Week 37 Mark
A couple of days ago I was thinking about the parables of the Lord. Simple homespun anecdotes disguising not-so-simple and not-so-homespun ideas. They come with a Reader Beware label.
So anyway then I read a couple of chapters later where the Lord was privately talking with his disciples. Mark says: then Jesus began to tell them that he…would suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the leaders…He would be killed, and three days later he would rise again.
Nothing about farmers or mustard seeds or like that. No crafty parabolic curveballs. Mark says Jesus: talked about this openly with his disciples. Plain talk. Plain enough that Peter a) definitely understood it, b) definitely disliked what he heard, and c) definitely – and idiotically – reprimanded the Lord for saying it.
Six days later Jesus told the disciples not to publicize seeing Moses & Elijah until…: he had risen from the dead. They were puzzled and left wondering: what he meant by “rising from the dead”.
The Lord mentioned it in Galilee: but they didn’t understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him.
He spelled it out on the road to Jerusalem. The disciples’ response? Nothing.
So while the disciples were curious about the parables with their tricky metaphors and hidden meanings when it came to the plain talk of the Lord dying and coming back to life it seems like they didn’t know and maybe just didn’t want to know.
Note: quotes from Mark 8:31, 32, 9:10, 32, 10:33-34 (NLT)