Mark Part 4 - Faithless or Faithful?

We’ve established now the definitive “good guys” and “bad guys” in the Gospel of Mark, but one people group has yet to be mentioned and categorized. Enter: The Apostles.

These were them. The men that Jesus hand-picked to be in His inner circle. His closest friends. The ones on whom He could rely on. These were the guys who, if nobody else got it, at least they would understand what Jesus was trying to say. These men, above the other disciples, would be the exemplary model of how to follow Christ with every little bit of them.

Right?

These guys didn’t get it half the time – which might even be a generous assessment. The guys who were closest to Jesus – expected to have the greatest faith – were often arrogant, ignorant, and faithless. 

Exhibit A: Miracles.

 

 

 

 

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 Exhibit B:Understanding Jesus' Teachings

Exhibit C:

In the middle of Jesus' beautiful example of leading with the heart of a servant and serving with the heart of a king...they argued about who among them would get to “ride shotgun” in Heaven and sit next to Jesus.

Exhibit D:

When Jesus needed their support and faithfulness the most in the Garden of Gethsemane – right before Jesus was betrayed and delivered by one of his own apostles – when He needed His friends to be diligent, awake, and in prayer, they fell asleep while He alone prayed to the Father about the upcoming suffering He was about to endure.

And we won’t even get into how the Apostles scattered like rats when Jesus was taken captive, even going so far as to deny any association with Him at all.

Faithful men, right?

Who feels just a little better about themselves and their walk with Jesus now?

In all seriousness, we are doomed to fail because of our humanity. Because we’re fallen people and we tend to suck more often than we succeed. That’s just the way it is. The example, though, of how the apostles actually WERE men of faithfulness (with that term pretty loosely defined) was that they kept coming back to Jesus. They returned to Him with their questions, with their concerns, with their prayers, with their failures. They allowed their hearts to be humble before the Christ in saying, “Oh, Man did I mess this one up, Lord” or “Hey, Jesus, I really don’t understand what you’re trying to teach me here.”

Did Jesus get frustrated with their lack of faith at times? Absolutely. As, quite frankly, I think He gets with us from time to time.

I know in my life, Jesus has had to repeatedly teach me the same lessons. Over and over. Lather, rinse, repeat. And still I don’t understand fully what He tries to teach me…it doesn’t always sink in the first, second, or forty-third time. But I have to allow myself to bring my failures and my misunderstandings to Christ. Or else I become faithless.

I become like Judas Iscariot – who in spite of being among the closest friends of Jesus – still allowed Himself to be overtaken by a lack of faith, a lack of belief that the Christ could do all that He came here to do, and in the end it not only cost Jesus His life (Jesus would have gone to the cross anyways, but Judas certainly was the catalyst for the whole event), but it cost Judas something much greater – eternal fellowship with God.

There will be times in our lives when our faith will be tested. And there will be times when our faith comes up lacking. But the difference between faithlessness and faithfulness is whether or not we allow the failures of our faith to drive us back into the arms of Christ who is the source of all faithfulness, or whether we allow them to drive us away.

 

We each have a choice to make.