Hardness of Heart
One of the most sobering themes in the Gospel of Mark is the hardened hearts of the disciples. We expect to read about the hard hearts of the scribes and the Pharisees. They are the classic villains of the Gospels, infamous in the imaginations of modern Christians because, as Mark puts it in the beginning of chapter 3, “they watched Jesus . . . so that they might accuse him.”
It should give us pause, therefore, to read what Mark has to say about the disciples in chapter 6. “And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” (v 51–52).
By the time you read this statement, the disciples in Mark’s Gospel have been privy to several significant events in Jesus’ ministry, including (but certainly not limited to) the healing of the paralytic (during which Jesus states that he heals to prove that he has the authority to forgive sins), the calming of a storm that threatens to overwhelm the boat they are in, and God’s provision for them as they journeyed in pairs and embarked on ministries on Jesus’ behalf.
But then we read of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand in chapter 6 after the disciples return from their journey. We all know the story. But do we catch the distinction Mark draws between Jesus and the disciples? When Jesus sees the crowd, he has compassion for them, despite having gone to the wilderness to get away from them. But the disciples’ attitude is very different. When it gets late, they tell Jesus, “Send them away to go . . . and buy themselves something to eat” (v 36). It’s easy to see why they feel this way. They’re tired. They just got back from a long journey where they took nothing with them and had to rely solely on God’s provision. Jesus gives them what must have been a maddening answer. “You give them something to eat.” How could they do that? After all, it’s not like they just got back from a long journey where they took nothing with them and had to rely solely on God’s provision.
Later, after witnessing Jesus’ miracle, the disciples are struggling across the sea of Galilee against a brutal headwind. Walking across the water, Jesus gets into the boat with them, and the wind dies down. This is the second time that Jesus calms a storm they are facing, and yet, as Mark puts it, they are astounded. And now, Mark points out why. Their hearts were hardened.
How could this be? They have been with Jesus this entire time, witnessed countless miracles (some of them repeated), and heard his teachings and even his explanations of his teachings. Sadly, it gets worse from here. In the coming chapters, Jesus rebukes the disciples again and again for their hardness of heart. Even after he is raised from the dead, he rebukes them for not believing the witnesses who told them that he was alive.
It’s almost as if the disciples are incapable of believing him. They get distracted by trivial matters, tripped up by their pride, can’t understand the simplest teaching, and ultimately fall victim to their cowardice, scattering when Jesus is taken.
So like us. In this way, the disciples bring us a measure of comfort. As in: if Jesus saved them, there’s hope for me. But we can’t leave it there. The example of the disciples is only valuable when we ask ourselves, in what way are we refusing to receive what Jesus has for us?
Individual answers to this question may vary. Sin is deceitful, and we are all too willing to rationalize sinful habits. We even can turn sin into a non-sequitur, reforming problems that aren’t really an issue for us individually. It’s always easier to focus on someone else’s sin.
Softening our hearts before God is one of the most difficult and important things we can ever do. It takes daily devotion, the ministry of the Word, prayer, and a willingness to respond to the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
While there are many ways in which we can harden our hearts to God, I have two concerns for the church in general. The first is that we harden our hearts by longing for the esoteric or by emphasizing the trivial. We read passages like The Feeding of the Five Thousand and latch on to cheap symbolism instead of exposing our hearts to the searching questions the text has for us.
In First and Second Timothy, Paul warns his protégé several times about people who stir up controversies, trivialities, myths, and speculations. It will always be easier to jump on some absurd bandwagon than to say, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
The other concern I have is that we harden our hearts because we love the kingdom of America more than the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Throughout my adult life, I’ve watched the church sink deeper into nationalism, and we are reaping the rewards of it: bitterness, anger, malice, hatred, envy, and a longing for anyone who can stoke our indignation.
We look at the lost and, instead of having compassion on them as Jesus does, we search for anything to accuse them of, saying, “Thank God, I’m not like that man.” The church in America is on a very dangerous footing in this regard, and the consequences of our pride are dire unless the ministry of the Word drives us to soften our hearts before God.
