His disciples are being taught by someone who knows, who has authority, someone who is the King in God’s kingdom, indeed the Son who speaks for the Father.
In a culture where only tolerance is tolerated it has been the practice for a while to “normalise” Jesus’ teaching so that it sounds like the kinds of things we like to hear. It is brought within the normal range of our understanding and preferences. It is also varied so that “Jesus” is able to speak in contradictory ways to different groups of people.
But on the surface Mark is not reporting Jesus like that. And the deeper we go into Mark the more difficult Jesus becomes. We sympathise with the disciples, but perhaps we should feel embarrassed with them.
One of the unhelpful things that the monastic movement has left us is the idea of different levels of disciples. It is another unbiblical tradition that obscures the real demands Jesus places on all who follow him. Most of us want to be better disciples, and it is easy to grab on to a course or system or set of practices that we hope will give us a leg up. But these nearly always end up as just another set of traditions.
What does Jesus want of his disciples? How should we live? When he said to keep a sharp look out for the leaven of the Pharisees, what was it that he did not want fermenting in their brain?
Dale