September 5, 2024 - Mark 9-10

Mark 9 tells the story of the transfiguration.  When Peter saw Jesus with Moses and Elijah, he offered to build tents for their comfort.  Peter was so focused on the here and now; he seemed not to understand what Jesus was all about.  In fact, this confusion (or was it simply refusal to hear and understand?) carried over to the time of Jesus’ death (though Jesus had told them over and over he would be killed, they were caught completely off guard) and to the conversation with the resurrected Jesus reported in Acts 1 (“Is it now?  Is it now, Jesus, that you're going to restore the kingdom of Israel?”).  They just didn’t get it.

After this episode, Jesus went right back to healing and teaching.  He could not, and would not, let his disciples’ dullness deter him from what he had come to do.  And so, in the latter part of the chapter, he explains to them, again, that he must die and that he would rise from the dead.  The atonement!  The Son of God dying for his people’s sins!  And what are the disciples concerned about?  They wanted to know who among them would be counted as the greatest.  And they complained about someone else casting out demons.  So caught up in the moment and in their own concerns!

Jesus just keeps teaching: about temptation, about marriage and divorce.  He spent time with the children and rebuked the disciples for trying to discourage the children from coming.  The encounter with the young lawyer, further teaching about his death.  And so, what do James and John do?  They ask him for the preferred seats in heaven on his right and on his left!  Jesus' answer:  “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45).  And so, he goes right back to healing, and blind Bartimaeus is given sight.

With Moses and Elijah nigh

Th’incarnate Lord holds converse high,

and from the cloud the Holy One

bears record to the only Son.

Faithful hearts are raised on high

by this great vision’s mystery,

for which in joyful strains we raise

the voice of prayer, the hymn of praise.   -- J. M. Neale (1854)