“Don’t just do something, stand there.”

A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

Today's gospel (Mark 8:11-13) is but the briefest of extracts. These days, we might even call it a TikTok gospel. The Pharisees approach Jesus, apparently intent on starting an argument. They say they want a sign from Jesus and no doubt some of them are very pleased not to get one. Having refused their requests, Jesus departs rapidly, climbing back into a boat and making His way across the lake.

Once again, for such a short passage, almost every single line raises questions for us. The Pharisees approach because they wish to test Jesus. Perhaps some among them want to test him out of a habit of searching for signs and wonders as proof positive of the Lord’s action; many of us can be guilty of a touch of that. Perhaps the more honest among them see this test as a condition of sound discernment. We may well fear, however, that other Pharisees impose this test precisely because they felt it was one that Jesus could not pass.

Yet how strange if this was indeed their position. At this point in Saint Mark's gospel, Jesus had already cured or delivered many souls from their illnesses or from possession. Had the Pharisees but inquired among the people who lived in the region from where Jesus had just come, they would have learned that He had fed 4,000 of them with a few loaves and fishes. Just what was the point, therefore, of trying to put Him to the test in this way? Given the context, Jesus’s reply comes as no surprise: Why does this generation demand a sign? I tell you solemnly, no sign shall be given to this generation.

Before He says these words, however, there comes a moment that is revelatory and yet hard to decipher. He sighed deeply in his spirit, says one translation of the gospel. But what happens here? Is this frustration? This cannot be a moment of annoyance for even while the perfect God-Man is like us in all things but sin, He does not suffer from the irregular emotions or dissonant needs caused by the wounds of original sin. On the other hand, if this is an occasion for just anger, why does Jesus not just upend the chairs of a couple of nearby Pharisees, like He will one day overturn a row of money changers’ tables in the temple?

Perhaps we may identify in this moment the docibilitas of Jesus–His teachability–which we should ascribe to His human nature. This is a theory and only a theory, but it is one I find instructive if we consider it in relation to Jesus' other kinds of knowledge. For in Jesus, we know there are three kinds of knowledge, although how they combine and coordinate is beyond our understanding to grasp. There is His divine knowledge which He has through His divine nature and which He cannot cease to have and still be God; there is His infused knowledge which He has as Saviour of the human race, and the prophet of the New Testament; and then there is His acquired knowledge which, in the process of assuming human nature, He allows Himself to be subject to; for Jesus grew in grace and wisdom, as St Luke tells us, after He was rediscovered in the temple. In this gospel extract, then, the docibilitas of Jesus is perhaps that dimension of His human nature and knowledge that prepares Him to face what is, as far as we are aware, a new situation for Him; one He must learn to handle, as He once learned to handle a hammer or to be wise about dealing with beggars. His ignorance is not the ignorance caused by sin but of a true human nature, marvellously gifted and yet in formation, saying its own continual "yes" to the Father.

For what confronts Jesus is not just a refusal of people to believe in Him, but a stubborn and pertinacious rejection of Him. While He knows this is bound to happen, perhaps He has not yet had the experience. He has preached, and they no doubt have seen His goodness or at least the strong evidence for it; there have already been countless miracles associated with Him. And still, here they come, the Pharisees, asking for yet more signs. We know from later in the same chapter of Saint Mark that Jesus will draw a very sobering lesson from this encounter: beware the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. But in responding to their apparent incomprehension of His ministry, a range of options still lies before Him. Should He just ignore it and go merrily on His way, tiptoeing through the tulips to His next miraculous moment – a sort of “I’m-the-Messiah-so-get-over-it” response? Such a reaction might seem mere complacency. Or, conversely, should He perhaps organise a discussion group with the Pharisees, host a series of meetings for frank and honest exchanges, and facilitate an accommodation with their sensibilities, attempting to honour the diligence in their observance of the law, rather than denouncing the deceits we now associate with the Pharisees’ name? Yet to do this would be to act through desperation, perhaps even contrary to the freedom of those He was trying to help. Faced by their obstinate unbelief, Jesus seems a little like a medical professional, standing before someone critically ill: should He intervene, or should He not? Should He act and try to save the day like some dashing superhero who can put everything to rights, or should He do nothing, as if there is nothing that can be done, and seem to risk defeat?

And this is where, for the God-Man, the docibilitas becomes pertinent. Of course, as God, He knows perfectly well what to do and what will happen to each and every one of the souls He is dealing with. Yet, in His human nature, He must still navigate this incident on this day in this region: to see, to judge and to act. Through docibilitas, therefore, Jesus in His human nature perhaps recognises the moment for what it is, savours the circumstances in all their concreteness, judges the behaviours before Him for what they are. He is neither overly indifferent, nor is He desperately idealistic about wanting to win the Pharisees over to create a kind of “peace-in-our-time” moment: docibilitas, perhaps, leads Him to carve out a response to a problem for which, humanly speaking, there is no solution without compromising the truth. After all, on this latter point, maybe Jesus could have got the Pharisees on His side if only He had not been so bold with His claims to be somebody special. Just think: with a touch of goodhearted idealism, Jesus might have avoided two thousand years of Jewish-Christian tensions if only... if only He had tempered His rather dogmatic views about being God with …just a little more interreligious sensitivity. But, with His mind made up, He breathes forth a sigh, and a profound sigh at that: humanly, it is a triggering of the parasympathetic system that calms the nerves; divinely, it is a breathing forth, a tangible, incarnate sign of His inner life as the Son, perhaps one last breath of grace on the hypocritical hearts listening to Him.

But that is not the end. The gospel offers one more chilling sign of the cost that the Pharisees’ hypocrisy incurs: And he left them and getting into the boat again he departed to the other side. It was not that Jesus was not there for them, but love them as He no doubt did, He was not there at their wilful beck and call for streaming on demand. The unconditional God of love, the God who goes in search of us when we are lost, is not for all that a TV dinner kind of God who is happy to be shoved in the microwave of our unfaithful hearts when we happen to feel fervent. He will leave the Pharisees for now, hopefully to learn from the disenchanting, bitter taste of their own unbelief. For all their feelings of being justified, they cannot have taken much joy in seeing Jesus retreating in a boat across the lake.

Docibilitas - our teachability – should among other things lead us to a sense of what is within our capacity and of what is not. Through docibilitas, we avoid the extremes that might lead us either to a attitude that is ignorant and indifferent to what is around us, or to a mindset that urges us to idealistic or romantic dreams about ourselves or others. To be docile, to be able to learn from what is around us, as Jesus was, is not to be passive but to recognise the hand of Providence in all that befalls us; to ask for no more than the goodness of God offers us; and finally, to allow ourselves to be led on by that Spirit that Jesus sighed forth with such feeling; the same Spirit that would wrap all men in its embrace, but not cast its pearls before their refusal of the truth. Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, and as the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland says, we must learn not just to do something but to stand there; to learn to await God’s moment.