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Feb 06, 2022

Corrective Lens

Corrective Lens

Passage: Mark 8:22-9:1

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Follow: Learning from Mark about Jesus’ Most Misunderstood Command

A man is healed of blindness in a way unlike any other of Jesus’s healings. It turns out to be a metaphor for the spiritual sight of us all. What must we see to follow? What must we be healed by Him to see?

Readings & Scripture

Psalm 119:18, 19
LEADER: Deal bountifully with your servant,
that I may live and keep your word.

ALL: Open my eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law.

Proverbs 29:19 (The Message paraphrase)
If people can’t see what God is doing,
they stumble all over themselves;
But when they attend to what he reveals,
they are most blessed

CENTRAL TEXT: Mark 8:22-9:1
22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus[a] laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.” 27 And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” 29 And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. 31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” 9 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”

BENEDICTION: 1 Corinthians 13:12
LEADER: For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
ALL: Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Isaiah 52:13-53:12
  • Daniel 7:13
  • John 9:39
  • John 13:12-17
  • Romans 1:16-17
  • 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
  • 1 Peter 2:4-10 
  • Revelation 3:18

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Of those among you who need corrective lenses of some sort, at what age did you first need them? How did you or others discern that need? How did it feel to receive them?
  2. Take a minute and reflect: what are your first “images” of Jesus–that is your first sense of who He is? What development of that image can you reconstruct over time? What has come into sharper relief? Can you remember a time when you started to think that who He is and what He did had some relevance for you?
  3. Who has been one of the most influential people you’ve personally known–who’s helped you understand yourself and the world? How has Jesus shaped your understanding of yourself? How did you end up “giving” Him authority to do that?
  4. As it pertains to the first question he asks the disciples, for what reasons might some have made those associations with Him? Why does He then poll his disciples? Why is the answer to his question so important–to them, and to anyone who might consider him?
  5. Mark’s account of the defiant exchange between Peter and Jesus is awfully spare; we have to think hard about what provokes them to speak as each does. For what reasons might Peter have spoken so vehemently? Same question for Jesus’s response?
  6. From those last several verses, how would you summarize what naturally, if not inevitably, comes with following Jesus?
  7. Have you ever been disrespected–even held with contempt–for your belief in Jesus? If so, what provoked it? How did you feel or respond? 
  8. How is the belief in Him its own source of resilience against the disrespect? How do we apply that belief in real-time should a moment like that come?

Illustrations

InView Media 2.06.22 Album

QUOTES: 

 

  • . . .theologians of the cross do not worry so much about what is obviously bad in our religion, our bad works, as they do about the [pretense] that comes with our good works. Gerhard O. Forde. On Being a Theologian of the Cross
  • The most common overarching story we tell about ourselves is what we will call the glory story. We came from glory and are bound for glory. Of course, in between we seem somehow to have gotten derailed - whether by design or accident we don't quite know - but that is only a temporary inconvenience to be fixed by proper religious effort. What we need is to get back on "the glory road." The story is told in countless variations. Gerhard O. Forde. On Being a Theologian of the Cross
  • He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted . . . and together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat. Galadriel, The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
  • For whatever seems hard in what is enjoined, love makes easy. St. Augustine

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