Fuzzy Vision
Image: Martineric @ Flickr
Mark 8:14-26 Expand passage
14The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15"Be careful," Jesus warned them. "Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod."
16They discussed this with one another and said, "It is because we have no bread."
17Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: "Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember? 19When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"
"Twelve," they replied.
20"And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?"
They answered, "Seven."
21He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"
22They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?"
24He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around."
25Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26Jesus sent him home, saying, "Don't go into the village."
My father and sister are both accountants so when my job at work changed, requiring me to learn basic bookkeeping, I was very worried that my families ‘dark gene’ might emerge in me as well.
I needn’t have worried. Once they knew about my new role they decided to ‘help’, by explaining the basics of double entry book keeping to me. In case anyone reading this is unfamiliar with double entry book keeping let me explain something. Double entry book keeping defies all known logic, sense and common decency. In fact I would go as far as to say that it is the most nonsensical, weird and generally bizarre concept I have ever heard, and I have a philosophy degree.
The thing that makes my head hurt about double entry book keeping is the fact that if you debit an account then you don’t always take away from it. Similarly if you credit an account you don’t always add to it. In the end my concept of debit and credit was so shaken that I had to go and sit quietly with a copy of the Beano.
With this experience in mind I can spare a thought for the disciples in our passage. I suspect that all Jesus’ talk of leftover bread rolls was possibly doing to their heads what adding debits and subtracting credits was doing to mine.
Similarly verses 22-25 of Mark 8 have the capacity to disorientate the Christian reader. They are very curious verses. They seem to be an example of Jesus not quite getting a miracle right, which as Jesus is the perfect son of God, seems unlikely, so what is going on here?
The first thing to say is that Jesus isn’t getting a miracle wrong. Perhaps at first glance it might look like that but Jesus is actually making a point whilst performing the miracle. The point becomes a bit clearer if we look at what happens directly before this encounter
In the first part of our passage the disciples haven’t quite got who Jesus is. They have given up everything to follow him. They have seen that he is someone special, but when it comes to the specifics of how it works they are quite clueless.
High insight is a wonderful thing and looking back at this passage now, maybe we can see the 12 loaves symbolise the 12 tribes of Israel, but would we have spotted that at the time? I think not. We read the Bible with Christian eyes, with the knowledge and understanding of the cross which those present at the time were not lucky enough to have.
In the same way that the blind man could kind of see what was happening when Jesus healed him the first time, the disciples could kind of see who Jesus was. When Jesus touched the man again, he could see clearly and later on in Mark we will see that only once Jesus has died, risen again and revealed himself to them do the disciples finally understand who he is and why he has come.
So what does this mean to us? Well I think we can also find ourselves suffering from a form of spiritual blindness.
We live in the age of Wikipedia. If you want to know about something then you ‘google’ it. With the internet and mass media, information is at our finger tips.
I have a book case full of Theology books, Bible commentaries and concordances. They sit on my shelf as testament to the fact that if a complex theological question arises at home group, or on a discussion forum, then I want to be able to answer it.
And yet in our passage we see that the answer to spiritual blindness does not come from reading, it does not come from common sense or logic, it comes from Jesus. The man who was blind would not have been pleased if Jesus had given him a copy of ‘optic nerves for dummies’ and then moved on. Similarly it wasn’t the publication of the works of John Calvin that taught the disciples to understand who Jesus was. No in both cases it was Jesus performing a miracle.
In my life I find it easy to forget that all understanding comes from Jesus. It’s easy to get into the mindset that if you do x y and z then you will become a wise and knowledgeable Christian.
A few years ago I decided that if I read the entire bible cover to cover then I would become UBER CHRISTIAN. I would be all knowing, there would be no theological question that I could not answer, no spiritual conundrum that I could not solve.
It didn’t work, sure I did learn a lot, but with everything I learnt I became more aware of 3 more things that I didn’t know. So I read the Bible again, cover to cover, but then I saw 6 things I didn’t know for every thing I learnt.
The mistake I was making was thinking that the power was mine. I thought that if I read every verse in the Bible I could get all the knowledge there is to know. God was gracious, he taught me things, but in trying to exercise my own power I only became more aware of my lack of it.
There are three little words which we are very scared of in our culture ‘I don’t know’, and yet they can be the most liberating in the English language. We don’t need to know everything, we just need to ask Jesus to show us what we need to know (by the way that doesn’t mean that Jesus can’t teach us more about himself through books and the Bible, rather that we need to recognise that the books in themselves don’t lead to knowledge, it is Jesus working in the heart of the reader).
One of my favourite Christian singers is called Nicole Nordman, rather than labour my point for a couple of hundred more words I’d like to close by quoting some words from her song ‘Who you are’.
I was certain that I knew You
At the tender age of twelve
You’d so often been described by those
Who said they knew You well
Dark and rugged in Your thirties
With a smile as bright as Your robeEvery teacher, every preacher
With the very best intent
Found new ways to hide the mystery
Replaced by common sense
And to know You was to keep You in my pocket
So easy to holdI know I can’t explain You
I would not even try to
And yet it’s clear that You are here beside me
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Really enjoyed this article. So often we try to learn things on our own through theology, Bible study, etc – and forget that it is God who opens our eyes. So easy to forget that!
One thing I find interesting about this passage (which, ironically enough, I learned on a theology course) is the way the man’s eyes being opened is sandwiched in between the stories about the disciples getting it wrong, and then getting it right.
It’s as if the man’s eyes being opened is a symbol of what’s happening to the disciples. Another example of how Mark’s gospel is much more complex than people often think perhaps!