They brought to Jesus a blind man and begged him to touch him. Despite Jesus ordering the crowd to keep quiet about the miracles which God was working through him (cf. Mark 1:44, 5:43, 7:36), his reputation continued to spread and preceded him to the places he was to later visit. This resulted in many sick people being brought to Jesus so that he could lay his hands on them (touch them) and restore them to wholeness. In today’s Gospel reading, a blind man is brought to Jesus. Those who brought him beg Jesus to touch him, and in a surprising move, Jesus not only ‘touches’ him, but he does so in a rather ‘crude’ way. For as Jesus laid his hands on the blind man, he proceeded to put spittle in the man’s eyes. It was something that must have shocked those who witnessed it. But it was not a shocking detail to Mark the evangelist. In fact, he might have been shocked had Jesus not made such a move at all! For Mark, the Incarnation is a very practical thing. God assuming a human nature and coming to dwell in our midst is not simply an idea. The Incarnation is all about God getting his hands dirty, so to speak. God’s presence to us has to be felt, touched, and tasted. God must involve the self in the nitty gritty of human affairs. To Mark, this is precisely what Jesus was doing when he put spittle in the blind man’s eyes. Jesus would have simply said the word and the blind man would have recovered his sight. But had he done so, he would have remained separated from those whose lives he had come to change. Had Jesus strived to stay apart from his brothers and sisters, especially those whom the society had put down, then the Incarnation would have not made much sense. God assuming the flesh only becomes complete when he can be touched and when he touches back. Jesus touched the man in order to show those who were watching that the man’s blindness had not placed a barrier between him (the blind man) and them. He placed his hands on the man to show the people that in addition to the desire to see, what the man had also missed was human touch. Part of the Good News which Jesus came proclaiming includes the removal of the barriers that men and women have placed between themselves. True healing cannot take place until such barriers are removed and done away with just as Jesus did.