Physical & Spiritual Perception
Last week I had an experience I'm not keen to repeat anytime soon. I had to go into VicRoads. After forty-five minutes I was still waiting for my number to be called. I don't know how you pass the time in situations like that, but I found myself trying the eye-testing charts that they had up behind every counter. Even sitting far away I found I could do pretty well. The sad truth though is that if I took my glasses off, I couldn't even see the charts, let alone the letters on them!
The man we meet at the start of our passage today is even worse off. He’s completely blind. I wonder if you’ve ever thought about what it would be like to be blind? If you’ve ever, even for a short while, had your sight taken away? I’m not sure how I’d cope, but I know a few blind people who are truly inspirational. One friend learnt how to play guitar and plays every year as part of the Myer Music Bowl Christmas Carols. This same friend has done two rides across Australia, to show that being blind doesn’t mean the end of life.
But it would’ve been a very different story in the first. There’s very little this blind man could’ve done. He wouldn’t have been able to work, and if his family and friends couldn’t support him, he’d have to beg in order to survive. And of course there weren’t any Seeing Eye dogs back then, so he’d be totally dependent upon others to get around. Which is why we see others bringing him to Jesus.
As it turns out though, this man isn’t the only blind one in our passage. As he’s travelling around, Jesus asks his disciples, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’ They report back the kinds of things we’ve already seen in Mark. Some people think Jesus is Elijah, or one of the other prophets. Others are following King Herod, who back in chapter x we’re told thought that Jesus is John the Baptist come back to life. People think he’s a good teacher, able to do amazing things, but they can’t see anything more than that. Their spiritual perception is limited to what their eyes see.
Have you ever been in a meeting when someone asks, “Has anyone else got any ideas?” It’s usually a good sign the right answer hasn’t been given yet. Well, that’s exactly what Jesus asks the disciples. It’s clear that it’s not enough to think Jesus is just a good teacher, a miracle worker, even just a prophet. People need their eyes opened.
Which is exactly what Jesus does for the blind man. Jesus takes him off in private and proceeds to heal him. It’s probably a good thing the man couldn’t see what Jesus was doing! Rather than just commanding the man’s eyes to be opened, Jesus spits in his hands and then rubs them on the blind man’s eyes. Mark doesn’t make it clear why Jesus needed to get his hands dirty this time.
There’s something else unusual about this miracle, something that makes it unlike any other in the gospels. When he’s done Jesus gives the man a quick eye exam. “What can you see?” he asks. The man’s answer is a little troubling. “I can see people walking around, but they look like trees!” he replies. From Mark 6, we’re told that Jesus had difficulty performing deeds of miracles because of the people’s unbelief, but here we’ve hit rock bottom. This is the only time in the gospels that Jesus’ doesn’t fully heal someone. The disciples must be wondering if Jesus has lost his mojo! What’s going on?
The disciples would’ve been especially confused as they knew that Jesus was more than just a teacher or prophet. They’d seen with their own two eyes everything Jesus had done and they think they’ve got it. When Jesus asked them, “Who do you think I am?” Peter quickly answers, “You are the Messiah, the Christ!” They knew Jesus was the one we heard about last week in Psalm 2. He was God’s anointed one, God’s chosen ruler. While everyone else might be groping around in the dark, the disciples at least have seen the light. They recognize Jesus for who he truly is. They know that as the Messiah Jesus wields God’s power and authority. The Messiah can do anything. Except, it seems what Jesus tells them he’s going to do!
Immediately after Peter’s declaration, Jesus tells he will undergo great suffering, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and eventually be killed. To the disciples this was ridiculous. The Jews were expecting the Messiah to ride into Jerusalem in glory, drive out the Romans and liberate Israel. He’s meant to lead them in glorious victory, not to suffer and die. Its no wonder Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him! It just won’t do to have Jesus saying these kinds of things in public! They were expecting the Messiah to use his power then and there. To heal people in an instant, to restore the fortunes of Israel, to order the world the way they thought it should be. Jesus had better hurry up and get with the program.
It’s easy for us, for Christians, to expect the same thing of Jesus today. There was an article in the Age recently by a young woman, who was diagnosed with an incurable degenerative illness when she was just twelve. She was brought up in the church and she’d been taught that Jesus had the power to heal her. So she prayed, but nothing happened. God didn’t heal her. After a few days she got frustrated with the lack of an answer to her prayers. What would you do in that situation? This woman decided that because he hadn’t healed her, God didn’t make the cut. So she, “abandoned all ties with God,” and now proclaims in the title of her article, “Thank God I’m an Atheist!”
A dim, fuzzy view of Jesus that expects answers to our problems right now isn’t any good. It doesn’t matter if we say that Jesus is our Lord but aren’t prepared to live that out. Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed King, so there are really only two choices. We can submit to him or we can rebel against him. In trying to straighten Jesus out, Peter was really choosing the former. He was trying to dictate how the King should behave! He was rebelling against Jesus’ authority. That’s why Jesus rebuked Peter so sharply, “Get behind me Satan!” The disciples thought they could see perfectly, but it turns out their sight wasn’t any better than the man who saw fuzzy trees walking around.
If you’ve seen the ads for Medownick, you’ll know they promise their laser-eye surgery offers people the potential of achieving 20/20 vision. This is exactly what Jesus wants to do. In verse 25, Jesus lays hands on the blind man again. This time the man’s sight is fully restored and he can see everything clearly. But Jesus isn’t done. He wants everyone to have perfect spiritual vision, so he calls the crowds together in verse 34. He makes it clear what it means to not just call him Messiah, but to follow him;
34“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?
Is this the kind of thing that makes you want to follow Jesus? What he promises is not the nice easy life that we might expect. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Jesus wants us to see that being a Christian is hard. In calling us to follow him, Jesus expects us to deny ourselves. I remember all those ads for National Mutual when I was growing up. Do you remember their tag line at the end? “For the most important person in the world… You!” Jesus wants us to open our eyes and to see that this just isn’t true.
Instead, if we want to save our lives we’ve got to lay them down. I’ve no doubt that these words would’ve been especially poignant for those first Christians. Many of them did give up their lives for the sake of following Jesus. When I read the accounts of the martyrs in the first few centuries, I often cry. I seriously doubt if I could endure what they did, without recanting or wavering. They laid down their own lives for the sake of the gospel. But Jesus is calling all of us to not just be prepared to do the same, but to actually do it. He does not want us to all rush out and martyr ourselves. But he does say that those who want to save their lives must lose them. We’ve got to acknowledge that we aren’t the ultimate authority in our lives. We’ve got to not just say that Jesus is the King, but to live with him as our King. We’ve got to submit to his rule and authority. We’ve got to not be ashamed, but to confess him as Lord, over the universe and over us and our lives.
Part of this involves doing what Peter struggled to do. We can’t dictate to God how he should act, or what he should do. This is what that young woman who wrote in the Age couldn’t do. She couldn’t accept that an ‘all-loving’ God would allow afflictions like hers, that he wouldn’t just make it all better. So instead she decided there mustn’t be a God.
But Jesus came to open our eyes, to see things from a spiritual perspective. He doesn’t call us to lead him about or direct him, but to follow him. Over and over again in Mark we’ve seen Jesus demonstrate his power and authority. But he didn’t use them to avoid the cross, or the suffering that went with it. If that’s the case, we’ve got to accept that he might not make our lives easier or make all our problems go away. There’s no denying that it’s hard. Following Jesus doesn’t mean everything will be made all right. But it does mean that everything will come right in the end. We might not see relief in this world, but we can take hope that there is a better day coming.
Jesus said that the Son of Man must suffer and die, but that on the third day he would rise again. And that’s exactly what he did. Jesus death and resurrection is the answer to the futility of this life. It tells us that God has intervened in the world. That he’s dealt with the biggest problem in our lives - our sin. And his death and resurrection deals with the finality of this life. It shows us there is life after death. Jesus promised that if we lose our lives in following him, we’ll gain new, eternal life.
So I wonder this morning, how’s your eyesight? When you look at Jesus what do you see? Just a prophet, a teacher, or a miracle worker? If you say he’s more than that, if you see that he’s God’s anointed ruler, then are you taking up your cross every day and following him? Are you submitting to his rule every day, doing as the writer of Hebrews challenges us to do;
1Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb. 12:1-2)