Mark 6-7

[wolfpurplemoon]

More of the same as what Matthew told us already of Jesus' welcome in his home town, sending out the disciples, the beheading of John the Baptist, the feeding of the five thousand, walking on water, and more healing the sick.

When Jesus sees the crowd he later feeds five loaves and two fish to he takes pity on them because they seemed to him like sheep without a shepherd, so he teaches them things (must have quite an ability to project his voice in a crowd that size).

An added part to the fact that nothing going in to a person can defile them means that no food is therefore considered unclean, negating the long biologically inaccurate lists of animals considered clean and unclean from the OT.

It seems that some people are healed without Jesus meeting them and others need him to lay his hands on their afflicted body parts (ears and tongue for a deaf and mute man).

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[zteccc.livejournal.com]

As stated before, the Gospels were written by different people for different audiences. They are not sequential books about Jesus, but concurrent histories. we therefore will see many accounts that we have seen before, but from different viewpoints.

Chapter 6
Jesus' message is not received in his hometown. There's a saying that an expert is someone from another town. It is generally true that we neglect the possibility that someone we are familiar with could do great things. This is a very human reaction and if nothing else, it lends credibility to the Gospel because it shows all of the participants as human with human reactions, not artificial ones as one would expect of a work about the savior of the world.

Verses 6-12 The apostles are sent out to preach, heal and cast out demons. It should be noted that all of the apostles spread Jesus' word (including Judas Iscariot). At this point, Judas acted as a devoted follower. Judas knew Jesus and knew the fact of him being Messiah, but was never a true follower. Even a non-follower can sometimes do good things, but eventually he will be shown to be false.

Verses 30-32 Eventually people get tired and need time to recharge, this is true of Jesus. This also shows Jesus as a very human person. Jesus wasn't some super-human person, he got tired, he needed time to himself. It isn't glamorous as we'd see if this were some Hollywood epic, but rather the reality of a deity who has become human for a time.

The site where it is believed that Jesus fed and preached to the 5,000 is a natural amphitheater which is large enough to handle that size of crowd with acoustics good enough for them all to have heard. Similarly, Jesus preaches from a boat in the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4); there is a bay there which has similar characteristics.

Chapter 7
Mark gives a slightly better account of the hand washing passage. Mark refers to the "proper way" of washing that the Pharisees referred to. It wasn't about cleanliness, but ritual, and Jesus says that they follow human laws, but not God's laws (even going so far as to ignore God's laws in favor of human ones). Over the years, the religious leaders had piled extra rituals on top of the laws. Many religions, even Christian religions, today follow this same pattern. Sometimes they even had loopholes to the laws so they wouldn't appear less than perfect.

Jesus does declare all foods clean and fit to eat, this is part of the "fulfillment of the law" that Jesus mentioned. The purpose of the restrictions has ended. It is clear that the author understands this from Jesus' words. Peter will need more convincing (as we'll see in Acts). Of greater importance, however, is what else Jesus says, that what comes out of us can make us unclean (evil thoughts, vulgar deeds, lies, off-color jokes, etc.).

Jesus rarely heals using the same methods. We see him lay hands on some, we see others healed by touching his clothes. We see some healed from afar (the centurion's daughter in Matthew, for example). We cannot put the methodology in a box because it isn't about the method, it is about the faith. In the case of the deaf man, Jesus used elaborate methods. Some would consider what doctors do elaborate as well. They poke and probe, they look with scopes and then inject a fluid or have us swallow pills. Could Jesus have healed the man without the fingers and the spit? Of course. Is there some reason that Jesus did it this way? Perhaps it is illustrative of the condition.
The deaf man wouldn't have heard any of Jesus' commands. The man would barely be able to communicate with Jesus. Jesus, through his actions, would have made it clear to the man what he was doing. He took the main aside so that the man could focus on Jesus (and not be distracted by the crowd). He communicated to the man what he was about to do and made it clear to any watching from a short distance away what was happening. Only after that did he heal the man. This made it very clear to the man, and those watching, what he was doing and that the areas that he indicated were healed completely.