Blogging Towards Sunday, September 28, 2025
Thoughts on Today’s Reading
Mark 8:22-26
Today we’re wrapping up a month-long series on Miracles, Signs, and Wonders. Today we’re sitting with the idea of vision: Jesus restores sight to a man who for an unknown time was unable to see. The healing takes more effort than usual (at least in most of the gospel stories of Jesus healing people). Jesus has to act, touching the man, twice. Was Jesus not strong enough? Was this blindness extra tough to cure? What’s the gist of that?
Often Jesus tells those he heals to follow him. Here though, he tells the man defined by his sight to not return to the village. Weird! Maybe he’s saying to move elsewhere because no one will accept him as a healed man? Or maybe he’s telling the man that he can’t just return to life as if nothing happened. His restored, or new vision, can’t just be accommodated into his old life, patterns, habits, addictions, and way of being. He has become a new creation.
Our story today rhymes with another about a healing of limited or no vision – the man Bartimaeus told in Mark 10:46-52. These two stories about new vision miraculously given by Jesus sandwich the core section of the gospel of Mark in which Jesus is proclaimed by the disciples as the Messiah. And then the disciples, Peter in particular, correct Jesus in terms of how Jesus sees his role and purpose as the Messiah. There seems to be an underlying message throughout the stories that make up Mark 8:22-10;52 about vision, sight, hearing, being – becoming new, not conforming to what was believed before.
We’ve seen that the word miracle in English is our translation for multiple words and ideas in the languages of the Bible including:
· the Greek δύναμις (dunamis), meaning “power” or “mighty work,”
· the Greek σημεῖον (semeion) meaning “sign” which became the Latin “signum” (from which we also get “signal,” “insignia” and “signature.”)
· the Hebrew word פֶלֶא (pele) meaning” “marvels” and “wonders” which refers to something beyond human ability: a divine act.
· and the Greek τέρας (teras), meaning “wonder.”
The curious things about miracles is that they aren’t just the fixing of a problem, or the healing of an ill. They mark an inflection point, a point of no return. You can just go back to life as if the miracle/sign/wonder/marvel never happened.
Questions for Reflection & Examen:
• What engaged, enraged, or surprised you in these texts?
· Why does Jesus tell the man not to return to the village?
· How have you been changed by a miracle?
· What do you hear God saying to you through today’s readings?
CAPC Oakland 