Testament counterpart, but where Elijah saw great blessings and national repentance and eternal life, John got his head served up as a grisly dish as a banquet. How can this be explained? Now that Jesus has come, wouldn’t you expect all to be victory, all the way? The kingdom of God has arrived. So how come God’s prophets are still being killed? How come “Jezebel” is victorious?

We looked last time at the sending of the Twelve, and the importance of all the instructions Jesus gave them. We didn’t think of the importance of the setting of their sending in the context of Mark’s Gospel. By splitting the story of the Twelve up around the account of John, Mark is linking the ministry of the Twelve to the ministry of John.

The Twelve found their preaching journeys very exciting. They cast out demons, healed the sick, and preached repentance. They believed that the kingdom of God was here- and now they were seeing it take concrete forms at their own hands! It must have been thrilling to be able to command demons and have them obey, or to be able to heal incurable ills. It is hard for us to imagine. But the apparent success of their work bodes ill for them. They were doing as their master did, acting by his authority- and seeing victory. They expected unalloyed victory, battle after battle won until all Israel repents and believes and enthrones Jesus as king. By cutting to a different scene- to John’s death- Mark reminds us of the reality of kingdom life. Victory only comes through death. Before the crown, comes the cross. This episode is an ominous portent for the Twelve, and it foreshadows Jesus’ own death. The disciples seem to have enjoyed their ministry, and were probably received as Jesus was- with joy and expectation by most ordinary Jews. But John had also been a faithful minister, and his faithfulness cost him his head. It is very important for Mark’s readers to take this on board. They will face imperial persecution. When the knock comes on the door in the middle of the night, they will half-expect it to be the legionaries coming to arrest them. This shouldn’t come as a surprise for them. They know that they are on the Lord’s side, and so will win in the end, but they should also be aware that no war is fought without casualties. 

Jesus came to bring God’s kingdom to the world, and the world put him to death. The Twelve can expect no better treatment at the hands of the world, and neither did John, and neither can the church of Jesus Christ today.

Mark 6:6b-13; 30-32. Two by two

And he went about among the villages teaching. And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff- no bread, no bag, no money in their belts- but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them…

 

…The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.

 

So far, Mark has arranged his accounts loosely into cycles of miracles and other pieces of narrative, each cycle with a different focus. In the first cycle, the point was simply to show what God’s kingdom is going to be like, right at the outset, as the king appeared. So Jesus casts out a demon, heals Peter’s mother and many sick people, and cleanses a leper, in order to show that under his reign, Satan’s power will be broken, the curse will be lifted, and uncleanness will be no more. Under God’s reign, Jesus is the King. So Jesus commands some disciples to follow him, and teaches with authority in the synagogues.

In the next cycle, a new element is introduced, namely that of opposition and division. God’s kingdom is not only a place of blessing, but also a place of conflict. There are those who harden their hearts and oppose the reign of King Jesus, despite its obvious goodness. In all of the snapshots of Jesus’ ministry under this section- the healing of a paralysed man, the healing of a man with a withered hand, the calling of Levi- Mark’s focus is not so much on the miracles themselves as the disputes which they occasioned. And Mark also records the dispute over plucking of grain on the Sabbath, and the occasion when the religious leaders accused Jesus of being under Satanic control, and the time when Jesus’ natural family said that he was a madman and tried to take him away until he got better. The disciples are marked out as Jesus’ true family, because they are in his kingdom. Mark wants to point out that the kingdom of God is essentially divisive. When it comes, it makes things much clearer, and the goats are plainly shown to be different from the sheep.

The next cycle focuses on those who do respond to the kingdom of God, and who grasp the blessings offered. Mark chooses two more miracles out of the many which Jesus did in order to make a point about faith. The blessings of the kingdom are grasped by faith. Both the woman and Jairus are commended for their faith.

Now Mark comes to the time when Jesus sent the disciples out as heralds of his kingdom. So far, they have been learners, observing Jesus in all he did. Now they are to go and be his apostles. Between the sending of the Twelve (v6-13), and their return (v30-32), Mark tells us about what happened to John the Baptist, who he had introduced right at the start of the gospel.

 

The sending and return of the Twelve

 

1) What is the relationship of the Twelve to Jesus?

Teachers in Israel would have different groups of followers. Some would hear them when it seemed convenient- when the teacher visited their home town, for example. Others would be more interested, would have marked out a particular teacher as a favourite of theirs, would identify themselves in some sense as a supporter, might offer him hospitality, or put themselves out and travel to the next town to hear him teach. But there would be a small and dedicated group who were actually the disciples of the teacher. They would call him “Rabbi” (My teacher). They would be allowed to sit at his feet, to hear him intimately. They would be allowed to share his life in every way. They would follow him everywhere he went, listen to all his teaching. He would teach them privately, apart from the crowds, and take them deeper into his thought. They would eat with him, sleep where he slept, even leaving home and family for a while to follow him. The Twelve are chosen by Jesus personally to be his disciples. They have left home and family for his sake, as Peter says (Mark 10:28). Jesus sees them as his family, and says so publicly (Mark 3:34).

In some sense, they are actually an extension of Jesus himself; his body. The Twelve are the embryonic church. There are twelve of them because they are his new Israel, the new twelve tribes.  They, along with the prophets, will be the foundation for the church (Ephesians 2:20). The structure will be built on them after Pentecost, but for now, they are all that there is. They are the group publicly identified with Jesus. We have Paul’s teaching in his letters to churches that the church is Christ’s “body”

 ”For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many”… “God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body”… “But God has so composed the body, giving greater honour to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” I Corinthians 12:12-27.

“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ”… “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” Ephesians 4:11-16.

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Ephesians 5:22-33.

“I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” Colossians 1:24.

Your body is the physical organism by which you interact with the world around you. You pick things up, put them down, eat, drink, communicate- all by using your body. The church is the physical thing by which Jesus Christ himself interacts with the world. Paul is drawing out similarities between (variously) a man and his natural body, a man and his wife, and Christ and his church. The Twelve stand in this intimate relationship to Jesus. When people reject the apostles, they are rejecting Jesus himself. Mark is concerned to point out that when Jesus goes hungry, the twelve apostles go hungry.

But more even than that, they are his plenipotentiary ambassadors- the apostles of Jesus Christ. They are sent out by Jesus to be his personal representatives. He gives them authority to use his power over the demons. They do his work, in his name, by his authority.

 

How is this relevant to us today?

We are linked to the apostles. We are part of the superstructure, and they are part of the foundation. We should do as they did in looking to fulfil Jesus’ commands and work to build his kingdom. There are a thousand practical implications here:

Do we see our fellow church members as part of the same body?

Do we care for them as part of the same family?

Do we work together as one unit for the same goal?

Perhaps this is highlighted by the big difference between modern believers and the twelve. We are not apostles with Jesus’ authority over the demons. There are other ways in which the power of God should be evident through us. Unlike them, we are not on a whistle-stop tour through the nation. We have time to live alongside people and let them see the way we live our lives. Are we conspicuously different from the world around us? Conspicuously more holy? This should be evident in us as individuals, and also in our families, and (most of all) in our churches. Our churches should be places where the presence of the Holy Spirit cannot be denied. We should evidence the fruit of the Spirit, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”. Under the surface of most other associations of fallen men and women, lurk resentment & rivalry- the workplaces, the social clubs, the political parties.  Not so in genuine churches. They are supernatural. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” John 13:35.

 

 

2) Why are they sent out two by two?

There is undoubtedly a practical element to it- they are weak and need support from one another. They are given Jesus’ power, but they are still vulnerable. And they will likely come under attack. Jesus has caused controversy, and in some places, he has been rejected. The Herodians and Pharisees have already plotted together to kill him (Mark 3:6). The servants cannot expect to be treated any better than their master. They will face hostility too. It would be dangerous and foolish to go out alone. And they will face questions. The teachers of the law might try to trip them up on various points from the law and the prophets. When Jesus came to the Temple, he was asked difficult questions in order to trip him up. Two heads are usually better than one in such cases. They will be more effective in pairs. We need a balance when we think of them. Sometimes they seem to be great men of faith. Others they seem so weak and fragile and wrong-headed. They are real men.

But more than that, they are witnesses. In the Old Testament, when a serious case came before the village court, the elders could not convict on the evidence of just one witness (Numbers 35:30, Deuteronomy 17:6; 19:15). These men are going out to bear witness to the fact that Messiah has come. The King has arrived. They will tell people about his teaching and his deeds. Their witness has got to be trustworthy.

 

How is this relevant to us today?

As servants of the same master, we cannot expect any better treatment either. And so we need to be wise and acknowledge our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Having just thought of the ways God’s power should be at work in us, we also need to recognise our flaws. Some of these are due to the limitations of finite beings. Some of them are due to our sinful failings. Although redeemed, we are not yet made perfect. In Luther’s words, we are “simul iustus et peccator”- at the same time righteous and sinners.

Christian biography can be unrealistic and unhelpful here, with pictures of supermen who use every disappointment as a springboard, leap high buildings in a single bound, and leave converts in their wake wherever they go. Even an undeniably great man like the apostle Paul was left crumpled and bleeding, an apparent failure in many of the cities he visited. We aren’t strong enough to go it alone.

 

3) Why are they to take nothing for the journey?

Is this redolent of any Old Testament passage? When Israel were called out of Egpyt, they left in a hurry. They didn’t have time to pack. Maybe they’d have liked to prepare, to pay off and call in debts, to say goodbyes, to set affairs in order. But it was not to be. They were to eat the Passover with their belts fastened, their staffs in their hands, and their sandals already on (Exodus 12).

Like the Exodus from Egypt, the disciples have an urgent mission. The apostles are God’s messengers. They are going to call the nation out of Egypt and back into covenant with God and obedience to his law. They might like to pack some things- a change of clothes and a spare pair of sandals at least, and some money for food and shelter. But they are not given that chance. They must go now.

This is perhaps one reason why Mark has recorded the section about John’s death here. It is another example of his split-screen technique. And it is one not necessitated by chronological demands. Mark could have recorded John’s demise anywhere in the book. But he inserts it between the sending and the return of the Twelve. We will (D.V) look at this section next time, but for now we can note that Mark is calling our minds back to the opening of his Gospel, where John appeared in the wilderness, baptising with a baptism of repentance. This was an initiation ritual. John was performing it down at the Jordan river, the entry-point into the land. He was performing that initiation ritual to call out a new Israel; an Israel from within Israel. The people had disobeyed, and there was judgement in the land- the Romans had defeated them and occupied the place, and every Jew knew that God had promised to protect them from their enemies so long as they were obedient. John called out a repentant people who wanted to renew covenant with God.

The Twelve were the seed of Jesus’ new Israel, and they were to call other Jews to join them in this nation. This is a new Exodus. The people have been in exile, not in Egypt, but within the land itself. They have been in spiritual exile, and now the disciples are going about like Moses, gathering them together and calling them out. They will not cross the physical Jordan as God’s people did under Joshua, but they will cross from the world into God’s kingdom in a different sense. Moses’ exodus was only a shadow. This is the reality. And there is a sense in which it is beginning here in this passage, as the disciples go out. It is a work of urgency just as was the first exodus.

 

How is this relevant to us today?

Planning ahead is not wrong. Packing adequate provisions for a long journey is plain commonsense, provided that you have time to do so.  But our message should be an urgent one. We are not speaking “Peace, peace” where there is no peace. We are telling men and women and children to flee from the wrath to come. There is a sense of haste to it.

And we are to do what we can with what we have, now. Proper planning is sometimes necessary. If a church wants to set up an orphanage, or a pastoral seminary- both worthwhile aims- then these are not things which can be done overnight. The church will have to save money, buy property, plan over many years perhaps. All well and good. But we are never to let long-term aims become an excuse for short-term inactivity. O.K, so you want a larger kitchen in order to strengthen the kingdom of God by offering hospitality to others in the church who live alone and go back to empty houses when they leave your meetings… But there’s nothing stopping you from inviting them in for coffee today. If a job’s worth doing, then it’s worth doing badly.

 

4) Why are they to stay in only one house in each place?

It would be inappropriate, given their position as messengers of the kingdom. When Jesus says, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there”, he doesn’t mean “stay in the house until you depart from the house”. It would be difficult to do anything else, and such an instruction doesn’t need giving. Rather, the idea is that the apostles should pick a house in a place, and stick with it until they move to the next town. The apostles will arrive at a village, proclaim the Gospel, call the people to repent and to follow Jesus, heal and cast out demons, and then ask for a bed for the night. The next day, they will do the same again. Maybe they will spend a week in one town, if there are many who want to hear them and think about their message. And Jesus foresees a situation arising where they accept lodging with someone, and a few days later somebody else comes up to them and says “Why don’t you come and stay with me for the next few days? I’ve got a bigger house. I can supply hot water in the mornings. My food is better quality. You’ll be much more comfortable with me.”

The idea here is that of soft bribery. There is nothing wrong with comfort and enjoying the good things God gives. And there might be all sorts of unselfish reasons for accepting such offers of hospitality; it would mean personal contact with two homes instead of one; the new house might be bigger and more suitable for teaching meetings; it would reduce the burden on the householders to share the hospitality. But if this sort of thing was allowed to happen, it could give the impression that the disciples were hawking themselves around, using their position as ambassadors of the great kingdom to obtain favours. It would undermine their whole message. They are calling a disobedient people to repentance. They are not to be bought off with a hot bath.

They are messengers of the king who has wealth beyond compare. And he is giving away his wealth. His ambassadors can’t afford to give the impression that their favour can be bought. The Gospel cannot be bought. It is a free gift.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23)

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.” (Isaiah 55:1-3)

 

How is this relevant to us today?

We are not to be bribe-able either. I’ve heard people say of churches “They’re only after your money”. Partly that’s a pathetic and wicked excuse to ignore the Gospel- throw mud at the messenger and you might get away without having to listen to the message. But it’s partly because we sometimes give that impression. With collections, and fund-raising events, and little thermometers outside church buildings to show how much of the money for the new roof has been raised so far, we can easily give the impression that we’re out to part fools from their money. And we have a solemn responsibility not to do so. It undermines the Gospel.

We should also not be gullible, and not be afraid to call evil evil when it comes under a “Christian” banner. The US Senate is currently investigating 6 “mega-ministries” for a form of fraud in which tax-exempt status for churches, given with the rider that the tax-exempted funds are not to be for personal use, has been abused. Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer (4 of the 6 under investigation), and many others have become rich from their “ministries”. It is a public disgrace, and these charlatans should be ashamed of themselves.

 

5) Why are they to shake the dust from their feet when they leave a place that will not accept them?

This is something we see again in Acts, and it has a very similar meaning there. In Acts 13:51, Paul and Barnabas go to Antioch in Pisidia (this is very relevant to our impending summer studies in Galatians. The church in Pisidian Antioch was one of the Galatian churches, and we can see something of the makeup, and likely fracture lines, of that church in Acts 13. This is crucial to a proper understanding of Paul’s letter). When Paul and Barnabas arrive, they preach in the synagogue to the men of Israel and the God-fearers about Jesus. They draw crowds, and the Jews become jealous, and revile Paul. Paul then pronounces judgement on them, and turns to the Gentiles, who rejoice. But the Jews stir up persecution against the missionaries, and have them run out of town. And as Paul and Barnabas leave, they shake the dust from their feet as a testimony against that place.

Again in Acts 18:5-6, we have this statement,

“When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’”

Paul was shaking dust out of his robes, as a symbolic declaration.

Devout Jews, if they left the holy land, the land of promise, would shake the dust off their feet when they came back in across the border. They would see it as contamination- Gentile dust, dirty dust, unclean dust. They didn’t want to get the unclean dust all over the soil of God’s clean earth. Gentile dirt would contaminate the clean land. So they shook the dust from their feet, as a symbolic declaration that they were now leaving the unclean place, and coming back in to the holy land, out of the world.

So what the disciples do is radical. When a town rejects them, they are to shake the dust off their feet as they leave, as if it were unclean dust; but they are visiting towns in Israel! They are declaring towns which were well within the boundaries of Israel to be Gentile towns. Israel was a land under God’s protection. It was a land where there were guaranteed blessings, so long as the Israelites obeyed. It is all there in Deuteronomy 28:1-14. Their harvests would be good, their enemies would be defeated, everything they did would be smiled upon by the Almighty. But if they disobeyed the Lord, and were not careful to do all his commandments, then all of these blessings would be turned into curses upon them, which is all there in the much longer and more explicit section of Deuteronomy 28:15-63.

The apostles were removing God’s blessing from these towns. Effectively, they were redrawing the boundaries of Israel. They were declaring places that would not welcome the Messiah to be no longer part of the commonwealth of Israel- to be unclean places.

 

How is this relevant to us today?

We start where the twelve ended. None of our towns are holy places. God has not promised protection and blessing to any of our towns. There was only ever one holy land, and it ceased to be holy when Israel refused their Messiah. Darkness fell on the whole land at the crucifixion (Mark 15:33), just as it had fallen on Egypt before. If there is a holy land now, then it is not a physical land. It is the church. Churches, not nations, are promised God’s blessing, and his protection, and his kindness.

This passage is not there to teach us that we should preach somewhere, then move on; a hit-and-run strategy. That may be a sensible use of resources, but it is not a scriptural command. The apostles are not forbidden from ever going back to the places they’d left. This is not a one-strike-and-you’re-out scenario. Many of those places must have been visited again when the believers went out from Jerusalem in Acts. But if the apostles returned, it would be with the awareness that this place had forfeited blessing already. It was a place over which God’s wrath loomed large. Our attitude should perhaps be more like that as we evangelise.

And it tells us to have courage, confidence, boldness, as we proclaim the Good News.

In our pluralistic society, we grow up in a world in which every point of view must be valid and every opinion must be valued. We are told that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and that to be unshakeably certain of something is somehow arrogant. There can be no dogma, and the only heresy is that there could be such a thing as heresy. Growing up breathing such an atmosphere, it is easy for us to feel that we shouldn’t push our views on people. In fact, even the construction of the previous sentence shows that I am a child of post-modernity. “Our views”, as if we have our views and other people have theirs, and that’s just fine? We can feel that when somebody gives us a hearing, they are doing us a favour by being so tolerant and reasonable.

Precisely the opposite is true. We are doing others a favour when we tell them about the saviour, not them us by giving us a hearing.  When the Queen writes the invitations to her annual garden party, do you think she words them “Dear Sir, I hope you don’t think me too pushy, but would you mind awfully if I invited you to a garden party? I would be most grateful if you could come- if you’re not too busy, of course”? Of course not. She will phrase the invitation kindly and graciously, but the fact remains that she is doing the invitees an honour by inviting them to meet her- they are not doing her an honour by attending. So it is with the kingdom of God. We can proclaim a royal invitation from the king to come under his rule and be delivered from the powers of darkness.

When the twelve were rejected, those who passed judgement upon them were in fact cutting themselves off from God. Those who refuse to listen to the Gospel today are confirming themselves as being under wrath. We are doing them a kindness, for which we shouldn’t need to apologise.

Mark 5:21-6:6 Faith works. And not by magic.

“And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief”

 

Mark, from 4:35-5:43, records for us four more of the signs of the kingdom. At the inauguration of his reign, Jesus visibly brought the everlasting kingdom of God into this fallen world in a number of different ways. We’ve read in the first 3 chapters of Mark about how Jesus cast out many demons, healed many sick people, cleansed a leper, healed a paralytic, and restored a man’s hand. We have looked recently at the significance of the calming of the storm, when the chaotic waters are stilled. In God’s kingdom, ultimately, there is no sea- or the sea is like glass (Revelation 4:6; 15:2; 21:1). In God’s kingdom, there is no chaos, no danger, and no storms; and Jesus brought that kingdom to earth with him.

We looked at Jesus healing a demonised man, restoring him to proper control of himself, breaking the power of Satan which was working for destruction through the man. In God’s kingdom, Satan is cast out utterly, and people are restored to the way they ought to be, fully Christlike and bearing God’s image. God’s kingdom is here now. God has invaded the cursed earth in the person of the Son.

But we have seen also that people rejected this kingdom, and couldn’t understand it. We saw intensifying opposition to Jesus throughout the early chapters, until the Pharisees and Herodians were plotting together to kill him. In chapter 4, even the disciples were terrified rather than overjoyed when Jesus spoke to the wind and waves. And in Chapter 5, the Gadarenes rejected Jesus- they would rather have their pigs than the Son of God.

Now we come to these healing miracles, and to events in Nazareth, when Jesus returned to his home town.

 

A woman touches Jesus

1) How does this woman view Jesus? 

2) How did Jesus’ healing power work? He “perceived in himself that power had gone out of him”. Was he a kind of mechanical power source, like a battery, into which anybody could tap?

3) Why does Jesus stop and ask who has touched him? Why can’t he just move on?

 

Discussion 1-3)

Jesus and the disciples travel back across the Sea of Galilee, and doubtless the disciples remember how the waters had behaved the night before when Jesus had commanded them. When they arrive on the shore, they are swamped by a crowd of people. The crowds flock to Jesus, wanting his help. A man, Jairus, is among them. He comes to Jesus in desperation. He was the leader of the local synagogue, and so he would have known something about Jesus- it would be his business to know about the religious movements in Israel. And when his 12-year-old daughter fell seriously ill, he came to Jesus. He came in faith- believing that Jesus could and would help him. Jesus listened to his pleading, and followed him back to his home.

But on the way there, they were interrupted by someone else who needed help. This, incidentally, indicates the sort of pressure Jesus worked under. There were constant demands on him, people incessantly begging for aid from all directions. This woman has suffered from bleeding for many years. And she is a tragic figure. She’s thrown all her money at doctors, and they have been able to do nothing for her. She’s got nothing left, and she’s still sick. She is despairing, slowly dying- and worse than that, she is desperately unclean. Her blood flow caused uncleanness (Leviticus 15:4). Perhaps this is why she seems so very shy of appearing in public- and especially of allowing Jesus to know that she is there: She would be coming among the people while unclean, which would be about as socially acceptable as sneezing all over the faces of your co-passengers on a train, and she would be doing it in order to come before a religious leader, which may have served to heighten the taboo in her mind. She seems to have hoped to take advantage of the crowd by touching Jesus unnoticed, and slinking away again. How did she think this was going to work? Was she superstitious? Perhaps she was in some measure, but she had real faith, and Jesus responded to her faith.

The passage seems to present Jesus as having an innate supernatural healing quality, to be tapped into by touch, like power is drawn from a battery when a circuit is connected. And I think that this was exactly how the woman thought of it- if she thought of it at all- Jesus was like a charged battery, and she could drain some of his power by touching him. It is clear that Jesus knows that power has gone out of him. What does that actually mean? Healing people took effort- it cost Jesus. It was physically and emotionally draining, and so Jesus does know when he has healed someone, even apparently involuntarily- God the Father healing through him. The woman touches him, and Jesus knows that this touch is different from the jostling of the others in the crowd. He feels strength go out of him.

So Jesus stops dead and demands to know who has touched him. His disciples think that the whole thing is ridiculous. “The crowd are pressing all around you, Jesus. We’re all being jostled constantly- yet you stop to ask who touched you? Well, who hasn’t touched you? Come on, we’ve got an emergency on our hands here. Jairus is waiting. We can’t hang around wasting time like this.” But Jesus stops walking, and looks around him. He does not want to let this go unresolved. He won’t let the woman sneak away, healed.

From the conversation which ensues, we can see Jesus’ reason for wanting to talk to the person who had touched his garments. The key thing is that Jesus made sure that there would be no remaining ground for superstition in the woman’s mind. He brought her into the open, showed love and care for her, and did not allow her healing to be a mechanical act. He wasn’t about to let her go away with her misunderstanding. He breaks off from his urgent mission to heal an ill girl, and searches for this woman, demanding to know who had touched him. The woman alone of all those in the crowd knew exactly what he meant. She had believed that Jesus garments could heal her- as if by magic- but Jesus makes it clear that it is he, not his clothes, which have the power. He suggests that he has responded to this woman’s grasping for healing- and it was vital for this woman to realise that it was because she had trusted him that he healed her.

The woman, trembling with fear- literally, you could see her shake- came out of the crowd and fell at Jesus’ feet. She told him her story, how she had desperately hoped to be cured, and desperately hoped that touching his garments would cure her. Jesus then blessed her and sent her on her way.

 

Jesus heals Jairus’ daughter

4) Mark deals with these two miracles in detail. Jesus must have done thousands of miracles, and Mark could afford to be highly selective with his material. Why does he choose these two to include in his Gospel?

5) The account of the bleeding woman is sandwiched between a two-part account of Jairus and his daughter. Mark structures his narrative in this way (when other Gospel writers do not) in order to point out the inter-relatedness of central meanings of events. What do these two accounts have in common?

6) How are these two miracles “signs of the kingdom” in a way which means that they are not just repeats of earlier signs? What would we lose if Mark had left them out?

 

Discussion 4-6)

All of the above questions have essentially the same answer. Mark has told us of many miracles that Jesus did, and all the miracles have been signs of the kingdom. We’ve thought a little about this- the casting out of demons and the healing of diseases reveal God’s kingdom in a way that flying about in the air would not, though both would be demonstrations of power. So far, Mark has arranged his accounts loosely into cycles of miracles and other pieces of narrative, each cycle with a different focus. In the first cycle, the point was simply to show what God’s kingdom is like. Under God’s reign, Satan’s power is broken and the curse is lifted. So Jesus casts out a demon, heals Peter’s mother and many sick people, and cleanses a leper. Under God’s reign, Jesus is the King. So Jesus commands some disciples to follow him, and teaches with authority in the synagogues. 

In the next cycle, a new element is introduced, namely that of opposition. God’s kingdom is not only a place of blessing, but also a place of conflict. There are those who harden their hearts and oppose the reign of King Jesus, despite its obvious goodness. So Mark tells us of how Jesus healed a paralysed man, and a man with a withered hand- but in these accounts, Mark’s focus is not so much on the miracles themselves, as the disputes which they occasioned. Mark wants to point out that the kingdom of God is essentially divisive. When it comes, it makes things much clearer, and the goats are plainly shown to be different from the sheep. And along with those miracles, Jesus calls Levi- and again the real focus is on the disputes which followed and on Jesus’ teaching about his kingdom being new and different from that which had gone before. And Mark records another dispute Jesus had with the religious leaders over the Sabbath, and also the occasion when the religious leaders accused Jesus of being under Satanic control, and the time when Jesus’ natural family said that he was a madman and tried to take him away until he got better. The disciples are marked out as Jesus’ true family, because they are in his kingdom.

Mark therefore chose these two miracles out of the many which Jesus did in order to make a point. There is something about these miracles which means that they add something to the Gospel so far. They are not just repetition of truths Mark has already made plain. These miracles are certainly signs of the kingdom in the same way that other miracles were signs- we’ve already thought of that in previous passages. But Mark is a skilled author. His Gospel is an excellent literary composition, with no redundant material whatsoever. He has already made the point that Jesus healed as a sign of the kingdom with no disease or death. Here, he is making an additional point about the kingdom if God.  The blessings of the kingdom are grasped by faith. Both the woman and Jairus are commended for their faith.

Mark weaves the two stories together not only because that is how things happened, but also to highlight the basic elements in common, and the basic elements of difference. In both miracles, there is a focus on the faith of people involved. Jesus wants to make it clear to the woman that it is her faith that has made her well. Jesus says to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.” The woman has a confused faith, full of misunderstanding, and Jesus encourages her and corrects her. Jairus has great faith. He is willing to risk the opprobrium of other religious leaders by seeking Jesus out. He is sure that Jesus can heal his daughter. And Jesus tests his faith to strengthen it.

Another point of similarity is the “twelves”. Mark considers it worth the space to record that Jairus’ daughter is 12 years old, and that the woman has been suffering for 12 years. Given the weighty Biblical freight attached to the number 12 (See the study on the calling of the Twelve in 3:14 for more detail), it seems that we are supposed to see these women as typical of God’s people. The woman and Jairus are representatives of the new Israel, gaining the blessings of the kingdom by faith.

When Jesus stopped to deal with the woman, Jairus (almost certainly) would have been impatient. This woman took Jesus’ attention away from him and his daughter. She was an unwelcome distraction at just the wrong time. The daughter’s situation was urgent- as we see when the servants arrive with news of her death- and Jairus will desperately want Jesus to hurry. The woman has been ill for 12 years already. What difference would another day make? But Jairus has to trust Jesus and leave things in his hands. The servants turn up and say, “Just come home. It’s too late now. Why bother the teacher- let him go his way, he can’t help us now. She’s dead.” And did Jairus’ hopes plummet? This was surely the end. To cure illness is one thing, but to raise the dead? Jesus though, tells Jairus to keep trusting, and they keep going to Jairus’ house. In effect, Jesus is telling Jairus that he has power over death, and is capable of raising the girl from the dead. And Jairus obviously believes him- he doesn’t say “Oh don’t be stupid. It’s too late now. Just let me go and bury my daughter.” Rather, he takes Jesus home.

When they arrived at the house, the elaborate ritual of Jewish mourning had already begun. This was something to be done with all speed in a hot middle-Eastern climate (Acts 5:5-7). The people mentioned as causing a commotion here were professional mourners. They would weep and wail for money- and this was the accepted cultural norm. A local bigwig like Jairus would be expected to give a good impressive funeral for one of his own family. But Jairus trusts Jesus enough to allow him to disrupt the mourning arrangements and ruin the funeral.

We’ll just digress for a moment and deal with Jesus’ brief debate with the mourners. These men had seen a lot of corpses in their time. They knew what death looks like. But Jesus waltzes in and tells them that the girl isn’t dead, she’s asleep! The mourners think that this guy must be a comedian. They laugh at him. Dead bodies are their business, and they know a stiff when they see one. Anti-supernaturalists jump at this as proof-positive that the early church invented all the miracles. “Aha, aha!” they say- most of them doubtless opening wide their mouths into the bargain[1]- “Jesus didn’t raise the girl from the dead. She was merely in a coma, and Jesus simply calmed everyone down and roused her. But then after Jesus had died, his disciples started telling lies about him, and invented a whole bunch of divine powers for him.”

But Jesus hadn’t even seen the child when he told the mourners that she was sleeping, and he wasn’t in the habit of giving snap medical diagnoses anyway. Rather, Jesus is making a veiled promise of his power. Jesus was saying that for this girl, her death now was not something final and irrevocable. The household did see death as final- “Don’t bother the teacher any more”. But Jesus intends to give this girl her life back- to put the ghost back into the machine. His usage of sleep terminology is like that of Paul in I Thessalonians 4.

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”

Paul is talking about dead Christians. But he refers to them as “asleep” because he wants to make the point to the Thessalonians that death is now reversible. Jesus has risen from death, and so all those who died united to him cannot remain dead. They will wake up one day.

The miracle is simply described. Jesus does not recite a magic formula, but simply commands the dead girl to rise, as he also commanded the sea and the demons.

As with previous miracles, Jesus is clear that nobody should be told about this. He had already ensured that only minimal witnesses would be present, leaving the crowd with the disciples, and taking only his inner circle of three into the house. Those outside the room could only speculate about what had happened- until the silence was broken by the apostles when they began to speak publicly of these things.

Why should this be? We’ve noted this secrecy theme before, and will do so again. But for now, briefly, the Jews expected a great Messiah; a king, a ruler, a man to command their armies, drive out their enemies, and rule in peace and prosperity. Jesus would do all of these things, but not in the way they expected. He came to do them fully and perfectly, where many of the Jews in Jesus’ day wanted only a partial and imperfect Messiah. They wanted someone to give the Romans a good kicking. Jesus came to defeat the great enemy, Satan. They wanted someone to establish an earthly throne. Jesus came to establish an everlasting kingdom. They wanted safety from human attackers, and plenty to eat and drink. Jesus came to bring in a kingdom of real and lasting joy, freedom from all sorrow. And to do those things, he would have to deal with the curse; to deliver those who he chose to be in his kingdom from the curse. So his Messiahship could only be properly understood when it was understood that he had come to die, despised and rejected, and to be raised to life on the 3^rd day. In Gentile Gadara, there would be no such misunderstanding, so the healed demoniac is free to tell everyone he knows about what Jesus has done for him. In Israel, these things must be kept quiet.

This point is underlined by Luke in Acts 9, where we find a big contrast with this episode. After the resurrection of Jesus; Peter raised a woman from the dead, saying words strangely similar to those of Jesus…

 ”Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room… All the widows stood beside him… But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, “Tabitha, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he presented her alive. And it became known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.”

Peter said “Tabitha kumi” where Jesus said “Talitha kumi”. Luke, I am sure, is well aware of this. The striking difference is that where Jesus kept things hidden, Peter called everybody into the room to see what had been done. After the cross and the tomb and the ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ power should be made plain- and many in Joppa believed.

 

Jesus in Nazareth

7) Why is it that Jesus can do no mighty work (except a few healings) in Nazareth?

Eight, which appears as a smiley if I type the number) How does faith operate? What is it about faith that means God either cannot or will not work without it? Is it basically a sort of magic?

9) What is it about the content of all three sections of the narrative from 5:21-6:6 that bind them all together as parts of a larger unit, and how does this develop the central themes of Mark’s Gospel so far?

10) What is the most important thing we should take from this passage?

 

Discussion 7-10)

Jesus went to his hometown, Nazareth, and began to teach in the synagogue there on the Sabbath. But those who heard him “took offence at him”. They resented him. These are people who know Jesus well. Some of them will be friends of his mother, and will have seen him grow from a child into a young man. Some of them will have shared jokes and meals with Jesus and his family. They identify Jesus as their carpenter- it seems that Jesus must have worked as the village carpenter for some time. Many of them will regularly sit on chairs made by Jesus, eat at tables which he made, use ploughs and sickles which have passed through his hands. They know his brothers. His sisters still live in the village. And that is how they relate to him. Everywhere else in the land, Jesus is the hot new phenomenon, followed by crowds all the day long. In Nazareth, he is not a celebrity, but is a village lad, the carpenter. People are used to walking into his shop and ordering a couple of yokes for their new oxen, not walking into the synagogue and hearing him speak authoritative wisdom.

The bleeding woman and Jairus had their requests granted because of their faith. They came to Jesus because they believed that he could help them, and so he did. We see the opposite here in Nazareth. Jesus’ own townsfolk have the opposite of faith. They seem to sneer at Jesus. “We know this guy. He’s just the carpenter’s boy. Who does he think he is, going around like a teacher? Where did he learn all this stuff anyway? He never went to any fancy school. He’s gotten too big for his boots. Someone needs to take him down a peg or three.” They are amazed at his wisdom, and can’t understand how he is so learned- but they won’t trust him. They refuse to believe that he is anything but a carpenter, the son of Mary. The latter phrase is possibly an offensive slur on Jesus’ parentage- it would be very odd in Jewish circles to refer to a man’s parentage through the maternal line rather than the paternal, even if the father was deceased. Sometimes there was a good reason for it (sons of the same man distinguished by their mothers, for example), but not in this case. And those in Nazareth would be aware that there was something a little unusual surrounding Jesus’ birth. If so, then Mark displays his nice sense of irony here- the townsfolk are looking down their noses at Jesus for being a bastard, as they see it. But Mark and his readers can see that Jesus’ lack of an earthly biological father is proof that he is indeed the Son of God.

The fact that Jesus can do no mighty work in Nazareth (oh, except for the minor matter of healing a few sick people[2]) seems to be linked to the lack of faith among the people there- and this theme of faith (or lack thereof) is what links this passage to the end of chapter 5. Jairus and the woman had it. The Nazareth-ites didn’t.

With regard to the question about what faith is, and how it works; to use theological jargon, the word “faith is used in two ways. It either means something which somebody exercises and which is the instrument of their being saved- the “faith” by which one is “justified” (Romans 5:1). Or else it means the body of doctrine which constitutes the Christian beliefs- the “faith” that was “delivered once for all to the saints” (Jude 1:3). It is the Romans-type of faith in view here, and to keep using theological jargon, it has three components, which are assensus (assent), notitia (knowledge), and fiducia (trust).

I would think that a fairly close synonym for “faith” generally is “trust”. With that in mind, it becomes clear why Jesus “could do no mighty work” in Nazareth. People took offence at him, and so they refused to come to him for healing. So he didn’t heal them.

The point of the question (no. 8 above) was to deflate the (I think pretty foolish) idea that faith is a sort of magic. I’ve heard readings of the passage that seem to think of Jesus as a mystical wizard, and “faith” as the mysterious well of power on which he draws. Under this view, Jesus actually becomes stronger when lots of people really believe in him, and actually becomes weaker when they don’t. Which is nonsense, and if it were worked out into systematic coherent doctrine would be serious heresy, making the creator’s power dependent upon his creation.

A more present danger of that view is that it often mutates into thinking “if I believe it really really hard, it will come true”. This is dangerous because it divorces the content of the belief from the content of God’s promises. We have no warrant for faith in anything which we are not promised. We can trust in Jesus Christ for salvation because he has promised that all who come to him seeking forgiveness, will be forgiven. And if we trust him even weakly, he will save us. Weak faith; strong saviour.

If I throw a coin on the floor and ask you firstly whether or not you think I can levitate it by miraculous powers, and secondly whether or not your beliefs about my ability would actually change the ability itself, what would you reckon? The correct answer is that if I throw a coin on the floor, then a combination of physical realities means that it stays on the floor unless someone touches it. I do not have the power to flout gravity with my mind, not even if I really really believe that I do. And most people who really really have faith that they can ignore gravity end up really really dead really really soon, because their faith by itself does not alter reality. What their faith might alter is their own behaviour. Specifically it gives them a tendency to walk out of the windows on the 20^th floor saying, “Look at me, I can fly”. It does not alter the reality outside themselves, and so they end up half an inch tall and twenty feet wide.

I don’t have the power to levitate coins no matter how many people believe I do. If a million people believed it, they’d all be wrong. And likewise with Jesus. He had the power to do miracles. And that power was his regardless of what anyone else thought. If all the world had doubted him, his power would not have altered one iota. Mark is simply saying that if nobody will come to Jesus looking to be healed, then nobody will be healed.

Beliefs have consequences. Faith and works cannot be separated. If Jairus trusts that Jesus can raise his daughter to life, then that faith will show itself in Jairus’ actions. He will seek Jesus out, he will not rest until Jesus is going to see the girl, he will allow Jesus to disrupt the funeral… And on the flip side, if none in Nazareth believe that Jesus can help them, then they won’t seek him out for help. And if none come to him, Jesus won’t heal them. Faith and works can be distinguished, but cannot be separated. I can distinguish between my body and my spirit. But I cannot separate them unless I want to inconvenience the ambulance service and put further strain on the NHS. Like faith without works; the body without the spirit is dead. If there are no works, then any faith is not real faith at all. It is dead.

Of course Jesus would have had the power to heal the sick of Nazareth anyway, regardless of what they wanted. But in terms of ”signs of the kingdom”, physical healing of stubborn Christ-haters would have been a sign that pointed the wrong way. If people reject the kingdom of God, then ultimately they don’t get to share in its blessings.

 The kingdom is entered into by faith. People come to Jesus- and they come trusting, believing, that he can help them. If they had no faith, then they wouldn’t come. They came believing that Jesus could do for them what they desperately needed. And he did.

And he still does. In Acts, people came believing that Jesus can forgive their sins. They saw him revealed as the Messiah who died and rose again, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom of joy and peace. And they trusted him to forgive their sins and bring them into his kingdom. And through their faith, they were forgiven. Not through any intrinsic power in their faith, but rather through the intrinsic power of the saviour to whom faith sent them.

 

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 [1] Psalm 35

[2] Mark’s “except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them” seems to be almost amusing to us. It dismisses as insignificant something which we in our day would regard as highly significant. “A handful of people were healed- so what? Big deal” Mark seems to be saying. Whereas if a guy walked into your local hospital, laid his hands on 5 folk with their legs in traction, and had them leaping and dancing and praising God, it would make the news headlines. But in his day, Mark was dead right. A handful of healings were small beer. The kingdom had finally come, and signs of it were abundant everywhere. In other towns, Jesus was up half the night healing all who came to him, so big were the crowds. A few healings gets a mention only because it is an abnormally poor show.

 

Mark 5:1-20. “My name is legion, for we are many”

“They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea. The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marvelled.”

Jesus has been teaching about the kingdom of God. He has taught the crowd in confusing parables, so that they may see and not perceive, and hear and not understand. Jesus has explained the parables privately to his disciples, to whom the secret of the kingdom of God is given. Mark now (from 4:35-5:43) records for us four more of the signs of the kingdom which Jesus wrought; visibly bringing the kingdom of God into a fallen world. We looked last time at the calming of the storm, to which the disciples responded in fear and amazement.

 

Jesus casts out many demons from a man

1) Where does this miracle take place? Is the location significant? What does it mean for Jesus to do this miracle where he does it?

2) What do we mean when we describe someone as “demon possessed?

3) Is “demon possession” a helpful term?

4) What are the features of those who have unclean spirits?

5) Do we see demon possession today?

6) If so, how should we deal with it?

 

Discussion:

1) This is the first instance in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus goes outside Jewish territory. This is very significant. We don’t immediately see why it matters, but that is partly because we are Gentiles, partly because we live in a Western democracy, and partly because we are used to cheap flights, easy travel, and finding Coca-cola and McDonald’s in every nation. As with understanding so much of the Gospels, one huge obstacle for us is that we do not have 1^st century Jewish mindsets.

In this case, we are used to thinking that location is relatively unimportant. We can fly to the other side of the world in less than a day. Some of us teleconference with colleagues in the U.S.A or Sweden every week. And as far as we are concerned, there is a global culture. We all speak English. We are all aware of Hollywood movies. We all know what a cheeseburger tastes like. In one sense, that would have been true within the Roman Empire. But in Israel, the dominant culture was Jewish, and location was very important. If you were a true-born Israelite, then had everything run smoothly, your family farm should have been in the family ever since Joshua first conquered the land. The disobedience of Israel, and the exiles, made all this very complicated, but land as a fixed inheritance was a much more vital concept in Israel than in modern-day England.

A more important difference between our mindset and that of a Jew in Jesus’ day would be our views on church and state. We almost automatically think of church and state as separate institutions. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, as he himself said to Pilate (John 18:36). Our churches do not have physical borders, or flags, or currencies in the same way that nation-states do. For the Jews, things were different. They would be used to thinking of their religious views as at least coterminous with their national and ethnic identity, if not inextricably bound up with it. They would have looked back to the promises to Abraham, and to David- promises God made to his people that he would give them a land and a king. The Jews would have seen Canaan as the holy land, and “the nations” as unholy. Had you asked a Jew where you should go to meet with God, then he would have told you to go to Jerusalem, to the holy city, and to God’s own house, the temple, where God dwelt. And they would have been right. God really had set his name on Jerusalem. It really was holier than anywhere else in the world.

 And Jesus here goes to a place inhabited by Gentiles- a place where they herd pigs (think of the “far country” in the parable of the prodigal son- a place where uncleanness is rife). It is not a holy place. But Jesus does something which would have shocked the disciples rigid. Given that the miracles were signs of the kingdom, then to the extent which this was understood by the disciples, they would be amazed to see Jesus casting out demons from a man in this Gentile place. Jesus was extending the blessings of the kingdom of God to a Gentile land, an unclean place.

The disciples thought of God’s kingdom as being something for Israel. It was not for the Gentiles. Sure, maybe it would extend to the Gentiles too- but not to the Gentiles as Gentiles. They would have to be proselytised, and become Jewish, like Rahab, or Ruth or Caleb. We can see this in the way the disciples express their hopes about what Jesus will do. Even after Jesus’ death and resurrection, their question to him is, “Lord will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). If the Gentiles wanted a piece of the blessings of God’s kingdom, then they would have to take the route that Gentiles had always taken to God; they would have to become part of Israel.

Jesus changed that. With the incarnation, Jerusalem was no longer the pre-eminent place to meet with God. Rather, at Jesus’ feet was the best place to meet with God. Israel was no longer the holy land. Wherever Jesus chose to walk- that was holy ground. And so this episode is a foretaste of things to come. Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, people (Gentiles? Jews living in exile?), have come to hear him from Tyre and Sidon, but they have had to make pilgrimage to the holy land in order to do so. Now, the holy land comes to the Gentiles.

 

2-4) When Jesus and the disciples reach the other side of the sea, they are met by a man who has an unclean spirit. He has seen them coming across the water, and has run down from his den in the tombs to meet Jesus. This is the longest section in any of the Gospels about a demonised man. So it is probably worth our stopping a moment to think about demons and “demon possession”. I’ve put the phrase in inverted commas, not because I don’t believe it happens, but because the phrase doesn’t appear here. Our translations have it, but the Greek does not. The usual Greek construct is that a man has a demon, not the other way round.

There is a spirit realm, a part of creation which we cannot always see (although men have seen angels- Abraham, Elijah, and Rhoda the servant girl among others). This part of creation is populated by beings which have personality. There are good spirits and bad spirits, clean and unclean. They are sometimes called “angels”, which simply means “messengers”. God’s angels are described as holy, and these spirits in Mark 5 are described as “unclean”.

And we all have spirits ourselves. There is a part of us which is not material. When our physical bodies die, part of us- our spirits- will still live, waiting to be re-united with our bodies at the resurrection. There is a ghost in the machine. If your body, including your brain, can be thought of as a machine, then there is something that animates the machine. There is something in there which cannot be touched or seen, but which is alive and is pulling the levers to make the machine work. Something that is “you”, but which can be thought of apart from your body.

And other spirits apart from yours can also pull levers in the machine. Normally, your spirit and your body are in harmony, your spirit driving your body (apart from when you’re asleep. And let’s take a moment to reflect on how bizarre sleep is). But in some cases, we see evil spirits coming in and taking over a body, invading it, pushing the native spirit out and taking the wheel, or coming in where the native spirit has abdicated the wheel.

The phrase “demon possession” can be unhelpful. It carries the sense of total ownership. “Demonisation” is better. Some people are more demonised than others. This man is very demonised indeed. He has a whole legion of unclean spirits, and they are defacing the image of God in him. This we would expect. They hate God, and so they hate to see him even in a cracked and distorted mirror. They can’t destroy the mirror utterly in this world, but they can warp it ever further. This demonised man is obsessed with death and unnatural things- he chooses to live among the tombs. He loves destruction, and is addicted to self-harm, injuring his body with stones. He doesn’t care about wrecking the machine. He will wrench chains apart regardless of the damage he does to himself in the process. He isn’t himself any more. If you were sufficiently impervious to pain, and sufficiently uncaring about the state of your forearm, you could probably punch your way through a brick wall. Your arm might be a bloody stump afterwards, but fourteen inches of bone and muscle are probably stronger than four inches of brick and mortar. And why should the unclean spirits care if they break the man’s body?

In cases like this, demonisation does not mean that medical care is useless. We will read in Mark 9 of a boy who has an evil spirit which convulses him and throws him on the ground, making him froth at the mouth. Today, this would be diagnosed as epilepsy, and the boy would be given anticonvulsants. And I think that this would be an accurate diagnosis, and that the anticonvulsants may well stop the boy convulsing. Just because the behaviour has a demonic cause, does not mean that it cannot be physically treated. The body is still physical. Cut the tendons, and the arm won’t move. Shut down the neurotransmitters, and the convulsions won’t be happening. If you disable the transmission and siphon off the fuel, the car isn’t going to move, no matter whether a demon or a man is behind the wheel.

Not all cases of demon possession will be like this. Judas, we are told, had an unclean spirit at some point. During the Last Supper, Satan “entered into him” (John 13:27). But in his case, he didn’t become obviously destroyed. It didn’t suit Satan’s purpose to erode Judas’ rationality to the extent that he became a gibbering madman. Judas acted irrationally, even going so far as to double-cross the omniscient omnipotent Lord, but no doctor would have certified him insane.

 

5 & 6) There would be a coherent argument to be made for the amount of demonic activity in the New Testament to be considered abnormal. After all, Jesus is breaking down Satan’s kingdom. Demons are being cast out from their strongholds. There will be an obvious clash between Jesus and the evil powers in the heavenly places. We would expect to see Satan’s troops gather where their line threatens to break.

But whether or not there was unusual demonic activity in the days of the Gospels, it is undeniable that we still see demonic activity today. In one sense, everything wrong with the world is demonic. Evil men do evil because they are the children of Satan, the father of evil. And there is no reason to believe that the illnesses and natural disasters we see all around us are not in any sense caused by spiritual agents- think of the case of Job, and how Satan caused his livestock and his children to be wiped out in a series of disasters including military raids, fire from heaven, and something like a tornado, and then later caused Job himself to contract a painful case of all-over boils. It is a category error to assume that just because we have some understanding of the immediate physical causes of an illness or a pattern of weather, it is therefore removed from the spiritual realm.

And even in the more specialised sense of demonisation- of evil spirits actually pulling the levers of certain men, to the extent that the spirit of the man is no longer active- I would argue that we still see cases very similar to those in the Gospels. People do harm themselves. I’ve known a man who imagined he heard voices, and who spoke back- either to the voices or to himself or to both, and who eventually tried to kill himself with an overdose of pills and alcohol. I’d describe him as demonised. Ditto a lad I’ve met on a street corner, shivering and begging my friend and me to buy him some cider. What he told us of his life was wholly joyless. Peter Sellers was the man of a thousand voices, but I don’t think he knew which of them was his own. “My name is legion, for we are many”.

 All of these men, I would pity. Those of them I met, I would pray for. In no case would I attempt an “exorcism”. Jesus had authority over the demons, and so could cast them out from people. Those who haven’t such authority shouldn’t attempt to use what they don’t have.

Jesus shared his authority with certain men. Mark says explicitly that Jesus gave to the Twelve the authority to drive out demons (Mark 3:15). Matthew and Luke add to the powers shared with the Twelve the authority to cure diseases (Matthew 10:1, Luke 9:1). After the resurrection, the apostles continued to do these things. But they were plenipotentiary representatives of Jesus. He had given them this authority to act as his representatives, with all his power.

The Twelve held a special place in other ways too- they were given Jesus’ authority not only over demons and diseases, but also over churches. Their words were authoritative over churches. I would argue that believers today have no more authority to command a demon to come out of a man than we have to write to a church and tell it what it ought to be doing in various matters hard to determine. Paul feels free to do both, because he can do so with Jesus’ authority, as an apostle.

The obvious rejoinder to this view is to say that other men apart from the Twelve were also given special authority. There were the seventy-two sent out by Jesus who returned joyful that the demons submitted to them in Jesus’ name (Luke 10:17), and an unidentified man appears to be doing the same thing in Mark 9:38. Philip in Acts 8 is not an apostle (assuming that this is Philip the Jerusalem deacon rather than Philip the apostle), but is still doing miraculous signs. And isn’t every believer an ambassador of Christ? Don’t we all have authority to act in his name?

My answer would be “no”. Paul doesn’t call every believer Christ’s ambassador- if you’re thinking of 2 Corinthians 5:20, it is Paul and his fellow ministers who he has in mind. And an ambassador isn’t the same thing as an apostle anyway. And all the other men who performed signs and wonders in the early church, did so either under the direct approval of Jesus himself, or under the approval of at least one of the apostles. The whole phenomenon of healing, driving our demons, and performing other signs and wonders is all linked to the coming of God’s kingdom. These were guarantees, proofs, of the character and power of the new kingdom as it came. They were like the bread and the cakes of figs and of raisins handed out as freebies by David when the ark of the Lord first came “home” to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6). These goodies were symbolic foretastes of the time of blessing and plenty which could be expected now that God’s presence dwelt in the capital city. It was understood that there would not be handouts again the next day and the day after that. I would argue that Jesus has authority, and the apostles were given authority, and other men exercised authority under them. After the initial foundation of the church, we see the exercise of this authority in signs and wonders decline. And with the death of the last apostle, it died completely.

This is why Matthew and Luke both link healing with driving out demons, putting both authorities in the category of “things Jesus said that the Twelve could do”. But when James writes, perhaps in about 40-50AD, to believers about sickness, he doesn’t say, “Is any one of you are sick? He should find a healer, and be made well”. Rather, he says “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord”. Surely, if every believer- or even if some believers- in the churches James wrote to had “healing ministries”, an injunction to pray and do no more would be a little odd.

The fact of the matter is that we don’t see exorcists or healers doing things like Jesus and the apostles did. We see charlatans like Benny Hinn putting on a show for money, but we don’t see them restoring genuine maniacs to normal in a moment, or raising the dead as Jesus and Peter and Paul did.

It seems to me that a charismatic reading of the scriptures is inconsistent here. On the one hand, there is the appeal to the Gospels to support healings as part of Gospel ministry The argument for this is very straightforward- “People listened to Jesus because he went around healing people and casting out demons and doing miracles. So we should do the same as part of our evangelistic efforts”. But though it is a simple argument to follow, it is also simple to knock down. There is the obvious fact that lots of people remain resolutely ill and demonised. This is accounted for by saying resignedly “Well, this is the Lord’s will.” or “Maybe it is better for some people that they shouldn’t be healed, or at least not yet” or even “I’m afraid you need more faith, brother”. Now surely it is indeed better for some people to be ill sometimes, and these things certainly happen under God’s control, and according to God’s good and wise purposes, and we all need more faith. But as an explanation for Gospel healers being unable to heal, these are pretty thin. If Gospel healers are healing just like Jesus and the apostles did, as a continuation of their ministry, then they should be able to heal everyone. It is a fact that EVERYBODY who came to Jesus asking for healing was healed. We do not read of a single occasion of someone coming to Jesus saying, “Lord, heal my daughter” or whatever, and Jesus saying, “Nope, afraid not. It wouldn’t be good for her, you know. She’ll be able to minister to other sick people if I let her continue to be ill. And anyway, she’ll grow in patience and holiness on her sick bed.” The disciples weren’t able to cast out a demon once, but this was so far from being a regular occurrence that it was a matter of considerable perplexity for them (Mark 9:18,28). And Jesus himself didn’t turn anyone away. Everybody who asked him was healed indiscriminately and without exception. Even some of those who didn’t ask him were healed. Even those who were only out for themselves and were not remotely grateful were healed. Jesus healed ten lepers, and as far as we know, nine of them ran off and never wanted to see him again. Only one of them was interested in the kingdom, but all ten were given some of the benefits of the kingdom coming. God’s grace was extended to the unworthy. We see nothing like it in the modern charismatic movement.

The Pentecostals can’t have it both ways. If the Gospels are the model for ministry today, and if that means that we ought to be healing and driving out demons as Jesus and the apostles and those associated with them did, then why are some people not healed? Jesus never told anybody that they didn’t have enough faith to be made well, so why should we be allowed to?

If we are allowed the get-out clause of “it wasn’t God’s time”, then we should recognise that this represents a significant difference from the situation in the Gospels, when, funnily enough, it was God’s time for everyone. But then that starts to sound less like charismatic theology and more like cessationist arguments that the signs of the kingdom were for the specific time of the inauguration of the kingdom.

This does not mean that we are powerless. Far from it. We have recourse to the one who sits upon the throne of the universe. We can pray to him to drive demons out. Believers can try to drive out demons in the same way that we would try to heal a broken leg- by non-authoritative practical steps; setting and plastering the limb in the case of a broken leg, trying to speak peace and truth in the case of a broken mind. But above all, we should pray.

We can be sure that whatever we ask for, in Jesus name, it will be done for us. When we ask for something which Jesus legitimises, that thing will be done. Nothing and nobody can stop it. Satan himself is bound and powerless. When a policeman arrests somebody “in the name of the law”, then he expects that the law will back him up when the case goes to court. And insofar as his actions have been upholding the law he invokes, the law promises to back him up. Assuming he isn’t a shonky copper making an illegal arrest, then arresting “in the name of the law” means that the full power and authority of the law are the guarantors for his arrest. If the criminal resists arrest, he is guilty of a further transgression of the law.

When we pray “in Jesus’ name”, this isn’t just a magic formula which we say at the end of a request because that’s the way we Christians do things. When we say those words, we are calling on the limitless authority of the king of all kings to underwrite our prayers. And if our request is in line with his will, then he has promised to act on it.