A Question and a Calling – March 7, 2021

Scripture: Mark 8:27-36

“This story is unique in the New Testament in that the healing happens in two stages. Mark’s account, however, has an important, symbolic significance as well: Clarity about Jesus’ mission comes only after confusion.” Right after the story of the blind man’s healing, Mark showed Peter’s great confession of Jesus as “the Christ” (the anointed one in Greek, equivalent to the Hebrew “Messiah”), followed immediately by Peter’s confused effort to “correct” Jesus’ explanation about what it meant to be the Christ. Glimpsing the truth, but only in a fuzzy image “like trees…walking around,” Peter couldn’t yet grasp that Jesus truly meant that his mission involved rejection, suffering and execution.