In these four chapters, Jesus is continually teaching and healing amongst his disciples, they see him performing these miraculous acts, they even receive power from Jesus to do this themselves, and yet they still struggle understanding who he is.
Jesus tells them the parable of the farmer sowing seeds, how some of the seeds were eaten by birds, some landed on rock so that they grew quick but weren't rooted and dried up, some fell on thorny plants and were choked out, and some fell on good soil and bore fruit. Jesus ended by saying that anyone who had ears to hear should listen. The disciples ask Jesus what this parable means, and it seems and though they continually ask him in one way or another in these following chapters. Not long after Jesus encounters a man possessed by a demon named Legion, who instantly recognizes Jesus as the Son of God, he heals the man and tells him to go back to his home and tell everyone what has happened, which he does vigorously.
Time and again we see Jesus encountering people who either meet him for the first time, or have heard about him, such as the woman who had been suffering physically for over a decade, saw Jesus, and touched his robe and was healed. Time and again after Jesus healed others, he would tell them not to say anything, but they would because of what they had experienced. And though these people were transformed after only a few hours with him--or even a few seconds--those who were spending their life with Jesus did not seem to catch on as quickly. Jesus even commissions these disciples to go to other communities and do exactly what he's doing--which they do--and still they don't seem to understand. They are present when Jesus is able to feed 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. He gives the food to the disciples personally to hand out to the people, and still they do not understand. When they are in a boat at sea, and a strong wind stopped them from reaching land, Jesus walked on water to them; when they saw him they screamed because they thought he was a ghost. When he entered the boat the wind stopped, and they were baffled, they didn't understand. Even after all they had experienced.
Can it be that sometimes when we are in the midst of following Jesus we can forget why, or who it even it we are truly following? How could we be amongst people who Jesus heals and not see the powerful transformation which takes place? How could the disciples watch Jesus place his hands on the eyes of a blind man, and then take them away so that he was now able to see, and still not understand? Wherever Jesus went, people would place the sick, the blind, the dying to him so that they would be healed, and the disciples continue to ask who Jesus is?
Even after a lifetime of attending church, we can still ask that question. The whole tree/forest imagery, or the baby/bathwater--name your metaphor; sometimes the people who understand Jesus the least are those who seemed to have followed him the longest. But have their lives been transformed by him?
In chapter 8, Jesus and the disciples are in their boat, and they only have one loaf of bread for all of them, to which Jesus advises them to watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and of King Herod. The disciples talk amongst themselves thinking that Jesus made this comment because they had no bread, but Jesus ask them why they still don't understand. "Are your hearts so resistant to what God is doing? Don't you have eyes? Why can't you see? Don't you have ears? Why can't you hear? Don't you remember?" He reminds them of the feeding of the 5,000, and then later when he feed 4,000, and how they had food to spare. "And you still don't understand?"
Humanity is a curious lot, that we can claim we are waiting for something which has passed us so many times already, or we hold ourselves back from the very thing we claim to want. Why? Why do we talk about wanting to change the world, but are afraid to look a person in the eye who's sitting on the cold concrete? Why do we say the way we do things needs to change, but then implement the same methods with new titles? Why do we struggle to know Jesus, or think of how our lives have been changed because of him?
Do we still not understand?
I admit that I have not had a "drop my net and follow Jesus" moment, a defining event in my life in which I could say "Yesterday I was not a follower of Jesus, and today I am." It has been a gradual process over my life that is so intermixed with me that it is a journey I am still on. But one example I often come back to is when my younger brother was a church mime. I don't know what the correct title is, but remember back in the early 2000s when doing mime performances in youth groups were popular? One Easter sunrise service at my hometown church, our youth group enacted the Easter story in mime; all the youth wore mime makeup and the black and white striped clothes, and my brother played Jesus. He looked like all the other mimes, but he had a cross with him. And as he came up the aisle, re-enacting the journey up to Golgotha to be crucified, right as he passed me, he fell to his knees holding the cross on this shoulders. I don't think he noticed I was sitting there, I don't think he planned it, but as part of the performance he portrayed the weight of that cross on his weakened, beaten body. It was at that moment, seeing my brother fall with that cross over his shoulders, watching the way he made that cross look so heavy, that I personally felt Jesus giving himself for the world....for me.
I don't often preach the idea of "When Jesus died he was thinking of you," the idea that when Jesus was crucified, he did it for Andy Whitaker Smith, because I think a lot of times that's more of an ego boost for us than a proclamation to Christ, but I do believe that when Jesus died, he died for God's people, and I am one of them. So Jesus did die for me.
And sometimes I forget, and I still don't fully understand it, but I continue to live my life in the faith of it, of Christ, and doing what I can to share that story with the world.
How will we live so that we understand who Jesus is as we follow him?
Gracious God, sometimes we think we are following Jesus so closely that we can forget why. Help to live not just in his teachings, but that we see the transformation he has had on us. AMEN
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