Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Mark · About this commentary
Transfigured, and a Faithless Generation
Mark 9:1-29
1 He said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste death until they see God’s Kingdom come with power.” · WEB
Glory on the mountain with the command to listen — and at its foot, a failed exorcism, a desperate father's honest prayer, and the remedy of prayer itself.
He was changed into another form in front of them. His clothing became glistening, exceedingly white... Elijah and Moses appeared to them Mark 9:2–4.
Six days after the cross was announced, three disciples see the glory it conceals — the veil of the incarnation drawn back rather than something added. Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets, stand talking with him; Peter, terrified into hospitality, proposes three tents Mark 9:5–6 — three shrines, three equals — and the cloud corrects him with the Father's second attestation: this is my beloved Son. Listen to him Mark 9:7. At the baptism the voice spoke to Jesus Mark 1:11; here it speaks to the church in embryo, and its one command is the Shema's verb pointed at a person. Then the tableau resolves to the whole of Christian vision: no one with them any more, except Jesus only Mark 9:8.
He commanded them that they should tell no one what things they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead Mark 9:9.
The secret receives its expiry date — the glory can be told once the cross has defined it — and the disciples descend puzzling over rising from the dead Mark 9:10 while Jesus reads the Baptist's fate as Elijah's ministry fulfilled and previewed: they have also done to him whatever they wanted to Mark 9:13 Malachi 4:5 Mark 6:27.
"I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they weren't able" Mark 9:18.
At the mountain's foot, the church's permanent situation: glory above, failure below. Nine commissioned exorcists Mark 6:13 stand defeated before one convulsing boy while scribes score points and a father despairs. The father's plea has shrunk to a conditional — if you can do anything — and Jesus hands the condition back: if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes Mark 9:22–23.
Immediately the father of the child cried out with tears, "I believe. Help my unbelief!" Mark 9:24.
Six words that have served honest believers ever since: faith and its deficit confessed in one breath, and the confession itself treated as faith enough — the boy is delivered on it. The exorcism passes through an apparent death — he became like one dead... but Jesus took him by the hand and raised him up Mark 9:26–27 — the book rehearsing its own ending in miniature. And the private diagnosis afterward: this kind can come out by nothing but by prayer and fasting Mark 9:29. The nine had, apparently, tried the authority without the dependence — yesterday's commissioning treated as today's power supply. Prayer is not preparation for the work; it is the work's current, and it was the one thing nobody at the bottom of the mountain was doing.
settled What this mark means