This episode was dense with stories drawn from the Gospels as well as advancing extra-biblical characters’ stories.

At no point do the disciples figure out exactly how and when Jesus heals a person. They never stop wondering how they can can a handle on Jesus so they can predict his actions. At one point one disciple comments to another, “We are his students, not his equals.” The desire to predict Jesus’s actions, to get him to reliably do what we want, has been a challenge for disciples from the beginning.

When reflecting on the death of one of the disciples Jesus says, “This is the way of all the earth. For now.” The recognition of the universality of death is necessary, but easy to make. If we take off our willful blinders we see death all around us. We know we will all die. It’s the second sentence where Jesus says the unexpected. Death reigns over us all – but its reign will come to an end. This saying of Jesus is not from the Bible, but it reflects his plan to deal death a mortal blow.

A disciple is grieving the death of another. Peter comes to Jesus wondering what he, The Rock, can say that will help. Jesus tells him that being with the friend who is grieving is more important than finding words to say.

Thinking back to his own grieving over the loss of a loved one, Peter mentions going through a time where he “Resented Jesus’s miracles for others” when he didn’t get one for himself. With the perspective of time Peter recognized that the time of loss “Made me desperate for him [Jesus].”

James and John reflect on their relationship. All their life they had been James AND John, a pair, not individuals. When Jesus sent them out two by two each one went out with another. During that time John bonded deeply with Thomas. We’ve seen the division Jesus creates within families elsewhere in The Chosen storyline. Here we see the flipside of Jesus’ devaluation of natural family bonds. New and deeper bonds are created between his followers based on their shared faith in him. This is still one of the hardest things for disciples to hear today.

Asked about his prayer life, the deeply grieving disciple says, “I do my prayers but its hard to mean them sometimes.” What’s the difference between saying something and meaning something? How are the two actions related? What is their relative value in our life as disciples?

In conversation with Little James and Thaddeus, Jesus observes of the disciples that they are expending great effort to either show themselves to be right or to show others to be wrong.” This expending effort to establish our self-righteousness has not lessened in all these years.

A Gentile who has come to faith in Jesus says to the disciples he is opening up to, “I have heard him say words that unscramble a lifetime of mystery.” This ought to be a common experience for new Christians, for people our churches are reaching through evangelism. If this is going to happen in our setting, we’ll need to offer more than an encounter with a voluntary organization that fills their lives with busyness and regular eating opportunities. Don’t get me wrong: I love the opportunities we have to eat together and see them as potentially being a way we copy Jesus’ own ministry (though as an aside, this aspect of Jesus’ ministry has not been highlighted yet in The Chosen). But what people need is an encounter with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. This Gentile experienced real life change and his world was turned over because of it. There’s great excitement that comes from seeing this happen. We’ll probably not experience that kind of excitement as long as we’re satisfied with shuffling sheep from church to church.

In conversation with Matthew and Peter the Gentile highlights a perceived barrier to his coming to Jesus: “I’m an outsider.” By that he meant a “non – Jew,” assuming that Jesus as Messiah was for the Jews only. Peter has learned enough by this point to tell him that as an outsider he’s exactly the kind of person Jesus would be looking for. Those who have been watching the program will know that Peter’s ability to say this is not just based on his knowledge of Jesus’ teaching, but on the fact that Peter himself had been building a relationship with this Gentile. He doesn’t know him as just “a Gentile” – or more pejoratively, “a Roman enemy,” but as “Gaius.”

As soon as the Gentile convert gets home from his encounter with Jesus the first thing he does is extinguish the candles at the household lares, the family altar to the gods. In so doing he is renouncing his allegiance to those gods.

Partially at the urging of their mother, James and John finally ask Jesus their question. After all, Jesus has told them to ASK, right? They ask, “When you come into your kingdom can one of us sit on your right, the other on your left?” To James and John this question makes perfect sense. They KNOW who Jesus is. They KNOW he is the Messiah. They KNOW the Messiah is bringing the kingdom. They KNOW what the kingdom is. Jesus is in shock that they could ask the question, telling them they have no idea what they’re asking for. The filmmakers bring together here the story of this encounter in Mark 10 with Jesus’ statement about what awaits him from Mark 8 (right after Peter’s confession of his identity). Jesus tells them that they’re “acting like Gentiles,” and acting on a Gentile presumption of what the kingdom is like. “This is not how it will be among you,” Jesus says.

In the next scene with Jesus we see him in mourning. The only words we hear are Jesus praying Psalm 38. In context, this is a Psalm of confession of sin. Jesus, however, is not confessing sin, but laying out his burden of failure before the Father. He’s spent so much time with the disciples, seeking to teach them his ways and impart his character. And yet even those he’s spent the most time with, those who have seen the greatest miracles, don’t seem to get it. As one who has felt a similar burden of failure in recent years I found this comforting.