But it is hard to see that such directness had a different result. On three separate occasions, for instance, he spoke quite clearly about the certainly of his dying and rising at Jerusalem, but when he came to those mighty acts themselves, his disciples might as well never have heard a word he said. The mystery of the kingdom, it seems, is a radical mystery: even when you tell people about it in so many words, it remains permanently intractable to all their attempts to make sense of it. In any case,