morning, we join Jesus and his disciples as they are working their way south through Galilee. Jesus is keeping a low profile at this point because he is teaching his disciples about the very hard road ahead at Jerusalem.

Jesus says he will be handed over, and we know it will be by a friend, Judas, one of his 12 closest disciples, his intimate leadership team. This is a striking betrayal of friendship.

He will be handed over to “human hands.” The High Priest, the chief priests, the scribes and the elders who will interrogate and condemn him are meant to administer God’s mercy and judgment. But instead, they administer their own judgment because Jesus challenges their leadership and authority. Despite their religious appearance, there is no indication that they are following the scriptures or being led by prayer. These are indeed “human hands” as are the Roman soldiers who “will kill him.”

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Caesarea Philippi seems an odd place for Jesus to bring his disciples. Although technically within historic Israel, it was in a region of Greek villages, which were remnants of Alexander the Great’s empire 300 years before.

Herod the Great, the same Herod that bult the Temple Mount and hunted Jesus at his birth, established the city and built a temple to Augustus Caesar there. The people were supposed to worship Caesar as a god. (After Herod died, his son Philip the Tetrarch governed that region and added his very Greek name to it.)

Herod the Great also built a major temple there to Pan. Pan was a Greek god of fertility, agriculture and flocks who was worshipped in the region. At Caesarea Philippi is a huge cave which they thought was an entrance to the underworld.

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Jesus took the man who was deaf and had an impediment of speech aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers in his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then he said “Be opened” and his ears were opened and his tongue was released and he spoke plainly.

That seems very strange and I expect it seemed very strange to the people in that moment as well as the early Christians who first heard Mark’s gospel. Jesus was perfectly capable of healing people from afar, as he did the girl in the other healing we heard this morning. Why did he go farther than simply laying his hands upon the man as requested?

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