Crowds were hungry for anyone who could heal and they swarmed Jesus from the very beginning of his ministry. It’s amazing to think how powerful and fast spreading word of mouth was in those days (today too). When Jesus has run-ins with “evil spirits” they begin to reveal his identity and he like many other times in the gospels (especially in Mark) commands them not to tell anyone about him.
Scholars (N.T. Wright and Gordon Fee have been most influential for me on this subject) regularly mention that anyone living in those times who saw a religious leader who was attracting a lot of attention was choosing twelve disciples would get the message. The Jews had longed for the twelve tribes of Israel to be restored and for the kingdom of God to come. Anyone healing, teaching and gathering twelve disciples was sending a message that God is restoring his kingdom. When it mentions that Jesus takes them away to a mountain near the lake my first response would be for solitude and prayer primarily but in those days you took people there to plot revolution.
Jesus was starting something but he seemed to want to delay anyone’s misconceived notions of what it would be. Truly all the gospels lay out a path that in ways in familiar but very different then what anyone expected.
Imagine being a disciple and being this close to the teaching, healing, prayer and revolutionary symbols what would you be expecting? For me this begins to make sense of many of their misunderstandings that frequently occur even after Jesus’ ascension.
Once again this theme in Mark rings loud of Jesus inaugurating something new that God is doing but at the same time it almost seems like he wants to keep the lid on it. Most importantly Jesus seems to want to avoid people’s expectation of the messiah to be put on him.
Why?
I have some guesses but I’ll share those later.
Scholars (N.T. Wright and Gordon Fee have been most influential for me on this subject) regularly mention that anyone living in those times who saw a religious leader who was attracting a lot of attention was choosing twelve disciples would get the message. The Jews had longed for the twelve tribes of Israel to be restored and for the kingdom of God to come. Anyone healing, teaching and gathering twelve disciples was sending a message that God is restoring his kingdom. When it mentions that Jesus takes them away to a mountain near the lake my first response would be for solitude and prayer primarily but in those days you took people there to plot revolution.
Jesus was starting something but he seemed to want to delay anyone’s misconceived notions of what it would be. Truly all the gospels lay out a path that in ways in familiar but very different then what anyone expected.
Imagine being a disciple and being this close to the teaching, healing, prayer and revolutionary symbols what would you be expecting? For me this begins to make sense of many of their misunderstandings that frequently occur even after Jesus’ ascension.
Once again this theme in Mark rings loud of Jesus inaugurating something new that God is doing but at the same time it almost seems like he wants to keep the lid on it. Most importantly Jesus seems to want to avoid people’s expectation of the messiah to be put on him.
Why?
I have some guesses but I’ll share those later.
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