Open Your Eyes…

Good morning, Church! We are just about halfway through our series on the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as recorded in the New Testament Gospel of Mark. This morning, we come to a crossroad as Jesus reveals to his earliest disciples not only who he is but what sort of servant of God he is – and it is not what they want to hear.

One of the reasons we have these early gospel accounts that share the successes and the failures of those early disciples is to help us see how much like them we are. We want a savior, but we don’t always want the hard stuff. We want to be glorified with him, but we don’t want to suffer with him. We want to receive all the blessings of God, including boundless forgiveness and grace, but we don’t always find it easy to give those things to those who offend us.

So, what will we do with this Jesus and his teachings that we might not want to hear? Will we listen? Will we accept it? Will we put our trust in him knowing that hard times are coming? Or will we just keep ourselves at arm’s length from the world and tell ourselves that it’s enough? Will we fully open our eyes to see who Jesus is, or will we wander aimlessly through life thinking we can figure it out on our own?

These are not simple questions, but they are questions we must wrestle with and answer, because our choices have serious consequences. My hope is that we will learn from what those early disciples did and be convicted by their faithful response to the Jesus they knew. He’s still the only one who can save us.

—Patrick Barber