Mark 9

Tuesday 3 March 2009

Mark 9

Half Way.

Mark 8 is the half-way chapter of this book, and in a way it felt like the pivot of a see-saw, the ‘tipping point’ as a sociologist might describe it. So let’s have a quick look back at what has happened so far;-

We have been on a journey with these disciples and their Rabbi. To kick off, we see Jesus baptised and granted authority by God. We then saw the beginnings of that ministry – the call of the disciples, the healings, the crowds that followed Jesus, the anointing of the apostles, the wisdom of Jesus, the parables taught by Him, then we saw something strange – He started stating that some people won’t understand Him – but didn’t seem to make any special effort to force them to understand – He just accepted that they wouldn’t.

Then we have Jesus controlling weather, casting out demons and raising people from death to life. Jesus then goes back to His hometown to find that the people there won’t listen to Him. Following this, the disciples are sent out into the mission field where they experience healings and the casting out of demons without the need for Jesus to be with them in the flesh.

John the Baptist is then beheaded. Following this, the disciples gather around Jesus and excitedly tell him how great they’ve all been. Jesus then subtly changes tack and starts showing them that it’s not all about healings and casting out demons, but that we are to rely on Jesus for our very survival. He does this by feeding 5000 people. The disciples then freak out and ask each other ‘who is this guy?’. Jesus then walks on water and again, the disciples freak.

The Pharisees then get involved (again) and try to tie Him up in theoretical religious knots. Jesus isn’t having any of that and tells them to effectively stop blaspheming. They don’t like this. Jesus then declares all food okay to eat and then wanders off to a particularly Pagan city, where He sets a girl free of a demon without even meeting her and goes back to Galilee, where he sets about healing and feeding people.

Now we come to the tipping point – everyone’s arguing about who Jesus is, and so He decides to ask the disciples straight ‘who do you think I am?’. And our favourite disciple, the impetuous Simon Peter finally does something right – He sees Jesus for who He is – the Messiah, the Son of God, the deliver, the substitution for our sins, the lamb of God and the Lion of Judah. Peter then blows it again by telling Jesus to stop predicting His death and have a good confession.

And now...

Mark 9

The Transfiguration

We discussed in Mark 8 that finally the disciples were starting to ‘get it’. They had finally shown that they had the ears to hear and the eyes to see – Peter led the charge – as he usually did – the first called, the first listed, Peter was basically Jesus’ guy. John was described as ‘the disciple that Jesus loved’ but in the writings of the gospels, Peter is usually the first mentioned in any list. He also led the first church at Pentacost.

Peter, James and John were Jesus’ closest group of disciples. They are the ones who went to Jairus’ house and saw the girl raised to life in Mark 5, and once again we see the three going with Jesus aside from the other 9.

Mountains were often symbolically used as places to meet God – both Moses and Elijah meet with God on mountains (Exodus and 1 Kings) and so there is precedent to go up a mountain to get away from everyone else, and really get close to God.

To the disciples, Moses would have represented the law, and Elijah would have represented the prophets of old – these were two seriously big pillars in the Jewish faith. To see Moses and Elijah speaking with Jesus would have had a huge affect on the disciples – it would have shown them that Jesus is serious about what He says – He’s not just another teacher, he gets to consort with the top of the top, and then God goes and confirms what He said at Jesus baptism – Jesus is the Son of God!

Remember, this is the confirmation to these three disciples of what they’ve began to suspect themselves – Jesus is the Messiah and regardless of what he says or does and irrespective of what you would expect your Messiah to do, this is the guy.

We are now metaphorically in a new chapter for Jesus’ ministry. Now that the disciples know who He is, He is able to start talking to them about the resurrection, and here is His second clue about it (having already started in Mark 8)– ‘until the Son of Man had risen from the dead’ – Mark never wastes words, and here he says that the disciples are discussing what this ‘raising from the dead’ is all about. Hence, it’s important.

v14-29

We now move back to Jesus’ more public ministry – and here He is with a man with a deaf and mute son requiring healing. The disciples for some reason have failed to drive the evil spirit out, and the response that Jesus gives is interesting and again refers back to His leaving the disciples. He infers that he won’t be around forever.

This is linked to belief. Jesus states ‘ Oh unbelieving generation’ and then talks to the father about belief – the father responds that he does believe – but yet, help him with his unbelief.