Jesus was already well known by this time as a worker of miracles so the leper knew who to see. The request to be “clean” is both medically and ceremonially. Even if he was cured, he is “unclean” until the procedure has been followed to resolve that. His request isn’t really even a request, he acknowledges that if Jesus wants to, He can heal him. Given that Jesus can heal people without even seeing them, the reaching out to touch the leper should’ve made Him unclean, but instead the reverse happened. Seeing someone willingly touch a leper would’ve been shocking to anyone watching. He tells the former leper to keep the miracle to himself but otherwise go follow the law regarding making himself clean again. Drawing attention at this time was not the plan.

Next a centurion (high ranking Roman soldier) approaches and asks Jesus (who he addresses as Lord) to heal his paralyzed servant. The “Lord” either suggesting he knew Jesus was the Messiah or just a very respectful “sir”. In either case, he approached with absolute certainty that Jesus could accomplish this. Jesus says he’ll swing by the centurion’s home (abnormal for a Jew to visit a gentile) and the Roman not only declares himself unworthy to host Jesus (!) but says “Just say the word and he will be healed”. Which is a wild level of understanding for a gentile. The Roman saw that Jesus had authority over the natural world, so a word is all that’s required. Jesus marvels at the centurion’s faith and tells the Jews that none in Israel have this level of faith and the next line drives home the point: you should expect to see more than just your fellow Jews in heaven.

Following some more miracles, a scribe approaches. Scribes were often associated with Pharisees and, themselves, often teachers, so the scribe addressing Jesus as “teacher” would raise an eyebrow. One could conclude that this was someone looking to spy perhaps. Become famous? Jesus tells him that the animals have a place to rest but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head. As in, this journey isn’t going to be cozy, are you still going to be super eager to tag along? Also unless I missed one, this marks the first instance of Jesus calling himself the Son of Man, thought to be a reference to the prophecy in Daniel which uses that language. The name suggests the greatest of all human sons. Another would-be disciple says “let me just go bury my father”. Jesus’s response sounds harsh to us but that’s because we forget He is king and not some hippie like the culture would prefer. When the king says move, you move. “Follow me” means “now”. There’s some thought here that this wasn’t “hey the funeral is in 10 minutes, I’ll be right back”, he may have been asking for as much as a year, based on Jewish tradition. Also, Jesus routinely told people that the commitment to Christ came before even commitment to family. If you’re not willing to follow Jesus unless it’s comfortable (scribe) or socially approved (bury father) then you weren’t serious to begin with.

We move to a scene of a vicious storm at sea. The lifelong fishermen seemed quite convinced they were going to die in these conditions so it’s reasonable to think that Jesus sleeping through it was a sight to behold in itself. They wake Him up and like anyone who was soundly sleeping, He’s not thrilled. He rebukes their lack of faith, as though the Son of God could be drowned on a sinking ship. He tells the storm to cut it out and it promptly does. His disciples reacting with shock at His power even after time with Him shows they still didn’t quite get it. You’ll get used to this. If I may be so bold, His apostles are kind of charmingly bad at following Him. They very often don’t get what He’s saying, are rarely on the same page as Him, and routinely seem like they need to be beaten over the head with miracles to get the picture and even then you’re not sure. But I think (again I am no teacher) that there’s a reason for that: they’re human. We’re not that great at following God. We need to be beaten over the head. They demonstrate that even looking Jesus in the eye on a day to day basis, they still had doubts. So in a sense, of COURSE you’re going to. The point is that you try and you keep coming back and asking for more faith, not signs. Jesus walked this world with them in his physical life. He loved them. Gave the keys to His earthly church to them and that’s in full view of them kinda screwing up all the time. So if ever you struggle and feel like you’re not doing it right, we look to the earliest Christians for example. God knows you’re not going to get it 100%. Just keep at it.

Now we have some demons. If you think demons aren’t real or are just a metaphor, you should read this until you change your mind because Jesus seems to think otherwise and one of you has to be wrong. Demons are fallen angels that joined Satan in rebellion against God. They address Jesus correctly as they know full well who He is and acknowledge that He has authority to judge them and enforce Hell on them. They know what’s coming to them but just seem to dispute that it’s too early. Knowing they’re about to get bopped, they plea to at least be sent inside pigs rather than banished to the abyss to idle until judgement. Sure. So they go in the pigs and the pigs all drown themselves. Unsure what happened to the demons beyond that. The gentile owners of the pigs aren’t thrilled (naturally) and report to the city. Between pig genocide and banishing demons from people, the residents of the city didn’t want the drama and asked Jesus to leave. Rather than being awed, they were scared. In Mark, there’s a verse about Jesus telling a gentile that DID respect Jesus to stay home and instead tell people about God’s mercies. So…. an early evangelization.