Summary 

Many people see Jesus as just a good teacher or want Him to validate their personal views, but this is like seeing trees walking around - partial and blurry. The Gospel of Mark shows us that spiritual sight often comes gradually, and true clarity requires understanding Jesus as the suffering Messiah. Seeing Jesus clearly means recognizing that the path to true life leads through death to self - taking up our cross and following Him. This involves costly forgiveness, dying to our selfish ambitions, and submitting to His way rather than trying to make Him support our agenda.

Transcript

I want to read to you these words of John Newton from the meditation page inside cover of your bulletin. What thank you of Christ is the test to try both your state and your scheme. You cannot be right in the rest unless you think rightly of Him. As Jesus appears in your view, as he is beloved or not, so God is disposed to you, and mercy or wrath is your lot. Let me pray for us.
Lord, we're thankful again for the Gospel of Mark. Lord, I thank you for how quick it is, how well it is crafted, and the beauty of it. Most of all, Lord, we're thankful that it points us and tells us and. And calls us to our Lord. I pray this morning that we would heed that call, that yout would touch us, uncover our blindness, Lord, we would see youe and love youe, follow youw.
Amen.
This week I listened to a podcast, Rethinking Ted. Has anyone listened to that? Adam Grant, the organizational psychologist who teaches over at Wharton at Penn. He interviews particularly people that have already given TED talks he finds really interesting, and he gets deeper in with them. And the episode that I listened to was with Jacob Collier.
Does anybody know Jacob Collier? I almost said magician, musician. He's actually kind of like a magician, right? He's kind of amazing. Matt Monticcho, our former music director, put me on him, like, a decade ago, and he really is kind of.
I did not mean to say magician. I don't know, but he is kind of like a magician. He's just this incredible artist of a musician, you know, plays just about every instrument, sort of goes. Brings different genres together, directs orchestras while he's directing the audience. Right.
He's won some Grammys, all that. All this kind of stuff. He's pretty remarkable. What he was saying in this podcast, though, in part is that all humans are musicians. I don't know what you think of that, but that's part of his contention that we kind of have this innate, what he calls wiggleness, that music brings out this liveliness.
We're all sort of musicians if we're given sort of the freedom. And one of the things that I think is really interesting in this podcast that he talks about is he talks about how music spans all of these different emotions of being human. So music actually is not only something that each human has, but it's something that calls each of us to a deeper kind of experience in life. So he plays this augmented chord and he says, doesn't that sound like a fairy? It evokes this idea of otherworldliness for us.
So he plays this augmented triad and I promise you, I tried to hum it to the point that I could remember it, and I was like, if I try that, I'm going to mess it up and you're not going to really get it. But it's sort of this listing up, right? What is to augment but to add, to bring you beyond, right? And this chord actually makes you kind of think, well, there maybe is a world beyond us. Maybe that's why it's so connected to fairies, he says, and then he plays a diminished chord.
Diminishment, of course, is to take away from. Right. Diminished chords are a little less friendly, they're a little less hopeful. That's kind of what it evokes in us. They're more sad.
I have hesitated to call myself a musician. This is probably because I'm not a capital M musician. But I've loved music my whole life, and I've played music and I've sang and all this, and I've had a sense of what an augmented chord is and a diminished chord and all this and how they sound. But in some ways, I never put these things together that actually the words themselves are calling us out from ourselves or actually calling us and actually naming for us the sad realities of the world. And even in the names of how we sort of describe those kinds of chords has that experience sort of built into it.
Which is to say, in some ways, I've seen and I've heard and I've even engaged with music. And just in this little kind of thing where he gets into in this podcast, I felt like I could see things a little bit more clearly. I was putting together musical ideas that, I don't know, I just never put together. Just in that moment, sometimes our ears and our eyes get opened a little bit more. For sometimes we see things, what they are, a little bit more clearly.
Of course, what this also means is that sometimes we don't. Often we don't, right?
Most often we are walking around partially blind and partially deaf. We know this as we engage with other people.
Listening well is far beyond just hearing what words are said.
I would even say that we rarely really listen properly. Hear the heart behind the intent behind what is said, the experiences behind what's said, the hopes behind what's said. Our passage this morning, it's kind of. There's a lot of different stuff going on, isn't there? Jesus engages with this blind man.
He asks, who am I? And then he says, hey, you got to follow me even to the place of suffering. But it begins with the story of this blind man who was brought to Jesus by others, probably his friends, who begged Jesus to touch him, who was then brought outside of the town, who was then touched by Jesus twice, who also spat on him.
Does that sound familiar? Does that sound familiar, some of you. That sounds familiar, right? I mean, last week. Last week we had a deja vu moment, didn't we, with the feeding of the 4000.
We were reading it and we're like, wait, that was on this page? Just the one before, with the feeding of the 5,000. So much was so similar. There were some differences, but it was so similar. Little deja vu.
And if you remember, actually two weeks ago, we had a story that Mark told us about a deaf and a mute man who was brought to Jesus by some of his friends who begged him, same word, touch him, who was brought away from those who may have maybe had mocked him for his speech impediments and all this outside of the community. And Jesus touched him. And one other thing he did is he spat in that thing. And of course, initially we're like, what's going on here? But what is unquestionably happening is deja vu again.
Mark doing.
Why is Mark doing this? Y', all. Repetition is the only a few of you listened last week. Let me say it again. Repetition is the key of learning.
Repetition is the key of learning. Okay, we'll get it. Mark wants you to get it. Mark and Jesus want us to learn. They want us to hear.
They want us to see Jesus. And part of the thing that we learn is actually the difference that's taking place in these stories. Just like part of what we learned in. In the feeding of the 5,000. The feeding of the 4,000 is actually in the differences of the two texts.
So what's the difference here?
There's a process here that's a little bit different, but that was sort of similar. One of the big differences is that in the first passage, it was the ears and the mouth, and now it's the eyes, right? And it's an interesting process because first Jesus touches him and he sees a little bit. He says, I see people, but they're like trees that are walking around. They're ents.
And then Jesus lays his hand on the man's eyes again, and his eyes are opened, and he sees everything clearly.
Sees everything clearly. His sight is restored, and he saw everything clearly. Now, keep in mind, he was taken out from the town. He's seeing people maybe walking in the distance, but who's right there? He's seeing Jesus clearly.
And Jesus wants him to see him clearly. He wants us to see him clearly. He wants us to move to a deeper understanding of him. He wants us to hear Him. Well, Jesus wants us to see him clearly.
I think he's doing this in some ways because we are actually a lot like the disciples in the boat. What was the last thing Jesus said to the disciples in the boat after they spent so much time with him, after they seen him do so many wonderful miracles, after he saw, you know, the 12 baskets gathered from the 5,000, the seven baskets from the 4,000? He ends with, do you not yet understand?
And I want to suggest to you that this morning, Jesus saying is, do you not see?
And when we have this passage, we have some reasons why we don't see. And then I think also we have the reason why Jesus actually wants us to see him clearly. Okay, so first, a few reasons why we don't see him clearly. So check it out in verse 27. We're going to.
27, the next passage. After this engagement with this blind man, Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Caesarea Philippi, and. And on the way, he asked his disciples, who do people say that I am?
Who do people say that I am? And the response, they told him, john the Baptist. Others say Elijah and others, one of the prophets, which again, is kind of a make us scratch our heads, right? Why? When did John the Baptist die?
Again, one more page behind, right, Chapter six. John the Baptist has his head cut off.
We know that Elijah's living 900 years earlier, But what we can kind of quickly at least put together is unquestionably people are saying somebody like John, at least somebody in the vein of Elijah, let's say just one of the prophets. Jesus is one of the prophets. Well, we can quickly say, if we kind of just look at that little list, is that most people are at least saying, jesus, you're one of the great teachers. One of the great teachers. A lot of people went out to John the Baptist here.
A lot of people heard the prophets of old. You're like. You're like those guys. And doesn't kind of everybody say that? Pretty much everybody says Jesus is a good teacher.
Almost nobody denies that Aristotle is known as the first teacher. Maybe some of you think of the great teachers like Confucius or Socrates or Solomon in the Bible, but it is an undeniable fact that Jesus is the great teacher. Most people think of Jesus, at least, at the very least, as a great teacher. The Bible itself, supposedly there's like five. I googled it.
Five billion copies of the Bible in the world. Far more than any other text. Far, far more than the Quran or the Little Red Book or Don Quixote, A Tale of Two Cities. All the greats engage with Jesus as at least a teacher.
Bible's in a different category. I mean, everyone here today and everyone who will listen to the sermon, I am betting, will say, Jesus is a great teacher. He has words to say that I maybe should listen to that might guide some areas of my life.
So many have had their eyes at least rubbed open to that, right? They come to Jesus for advice, for morals, for stories that help them understand themselves and the world better.
But of course, the disciples were saying a little bit more than this too, right? They were saying a little bit more than this. Which I think gets to sort of another reason why we don't quite see Jesus clearly. The people were saying that he is a prophet, John the Baptist, you know, they're not just listing random good teachers. It's John the Baptist, it's Elijah, he's a prophet.
Jesus, they are saying is one of those, which is to say that he's sent by God. He's sent by God with the words of God. He's sent by God with words of God to call people to God, show them the way.
So maybe you don't just take Jesus as a good moral teacher, somebody whose words are worth sort of considering as you wonder how to live your life. Maybe think he's one of the divine ones, the gifts from God to instruct us. Specifically. Muslims believe this, right? Some say he's one of the prophets sent by God.
One of the prophets like Noah, the great prophets, or Moses, one of the great prophets, Issa, Jesus, great prophet.
Their eyes are murky, still can't see. They can't make out. They can't see Jesus.
I think part of why we don't see Jesus clearly is that we in some ways don't see him enough, right? It's not that some people can't see him somewhat, you know, give me your words. I'll go along with the idea that you may be somehow from God.
We get caught up with the idea of having a good teacher be a prophet.
My guess is that some of you maybe this morning have at least that much of Jesus. You might want, might not want to go all the way. But you're like, good teacher, I'll take it. Maybe one of the greats. I'm there.
But a partial understanding, a partial seeing of Jesus is not what Jesus longs for, he desires not what he's about.
So Jesus goes on to ask his disciples, right? What does he ask them? Who do you say that I am?
Who do you say that Jesus is? Who do you say that I am? And I think he's doing this in sort of the same line of that last question from last week. You do not yet understand. Why do you not yet understand?
In some ways, he's saying, you yourself don't quite see. How are you viewing me?
Do not yet see. Do you not yet understand? And Peter gives a fairly good answer, you are the Christ.
Why do we know this is a at least fairly good answer? Well, Jesus, he doesn't rebuke him, he doesn't correct him. He just says, hey, let's not talk about that. Let's not talk about that.
And I think, in fact, even part of Jesus response is a way of saying you're sort of seeing, right? But you're still blurry.
Some say that when Peter said, you are the Christ, he's pulling together all of these other Old Testament passages that talked about messiahs and use that word, which is the Hebrew word for Christ. Christ is the Greek word meaning Messiah. And the word is used quite a bit in the Old Testament, and it's used in a lot of different kinds of ways. Messiah means anointed one. And so messiah, that word is used when the priests were anointed in the Old Testament.
It's used when kings are anointed.
It's used sort of in reference to the anointed patriarchs of Israel. It's also used actually, like we heard this in our psalm reading of Israel itself. Psalm 130 mentions that Israel as the anointed one whole body.
What does anointed mean? But consecrated by God. Consecrated by God, Set apart by God. And there were a good deal of others who claimed to be the Messiah around Jesus time. So this audience, you know, Peter's understanding of Messiah would have had all these Old Testament connotations set apart for God, but it would also have had contemporaneous sort of context.
There was Judas the Galilean. Y' all remember him? He was mentioned in Acts, chapter five. You probably know the story of Judas. Don't feel bad if you don't.
I looked him up.
He led a revolt in the year 6. So when Jesus was alive, toddling around Judas the Galilean in the area of Galilee in Judah, led a revolt against the Romans in the exact area where most of Jesus teaching took place. He died for it. But people called Him a Messiah, an anointed one by God, who sought to establish political strength. There was Simon of Perea.
Simon of Perea was an ex slave. He lived in the year 4 BC. He led a band of rebels against the Romans, again crowned himself king and then was killed. There was Theodus. He's also mentioned in Acts chapter five.
He also led a revolt against the.
And was killed. Yeah.
See, to be a Messiah at the time was to be consecrated by God, appointed by God, but appointed by God for the sake of dealing with the political enemies.
I want you to think about this too.
Think of how often and how much we come to Jesus for our political gain.
I mean, my word, yes, people come to Jesus as a good teacher.
Yes, people come to Jesus thinking you transcend just teaching.
But man, don't we often like to come to Jesus for political gain?
We come to him maybe on one side, prizing his teaching of personal responsibility, maybe traditional values and his deep care for the poor. His demand that we give of ourselves blessing of others. I mean, truly, don't we see folk on the right and the left claiming Jesus as their Messiah, theirs, the one who justifies their political thought and their actions? Do we? Come on, we're a call and response church.
A little bit. I mean, not normally in this kind of way, but in our. If we had it written in the liturgy, you would then say we do, right? Don't we? We do, yes.
And we find this impulse among ourselves, the impulse to have Jesus baptize our own political sort of thoughts, right? We do, don't we? We do. Job, you are fast learners. Don't we often see Jesus as one who is there really to baptize our view of the world, our own personal, our social ambitions?
Don't we? We do. We do. Which is to say, at least in a way we see him, but we see him fuzzy. And Jesus wants us to see him clearly.
He wants to receive him for who he really is.
Look down, starting in verse 31.
I think in these verses we have one of the greatest reasons why.
Well, let me say this side note. I think in these verses we see one of the great reasons to take the Bible seriously. You've got to at least consider that it's far more beyond just some human text. Because no one puts their leader, which is Peter, in the early church. I mean, you have Paul and James and John too, but Peter saying in one moment you're the Christ, then being told that he's Satan.
People don't do that when they're in charge of Writing their books, right? Unless it's true. Anyway. If you look down at these verses, what you see is that Jesus teaches them that he must suffer many things, that he must be rejected by the elders and chief priests, scribes, and he must be killed. Then on the third day, he would rise again.
And Peter knew these stories of Messiah.
And yet Peter does this remarkable thing.
Peter putting his arm around Jesus. Jesus, I need to rebuke you.
Right? Peter took him aside, verse 32, and began to rebuke him.
No, Jesus, you're not supposed to be the Messiah that dies. You're to be the Messiah that lives.
Peter can't see Jesus clearly. He will go along like everyone else with Jesus as a good teacher. He will go along like most people with Jesus, not just being a good teacher, but being somehow divinely given.
He will go along with the one, with the knowledge that he is the anointed one, the consecrated one by God. All of its political overtones at the time, which, by the way, Jesus actually never calls himself a Messiah, interestingly.
But if it means suffering, if it means dying, if it means all that stuff that we heard from Isaiah, that his visage was one so marred that we would not want to look upon him, and he needs to be rebuked.
And I want to suggest to you again, this is another reason why we just can't see Jesus clearly. We don't want a Jesus who suffers and dies, even if he does rise again.
Because we don't want to believe and confess and live into the reality that our sins are that bad.
Jesus, guide us in a way to live. Jesus, give us a divine anointing. Jesus baptized our view of the world. But don't tell me that you actually have to die for me, even if you're going to rise from the dead. My thing can't be that bad that it demands your life.
One of the great reasons why we don't see Jesus clearly, why we don't come face to face with him, is because we can't come face to face with what our sin demands. The death of the Anointed one.
We don't want to see Jesus clearly because we don't really want to see ourselves clearly. I think these are some of the big reasons why we actually don't see Jesus clearly. Partly because we actually are interested in his teaching. But we only want to go that far. Partly because we want Jesus just to go along with us, right?
Just be like me, have my views. Jesus, largely because we just don't want to come face to face with the reality of our own sin.
But I did begin with saying that this passage isn't just about seeing Jesus clearly and the reasons why we don't, but also the reason why he wants us to. So Jesus calls this crowd to him, right? He calls the crowd to him and his disciples. And he says, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it.
But whoever loses his life for my sake, the Gospels will save it.
Think about this. We see Jesus as a good teacher because we want to know how to live well. True, we see Jesus as a teacher sent by God because we want God's blessing. Yes, we see Jesus even as a Messiah, because we want our political power, But we rebuke him and reject him for his suffering. Because we want to see ourselves as good and we want the good life.
We want self preservation, Right? Self preservation. Jesus says that is the way of death.
When you seek to save your life, you lose it. When you lose your life, you save it.
Jesus says, despite what we think, the way of self preservation is the way of death.
The only way to life is through death. The only way to resurrection is through the cross. The only way to rising again is through suffering. Which is to say, if you want to see Jesus clearly, you have to be willing to die.
And we like more the idea of a guru who teaches us how to live.
Politicians that promote the good life, Messiahs who conquer the Romans, not die on a Roman cross.
But this is the way to see. This is the way of life. All right, think about this with me. I heard this from a friend I used to do RUF with. Imagine I just hit your car and totaled it.
Ignore the whole insurance thing that hopefully you have or I have. But there are only two options, right? Two options to repair the wrong. I can buy you a car. Cost me a lot, or you can forgive me.
Why can't God just forgive? Why can't God just teach and give people a good life? Just forgive me for totaling your car.
But you know that you can't actually just do that. If you did that, it would cost you. It literally would cost you. Buying a new one yourself, cost you your time and your energy. It would probably actually mean costing the anger that you felt that you had to eat yourself kind of at me that I'm going to forgive you.
I'm going to take a lot of deep breaths and not want to punch you in the face.
Or think about it like this, because this works in all of our Relationships, too. All of our human relationships and our divine relationship. Someone hurts me. Their words, their actions, with their omissions and commissions, with things they do and don't do, that they should do for me. I can hurt them back, right?
I can pull out their hair, gouge out their eyes. I can say mean things behind them, behind their back. I can mean. Say mean things to them in front of their back, right? I can hurt them, they hurt me, or I can forgive them.
But don't think that forgiveness doesn't mean dying. Forgiveness always means dying.
In order to forgive, I must absorb the pain that they caused, which is why true forgiveness and true repentance has to deal with the actual pain. Somebody's got to deal with it.
I mean, in order to forgive, I would have to turn away from my desire for revenge. I have to let that die, put to death bitterness, anger, malice, my right to be right and my right for you to teach or treat me like that. All of that would have to die if I were to truly offer forgiveness. There's an absurdity, forgiveness. Some of you know Walter Wangren's book.
As for me in my house. Some of you know that because in premarital counseling, I've given it to you.
He says, only the one who is wrong can make things right. Absurdity.
In order to make things right, in order to forgive, death has to happen the way of the world. You know that in order to forgive somebody who's really hurt you, truly hurt you, it is a suffering that you have to bear.
And the forgiving one is the one that has to bear it. It is always a death. It's always a death. And what Jesus is saying is, if you don't see this, that in order to gain your life, you must lose it. In order for resurrection to happen, there must be a cross.
And in order for forgiveness to take place in your own relationships and in my relationship with you, somebody must die. He says, in order to see me clearly, you have to see that I'm going there and you can follow.
See, we're interested in Jesus as a teacher. Jesus, the political baptizer, Jesus and all the rest. We want from life because we want life. He says, if you want life, follow me to death. Find there your own forgiveness and find there the only power for life to come to you, because you're going to have to die in your own life for it to actually flourish.
Bear fruit in the world.
Let me try to get back to music, and then I'll close. Okay? What's so powerful about music?
It Gives us a voice for what we're going through so often. Right.
I think one of the things that's most powerful, this is what Jacob Collier says, is that in some ways, music doesn't come to life in just the major chords, the augmented chords that make you go.
The wonder of music is that it makes you go, ah. And also makes you go.
It's dealing with all of life. Right? And this is what Jesus is inviting you to, to see him. He is the great teacher. He has tons to say about our social life together, tons of.
He is the divinely given prophet. That's true. He is the ultimate Messiah who has loads to say about his kingdom in the world.
But if all you do is keep him up here in the augmented fifths, right.
Do not see his beauty. To see Jesus, to hear him well, see him clearly. You have to go to the minor, have to go to the cross. And it is there that we see what we sang about. Love poured out for the life of the world.
Amen. We pray. Lord, thank you for this text. Thank you for your great grace to us. Thank you.
That you are slowed anger, that you are willing to go with the process, that you know that we often treat you in one of these different kind of categories, that you're slowly rubbing our eyes, that we can see you, Lord, do that more and more in us, please.
Give us open ears like you did the other man. Give us open eyes like you did here in this passage, the soft hearts. And then give us eager feet that we would walk in the way that leads to life, the way of the cross, and follow you. Amen.

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