Introduction
We come to another familiar scene – Jesus healing someone. We know what to expect after all the other miracles, but be prepared – the Holy Spirit may bring the unexpected.
The Text
Jesus and his disciples come to the town of Bethsaida, which is at the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee. We have a scenario similar to that of the healing of the deaf and mute man: people bring a blind man and beg Jesus to touch him. Indeed, the two Greek sentences that speak of these scenes are almost identical. For those of you present when we considered that other scene in 7:31-37, you will note other similarities. For example, in each instance Jesus takes the man needing help away from the crowd. In the case of the deaf man, he takes him aside, away from the crowd (33). Here, he leads the blind man by the hand all the way outside the village. That village, by the way, had the governing structure of a town, but it was a sizable place, perhaps as many as 15,000 people. Other gospel writers refer to it as a city. So, Jesus goes out of his way to lead this man aside.
Another similarity is the spitting. I have been to eye doctors who have placed drops in my eyes, shot puffs of air on them, shined bright lights in them, and even perform laser surgery. So far no one has spit in them! Evidently, saliva was a widely used medicinal salve. The way that the Greek sentence presents the matter, it appears that Jesus directly spat into or onto the man’s eyes. I wonder if he prepared that man like the doctors usually do: “Now this might feel a bit uncomfortable.”
Just as he touched the deaf and dumb man’s ears and tongue, he then touches the blind man’s eyes. The next thing obviously to take place is the record of the man’s full restoration of sight. That is what happened to the deaf and dumb man, and it is what has happened in every recorded instance of Jesus’ healings. We noted this in the passage of the deaf and dumb man. Jesus not only healed everyone instantaneously; he also fully restored to them their abilities to function. There is no recovery period. Jesus’ hospital would not have a recovery room, and he would provide no work for physical therapists.
So, the very question that Jesus asks is strange: “Do you see anything?” Jesus did not ask the paralyzed man, “Do you think you can walk now?” He did not ask the woman healed of her bleeding, “Do you feel better?” And he did not ask the deaf man, “Can you hear me now?” He doesn’t need to, because each person immediately shows the signs of complete healing.
Here, though, he asks, and we receive the strange answer. 24 “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Now, again, such an answer would seem expected in most medical situations and perhaps even with other so-called miracle workers. The doctor would have replied, “That’s to be expected; it will take some time for your eyes to completely recover.” But that is not a good enough answer for us, not after all the miraculous healings we have grown accustomed to.
Jesus does act quickly. 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. There! Jesus gets it right the second time and then gives a typical order for the man to go home and not spread the news around. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t go into the village.”
But we are left scratching our heads. What are we to understand? Is Mark telling us that this blindness was a particularly difficult case and that Jesus had to put more effort into it? That is hard to believe for a man who raises the dead, stills a raging storm, multiplies food, and heals every other type of illness.
Did Jesus slip up? It happens. Tiger Woods has missed a one-foot putt; I saw Michael Jordan miss a lay-up once. We have all embarrassed ourselves at one time or another by failing to perform a simple task that we have done thousands of times before without a mistake. Jesus, after all, was human. He may have been human, but not human in the sense that he made mistakes. He was, literally, the perfect human because he was also, literally, divine. Mark, as we have seen, has made this clear.
Well, then, why this two-stage healing process? Who knows? Who can get into the mind of Jesus? Mark provides too little information for anyone to form a confident conclusion. Some think the blind man’s faith was small and this was a means to build it up. Perhaps, but Mark doesn’t tell us enough about the man to really know. Some think Jesus wanted to assert his freedom to heal any way that he wanted to. He did not like the man’s friends telling him how he ought to heal. Maybe. Again, we are told too little.
Application
The approach for us to take is not to presume to figure out what Jesus was intending, but rather simply to consider for ourselves what his actions teach us. We can undoubtedly go in a number of directions with that, but most of the commentators go in one of two directions, both of which I think are equally valid and helpful to us.
The first has to do with what we learn about Jesus. Whether he was intending to assert his freedom or not, this particular healing does teach us that Jesus will act according to however he thinks best, and cannot be constrained to act according to our expectations.
That is a good lesson for us to learn. It certainly is one that most of us have already experienced. God, acts according to his purposes, not ours and certainly not according to our expectations. The very reason that Jesus is so baffling to us is that he serves his Father perfectly. He did, and still does, act in perfect obedience to his Father’s will. Isaiah 55:10,11 says:
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
That is true of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
What does this mean for us? It means to be careful of putting too much stock in our expectations. Jesus set us up, didn’t he? We thought we had his healing system down pat. We thought we knew the formula. There is only one formula for Jesus – to carry out his Father’s will perfectly and to do whatever God has ordained for the good of his elect. That’s it.
How many times have we set ourselves up presuming what God will do? If I tithe, God will solve my financial problems. If I attend church faithfully, God will bless my marriage. If I pray really hard, God will heal me. God may do these things and often does, but he is not bound to react to our formulas. He often acts in our lives in ways that are unexpected. Indeed, I would say that the one thing you can expect from God is for him to do the unexpected.
My own motto in life has become, “You don’t know what will happen tomorrow.” Let me explain. I committed my life to Christ while a junior in high school. The summer following I answered the call of God to become a minister. For nine years through schooling I never swerved from that course. My first assignment was to pastor two small churches eighteen miles apart. The first couple of years went fine; one church remained the same; the other began to grow. I expected to remain with both or at least the growing church for many years. However, that was the time that the northern and southern denominations merged. The growing church remained with the united denomination; the other pulled out. I chose to leave with the latter because of my theological convictions, and yet, I had to leave that church in a matter of months, because it could not support me. We moved to another small church, where, quite frankly I became disillusioned with the ministry, eventually leaving after a few years and joining a Christian community. I was seeking a faith and ministry that had power to it. I thought living in the community and helping in a new church would make the difference, because they exercised the charismatic gifts and seemed to have a dynamic faith. That would be where we settled. After one year, we left again, this time up to Philadelphia simply in an attempt to find a job and support my family, while I tried to get back into the pastorate. I truthfully was tempted to despair. I had committed my life to the Lord; I had prepared for nine years to become a minister; surely, it seemed to me, it was reasonable to expect God’s blessing on my ministry and family.
I was doing my part; what about God? Well, I found a job “by accident” after stumbling across Tenth Presbyterian Church, which happened to be searching for a school principal, a position for which I had no training or experience. Somehow I was hired after failing a profile test that measured if I was fit for the job. I successfully turned the school around, but again grew restless to return to the ministry. I applied to churches with no success until one took a serious interest in me, and it came down to me and one other candidate. I lost out, and I wondered why God would give me such a yearning to minister, if all the doors kept being shut. Meanwhile, problems arose in Tenth, the Executive Minister left, and that position came open. I applied for it and served seven years, so that I was at Tenth eleven years altogether.
I had expected to be in Philadelphia for only a couple of years. But the Lord, of course, had other plans and used that time to renew my faith, and to ground in me that all that I had sought for an effective Christian life and ministry had already been given me – namely, the Word, the sacraments, and prayer.
And it took the unexpected turns in my life to bring me to such a simple lesson. Jesus set me up! I had him figured out. I would be good and keep on tract for the ministry he was calling me to, and he in turn should reward me with a satisfying ministry. If I am faithful to God, he will be faithful to me. That is a correct statement; the only problem is that I am not as faithful as I think I am, nor do I have a very clear idea of what it entails for him to be faithful to me. It is because he is faithful that he does what is unexpected!
Do you want healing? God will heal you, but not necessarily in the way you expect. It may be another healing altogether or else brought about in an unexpected way. Do you want to be happy? That’s fine; God will give you happiness. The only catch is that his interest is in true happiness that comes from giving up the superficial joys of the world and finding it in him. You will get some unexpected lessons from that request. Maybe your desire is like mine – to have a fruitful ministry in service to him. That certainly is a noble sentiment. Get ready then. That straight train track may become a roller coaster, taking turns you’ve never imagined.
Expect the unexpected. That is a lesson to learn about Jesus and his dealings with us. Another lesson comes from what we learn about ourselves. I think that is a lesson that Jesus wanted to teach his disciples.
You will recall the previous scene, in which Jesus rebukes his disciples for their inability to understand fully who he is and what he is doing. What does he say to them?
Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have
eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? (17,18).
I could have expected Jesus (but then Jesus doesn’t do what I expect!) to turn to his disciples after the man spoke of seeing men as trees walking, and say, “That is what you are like. You may not be as blind as the Pharisees and teachers of the law, but you still do not see clearly.”
And that is not good enough. It is not good enough to recognize that Jesus is a special person. It is not good enough to even believe that he is from God. It is not even good enough to believe that he is God. It is not good enough to believe these things and yet not understand what he means by them. The disciples probably believed or strongly suspected that Jesus was the Messiah. The problem was that they had a different understanding of the Messiah’s mission. Jesus kept doing and saying unexpected things that baffled them. They sort of got the message; they were not rejecting him like the religious leaders; but neither were they yielding fully to him to let him set the definitions.
Again, it is not good enough to like or respect Jesus. You are at best seeing with near-sighted eyes, and he demands clarity. You have got to see him for who he is. I hear the sentiment that what matters to God is a sincere heart. That is true, but sincerity is tested by what one is willing to believe. If we refuse to believe Jesus for who he truly is, then we prove that our hearts are not sincere, that instead we are only willing to believe what makes us comfortable.
Let me give examples. Someone might say, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. He came to show us how we might all be sons and daughters of God like he is. Jesus is the model of what we ought to be if we fulfilled our true potential.” No! Jesus is what we will never become. We may become like him to a degree when received into glory, but Jesus is God the Son, not a son. Our hope is not to obtain the same status or quality of being, but to enter a state in which we fully worship him.
Another person might say, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. He came to show us the love of God and to teach us to love.” That is a half-truth, a fuzzy sight. 1 John 4:9,10 tells us:
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:9,10).
Yes, Jesus showed us the love of God, but he showed it through the action of atoning for our sins. If we do not accept the message that we are sinners needing to be redeemed for the guilt of our sins, we do not understand Jesus. And if we do not place our hope of salvation in the work of Jesus alone on the cross, we do not really know him.
Another might say, “I believe that it is through Jesus that we are saved. He makes it possible for us to be saved. It is then our job to live according to the standards that he has set.” No, no, no! Jesus did not come to make it possible for you or me to be saved. He came to save us. This is the hardest misconception to rid ourselves of. We want so much to have some role to play. We have got to do something to complete the work of Jesus. Do you want to know what it is? We have got to give up our efforts to earn favor with God. We have got to give up all claim of there being anything within us that compels God to save us.
And we have got to see all this clearly. It does me little good to be partially blind. Indeed, it can be more dangerous to see partially than not at all. I might fool myself into thinking I am heading in the right direction unaware of the edge of the cliff that I am approaching.
How do I see clearly? The same way that the man received full sight – he received Jesus’ touch. He let Jesus take him by the hand away from the village of the world and away from the opinions of men, and touch him. There are professing Christians today who attend church and hear sermons and never let Jesus pull them aside and touch them. There are people who profess to believe in Jesus, but never read what he has to say. They have created a Jesus of their imagination. They are as accurate in their view of Jesus as this man was in his comparison of people to trees. Only the real touch of Jesus can give real sight.
How do I get that sight? Ask Jesus. Read his Word, pray to him, ask him to touch your eyes that you can see. There is only one catch. He will probably do the unexpected, and that unexpected will change your life in ways you’ve never considered.
