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What's the deal with Jesus failed healing in Mark chapter 8? Here what it says

And some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and after spitting on his eyes and laying His hands on him, he asked, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking around.” Then again Jesus laid his hands on his eyes; and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Despite its real difficulties, this scene is actually really important for understanding Mark's larger message. It's critical that we get it right. Take a look at it in context.

In the two preceding chapters, Jesus has just spent a great deal of time privately training his disciples. And surprisingly, he focus' a great deal on bread. When he sends them out their first mission, he instructs them to carry no bread. He then shows them how to feed 5,000 and yet again 4000 with a few loaves of bread. And yet just before he encounters this blind man, he finds them totally misinterpreting his figurative teaching about the leaven of the Pharisees, wondering if they should have brought bread.

He tears into them. “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see and having ears do you not hear?” Do you not yet understand?”

Did you see that? Jesus links blindness with a lack of understanding. Encountering a blind man in the very next scene is not by accident. His blindness illustrates the disciples lack of understanding. And his partial healing their partially opened eyes.

This helps us to understand the events that follow. When Jesus next asks his disciples, the one question everyone’s been wondering, “Who do you think I am” Peter actually gets it right! “You are the Christ” The King! He says. But a kind of blurred vision persists. When Jesus next tells the disciples that He, the Christ, is going to be rejected and killed,Peter rebukes him. That's not at all what he meant by his answer.

We see this blurred vision continuing in the following chapter. When Jesus again tells the disciples that he’s going to be killed, they immediately begin arguing among themselves about which of them is the greatest. And still, it persists a chapter after that. This time, to make sure they don’t miss the point, Jesus not only tells them that he’s going to be killed, but mocked, spit upon, and whipped too. To which, James and John respond by asking if they can have the seats closest to his throne.

You can just see the dumbstruck expression on Jesus' face. “You don’t know what you are asking,” He says. Not at all! They're stupid. Though they see that Jesus is the Christ they fail to grasp what he's telling them. They continue to think that being close to Jesus will somehow make them great in the eyes of the world.

Mark stresses Jesus' message in chapters 8-10 in this thrice -repeated pattern. Jesus predicts his death and the disciples display some ironic pride. Which in turn leads Jesus to correct them through a paradoxical teaching. Up is down and down is up. To save your life is to lose it and to lose your life is to save it. To be first, you must be last. And to be a leader, you must be the slave of all. To be the Christ, the King, Jesus will suffer and die and for them to be his disciples they must live out the same end.

What’s interesting is, after the third time, Jesus encounters another blind man. The only other blind man in Mark’s gospel. And he cries out something akin to Peter’s earlier confession. This man gets it. This time, when Jesus opens eyes, there’s no spit. there's no failed attempt. Jesus doesn’t even have to touch him to get him to see.

For Mark, opening the eyes of these two men act as bookends around the correction of the disciples view of Jesus, his mission and what it means for them and by extension us.

Though the disciples still don’t get it, as we shall see, at least, we should.

See you next time.