Mark 9:28-32: in context

After Jesus casts out the spirit the disciples could not, they ask him privately why they failed. This kind, he tells them, can come out only by prayer. Then, traveling quietly through Galilee, Jesus turns again to the hardest lesson, telling his disciples plainly: the Son of Man is going to be handed over to men, and they will kill him, and after three days he will rise. But they did not understand, and they were afraid to ask him.

Two things sit in this short passage. First, Jesus' answer about the failed exorcism: this kind comes out only by prayer. The disciples had tried to do the work of God in their own strength, on the momentum of past successes, and it did not work; some things, Jesus says, yield only to prayer, to a real dependence on God rather than a technique or a routine. It is a reminder that certain battles cannot be won by effort or method alone but only by the kind of dependence that prayer expresses. Second, and more poignant, Jesus tells them clearly that he will die and rise, and they do not understand and are afraid to ask. He could not have said it more plainly, handed over, killed, raised on the third day, and it simply would not fit into their picture of the Messiah, so they did not grasp it, and they were too afraid to ask him to explain. There is something very human in that fear to ask. The truth was too disturbing, too far outside what they expected, so rather than face it they let it pass without questioning. Sometimes we do the same with the hard sayings of Jesus, half-hearing them, not understanding, and afraid to press in because we sense the answer will cost us something. The disciples' failure to grasp the cross was, in part, a failure of nerve to ask.

Do I press in to understand the hard sayings of Jesus, especially about the cross, or do I let them pass half-understood, afraid to ask because I sense the answer will unsettle me?