Mark 9: 30-32
They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
We’ve all been there. In a place where we simply can’t accept what is right in front of us.
But take note: This isn’t stupidity. This isn’t obstinacy. This isn’t a rigid unwillingness to face the facts. This is fear. Listen to Mark’s description again: “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”
Why such fear? Simply because they could not imagine how anything of what Jesus was saying could be true. How could Jesus, who spent his time teaching and healing and feeding and driving out demons…how could Jesus suffer the way he described? How could someone this good be killed.
But it was more than that, too. Because Jesus doesn’t just predict that he will suffer, but that he will be betrayed. And you can only be betrayed by those you trust. Which implicates them in the dark events to come. How could any of them betray their Lord? How could any of this possibly be true?
This whole picture is simply too terrible to face. It is too frightening. They don’t understand and, quite frankly, don’t want to. Not out of stubbornness, but out of fear.
Which makes me wonder if they even heard the last part, “and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”
Fear does that. It consumes you. It narrows options and constricts your vision of the future. Fear saps hope and strangles the imagination. Fear renders us powerless. Fear of the future. Fear of being alone. Fear of harm, of hopelessness,. Fear of never being accepted or loved or valued. Fear destroys possibility. And in this sense, fear, in some ways even more than death, is the opposite of life.
Which is why Jesus came. To take on our fear and die for our sins. To face what we could not. To travel to the cross, alone if necessary, because everyone else is too afraid.