Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 8 verses 22 through 33:
22 They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. 23He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Can you see anything?’ 24And the man looked up and said, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.’ 25Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26Then he sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village.’
27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ 28And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ 29He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ 30And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
Benjamin Elijah Mays, the former President of Morehouse college, close family friend of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. family, and the one who eulogized Dr. King at his death said of Dr. King’s martyrdom and its relation to Jesus’ cross:
“Inevitable, not that God willed it. Inevitable in that any man who takes the position King did . . . if he persists in that long enough, he’ll get killed. Now. Anytime. That was the chief trouble with Jesus: He was a troublemaker. So any time you are a troublemaker and you Rebel against the wrongs and injustices of society and organize against that, then what may happen is inevitable.”
In today’s Lesson the blind man sees more clearly what is inevitable than does the so-called sighted Peter. Peter sees Jesus triumphant, victorious in his vision without defeat. But the blind man sees what is inevitable — Jesus on a tree.
Many feminist and womanist theologians have rightly problemitized the veneration of the cross as it has far too often given credence to the passive suffering of the abused and the oppressed. Suffering in this way should never be legitimized. The cross of Jesus should never be used as an excuse for passivity to violence.
And it was not. Jesus was no passive sufferer. His journey to the cross was a willful act of both self-sacrifice and also self-determination. Jesus came to the cross as a lamb in body, but also a lion in heart.
No, as Mays said, God does not will the death of any anyone — not even Jesus. God willed that the world would receive Jesus. But the world rejected him. The powers of the Roman world rejected him yet he did not stop. He continued to demand his own dignity and the dignity of his people in what he called “the kingdom of God”. And so in due course the kingdom of this world — Rome — did the inevitable; they hung him on a tree. This is the law of the land — that this world will inevitably oppose and perhaps even kill its troublemakers. Even a blind man can see this.
But what the blind man cannot yet see is what happens after that — that though it may not have been God’s will that Jesus should die, on the third day it will be God’s will that he should live. And so with the touch of Jesus the faithful are made to see again — and somehow the cross of Jesus becomes a sign of hope and the death of the Lion the victory of the Lamb.
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