John Mark Hicks

The healing of the blind man in Bethsaida is the last miracle in the first half of Mark’s Gospel. Mark 8:27 begins the second half of the Gospel.

The second half of Mark’s narrative will focus on the passion and death of Jesus. Jesus appears as the suffering servant of Isaiah throughout the second half of the book and provides a model of self-sacrifice that is the cost of discipleship itself. The first half of Mark’s narrative has focused on the kingdom ministry of Jesus—proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God through word and deed. While the second half of Mark depicts Jesus as the suffering servant of Isaiah, the first half of Mark affirms Jesus as the kingdom prophet who practices the good news of the kingdom of God.

This last miracle story in the first half is the second of a pairing that function as bookends in Mark’s narrative (see the parallels in the chart below). The first is the healing of the deaf mute in Mark 7:31-37. Between the healing of the deaf mute and the blind man is the feeding of the 4000. Both are fulfillments of Isaiah 35:5-6 where the Messianic Age envisions the healing of the deaf and blind. Deaf and blind people are only healed in the ministry of Jesus and in the power of the poured out Spirit of God in the Messianic Age. These healings do not appear in the Hebrew Bible. The healing of the deaf and blind are actualizations of the coming reign of God on the earth.

These healings, at one level, accentuate the deafness and blindness of the disciples exhibited in their understanding of Jesus’ healing of the 4000. At another level, reflect the general response to Jesus’ ministry. Everyone loves the healings but few, if any, truly hear and see the message of the kingdom.

Who truly hears and sees the message? Isaiah 6:9-10 lingers in the background, a text that Jesus cited in Mark 4:12 and he alludes to it in light of the disciples’ inability to understand in Mark 8:18. The people see but they don’t perceive; they hear but they don’t understand. They are spiritually deaf and blind. In the physical healings Jesus enacts a parable that embodies his mission—to give eyes to the blind and ears to the deaf that they might turn and be reconciled with God in his kingdom.

In particular, the disciples are deaf and blind even though they themselves have been engaged in kingdom ministry for some time now. They do not yet see or hear clearly. In the next story—the turning point of Mark’s narrative—they will confess Jesus as the Christ (Messiah) but they do not understand what that means. They are like the blind man who needs two stages of healing. They come to “see” in part, but they do not yet fully see. They do not fully see until they see him resurrected and remember Jesus’ words about his suffering and coming glory. Their sight is fuzzy (like the blind man’s) at first but later they see more clearly (like the blind man).

We are all deaf and blind. We only see and hear through the healing and patience of God’s work within and among us. Our journey with Jesus is similar to that of the disciples. Only slowly do we come to “see” and “hear” the true meaning and cost of discipleship. We are the disciples in this story—we see but we don’t perceive, we hear but we don’t understand. And yet through our journey with Jesus our capacity for clear sight and sharp hearing grows.

This entry was posted on January 28, 2012 at 11:39 am and is filed under Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.