I suppose there are those here who know of Marfa—so chic—but if you kept on driving along Highway 90, and driving and driving, like you really had to get to Van Horn, you would pass through Lobo, what’s left of Lobo, anyway.  Other than that, there’s no reason to know or care in the least about Lobo.  You know Lobo because you’ve been through there.  Dalmanutha is like that: noted in the Bible only because Jesus was there.  The presence of Jesus is what makes a place, and a person, and a people, stand out.  And the absence of Jesus?

Conflict and need, need and conflict—Jesus encounters both wherever he goes: anywhere and everywhere.  The more things change.  We know about conflict.  We aren’t blind to the need.  What did Jesus do?

“The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus” (8:11).  Of course they did: popped up, gathered ‘round, like weeds, like flies or mosquitoes.  Now, questions can be good, very good, if they are honest, genuine, seeking questions.  God, faith, and Christianity can handle questions.  Even some among the Pharisees were asking genuine, seeking questions.  These Pharisees, however, were not asking genuine, seeking questions.  We can be charitable, say that they wanted to test him because they wanted to believe, and, all too human as they are, the only way they could see themselves coming to belief was by some absolutely undeniable sign from God in heaven.  Like . . . like . . .  Jesus had to, um, pass their test.  Even Thomas takes that attitude after being told about the Resurrection by witnesses to its reality.  These Pharisees wanted to stump Jesus, get him to contradict himself, prove that he was nothing but a fraud, just like they already knew he was, knew because . . . because he must be, because he just couldn’t be anything more.

If you weren’t a believer, how long would it take, and what would it take, for you to believe: especially if you had always been told, or just somehow naturally assumed, that Jesus and all that sort of talk was just a fraud?  Be honest.  Even the disciples, who had accompanied Jesus from the start of his ministry, even some of them still weren’t sure.  Peter was starting to feel sure.  Others, not in that inner circle, who had maybe only heard about Jesus—never seen him, only heard—had heard one thing and another: giving sight to the blind, impressive, to be sure; causing the deaf to hear; wonderful, certainly; healing sickness and casting out impure spirits—all beautiful and staggering, yes, yes.  But there were many who were saying it wasn’t the Lord but the Lord of Filth who was at work through this Jesus: that’s where the power was coming from—so watch out!  Most of the doubters were saying Jesus never did any of that: all made up, all lies, just to dupe more fools into the fool parade.

A sign.  They asked even there at the cross: If you’re the son of God (as you claim, which you aren’t, of course), come down from the cross, and we’ll believe.  Let God save you, if He loves you (Mk 15:29-32; Ps 22:8).  In The Last Temptation of Christ—which isn’t Scripture but does imagine a telling of the Jesus story—this is exactly what does happen: Jesus does come down from the cross.  A little golden child pulls the nails out and tells Jesus it isn’t necessary for him to die on the cross, that he can come down, that God is saving him.  And nobody believes, even then.

In the Old Testament days of yore, Gideon asked for a sign, and God was gracious enough to provide the sign, just as Gideon spelled it out for God.  Then Gideon asked for another sign.  Now, yes, God had told Gideon to do something that seemed to Gideon very much beyond his very limited ability, although God was assuring Gideon that God was calling Gideon to the mission and was giving him everything necessary for carrying out the will of God.  Faith.  Trust.  Is God trustworthy?  Well, frankly, Gideon wasn’t so sure.  Yes, God had done great things, in the past, as Gideon had always been told, but things weren’t going so well in Gideon’s day, and God—who as Gideon had been told, had all power and great concern for His people—where was God?  Why wasn’t He doing anything about what was happening?  And why had He allowed any of the mess to happen at all in the first place?  Shouldn’t God keep all of us happy, healthy, and wealthy?

Where is God, these days?  Why isn’t He doing anything?  If He’d just do what we asked—it’d be so simple, and the need is so real.  If God would just agree to pass our test.

It’s not that the Pharisees didn’t trust God.  They didn’t trust Jesus.  They didn’t trust that God was with Jesus because, if God was going to be with anyone, why, it should have been the Pharisees.  They could see how God wouldn’t be with someone like Jesus and his riff raff followers; what they couldn’t see is how God would not be with people like themselves.  Why wouldn’t God be with them?

A sign.  W. Graham Scroggie puts it aptly, as usual: “it is not signs that we need, but sense to act on what we already know.”[1]  Paul makes much the same argument at the beginning of Romans; the gist of it is that people, every person, has more than enough evidence all around already that there is a God.  If people would inquire seriously and study carefully this creation, they would, soon or late, come to the necessary conclusion that the Creator was loving, benevolent, providing for all Creation amply, and that the Creator wished to be known rightly.  Paul went on to say similar things about the conscience: that it already knows—how?—what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad.  Now, granted, there is much out there to confuse and mislead, but that comes through confused, misled people.  The God-given conscience speaks still.  God’s Word is always here, available, to clarify confusion and rightly guide people who have been misled.  We just have to set about reading it; people need to start reading this book.

It isn’t signs that we need.  Signs won’t cause belief.  Signs just whet that appetite for more, and more astounding, signs.  It’s like Herod in Jesus Christ, Superstar, rattling off his terms: change my water into wine, walk across my swimming pool, feed all my household with this bread: you could do it on your head; if you do, I’ll know it’s all true.  Somehow, we rightly remain unconvinced that he would.  But hey—Jesus would have put on a great show, for Herod.

Tell me, do you also have dear friends and close relatives who don’t believe?  Most just don’t bother to wonder: they have more pressing and interesting things occupying their lives.  Others aren’t opposed to belief: it just hasn’t become urgent or important to them.  Then there’s that handful who find it addictively delectable to scoff at Christians, Christianity, and Jesus, savagely to mock anyone who doesn’t share their own enlightened values.  Now, what sign would change the mind, change the attitudes, values, and interests, of each of these several types of unbelievers?

Not signs, beloved but Spirit.  Belief comes by the Spirit, and the Spirit, as we are told many times in many ways, moves when and where and as He wills, furthering God’s purposes, advancing God’s plan.  As for us, if we would, pray for the unbelievers and the believers in name only in our lives.  By our own faithful albeit imperfect discipleship, pray that these might also come to perceive and receive the grace of faith.  Let’s not be content with being generally kind and vaguely compassionate toward our fellow human beings: let’s actively desire their salvation.

Peter remembered, vividly, how Jesus “sighed deeply and said, ‘Why does this generation ask for a sign?  Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it’” (8:12).  Signs, signs, everywhere are signs . . . healings, feedings, restorations, power in and over the storms of this world, this life—Jesus had done all this; there were more than enough witnesses to attest to all this, and still disbelief and rejection on every side.  Yeah, maybe you did all that: but I didn’t see it!  There’s more at work here than simple intellectual assent based upon all available evidence.  People aren’t rejecting Jesus on account of insufficient evidence.  They reject him because their will is in it, they will rejection because the alternative would mean catastrophe for them, their choices, their values, their way of life, disaster for what they want, for what gives them pleasure, and for where they seek satisfaction in this life.

Jesus doesn’t come to approve of us; he comes to reclaim us, change and remake us.  It’s like that tried-and-true evangelical saying: God loves us just as we are and loves us too much to let us remain that way.

Mark writes that Jesus then “left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side” (8:13).  Mark adds this both to conclude this encounter and as a reminder that there’s only so much time to avail ourselves of what Jesus offers.  When he gets into the boat and continues on his way, there seems a definite, terrible sense that this is the last those people will ever see of Jesus until they see him again.  Oh beloved, pray.  Pray that the Spirit would continue to seek out and be at work for change in the hearts of those seeking, and those not seeking.

[1] W. Graham Scroggie.  Gospel of Mark.  Study Hour.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976.  141.