On the Way: Following Jesus, Mark 8:22-10:52

ON THE WAY

Following Jesus

A Sermon on Discipleship — Mark 8:22–10:52

 

Opening — “People Like Trees, Walking”

Good morning, church.

I want to start by naming something that’s true for a lot of us in this room. Some of you have been around the church a long time. You know how it works. You know when to stand and when to sit. You know the answers. Somebody asks, “Who died on the cross for your sins?” and before they finish the sentence, your hand is halfway up: “Jesus.” You could answer these questions in your sleep.

And that’s not a small thing. There’s a real gift in knowing God, in knowing the truth, in showing up week after week.

But I want to ask you a question this morning: Is it possible to know all the right answers about Jesus, and still not really see Him?

Let me put a face on that question. It was me. I grew up in church and knew about Jesus pretty well. I could ace any Bible quiz. On a game night, a round of Christian trivia — “name the twelve disciples,” “quote John 3:16,” “what are the fruits of the Spirit” — I cleaned up. And then the game ended, everybody went home, and quietly, on the inside, I felt strangely far from the very God I could describe so well. I could talk about Jesus for an hour. I just wasn’t sure I’d met Him lately.

If that’s you this morning — if you can talk the talk but you feel a distance you can’t quite explain — lean in. Because the Bible knows exactly what that feels like. In fact, the passage we’re in today opens with a picture of it.

Turn with me to Mark chapter 8. We’re going to live in Mark 8 through 10 today — one long stretch of Mark’s Gospel that I think is written for people exactly like us.

Mark 8, verse 22. Jesus comes to a town called Bethsaida, and they bring Him a blind man and beg Him to touch him. Jesus takes the man by the hand, leads him out of the village, spits on his eyes, lays hands on him, and asks — and this is the part I want you to catch — “Do you see anything?”

And the man looks up and says, verse 24: “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.”

Stop right there. That’s one of the strangest verses in the Gospels. Because this is Jesus. Jesus doesn’t do half-miracles. He speaks, and the storms sit down. He says a word, and a dead girl gets up. But here He touches a blind man — and the man sees something. Real sight. But blurry. “People like trees, walking.” Shapes moving around. Not nothing — but not clear.

So Jesus touches him a second time. Verse 25: the man looks intently, his sight is restored, and he sees everything clearly.

Now hold that image up against your own life, because for a lot of us “people like trees, walking” might be the truest picture of where we actually are. We’re not blind. We really do see something. But it’s blurry. We know Jesus is there — we just can’t quite see Him clearly.

And in case you think I’m reaching, watch what Mark does next. He puts the model believer right next to that blind man.

Verse 27. Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They give the survey results. Then He asks, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter — good, loyal, all-in Peter — nails it. Verse 29: “You are the Christ.” The right answer. A-plus. If this were a quiz, Peter just won it.

And then, three verses later, Jesus explains what being the Christ actually means: that He has to suffer, be rejected, and be killed. And Peter grabs Him and starts to correct Him. And Jesus turns, looks at His disciples, and says to Peter — verse 33 — “Get behind me, Satan.”

From “You are the Christ” to “Get behind me, Satan” in five verses. Same guy.

Do you see what Mark is doing?

Peter had the right title and the wrong script. He could say the words — “You are the Christ” — but he had no idea what they meant. Real sight. Still blurry. People like trees, walking. It is possible to know all the right answers about Jesus, and still not really see Him. Peter sees truly but not yet clearly.

So here’s where we’re going this morning. This whole section of Mark — 8:22 all the way to 10:52 — is really one long journey.

Jesus and His disciples set out together and walk from Bethsaida, up in Galilee, all the way down to the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem. It’s a road trip.

And Mark frames it with a bookend on each side. At the start, in chapter 8, that blind man is healed — but strangely, in two stages: first blurry men who look like walking trees, then a second touch and he sees clearly. At the end, in chapter 10, another blind man is healed — and this time it happens all at once, crisp and clear.

Two blind men, one at each end. And in between, a whole road full of disciples who keep almost seeing and not quite seeing. That’s not an accident. Scholars call this section the journey of discipleship because the whole way down that road, Jesus shows His followers what it actually means to follow Him. It’s about how a person goes from blurry sight to clear sight — from knowing about Jesus to actually seeing Him. And I believe it’s written for people who have known God a long time and still need their eyes touched again. So, let’s walk it together.

1. Discipleship Is a Road, not a Moment

The first thing I want you to notice is a phrase so small you’ll miss it in English, but Mark plants it over and over like a drumbeat.

The phrase is “on the way.”

Watch it show up. Chapter 8, verse 27: “And on the way he asked his disciples…” Chapter 9, verse 33: “What were you arguing about on the way?” Chapter 10, verse 32: “And they were on the way, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them.” And at the very end, chapter 10, verse 52, the man Jesus heals gets up and “followed him on the way.”

On the way, on the way, on the way. Mark wants you to feel the road under your feet. Because for Mark, “the way” is the whole picture of what it means to follow Jesus.

And this isn’t an accident — Mark set it up on page one. The very first lines of his Gospel, Mark 1:2–3, quote the prophet Isaiah: “Prepare the way of the Lord.” That’s Exodus language — God leading His people out of slavery and home through the wilderness, along a road He Himself prepares out ahead of them. From the first sentence, Mark is telling you: following Jesus is a journey. It’s God leading His people home along a road.

So, here’s the first thing I want to lodge in your heart today. Discipleship — following Jesus — is not a moment. It’s a direction.

A lot of us have carried around a version of Christianity that was all about the moment. The moment you raised your hand at camp. The moment you walked the aisle. The moment you got baptized. And listen — those moments are precious. I’m not knocking them. But if your whole faith is a moment in the past that you’re hoping still counts, Mark would gently say: “That’s not quite it.”

Following Jesus isn’t a photograph. It’s a walk. The question isn’t “Did I have the moment?” It’s “Am I still on the road — still walking, still following, still moving in His direction — today?”

Some of you have a testimony you can date and time. Praise God. But the question this morning isn’t when you started walking. It’s whether you’re still on the way.

And church, this is exactly why we say what we say. Our vision at FBCC is this: every member on the discipleship pathway. Sit with those words, because we didn’t pick them by accident. Not every member has a testimony. Not every member who prayed the prayer once. Every member on the pathway — every member on the way. A pathway is a road, something you move along, step after step, in a direction. It assumes you’re still walking.

That’s Mark’s whole point in our own words. Every member on the discipleship pathway means every person in this room is still moving toward Jesus — not parked on a decision from ten years ago, but out on the road with Him today. Not “I got in,” but “I’m still walking” — seeing Him more clearly this year than last, letting Him touch our eyes again. So don’t hear a program. Hear an invitation to keep walking. Because the only question the way ever asks you is: are you still on it?

And if discipleship is a road, the obvious question is: where does it go? Here’s the thing — Jesus tells us. Not once, not twice, but three times. So let’s follow the road. Where does discipleship lead?

2. Discipleship Leads to the Cross

Right in the center of these three chapters, there’s a pattern. It happens three times, and it’s the engine that drives the whole journey. Let me show you the pattern, then what it does to us.

It has three beats, and it repeats three times.

Beat one: Jesus predicts His death. Chapter 8, verse 31 — “the Son of Man must suffer many things… and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Chapter 9, verse 31 — same thing. Chapter 10, verses 33–34 — He gets specific: they’ll condemn Him, mock Him, spit on Him, flog Him, kill Him. Three times, Jesus says it out loud: the road leads to a cross.

Beat two: the disciples completely miss it. Every time. First, Peter rebukes Him — “No, Lord, not that.” Second, chapter 9, verse 34 — right after Jesus talks about being killed, they’re walking down the road arguing about which of them is the greatest. He just told them He’s going to die, and they’re having a “who’s number one” contest. Third — this would be comedy if it weren’t so sad — Jesus finishes describing His own torture and death, and immediately James and John walk up: “Teacher, when you’re in your glory, can we have the two best seats? One on your right, one on your left?”

Every time He talks about the cross, they talk about a crown.

Beat three: Jesus redefines greatness. He doesn’t rebuke them and walk off; every time, He turns the moment into a lesson. First, chapter 8, verse 34: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Second, chapter 9, verse 35: “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” Third, chapter 10, verse 45 — the mountaintop of the whole section — “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Put those three corrections side by side and ask: what shape is Jesus pressing His disciples into?

Deny yourself. Take up the cross. Be last. Be a servant. Give your life away.

Here’s the answer, and it’s the heart of this whole sermon: the shape of a disciple is the same shape as the Master. Jesus goes to the Father by way of the cross — so the one who follows Him goes by way of self-denial and service. Theologians have a word for it: cruciformity. Cross-shaped. A cross-shaped life.

The way up is down. Cross before crown. Mature following of Jesus doesn’t look like getting more impressive. It looks like getting lower. It looks more and more like a cross.

That means dethroning yourself so Jesus can actually be Lord. Taking your own agenda, your carefully managed image, your assumption that you have a right to be first, your need to win the argument — and laying it all down. And then picking up a kind of love that actually costs you something. “It’s not about me anymore. Jesus is on the throne, not me.”

Denying yourself doesn’t mean thinking you’re garbage. It means trusting Jesus so much that you can finally stop making your whole life about you. That’s not a burden. If you’ve ever met someone who genuinely lives that way, you know — it’s the freest, lightest way to live there is.

Let me make this concrete, because “take up your cross” can float off into the abstract.

For a student, the cross might be telling your parents the truth about a grade when a lie would be so much smoother. For a young professional, it might be refusing to climb over people at work when that’s exactly how you get ahead. In a friendship, it might be being the one who apologizes first when you’re 90% sure you were right. In your family, it might be honoring your parents in a hard season, even when they don’t understand you and aren’t going to say thank you. In dating, it might be choosing the other person’s actual good over what you want in the moment. None of that gets applause. All of it is cross-shaped. All of it is the road.

And here’s what breaks your heart about the disciples. Every single time, they want glory without the road. They want the thrones; they just don’t want to walk to the cross. They want Resurrection Sunday without Good Friday. And that exact instinct sets up the sharpest question in the whole passage. So let’s go there.

3. Status or Sight? The One Question Jesus Asks Twice

Watch two scenes almost back-to-back, because Mark sets them up on purpose, and once you see it, it’ll mess with you a little.

Scene one, chapter 10, verse 36. James and John have just made their move for the best seats. And Jesus turns and asks: “What do you want me to do for you?”

Sit with that. It’s an incredibly generous question — practically a blank check. And they answer: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Give us the status. Give us the seats where everyone can see how important we are.

Now hold that. Same chapter, verse 51. Jesus is leaving Jericho, and a blind beggar named Bartimaeus is by the roadside, crying out for Him. Jesus stops, calls him over, and asks — word for word — the identical question: “What do you want me to do for you?”

Same question. Exact same words. And Bartimaeus answers: “Rabbi, let me see.”

Do you feel that? Same question, two completely different hearts. The insiders — the ones who’ve been with Jesus for years, who’ve seen everything — want status. The outsider — the blind beggar the crowd was trying to shush — wants sight.

The men on the inside said, “Give us the best seats.” The man on the outside said, “Let me see.” Mark is holding up a mirror, and the question is unavoidable.

Because Jesus is asking you that same question this morning, on the way: “What do you want Me to do for you?” And I don’t mean in some vague spiritual sense. I mean: if you’re honest, underneath all the church words — what are you actually here for? What do you actually want from Jesus?

Let me name what “status” looks like for people like us, because it hides well in church. It can look like a résumé. A GPA. The title you finally got — at work, or even here, “worship team,” “small group leader,” “the reliable one.” It wants to be seen as the strong Christian, the mature one, the one people come to for answers. It’s the constant background hum of managing your image. It can even look like keeping your parents proud, carrying the weight of being the kid who turned out right. And the most subtle one of all — status can look like using God. Treating Jesus like the cosmic assistant who’s supposed to bless your plans and hand you your dream. “Jesus, sit at my right hand and make my life work out.”

Sight is a completely different thing. Sight is when you stop performing — when you quit trying to be impressive to God and everybody watching, and just say, “I want to actually see You. I want to know You. Not use You — know You.” And here’s the catch, the reason most of us instinctively ask for status instead of sight: sight might cost you the very status you’ve been chasing. If you see Jesus clearly, you might see that His road leads down, not up — which could mean laying down the very thing you thought following God was supposed to get you. “Let me see” is a braver prayer than it sounds.

So this morning, do the honest math on your own heart. When you pray, are you asking for a better seat? Or are you asking to see?

And if you’re brave enough to ask for sight, the next question is: what does He actually teach you while you walk? What’s the curriculum on this road? Look with me at what fills the space between those big cross-sayings.

4. The Curriculum of the Road

Here’s something I love about how Mark tells this. Discipleship, in Mark, doesn’t happen in a classroom. No lecture hall, no syllabus handed out on day one. It happens on the road — in ordinary, unglamorous, real-life moments, one after another. And what’s tucked between the three cross-sayings is a whole curriculum of everyday following. Let me walk you quickly through the syllabus, because you’ll recognize your own life in it.

First subject: dependent prayer. Chapter 9 — a desperate father brings his suffering son, half-believes, and blurts out this honest prayer: “I believe; help my unbelief!” That’s on the curriculum — learning to come to Jesus, being honest about your own wobbly faith, and finding out He can work with that. If “I believe; help my unbelief” is the most honest prayer you can pray this week, that’s not a failing grade. That’s the class.

Second subject: humility. Right after they argue over who’s greatest, Jesus takes a little child, puts the kid in the middle of them, and says, “Whoever welcomes a child like this welcomes Me.” In that culture, a child had zero status — nothing to offer, couldn’t advance their career. And Jesus says: pay attention to the person who can do nothing for you. That’s the class on humility.

Third subject: integrity. Chapter 9 again — Jesus uses that jarring language about cutting off your hand or foot if it causes you to sin. He’s not being literal; He’s being deadly serious. Take sin seriously. Don’t manage it, don’t negotiate with it, don’t keep a comfortable little pet sin in the corner. Deal with it. That’s the class a lot of us skip.

Fourth subject: faithfulness. Chapter 10 opens with a hard conversation about marriage and divorce, and beneath the debate, Jesus points back to God’s design for covenant love — that we’re made for faithfulness, for commitment that keeps its promises, in a world that treats relationships as disposable. That’s on the road too.

Fifth subject: childlike receiving. They try to keep the little kids away from Jesus, and He’s indignant — “Let the children come to me… whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” The kingdom is not something you achieve. It’s something you receive, with empty, open hands, like a kid who just shows up expecting to be loved. For all us high-achievers, that’s a hard class.

Sixth subject: money and ambition. The rich young man runs up, does everything right, and then Jesus tells him to sell what he has, give to the poor, and come follow — and the man walks away sad, because he had great wealth. He couldn’t follow because his hands were too full to take Jesus’ hand. That’s the final exam that a lot of successful people fail.

Do you see the point? Jesus isn’t discipling them at a conference. He’s discipling them in traffic. In interruptions. In arguments on the road. In how they treat kids, money, their marriages, and their own honesty. And that’s how He disciples you, too — not mainly in the big spiritual moment, but in the ordinary Tuesday, the annoying interruption, the awkward conversation. The road is the classroom.

And here’s the tender thing — you can sit through this whole curriculum and still feel like your sight is blurry. You can know all six subjects and still feel foggy. If that’s you, don’t lose heart. Because that’s exactly where this section started — and exactly how it ends.

5. From Blindness to Sight — In Stages

Remember how we started, back in chapter 8? The blind man at Bethsaida — “people like trees, walking.” A two-stage healing. Now watch: at the end of the journey, in chapter 10, there’s another blind man, Bartimaeus. Two blind men, one at the start and one at the finish. Mark did that on purpose. They’re the frame around the whole picture. And they’re about far more than eyes.

Look at the first one again. Bethsaida — chapter 8, verses 22–26 — is the only miracle in all four Gospels that Jesus does in two stages. First blurry, then clear. And you have to ask — why? Did Jesus lose power halfway through? Did the miracle glitch? Of course not. He healed that man in two stages as a living parable — a picture acted out in front of the disciples so they’d understand what was happening to them. And the parable is this: sometimes sight comes gradually. Sometimes seeing Jesus clearly is a process, not a lightning bolt.

And there are the disciples in that mirror. Where are they in this story? They see that Jesus is the Christ — Peter said so. Real sight. But they don’t yet see that the Christ has to go to the cross. So they’re stuck at stage one. They see something; it’s just blurry. They’re the blind man at Bethsaida, walking around, going “people like trees” — waiting for the second touch.

Now here’s why this matters so much for us — and I want to say this as gently and as directly as I can, especially to those of you quietly wondering if something’s wrong with you.

If your vision feels blurry right now — if the faith you inherited feels out of focus, if you believe but it’s fuzzy, if you can say “Jesus is the Christ,” but you’re stuck at “people like trees, walking” — hear me: the story is not over. You are not a failure. You are not a fake. You might just be a person between the first and second touches. And the same Jesus who reached out and touched that man again is not finished touching you.

I’ve watched this in real life. I’ve watched people who could recite the whole faith at twelve go through a foggy stretch in college where they weren’t sure they believed any of it — and come out the other side seeing Jesus more clearly and loving Him more deeply than they ever did as a kid who just knew the answers. The fog wasn’t the end of their faith. The fog was the space between the touches.

So don’t quit in the blur. Don’t walk off the road just because it got foggy. Keep coming back for the second touch. Keep showing up. Keep saying, “Jesus, I’m still here, and my sight’s still blurry, so touch me again.” That’s not weak faith. That’s exactly the kind of faith this whole passage is trying to grow.

And speaking of the second touch — watch what Bartimaeus does the moment he can finally see. Because it’s the whole point of everything we’ve said this morning.

6. Follow “On the Way” — Today

The very last line of this journey is the sentence I want you to take home. Chapter 10, verse 52. Jesus says to Bartimaeus, “Go on your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately — watch — he recovered his sight and “followed him on the way.”

There it is one more time — “on the way.” Bartimaeus gets his sight, and what does he do with it? He doesn’t run home. He doesn’t go back to his old life on the roadside. He gets up and starts walking the road — the road that leads to the cross — right behind Jesus. That’s what real sight does. Sight doesn’t just make you see. Sight makes you follow.

And that’s the invitation for every one of us this morning. Not just to see Jesus more clearly, but to get up and follow Him on the way — today. Let me give you four pictures of what that looks like, right here in this room.

One: own it — don’t just inherit it. For a lot of you, the faith you have is your parents’ faith. That’s a beautiful gift and a real head start — but a borrowed faith cannot walk this road. You cannot follow Jesus on your parents’ legs. At some point, the faith you were handed has to become the faith you have chosen. Nobody could believe in Bartimaeus. Somewhere on this journey, you have to stop being a passenger in your family’s faith and start walking on your own two feet. Is your faith yours yet? Not your parents’. Yours.

Two: come honest, not polished. Here’s a tiny detail that wrecks me. Right before Bartimaeus comes to Jesus, it says he threw off his robe. For a beggar, that robe was everything — his coat, his blanket, the thing he spread out to catch coins, his whole security. And he flung it aside to get to Jesus. He came with nothing. No image, no polish. Just, “Rabbi, let me see.” And that’s what Jesus responds to — not your polish, your honesty. We are so good at coming polished. We show up, we smile, “I’m good, how are you.” Jesus was never impressed by your image. He responds to your honesty. Throw off the robe. Come as you actually are.

Three: walk it together. Notice — the Twelve walked this road as a group. A messy group that constantly argued, misunderstood, and got it wrong. But they walked it together, even in their failure. You were never meant to follow Jesus alone. This road is not a solo hike. So find the people who will pick up crosses right next to you, who’ll walk with you through the foggy stretch and not flinch. If you don’t have those people, get them. Don’t walk the way alone.

Four: keep walking through the blur. I’ll say it once more, because you need it. Sight comes in stages, so don’t quit the road in a foggy season. When it gets blurry — and it will — that’s usually not the moment to leave. That’s usually the moment right before the second touch. The temptation, when your faith goes fuzzy, is to drift off the road quietly; nobody would even notice. Don’t. Keep walking. The second touch tends to come to the people who stayed on the way.

Own it. Come honest. Walk together. Keep walking through the blur. That’s how you follow Him on the way — starting today, starting this week.

Closing

So let me bring it home.

You can spend your whole life around church — nursery, camp, baptism, youth group, all of it — and still see “people like trees, walking.” You can know every right answer and still have blurry sight. If that’s you this morning, you’re in good company. You’re standing right where Peter stood, right where the disciples stood — real sight, still blurry, on the way.

But hear the good news of the whole passage: the road is not finished, and neither is Jesus. He is not done with you. And today, right now, He is asking you the same question He asked the men who wanted thrones and the man who wanted to see: “What do you want Me to do for you?”

Don’t ask Him for a better seat. Don’t ask Him for a status you’ll have to keep defending the rest of your life. Ask Him for the one thing worth wanting. Ask Him like a blind man on the side of the road: “Rabbi, let me see.”

And then — the moment you can see — do what Bartimaeus did. Don’t sit back down. Get up. And follow Him on the way.

Let me invite you into a moment of quiet before we respond. Be honest with Jesus for one minute — no image, no polish, nobody watching. Name it: what have you actually been asking Him for? Status, or sight? Just tell Him the truth.

And then, wherever you are, pray the bravest, simplest prayer in this whole passage. Just four words: “Rabbi, let me see.”

Let’s pray.