More Layers: Mark 8:22-26
There are always layers to understanding God’s action. When I was six, understanding God was about being amazed at God’s power in the story. As I got older, I started understanding deeper lessons based on the greater historical context. As an adult, I have the opportunity to apply those lessons to my life and see the breadth of God’s teaching.
When Jesus gets to Bethsaida, the crowd again brings forth someone with a deficiency. Mark doesn’t tell us they are friends of the blind man. Mark doesn’t even say that the blind man asked to be healed! This story reads as though the crowd saw Jesus coming, knew this was their opportunity to witness a spectacle, snatched up this poor blind man, and begged Jesus to perform.
Jesus’ actions confirm this reading. Instead of healing the man in the presence of the crowd, Jesus takes the man away. It is possible that some interested people followed along, but most of the crowd realized when Jesus started to walk away they weren’t going to get a show. Jesus removes the spectacle from the crowd. The crowd will benefit from seeing the healed man, but they won’t get the experience of the healing moment.
Jesus takes two tries to get the healing right. This has never happened in the Gospel story before, and it won’t happen again. Certainly, God is powerful enough to know how to heal Him properly the first time. What is going on here?
There are two possibilities. The traditional understanding is that Jesus heals in this way to make a commentary upon the faith of this region. The town showed interested in the spectacle rather than genuine faith; it is not unreasonable to think the blind man’s faith was equally as shallow and uninterested. Jesus could take two opportunities to heal the man to show him how much growth needs to happen.
On the other hand, the last time Jesus pulled someone away from the crowd He had a point. With the deaf man, Jesus acted out of compassion. Here, Jesus could be displaying compassion as well. Jesus might have been giving the man a taste of seeing before giving him the full sensory perception. Jesus might be bringing him up to speed in stages.
With this understanding, there is still a lesson. People come to God in stages. The disciples didn’t go from fishermen to spiritual martyrs in a single day. Their development took many steps and conversations. In healing the man in stages, Jesus could be giving the man time to adjust to a new reality before showing him the full experience.
Either way, Jesus demonstrates the depth of God’s will. He compassionately removes the man from the spectacle. Despite the crowd, Jesus does heal the man. In the healing, Jesus teaches a lesson on the depth of one’s faith and how faith comes to us in stages. There are always layers to understanding God’s action.
