The disciples were truly committed to Jesus, but every now and then the Son of God acted in unreasonable ways that made them want to leave. Here are six times the disciples asked Jesus if they could go home, ranked by how mad it made Jesus.
6. The time the disciples wanted to turn back while walking 200 miles to find a woman Jesus had heard might be nearsighted: When Jesus heard a rumor that there might be a nearsighted woman in Judea, he rounded up the disciples and set out to restore her sight. After walking for days through the desert in sandals, Simon piped up to ask if the disciples could head home to take a breather since they were exhausted and they’d already seen Jesus bring sight to much blinder people before. Jesus tersely replied, “No one’s keeping you here,” but he clearly meant that as a test, because he picked up the pace for the final hundred miles on the way to bless the nearsighted woman with slightly better vision. By a long shot, this was Jesus’ kindest response to a disciple’s request to go home.
5. The time the disciples asked Jesus if they could go home after he made them watch him turn the same glass of water into wine 300 times: The first time Jesus turned water into wine was a divine miracle that left all the disciples awestruck, but by the 300th time, that particular miracle had grown pretty tedious. When the disciples finally decided they were tired of watching Jesus turn the same glass of water into wine and back over and over and asked to leave, Jesus wasn’t too thrilled. He started telling them a parable called “The Ungrateful Servant” that he was clearly making up on the spot. While the servant in the story was named “Marcus,” Jesus made direct eye contact with the disciple Mark whenever he said it. Jesus was definitely pissed at the disciples, but this wasn’t the angriest he ever got when they asked to go home.
4. The time the disciples wanted to leave after Jesus gave them leprosy just so he could cure them of it: Having already cured all of the leper colonies in Nazareth, Jesus decided to stay busy by giving the disciples leprosy just so he could cure them. Since the disciples were already well-acquainted with this miracle, they asked if they could head home for a bit, which made Jesus so mad he threatened to turn them into lepers for life. Jesus was definitely pretty pissed, which is why this incident comes in at No. 4 on this list, but there were definitely times when he got way madder at the disciples when they asked if they could go home.
3. When the disciples tried to get out of accompanying Jesus to a funeral where Jesus planned to cure a dead man of male-pattern baldness: One time, Jesus made the disciples watch him go up to a bald dead man and use his divine powers to make the corpse grow hair. This miracle didn’t exactly ignite the disciples’ curiosity, since it basically boiled down to watching a dead guy grow a mullet while remaining dead, so they all asked Jesus if they could just leave and study some sermons at home. Needless to say, Jesus got pretty annoyed at this, and he punished the disciples by giving them all 7-foot-long ponytails that immediately grew back when cut.
2. The time the disciples wanted to leave the Last Supper after they finished eating but Jesus kept multiplying the food: The disciples got full pretty quickly at the Last Supper, but unfortunately, Jesus refused to end the meal and instead kept using his miraculous powers to multiply the food over and over for hours. Finally, after Jesus had divinely conjured 36 courses into existence, the disciple Andrew said that he was feeling tired and sick and asked Jesus if it would be okay if he went home. Jesus got so mad that he ran outside, found Pontius Pilate, and begged him to crucify him on the spot. “There is no point in living if my own disciples don’t want to eat all of this delicious food with me,” Jesus yelled as he began building a cross that Pontius Pilate could crucify him on. Pontius Pilate enthusiastically nailed Jesus to the cross, and Jesus spent his entire crucifixion whining about his horrible disciples. This was one of the angriest reactions Jesus had to a disciple’s request to go home, which earns it the No. 2 spot on this list.
1. The time the disciples asked to go home after Jesus rose from the dead and made them watch him give a bunch of sheep echolocation: After spending one day in the tomb, Jesus rose from the dead because he remembered that he meant to give sheep the power of echolocation before he died. As Jesus painstakingly walked around to every single one of the several hundred sheep in the pasture, the disciples grew bored and started backing away toward the road. When Jesus asked, “Where do you think you’re going?” the disciple Thomas replied, “To my house, Lord, where we do not need to watch you make the sheep of the fields shriek so displeasingly.” Jesus became so angry that he nailed himself back to the cross and died for an additional two days to teach the disciples an important lesson about loyalty. This is without a doubt the maddest Jesus ever got when the disciples asked to go home.
