Peter’s Declaration of Jesus’ Messiahship

Mark For Everyone

MARK 8.22–30
Peter’s Declaration of Jesus’ Messiahship...

...It’s quite a walk from Bethsaida to Caesarea Philippi. Even in a car, on modern roads, the trip takes an hour or two. Bethsaida is near the north shore of the Sea of Galilee; Caesarea Philippi is away up north, on the slopes of Mount Hermon, by the source of the River Jordan. Climb a little higher, and on a clear day you can see right down the Jordan valley. Why did Jesus take the disciples all that way, a good distance from the normal to-and-fro around the lake, to have this conversation?

We’d better think hard about this, because this passage is really the centre-point, the turning-point, of Mark’s gospel. This, too, is a mountain slope; a clear day’s thinking at this point will give you a view not only back through the gospel story we’ve already read, but on, down that same Jordan valley, to where the road, and the story, turn uphill to the final confrontation in Jerusalem...


Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright