While they were all amazed at his every deed,
Jesus said to his disciples,
"Pay attention to what I am telling you.
The Son of Man is to be handed over to men."
Precisely while they were basking in amazement Jesus told them a second time about his impending suffering. They might have thought he was a buzz kill to do so right when they were riding high from wonder at his deeds, especially so for Peter, James, and John, who had only recently seen him transfigured and glorious.
But they did not understand this saying
The disciples couldn't make the transition from amazement at Jesus to his prediction of the cross. They were so overwhelmed by his apparently limitless power that they couldn't even process it when they were told about the passion. They heard the words, but did not understand them. Yet it was not entirely in one ear and out the other. They knew there was something they missed, but were afraid to ask him. Somewhere deep inside they instinctively rebelled against the idea that Jesus would encounter difficulty. They had hitched the wagons of their egos to Jesus and, apparently, to the idea that he could solve all of their problems. They therefore took it personally when this hope of eternal comfort and earthly glory was put at risk. They preferred to look the other way.
its meaning was hidden from them
so that they should not understand it
It was not merely their own failings that prevented them from understanding. Jesus would not have been a very impressive teacher if such had been the case. Rather, he allowed mistakes and misunderstandings so that, when they learned, they could learn as they were meant to learn. For instance, there was the possibility that if they had fully realized what Jesus had meant then and there they would have concluded that they ought no longer to follow him, because who would follow a messiah doomed to experience such apparent failure? They needed the gift of the Holy Spirit, not poured forth until Jesus himself experienced the cross, in order to hold in dynamic tension both the suffering and the glory of the messiah. Without the Spirit the human mind would always insist that the one could have no relation to the other. And from this perspective suffering was always proof positive that the glory was only an illusion.
The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.
Apparent failures of understanding actually served as preparation, as pieces of what would eventually fall into place to make sense of the whole. They would eventually remember these words, even though they hardly heard them at the time, and grasp something important about the suffering of Jesus. This prediction would help them to realize that suffering was not merely something that happened to Jesus against his will, but that it was a part of his plan from the beginning, which is why he alluded to the passage from Isaiah about the suffering servant who was handed over for the sins of the people. It was not for nothing that he would suffer, not because he couldn't avoid it if he desired, but for the sake of the world's salvation. When the disciples experienced the dark night of the passion, and each in their own way failed to act as a friend to Jesus, they could look back on these words and remember that, for Jesus, this was a part of the plan. It didn't make him love them any less for knowing it. So perhaps there was hope that even after the cross they could again somehow be restored to his friendship. The reality would far exceed anything they dared to hope. It was precisely through the cross that the unshakable joy hinted at by Zechariah would finally be realized.
Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion!
See, I am coming to dwell among you, says the LORD.
Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD on that day,
and they shall be his people and he will dwell among you.
This means that for us the Lord is meant to be "an encircling wall of fire" and the glory in our midst. But perhaps we struggle to believe this. We may know it in our minds but still need a deeper revelation of it in our hearts. If this is so, let us remember that it is from the Spirit poured forth upon the cross that this promise is made available. We drink of it through the resurrection, but never apart from the fact that Jesus handed himself over for us. A resurrection that ignored that fact would be of no profit to us. But when the love that Jesus did in fact demonstrate manages to penetrate our egos it is then that we will truly be open to the realization of all he has done, and open to all he still desires to do through us.
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