8:22-26) We ended the last post after the episode in which Jesus reminds the disciples of the two miracles of the loaves, and then he asks, "How is it that ye do not understand?" (8:21) We are now going to learn of the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, in which we learn also of the derivation of the curious phrase, "men like trees walking." Jesus sets out to give sight to a blind man, and it takes two gestures of ministration. Then in a little while we are going to learn of the man with the demoniac son, the man who utters the plaintive cry, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief." And this episode ends with the disciples, frustrated and bewildered after their former ability to work wonders, asking Jesus "Why could we not cast him out?" Jesus responds by saying that the kind of demon presented here can be driven out only by prayer (though the source used by the KJV would have it as "prayer and fasting.")
It is not immediately obvious (especially given the obfuscations fostered by the churches) that here we are confronted by the inescapable manifestation of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God does not so much have to do with fellowship with God, nor with access to God, nor to the promise of salvation from God, nor with comfort from God, nor with obedience of God, or indeed with anything but one overriding element of the believer's relationship with God: The believer is the possession of God--as the kingdoms of old were understood to be the possessions of the monarchs--and (as is implicit in human relations and inescapable in spiritual matters)--possession by the monarch is not qualified. That is, the thing possessed by the monarch is an element of the monarch's very self, and retains nothing but provisional identity.
The subject is nothing as against the will--even the very nature--of the monarch, and all the more so the believer is nothing as against the will and nature of God. Inescapably, then, the thought life of the believer--of the subject of the kingdom of God--is understood truly in its barest essentials as consisting either of the ineffable joy of fellowship of God, or of the bottomless despair of alienation from God. The notion of the equanimity of the more-or-less (and hopefully improving) faithful in the service of God is a perfidious sin-state (and all the more so as it is celebrated as some sort of quaint journey of foibles and failings.)
Only the dullness of inattention to God and the habit of presumption on God's patience constitute that part of the believer's life that might be called routine. In the teachings of Jesus, the believer's consciousness is borne upon the ecstasy of fellowship with God or it is cast into utter agony at the sundering of that fellowship. This is the experience of humanity, and it would be strange indeed if the experiences of Jesus did not range from the intimacy of "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," to "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
To compress the above, the experience of God's mercy (like that shown to the blind man) can be incomplete, though such would seem to be counterintuitive; the experience of asking for mercy (like the frantic father) can hinge not on belief but on the realization of its lack; and the desire to work the will of God (like the disciples) can be chiefly about the impossibility of truly doing so. This, we will be reminded, is the province of the Jesus who promises us that we can do virtually anything if we have but the slightest faith--and we are scarcely distinguished by the ability to do virtually anything.
If we are to understand the gospels--indeed, if we are to understand anything--then we must look past our tendency to see the gospels as the playing-out of matters of religion on the stage of Creation. Religion that attends truly to the One God does not see anything that is other than God as being this or that entity engaged in activity against a backdrop of reference. Existence--that mystery that we cannot comprehend even as we extend ourselves ridiculously to imagine that we can begin to comprehend God--is not an existence of parts against a backdrop we in our conceit call "reality." Existence is one great organ writhing in its interactions, with us among its twitching parts.
To envision the Creation as a landscape of comprehensible references that we can piously call the rightful possession of God is in fact an appalling act of arrogance. All that we can truly call the rightful possession of God is everything that we think and feel. This is where the Gospel of Mark is going from here--indeed, this is where it has been going all along.
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