Monday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 12, 2024

Mark 8, 11-13

The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. He sighed from the depth of his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” Then he left them, got into the boat again, and went off to the other shore.

St. Mark places the text used for today’s Gospel Reading directly after his account of the Lord’s feeding of the four thousand.  While there is no reason to question the chronological order of these events, Mark is probably also conscious of the irony here: the Pharisees demand a sign for the Lord Jesus just after Jesus has performed a most remarkable sign.  This points to the almost willful blindness of the Pharisees to the meaning of the Lord’s actions.  

“The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.”  The Pharisees “came out”, not necessarily “came forward”.  Mark describes the Pharisees movement in terms of a military action.  The last part of the sentence could also be translated as “seeking his sign from heaven, testing him”, which helps us better understand what the Pharisees wanted.  They were not interested in signs on earth but one in heaven — in the sky — signaling divine approbation.  They are asking him to prove that he is the Messiah, though he has not claimed to be the Messiah.  To this point in Mark’s Gospel, he has not referred to himself as “the Son of Man”, either.  It is their assumption that they demand he validate.  By doing so, they are attempting to force Almighty God to prove something to them, violating the law, “You shall not test the Lord your God, as you tested him in the place of temptation” (Deuteronomy 6, 16), referencing the occasion on which the Hebrews refused to believe that God could give them water in the desert: “Why have you brought out the assembly of the Lord into the wilderness, that both we and our cattle should die?” (Numbers 20, 12).  

The Pharisees want a sign, but they expect God to give them the kind of sign they will accept, on their own terms.  The Lord Jesus “sighed from the depth of his spirit”, as though throwing their foolishness back in their faces.  “Why does this generation seek a sign?”  That is, they do not have to seek them for they abound all around them in the miracles he has performed.  Indeed, St. John, in his Gospel, refers to his miracles exclusively as “signs”.  By “this generation” Jesus refers to the people of his time and also to ours, and particularly to those who read the Gospels and still insist the Jesus prove to them personally that he is God.  The problem with people asking for signs is that the sign is never clear enough for them, or exactly what they wanted to see, and so one sign is never enough.  

“Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.”  In Matthew 12, 39 Jesus says this and adds, “except for the sign of Jonah the Prophet”.  These would seem to be separate occasions, however.  The fact is that the time for signs is over.  The Old Testament times was the age of signs.  But now has arrived the time of the fulfillment of these signs.  Now is the time of the reality.

“Then he left them, got into the boat again, and went off to the other shore.”  The Lord had nothing further to say to them.  We see him as the master of the situation.  The Pharisees attempted to put him on the defensive with their demand for a sign which they did not believe he could provide or that God would provide (if they had, would they put themselves at risk of the wrath of the One who gave the sign?).  He leaves them thwarted, not deigning to answer their demand.  If they had come to him as Nicodemus did in John 3, 1, and asked the meaning of the works he had performed, he would have taught them, but they came in bad faith, issuing orders.

How necessary for us to see the signs of God’s will which he does give us, to accept them, and to seek to perform what they indicate.