The two-stage healing of this blind man may surprise us. Jesus seems to be wrestling with the blindness. After the initial act of healing, like a modern doctor, Jesus asks his patient whether he can see anything before giving him additional ‘treatment’. Jesus is not satisfied with his patient being able to see vague moving shapes (v 24).  

This incident helps us interpret the next event, Peter’s ‘revelation’ of the true identity of Jesus (v 29). Looking ahead to verse 33, we can see that Peter does not yet have 20:20 vision. He will not see clearly (v 25) until after Jesus’ death and resurrection. He sees that Jesus is the Messiah, but that’s through the blurred lens of his preconceptions. For Jesus, bringing true spiritual sight to his disciples is a prolonged struggle. 

Sometimes we talk with friends and family as if coming to faith depended entirely on them (or on what we say to them). People can arrive at the first stage of spiritual perception through reason, evidence or experience. But a true understanding of Jesus requires revelation because it engages our whole person, not just our mind. 

‘Just as I am, though tossed about / with many a conflict, many a doubt, / fightings and fears within, without, / O Lamb of God, I come.’¹

Did Jesus fail to heal the blind man the first time and need a second attempt? Stop right there! Our first presumption must always be that Jesus did everything for a reason, that his initial hearers, and we later readers, are to learn something here. Mark organised his material very carefully and we should not make the mistake of trying to analyse the two-step healing out of its wider context as if it is a random event, unrelated to its setting. It was not Jesus who was failing, but the disciples. Mark keeps emphasising their failure to understand. They had not understood the symbolism of the feeding of the crowd, not even when the miracle was repeated before their eyes. The key to understanding these episodes is in Jesus’ own words. ‘Do you have eyes but fail to see?’ (see v 18). They were like the blind man seeing only the vague outline of things. There was another leap of heart and mind that they needed to make before they could see Jesus clearly, before they would fully understand.

It is easy to repeat the same error by reading Peter’s affirmation of Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, as if it too stands alone, independent of its context. Yes, it is significant as the first correct human statement about Jesus’ identity in Mark’s Gospel. The demons, whose screaming identifications Jesus silenced, are now replaced by the first human witness. Yet Peter’s response is met sternly. Jesus was indeed the Messiah of Scriptural prophecy, but he was not the all-conquering leader that people vainly sought.² He was also the Suffering Servant whose destiny was the cross.³ This is what the disciples still failed to understand. Their vision of who Jesus really was still remained inadequate. Eventually they would see clearly. For now, they still saw only the tree walking.

Jesus, Lord of my understanding, take the mist from my eyes, take the fogginess from my mind, help me to see you as you really are.

¹ Charlotte Elliott, 1789 – 1871, ‘Just as I am, without one plea’  ² Eg Ps 110  ³ Eg Isa 52:13 – 53:12