GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 8:11
A Sign from Heaven
It happened again. I received a survey questionnaire from an organization that was unknown to me. So, I went to the ol’ keyboard and typed the organization’s name into the search bar. It took a couple of searches, but I found its web page. There was no statement of the organization’s purpose or goals on the postal survey, but the goals were listed on the organization’s homepage—goals and purposes with which I mostly disagreed. Like many people who receive these shadowy letters, I don’t know where the organization got my name and address, and I’m not sure of the purpose behind the survey. Did the organization think I would send along a contribution with the completed form upon its return? Did they want to try to persuade me of their ideology? Or did they want to engage in a form of deliberative debate? In the end, I didn’t rise to the bait—I sent the envelope with its survey form to the landfill, where it may decay into something useful in a few thousand years.
These experiences are not new. St. Mark wrote, “And the Pharisees came and began to argue with him by seeking from him a sign from heaven, testing him.” (Mark 8:11) Jesus and his disciples left the northeast side of the Sea of Galilee and sailed southeast across the sea to the region of Dalmanutha, where some Pharisees heard of his presence and came to debate with him. Had they been honest in their inquiry, a discussion would have been a legitimate process. However, Mark added a two-word adverbial modifier, “testing him.” Mark’s word “test” is used over twelve times by New Testament writers in a negative sense. These Pharisaic debaters in Mark’s story wanted to demolish Jesus in front of the audience.
None of the writers explained where the Pharisees (and Sadducees, according to Matthew 16:1) came from—Jerusalem, Capernaum, Gennesaret? It would have been unlikely that a group like this would have lived in an insignificant place like Dalmanutha, which has since disappeared. They came seeking a sign, and not just any sign; they wanted a sign from heaven. The feeding of the 4,000 with seven loaves and a few small fish, the healing of the deaf man, or the healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter were not signs from heaven for them. What would a “sign from heaven” look like? Something blazing across the horizon, defying the laws of nature? The message in this story is that even if the sun dipped to bathe in the Sea of Galilee, these opponents would not have accepted that as miraculous enough to break them away from their mindset.
A poet wrote: “One asked a sign from God; and day by day\ The sun arose in pearl; in scarlet set;\ Each night the stars appeared in bright array;\ Each morn the thirsty grass with dew was wet;\ The corn failed not in the harvest, nor the vine—\And yet he saw no sign!”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: “Earth’s crammed with heaven,\ And every common bush afire with God;\ But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,\ The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
Father, open my eyes today.
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