Mark 10:32-34 Hearing what We Want to Hear

Mark 10:32   They were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking on ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were fearful. And again He took the twelve aside and began to tell them what was going to happen to Him, ³³ saying, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death and will hand Him over to the Gentiles. ³⁴ “They will mock Him and spit on Him, and scourge Him and kill Him, and three days later He will rise again.”

Jesus speaks in this paragraph with amazing clarity and specificity. He speaks, not to a huge crowd, but gathers around Him just the Twelve. He is speaking to a small group. They can all hear him. They can ask questions (but, no questions are recorded). 

He tells them exactly what is happening, and what is going to happen. Where are we going? To Jerusalem. What is going to happen? The Son of Man is going to be handed over (delivered, used often in judicial settings) to the chief priests, and then to the Romans, or Gentiles. The Jewish leaders will condemn Him.  The Gentiles will mock, spit, scourge, and kill. Then, this Son of Man would rise again. When would that happen? Three days later. 

The next paragraph, that we will treat separately, proves that the disciples did not hear what Jesus was saying. The only confusing question that I can imagine for why this did not penetrate the thinking of the disciples is the identity of the Son of Man. To whom is this going to happen? Does this Son of Man refer to Jesus, or to someone else? Could they have been confused about this?

The answer, I believe, is “no.” The first reference to Son of Man in this Gospel is 

Mark 2:10 “But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” — He *said to the paralytic, … “Get up.”

Jesus is teaching in a house, and friends lower this “paralytic” on a bed, down through the roof, since all other access to Jesus is blocked. Jesus says to the man, “Your sins are forgiven you,” and, of course, the religious leaders object, because only God can forgive sins. And Jesus says for the man to get up, and he does. 

Jesus’ explanation for his words are for a purpose, “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Now, the disciples were there, and it seems that there could be no mistaking that it was He, Jesus, who made the statement about forgiving sins, and who healed the man, and who, then, made the reference to the Son of Man doing the very action that He Himself had just enacted. No I don’t think the disciples were confused.

I think the problem is that we hear what we want to hear. Or, perhaps more importantly, we don’t hear what we don’t want to hear. There is a huge subjective element to our hearing. There is nothing wrong with the speaker. There is nothing wrong with our eardrums. It is our brains, our minds and hearts, that filter out what doesn’t set will with our desires.

It seems that the appropriate prayer is that God would help us (cause us) to heed even that which we don’t want to hear.