disclosing new worlds

Monday, 10 April 2006

Easter Day Year B

Acts 10: 34-43                      NRSV text
1 Corinthians 15: 1-11          NRSV text
Mark 16: 1-8                         NRSV text

 

Flight, terror, amazement and the silence of fear.  Happy Easter, Mary, Mary and Salome!  Hardly an Easter text, is it?  Where is the joy and wonder?  Where is the delighted astonishment and awe in the presence of resurrection?  Let’s remember that the earliest manuscripts of Mark end the gospel at this point!  It’s as bad as Gone with the Wind.  I say that because I saw that film when I was about 12.  I remember sitting through four hours of film, and wondering how on earth the story could be resolved.  And what was I given?  Scarlett O’Hara’s “Tomorrow is another day!”  Thanks a bunch!  I felt robbed.  In fact, it still rankles, as you may well gather reading this.  There was no resolution.  All the hares that had been set running – compellingly and grippingly – just ran off the screen.  They ran and ran into the cinematic fade-out.  And here, at the end of Mark’s story of Jesus, we have another Gone with the Wind – or is it just Gone …?

The sense of anticlimax and frustration could not have been more cleverly done!  We arrive with the women at the tomb.  We see, through their eyes, that the stone has been moved – rolled away.  We’re wondering what on earth we’re going to encounter when we step inside the tomb with them.  And what do we see?  Not Jesus, but a young man in white robe.  Aha!  So this is what happened to the young man who fled naked from Gethsemane.  He’s here!  And now he speaks (v6) and tells them, “Do not be alarmed!”  How very reassuring … NOT!  Try and imagine what a stand-up comic like Billy Connelly or Greg Proops would be able to do with this material.  It’s a gift!  The women have steeled themselves to confront the mangled, smelly corpse of Jesus, and he’s gone.  Instead, a strange young man in martyr’s robes is there, and his first words are, “It’s okay!”  Does he expect them to say, “Oh, thank goodness!  I was really worried for a second, just there …”  No it’s not okay!  It’s terrifying and mysterious and distressing!  Don’t try and tell us it’s okay when it manifestly isn’t!

Then he goes on, “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.”  Well, yeeees!  I mean, how many other corpses did they expect to find???  And then a wonderful statement of the obvious: “He’s not here.  Look, there is the place they laid him”.  They know he’s not there!  That’s the whole point, isn’t it?  And they’re staring at the place where he ought to be, and probably looking around the tomb to see if they could have missed anything as obvious as a corpse wrapped in a sheet …  And finally, the “explanation” – so unhelpful as to be positively crass: “He has been raised.”  Raised?  What does that mean? By what? By whom?  Taken where?  Are we seriously expected to think that this is helpful?  Should the women say, “Oh!  That explains it!  Thanks.  Well, we obviously don’t need all these spices, so we’ll be getting off back home.  You have a nice day!” 

It’s great theatre.  This is an account that hovers on the edge of slapstick.  Hovers, but doesn’t teeter over the brink, because we readers know what it means.  We already live on the other side of resurrection.  We thrill with the excitement of it: this is Easter.  It’s resurrection time!  So when the young man tells them to go and tell his disciples – especially Peter – that Jesus is not dead anymore and that they will see him, we’re already anticipating the next, wonderful scene when the women rush into the room, breathless with excitement, and blurt out their story.  Go on – write the scene for yourself.  And then read what happens.  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid”.  End of book!  See what I mean about Gone with the Wind?  Here is the greatest news ever in the history of humankind and the only people with the secret run off in abject terror and say … nothing!

 

“The way of the cross?  Yes.  The way of resurrection?  No!”

We need to remember that these are the women who have walked the way of the cross with Jesus.  Unlike the male disciples, they have not tried to dissuade Jesus from the path, nor have they abandoned him.  They’ve “gone the distance” from Galilee to Jerusalem to Golgotha and to the tomb.  They have not denied him, as Peter has. They have been prepared to “lose their lives for his sake”.  And now they come to pay him their final honours: a proper burial, followed by mourning and regular vigil at the tomb.

I think Mark is trying to tell us something vital about the shock factor of resurrection.  The women cannot cope with it.  They can cope with suffering, death and despair.  That is part of life, however difficult and tragic.  It belongs within the imaginative framework of a pre-Easter universe.  It does not shatter their devotion or their faith.  But resurrection is something else.  It is something so totally, shatteringly new and unexpected that it tears the fabric of their universe to shreds and reduces them to terrified silence.  They can cope with the way of the cross.  But the way of resurrection proves to be their own Gethsemane.  Here, in the garden (if that is where the tomb is), they, like their male counterparts, flee in panic.  The way of resurrection is a step too far - at least for the moment.

 

The process of “finding one’s life”

Moving from Good Friday (losing one’s life for the sake of the gospel) to Easter Sunday (finding/saving one’s life) is to move from one universe into another new, hitherto unimagined one.  There are no compass bearings.  There is nothing certain.  Part of our Easter “task” as disciples is to confront again the extraordinary sense of crisis that resurrection occasions.  This is not just a piece of biographical information about Jesus: it is about changing the rules of the universe.  We cannot remain the same.  We cannot live in the same way, or share the old priorities.  The old norms no longer work.  The hard truth is that it is easier to live among the tombs than to step into the new dawn of resurrection.  Losing one’s life is easier than finding it again in the risen Christ.

If we read Mark’s gospel in its longer version (ie beyond 16:8), we note the emphasis on “telling”.  There is the same dynamic in each incident: Jesus appears to someone, they tell the others, who do not initially believe, but by the end of the gospel (16:20) they are all out and bout, spreading the good news everywhere. 

Whatever we want to make of the text at this juncture, we need to recognise that there is process involved of learning to live with resurrection – learning to live and find our bearings in a radically different universe.  Part of the difficulty is coming to terms with the end of everything (which Mark presents Jesus’ crucifixion as being).  There is an element of radical decision-making involved – and then a process of growing into that decision!  John speaks about in terms of moving from darkness into Light, and from death into Life.  His Jesus calls it “being born again”.  Paul speaks of it as “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).  Everything “old” has died and is buried; everything has become “new”.

There is nothing “obvious” or comfortable about resurrection or about Christian faith.  To “understand” resurrection is to realise just how terrifying it is, because it is about leaving the old behind and stepping into a future where the only thing that is assured is that “Jesus has gone ahead, and we will see him” (Mark 16:7).

 

“If Christ has not been raised, then our faith is in vain”

This verse from 1 Corinthians 15 (v14) is not part of the lectionary passage for today.  Yet it is the climax of Paul’s preaching about what is most important (v3): Jesus was crucified and was raised on the third day (v4).  A dead Jesus is a tragic hero and a martyr.  All that we can do is to follow him, and at best “lose our lives for his sake”.  We have not yet “found” our lives!  Paul doesn’t mean, “At least, if you died for Jesus, you found something worth dying for!”  Christian faith is also about what is worth living for!  Resurrection is more than a promise that our living and dying like Christ will make a difference to the future of the world: it is the promise that we will share in that future!  And it is a promise of life now, in this world.

Resurrection, he will go on to argue, transforms Jesus’ death from something that happened just to him into the gateway into life for the whole of created reality.  It transforms Jesus from a martyred prophet (history is littered with them) into the Second Adam – the one who gives life to all of humanity.  This is the promise of release and liberation from the endless cycle of death and despair.  Resurrection is the announcement of the victory of Jesus over the Strong Man and all the powers that enslave, stifle, and kill.

Resurrection, he will go on to stress, is something that happens to bodies (vv 35ff).  This is important.  Paul picks up on the biblical link between sin and death.  It is possible to read this in “purely” theological terms – as though Paul were operating in the realm of theory.  He isn’t!  “Sin” is what we do as embodied people.  We use our bodies to live and act, to hurt, oppress, and injure others.  “Sin” is concrete.  Paul’s whole stress in this letter is on bodies – hence his concern with the “body life” of the Church and the way in which this is contradicted by people using their bodies inappropriately so as to make a mockery of new life.  This is seen no more clearly than in the way in which the concrete “body life” of the Church profanes Communion – the meal in which Jesus says, “This is my body, broken for you” (11:24).  We are not saved for some disembodied life in some heavenly universe, but for life here and now that is incarnated (takes bodily shape) in this world.  Resurrection is not some “spiritual” truth.  It is about the presence and activity of the Living Spirit in us – the transforming of reality.  We are to be part of that transformation.

 

Not a “fact”, but the power of God (Acts 10: 34-43)

I get fed up with the annual Easter debates about whether we ought to believe that Jesus was raised bodily, or whether it is something about the enduring presence of Christ beyond his death.  Both protagonists in this debate are arguing about the wrong thing.  Resurrection is not about “biographical facts about Jesus”.  Believing that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead is not what makes Christian faith either Christian or faith.  Nor are notions of the enduring presence of Jesus beyond death remotely satisfactory for life in a world where “sin” is to be counted in starving, tortured, addicted and diseased bodies. 

The question that human experience faces us with is, “Is there any power strong enough to break the cycles that trap us in cruelty, illness, poverty, oppression, despair and death?  Is it only possible to live a happy life by creating a living hell for most of the planet’s inhabitants?”  And the Christian answer is “Yes!”  It is God’s power – the power of the Holy Spirit.  Look at Peter’s sermon in Acts 10:37ff.  God anointed Jesus with the Holy Sprit and with power”.  The story of Jesus is the story of the power of Life abroad in the world.  It is a power that cannot be thwarted by crucifixion (v39).  When death has done its damndest and proclaimed itself the Ultimate Reality, God has a word of power to speak: “Resurrection!”  Resurrection is as real – as concrete and bodily – as both life and death.  We have “seen” it made visible in Jesus, who was crucified, laid in a tomb and then raised by God.  Its power and reality is not something to be “believed” as though it were something like gravity or relativity: it is to be experienced as transforming, and made visible as we seek to transform the world in the name of Jesus. 

 

Back to the beginning …

What if Mark’s gospel ends, like the film, at 16:8?  What are we to make of such an anticlimax to an otherwise thrilling story?  The clue lies in the opening verse of the gospel: “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”.  What happens when we read the whole gospel as the beginning?  Then we are brought to the threshold of it all: the story of Jesus who, having been crucified, is now alive in a world throbbing with the powers and possibilities of resurrection and is waiting … for us!  What will we do when we have lived long enough to overcome the terror of leaving behind our “old” world, and allowed God to let the Holy Spirit – the power by which God raised Jesus from the dead – loose in us?

 

Amen.

23:32 Posted in 1 Corinthians , Acts , Mark , Year B | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study

Tuesday, 04 April 2006

The Liturgy of the Passion - Year B

Isaiah 50: 4-9a                NRSV text
Psalm 31: 9-16                 NRSV text
Philippians 2: 5-11           NRSV text
Mark 14: 1-15: 47             NRSV text

 

It feels very peculiar to be concentrating on the Passion a week before it happens!  But then, many people move directly from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, missing out the passion itself!  It’s therefore very much a case of what to put in and what to leave out – particularly given the weight and size of the lectionary readings for the Liturgy of the Passion.  I want, therefore, to do nothing more than to highlight some of the issues that leap out at me as I read Mark’s account of the Passion, and which seem to me worth stressing to someone who will otherwise miss out on this crucial (a quite deliberate pun!) section of the gospel narrative.  It is, after all, the crunch – what it is all about.  Mark has brought us at incredible pace to the outskirts of Jerusalem.  The pace alone tells us how determinedly he has headed to this point.  Interestingly, it is only once we are “at the city gates” that Mark slows the narrative pace, concentrating on the passage of time.  There is a sense in which the entire gospel has been on “fast forward” as he whips through the lead-up that brings us to the events of Holy Week.  Now he lets go of the button, and the story is allowed to proceed slowly enough for the readers to take in every moment of the unfolding drama.

 

Messianic anointing at Bethany (14: 3-9)

This is a strange passage in several ways – not least because of what it includes (Simon’s name, that he was a leper, the monetary value of the ointment) and what it leaves out (the silence on the woman’s name is positively deafening).  This is extraordinarily ironic: the woman who will be remembered wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world and in all time is anonymous!  Wouldn’t it be good to know who she was?  And is it surprising that it is a woman who is so strikingly “forgotten” even as she is remembered?  This is the significance of Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s book, In Memory of Her.

What is it about what she does that is so “memorable”?  Jesus is doing more than saying, “This is a very striking incident that ought not to be forgotten”.  He is holding the woman up as a paradigm of discipleship.  Remember that the second half of Mark’s gospel is about the way of the cross, and the deep resistance of the disciples to it.  The point here is that the woman – unlike the disciples, and Peter in particular – accepts that Jesus is facing the cross.  She does not try to dissuade him from the path, but prepares him for it.  In effect, she says, “I am doing what I can to walk this road with you”.  It is costly ointment because the road ahead for Jesus is costly.

 

Sell-outs and signals: life in the shadows

The authorities have been conspiring to kill Jesus ever since 3:6.  As the Passover approaches, Mark resumes the conspiracy narrative.  Judas’ actions and the elaborate preparations for the Passover (14: 12-15) are puzzling at first sight.  Why do the authorities need a traitor?  Why not simply seize Jesus?  And why the emphasis on the Passover preparations that have led many commentators to see this as some sort of miraculous foreknowledge that Jesus has about what the “two disciples” will find in the city? 

These begin to make perfect sense when we recognise that Jesus and the disciples have gone underground.  Jesus is planning his “Jerusalem campaign” strategically.  Bethany is a safe haven for the group, which is being hunted by the authorities.  Jesus has been careful to date: his appearances in the city have been public, in the temple, where it would have been difficult to seize him without provoking a riot.  Mark paints a picture of a volatile situation that both makes it difficult for the authorities to move openly against Jesus and makes it necessary for Jesus to be very circumspect. 

They are in Bethany in secret.  If the authorities are to take him at a time of their choosing (preferably at night), they will need to know the group’s movements.  They need someone on the inside who is prepared to keep them informed – and that person is Judas.  Judas initiates the betrayal: he goes to the chief priests and agrees to betray Jesus for the promise of money.  Mark doesn’t invoke any theory of satanic inspiration for Judas’ actions: it is straightforward, grubby money-grabbing.  And so Judas begins to look for an opportunity to deliver Jesus to the authorities at time when he can be taken without fear of a riot.  That means that he needs to find a time when they are in the city (rather than at Bethany) or close enough for the authorities to get together an arresting party at short notice.  And it needs to be at a time that will enable them to act without being observed by the people – ideally, therefore, at night.

It will be the Passover that provides the opportunity.  Jesus and his disciples will have to go into the city.  This is highly dangerous, as well Jesus knows.  Clearly, there was an anonymous group of sympathisers, living in the city and linked to Jesus and his group.  Jesus makes arrangements with them to have a private room in which to celebrate the Feast with his disciples.  The logistics are worked out carefully.  Two disciples are to go into the city.  Two men are hardly likely to attract the attention that Jesus and his band would if they went in en masse.  There is an agreed signal: a man carrying a water jar.  That’s the contact.  Carrying a water jar is normally women’s work.  It’s a clever signal – unusual enough to be unmistakeable and noticeable, but not so unusual as to be conspicuous or arouse suspicion.  The two are instructed not to talk to him, but simply to follow at a distance.  The contact will lead them to the house.  The two are to wait until he’s gone in, then knock, and give the owner the agreed code (V14).  Jesus has already had word that this man is able to provide them with a large, unfurnished room upstairs that they can use.  The two disciples are instructed to prepare the unfurnished room, and then return to Bethany to lead the group secretly into the city under the cover of darkness.  Wonderful cloak-and-dagger stuff – yet terrible, terrifying and deadly. 

 

Betrayal and covenant

When we realise just what is at stake, and just how careful Jesus is having to be, we begin to take on board just how callous and cynical Judas’ betrayal is.  It doesn’t matter how elaborate the precautions are that Jesus takes to ensure the group’s safety: there is a traitor in their midst.  They are doomed.  We – the audience – know this.  And so does Jesus.

Small wonder, then, that the opening words recorded in Mark’s gospel are words of sorrow and accusation: “One of you will betray me!”  The disciples are probably just beginning to relax, and believe that everything has gone safely according to plan.  Jesus’ words area bombshell, and they “begin to be distressed”, as Mark puts it.  This is the closest Mark comes to English understatement!  They would have been shocked, frightened and devastated.  It can’t be true!  The pressure must be getting to Jesus – he’s losing the plot.  After all, if he only stopped and thought about what he was saying – even for a second – he’d realise just how ridiculous it sounded.  They begin to relax, having convinced themselves that it’s all down to stress.  So Jesus speaks again.  “Yes, I do know what I’m implying.  So let me tell you straight.  We’re not talking about one of our friends, who has helped us thus far.  I’m talking about you – the people in this room.  It is one of the Twelve – however unbelievable you find that!”

One question that arises is, given Jesus’ antipathy to the temple and its compromised cult, why does he bother with the Feast – particularly in view of the dangers associated with being in the city itself?  The answer lies in what Jesus will do at the Passover.  This is to be the new covenant.  Here is a word of hope and promise.  Until now, he has told the disciples only that he will be handed over, will suffer horribly, will be killed and will rise again.  Now he promises them that it is not in vain.  This has a purpose: his death is for others. 

We talk glibly about the “new covenant” as a covenant of grace.  Yet it is when we listen to the words of institution, prefaced by “On the night in which he was betrayed …” and realise the sick despair that Jesus must have been feeling as he sat at the meal, that we begin to appreciate what “grace” means.  It means Jesus facing the fact that one of his hand-picked friends, with whom he had shared his life and hopes and dreams, had callously and deliberately decided to betray him.  And Jesus knew that this was the night.  He knew, too, that his best efforts to convince the disciples about the way of the cross had failed.  They would all desert him before the night was out.  If his criterion for true discipleship was “denying themselves, taking up the cross and following”, then none of the Twelve was actually going to make the grade.  Everything that Jesus has worked for is about to be smashed beyond any hope of repair. 

Looking all this fully in the face, Jesus’ response is to promise them a future.  It is a future based on what he will do alone.  It is a new covenant based not on their faithfulness but on Jesus’ faithfulness.  It is the promise of fellowship, given to traitors and deserters.  Even though Peter will deny three times that he ever even knew who Jesus was (another sign of the intense threat facing the community), Jesus will never deny him.

 

Gethsemane: torment and terror

As the group (now minus Judas) leaves the upper room to return to the safety of the countryside, Jesus knows that it is too late.  They have been betrayed.  Escape is impossible.  Jesus must face the cross.  Typically – and unsurprisingly – he chooses to spend the short time he has left in prayer.  But this is a startlingly atypical “Jesus-in-prayer” scene.  Mark’s account of Gethsemane is deeply shocking.  Something terrible and destructive is happening between Jesus and the God whom he calls Father.  Several times in the gospel we find Jesus withdrawing at key points to be alone in prayer (cf 1:35, 6:46).  He draws strength and encouragement from communing alone with his Father.  Here in Gethsemane, Jesus is desperate not to be alone in God’s presence!  He asks his friends to keep watch with him – because he is terrified.  The language of 14:33 is very strong: he “shudders in distress” (ekthambeisthai) and “anguishes” (ademonein).  Its force is difficult to covey adequately.  The scholar Lohmeyer says, “The Greek words depict the utmost degree of unbounded horror and suffering”.

This is no reassuring time spent with God!  Jesus throws himself to the ground, begging God like a child (“Abba, Father, please …”) to spare him what lies ahead (v36a).  And he is answered with silence.  Yes, Jesus could have refused to go through with it, and yes, Jesus responds by saying “Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll do it” (v36b).  Yet Mark wants us to understand that Jesus finds the silence of God appalling.  God will not grant his request – and this is the reason for Jesus’ terror.

What is it that is so appalling?  Clearly, there is deep dread at what lies ahead.  Jesus would not be human if he didn’t fear it.  Yet Jesus is no coward.  There seems, in these verses, to be an altogether more terrifying prospect: the fear that he, the Son, the Beloved, who loved the Father as no one else has, could be ‘forsaken’.  He will not refer again to God as “Abba”, but only formally as “God”.  Jesus did not fear for his life.  He feared for God.  He experienced God’s silence as abandonment, and it tore his soul apart. 

What did the cross mean for Jesus?  We see it here, as he struggles in Gethsemane.  But struggles with whom?  It is more than his struggle with what lies ahead, more than his struggle with himself.  Gethsemane is Jesus’ struggle with his experience of God – the death of the Father-Son relationship.  This is his torment, and this is what he endures on the cross through his self-surrender.

 

The collapse of the discipleship narrative

This is a dark and depressing story.  We are watching the disintegration of all that Jesus has been about unfolding.  The tragedy is as inexorable as it is inevitable.  Try and imagine what it must have been like for Jesus.  He is utterly alone.  The disciples have slept, completely impervious to his agony.  They just will not “get it”.  Jesus wakes them – literally and symbolically.  As they struggle into wakefulness, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, all hell breaks loose.  An armed crowd arrives.  They haven’t evaded their enemies.  Then Judas steps forward from among the crowd – their Judas! – and kisses Jesus.  There is an immediate scuffle.  Jesus is taken.  Terrified, the disciples scatter.  Mark puts it starkly: “All of them deserted him and fled” (14:50).

 

A sign of hope

At this point, however, Mark introduces a tantalising mystery in the form of “a certain young man who was following” (v51).  The armed crowd try to grab him as he runs off, catching hold of his clothing (a linen cloth).  He tears away and flees into the night, naked, and leaving them holding the linen cloth.

This “young man” is a symbol.  The cloth is the symbol of the cloth in which Joseph of Arimathea will wrap Jesus’ body for burial (cf 15: 46).  The young man “reappears” at the resurrection, now wrapped in the white robe of the saints and martyrs (16: 5).  He is the symbol of the promise of a renewed community of discipleship.  He flees the Garden naked (symbolising shame) and is found “restored” in the tomb (symbolising the new community that is given birth through the resurrection). 

 

At the hands of the powers: the double trial narrative

Jesus is tried twice.  The accounts follow an identical structure: Jesus is questioned about the main charge against him; he doesn’t reply; he is pressed further and responds ambiguously: “Am I!”/”You said!”  Both hearings are then followed by some sort of consultation (between the high priest and the Sanhedrin, and between Pilate and the crowds).  Each ends with a verdict, followed by mockery and torture.

Several scholars have suggested that Mark’s intention is to exonerate the Romans as far as possible, and to blame the Jewish authorities for the death of Jesus.  The Sanhedrin, they point out, tries fair means and foul to obtain a conviction; Pilate, by contrast, tries to avoid condemning Jesus.  He is well aware of the Sanhedrin’s determination to secure a conviction at any cost (15: 4), and tells the mob baying for Jesus’ blood that he has not done any evil to deserve crucifixion (15: 13).

However, the whole of Mark’s narrative has been structured to show the collusion between Rome and the temple.  Jesus’ ministry has been a constant challenge to both.  His trial is the moment of confrontation with the very powers he has come to destroy – Imperial Rome and the temple purity cult.  Jesus is crucified as a messianic pretender and blasphemer: the truth is that he is the Messiah.  He is crucified as a self-styled King of the Jews and political revolutionary: the truth is that Jesus is Lord and king.

Mark uses the mockery of the crowds to shout aloud the truth about Jesus.  And nowhere is this to be seen more clearly than in the releasing of Barabbas.  His name literally means “Son of the Father”.  Jesus calls God “Abba”.  The crowd call for the release of the “Son of the Father” and for the crucifixion of the true “Son of the Father”.  We know this from 1:1 – Mark’s is the story of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.  But this true Son of God is also the true revolutionary!  His revolution is a different sort of revolution from the one Barabbas was part of.   Jesus will die to bring about something more far-reaching than the kingdom of David.  The revolution that Jesus is mounting is a one-man confrontation with powers, in the name of the kingdom of God.

 

Seeing and believing

The mockery is no more pronounced than on the cross itself (15: 25ff).  Mark is doing more than using narrative irony to proclaim who Jesus is, however.  This is “the Messiah, the King of Israel” (v32).  The mockery is both total and Mark’s point about the “last word” on the Good News that Jesus preached and lived.  Jesus is mocked by the passers-by, the chief priests and scribes, and the two bandits on either side of Jesus.  Jesus is alone.  The voice of God at his baptism and transfiguration is replaced and drowned out by the voices of mockery: “Everything you said and believed is rubbish!  You thought you were so special!  You thought you were God’s Son!  You believed the Voice!  Well, just look at you now!”  Two things are happening.  The first is that Mark is following his dramatic narrative formula of using irony to disclose truth.  The chief priests will “see and believe” that he is the Messiah, the King of Israel, if he comes down.  The ironic truth is that he is those because he chooses not to come down!  Jesus is reaping the consequences of the “Your will be done!” choice he made in Gethsemane.

 

The second is that Jesus’ soul is being torn to pieces – because these voices make sense to him!  Even though he hangs on (literally) and doesn’t turn back from the way of the cross, he does so in the face of the utter despair of being abandoned by God.

 

Golgotha: despair and death

There are no reassuring words from the mouth of Mark’s crucified Jesus.  Jesus hangs on the cross in silent agony for three hours.  He is utterly alone in his silence.  He has been abandoned by his disciples: he is no longer the Master.  He has been abandoned by his people: he is no longer a Jew.  He has been abandoned to crucifixion: he is no longer regarded as human.  And, at the moment of his death, he lifts his head to scream in despair, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

 

It is difficult to imagine how these words could have entered into Christian faith if they had never been uttered.  Nor will it do to note that they are the opening words of Psalm 22, thereby making them less shocking and offensive.  Psalm 22 ends up as a prayer of thanksgiving for deliverance from death.  Placing the cry of abandonment in that wider context robs the words of their horror and offence, but it will not do.  The popular notion that Jesus recited the psalm his dying moments, after three hours on a cross, is simply ridiculously implausible.  And the whole point is that there was no deliverance from death on the cross!  Jesus dies, utterly alone, calling to God, but in despair and accusation.  He does not refer to God as Father, but quite formally as “God” – as though he had come to doubt what had been fundamental to his identity throughout: that he was the Son, Beloved of the Father.

 

Three responses to Jesus’ death

Traditionally, there are three “true disciples” – three non-mockers, who respond appropriately to the death of Jesus: the centurion, Joseph of Arimathea and the women.  The centurion’s statement, “Truly, this man was the Son of God!” is commonly taken as the climax of the gospel.  He is the “ultimate witness” to the truth that Mark tells us at the outset of the narrative, and which is confirmed by the heavenly voice at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration.  Joseph is the other, repentant “Nicodemus-type” figure – Jesus’ “friend at court” among the Sanhedrin, who fails to do enough while Jesus is alive but now, with his death, finds the courage he previously lacked and aligns himself with Jesus (see, for example, the way in which he is portrayed in The Greatest Story Ever Told).  Both of these assessments need to be questioned.

 

The centurion: “Rome has triumphed over Jesus!”

This, at least, is Ched Myers’ contention.  The centurion’s statement has frequently been questioned as an unambiguous confession of divinity.  It could equally be a colloquialism – effectively saying, “This was a son of god (ie a human being)”.  If so, we ought to read this as “This was (and is no more) a human being” – ie “This man is dead”.  It is a formal declaration by the person responsible for overseeing the executions on Golgotha, and a declaration that Rome’s sentence and will have been carried out properly.  That is precisely what we would expect of the man in his position.  Moreover, the centurion then goes off to Pilate to report the successful completion of his mission (15: 44).  If this is about an epiphany and conversion experience of a centurion who becomes a disciple, Mark is singularly silent about telling us so!  There is no discernible change in the centurion – only an immediate return to his true Lord – Pilate!  Pilate is wondering whether the power of Rome (Caesar) has “triumphed” over the “King of the Jews” (Jesus).  The centurion’s role is to confirm that this is what has indeed happened!

 

Joseph of Arimathea: “The Sanhedrin has defeated Jesus!”

Mark is at pains to tell us that Joseph is “a respected member of the council” – in other words, deeply complicit in Jesus’ death.  He is “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God”.  The traditional view is that he is an exception to his brother councillors in this.  Yet there is never any suggestion in the gospel that the problem the authorities had with Jesus was that he preached the kingdom of God!  They, too, were “expecting” it.  Everyone was!  The problem was the content Jesus gave to the kingdom.  The Sanhedrin had found this blasphemous.  They had sought to have Jesus killed – and now he had been.  An end had been put to that little blasphemy.  It could be safely “buried”.

It was, indeed, a bold move to go to Pilate.  But is the boldness occasioned by fear of Imperial opposition, or is it a boldness that, under normal circumstances would be grossly impertinent, but, given the co-operation between the Sanhedrin and Rome in Jesus’ death, but in this context has as its basis a shared common goal?

Myers suggests – extremely plausibly – that the Sanhedrin wished to clear the whole matter away as quickly as possible, presumably to minimise possible trouble when the whole matter became public.  What better way than to have Jesus taken down and buried as hastily as possible?  And what clearer statement could be given that this matter was finished and filed in the archives? 

Rather than a mark of respect, in other words, we need to see Joseph as acting on behalf of the Sanhedrin to consolidate their victory over Jesus.  Joseph does not tend to any of the traditional offices or rites of burial – a reason, in fact, for the women to have to return to the tomb.  Joseph appears only to wrap Jesus (carelessly?) in the nearest thing to hand – a loincloth (itself a symbol of the disciples’ desertion) and almost toss his body into the tomb and shut it in order to get things done as quickly as possible.  There is nothing that shows any sense of respect: quite the opposite.  This, then, is a hurried burial – the final indignity.

Further weight is lent to this argument by Mark’s use of symbols.  A key area of contention between Jesus and the Sanhedrin has been the conflict over Sabbath observance.  Jesus has stood far too loose on this matter.  He is, as we are told in 2:28, “Lord of the Sabbath”.  In the end, the Sanhedrin has successfully seen off Jesus’ challenge to the symbolic order represented by Sabbath observance.  The one who claimed to be “Lord of the Sabbath” is subjected to the ultimate insult: a hurried, improper entombment for the sake of the Sabbath order, lest Jesus’ dead body profane the Sabbath!  Surely Mark is not unaware of the irony here: the Sanhedrin, in the name of God, has conspired to have Jesus murdered.  Their hands are covered in his blood; their system of justice manipulated, shamed and in tatters.  And now they are claiming the sort of purity-holiness that Jesus despised and decried by attending scrupulously to Sabbath observance – as though that were a greater profanity than Jesus’ execution!

 

The women – the true disciples

The women are the “lifeline” of the discipleship narrative.  These are the women who have followed Jesus from the Galilee, and served him.  They have followed to the foot of the cross, and now they follow to the grave.  Like the woman at Bethany who anoints Jesus, the women have not deserted him and fled.  Neither have they tried to avoid the cross.  In both of these things – being servants and following all the way to the cross and beyond – they have done what the male disciples were incapable of doing. 

 

And so, at the conclusion of the Passion, in the place of death and entombment, we find ourselves in the company of the women who will be the first witnesses to something utterly astounding – something that will change everything forever: resurrection!

 

Amen.

14:02 Posted in Isaiah , Mark , Philippians , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study

Monday, 03 April 2006

Liturgy of the Palms - Year B

Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29          NRSV text
Mark 11: 1-11                       NRSV text

 

Here’s a puzzle.  Why is the gospel passage traditionally known as “The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem” (as the NRSV heads this pericope), when Jesus only enters the city after all the commotion and acclamation has died down and finished?  If anything, it’s a “triumphal approach”, but the actual entry into the city (v11) is extraordinarily anticlimactic: “Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve”.  All that fuss and excitement – and by the time he actually gets into the city, the fuss has died down and it’s too late in the day to do anything more striking than to have a look around the temple and then head off to Bethany!

We’re back in Mark’s gospel again after an excursion into the world of John’s.  The contrast in narrative styles and strategies is important.  Mark’s gospel, we need to remember, is written like a dramatic play.  At this point in his narrative, we arrive with Jesus at Jerusalem, the scene of the great, final conflict that is about to take place.  This is the denouement – the unleashing of the storm that has been building with startling intensity and pace ever since the outset of Jesus’ ministry in Capernaum (1:21ff).  Those earlier conflicts were played out against the backdrop of Jerusalem and the temple, and we saw the fierce opposition Jesus provoked.  The city extended its threatening hand deep into the margins of the Galilee.  Now Jesus is bringing the fight to Jerusalem.  It’s showdown time, and Mark signals its beginning with a suitably high-octane piece of street theatre: Jesus, a donkey, palm-waving crowds and a fevered outbreak of messianic political expectation.  Let’s examine some of the elements of his choreography:

 

1.         Political street theatre: The periphery vs the centre

The action, as we have noted, actually takes place outside the city – within sight of the city walls but still, significantly, outside them.  We need to note the contrast between the activity outside the city and the non-events of the rest of the day (v11).  Mark is drawing our attention yet again to the contrast between the reception that Jesus receives on the margins, among the ordinary rural people, and the reception he receives from Jerusalem as the centre of political and religious power.  Those on the periphery hear his message of the kingdom and receive his ministry as Good News; those in the centre perceive it as threatening and maybe even demonic in origin.  The crowds who shout “Hosanna!” (which comes from Psalm 118: 25 and is a cry to God meaning “Save now!”) are the rural peasants, rather than the urban elite of Jerusalem.  These are not the city’s inhabitants.  They are those who have cut palms (or is it straw) “from the fields”.  They acclaim Jesus as a Davidic king and messiah.  By contrast, Jesus’ first interaction with the city’s inhabitants is to drive the moneychangers from the temple in the immediate aftermath of symbolically cursing the “fruitlessness” of the fig tree (1: 12ff).  This leads directly into the conflict in the temple with the chief priests, scribes and elders, who demand to know by what authority Jesus is doing these things (1: 27ff).  Those on the periphery recognise God’s presence in Jesus (“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”); those at the centre can only see Jesus as godless.

 

2.         Political street theatre: the Mount of Olives and the final battle

Mark casts Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem as a march upon the city – the climax of Jesus’ “campaign” of confrontation.  Jerusalem was occupied by a hated foreign power.  The cry, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor, David!” is the cry of hope for the restoration of the Davidic monarchy, and therefore the overthrow of the Romans.  This is political dynamite in the climate of the time.  It would entail not only the overthrow of Imperial Rome, but the ousting of the collaborators – the Jewish ruling classes.  It was a religious cry – “Yahweh, save NOW!” – and also and necessarily a cry of rebellion.  Moreover, Mark wants us to understand that, if Jesus is indeed the leader of an imminent revolt, this revolution is not going to be one in a long list of failed popular uprisings that have ended in crucifixions.  This one is the real thing!

He does this by placing the origin of the march “near the Mount of Olives”, a place associated in the early apocalyptic tradition with the final battle against the enemies of Israel in defence of Jerusalem: “I will gather the nations against Jerusalem to do battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered … Then Yahweh will go forth and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle.  On that day, his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives” (Zec 14: 2-4).

Moreover, the procession itself recalls the military entry of the triumphant rebel Simon Maccabaeus into Jerusalem “with praise and palm branches … and with hymns and songs” (1 Mc 13:51).  An additional factor that may have shaped Mark’s telling of the story is the striking parallels between Mark’s narrative and Menahem, who, during the Sicarii uprising, had led a revolt in the wake of the liberation of Jerusalem from Rome in 66, just a few years before Mark’s gospel was written.  Menahem (according to the historian Josephus) “entered Jerusalem in the state of a king”.  He went to the temple as a “messiah”.

One thing is clear: if we imagine Mark’s gospel being “staged” before an audience in the 70s, we cannot miss how politically loaded this episode is. 

 

3.         Political street theatre: the Liberator on an ass

For all the military imagery and echoes of the liberation-of-Jerusalem tradition, Mark employs another set of counter-imagery that is explicitly antimilitary.  Ched Myers points out that over half of the episode is given over to the detailed instructions from Jesus to the “two disciples” in preparation for the procession.  Jesus much earlier spoke of David getting what he needed for his military campaign (2:25).  Here Jesus, like David, gets what he needs for his campaign (11:3).  In this case, it is a lowly ass.  Mark is here invoking the very different tradition, also present in Zechariah, of the Messiah who comes to Zion “meek, riding upon an ass” (Zec 9:9f).

Two contrasting images from Zechariah.  Echoes of rebel liberators – and a counter-image quite explicitly distancing Jesus from them.  Mark is playing with his audience.  Imagine being in the situation of watching a thriller unfold, and trying to predict what happens next.  We’re caught in the throes of the “Will he/won’t he?  Is he/isn’t he?” debates.  What does Jesus intend to do?  Is he about to start the revolution?  Will he restore the Davidic monarchy?  Is the temple about to be re-established?

 

4.         Political street theatre: the kingdom of David or the kingdom of God?

That Jesus is messianic claimant is clear throughout the gospel.  That his “march on Jerusalem” is a provocative act, heralding a final showdown with the authorities is equally clear.  Throughout the gospel, the question that has been raised is what sort of Messiah Jesus is.  Mark, in his narrative of the approach to Jerusalem, faces with another, related question: what sort of king is Jesus?  This is the question that will obsess Pilate at Jesus’ trial.  While the Council want to know whether Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One”, the only question that interests Pilate concerns kingship, and he cuts directly to the chase: “Are you the King of the Jews?” (15:2) 

With the “Hosanna” cry of the crowds, Mark brings together two dominant traditions in contemporary messianic politics.  The first is Messiah-liberator tradition, rife in Galilee and which Jesus has resisted.  Now he brings restorationism to the fore: the restoration of the Davidic monarchy under a Davidic king.

This is precisely what is happening in the Psalter.  “Hosanna” comes from Psalm 118: 25 – the second of our lectionary texts.  Brueggemann has pointed out that, in their post-exilic editing, temple/Torah psalms are paired with royal psalms at crucial points, as these came to express messianic hope.  So we have, for example, Psalm 1 (Torah) next to Psalm 2 (royal); Psalm 18 (royal) followed immediately by Psalm 19 (royal), and Psalm 118 (royal) alongside Psalm 119 (Torah).  The point is that the restoration of kingship goes hand in hand with the restoration of the temple.  “King” and “Messiah” become parallel, related hopes.

The cry “Hosanna” is used in 2 Samuel 14:4 and 2 Kings 6:26 as a cry for help in addressing kings.  Psalm 118 was used liturgically as the Feast of Tabernacles and Passover.  “Hosanna!” could be used to address pilgrims or famous rabbis, but as a greeting or acclamation, rather than a cry for help.  At Tabernacles, branches were waved.  These branches were known popularly as “hosannas”. 

As we watch Jesus approach the city, therefore, with Zechariah echoing in our heads, we are meant to wonder whether this is the longed-for event: the overthrow of Rome and the restoration of the Davidic monarchy.  Is this Jesus’ political quest?  Is this what he meant when he spoke about the kingdom of God?  Is Jesus the “Son of David”?

At this stage, we are given no answer – only clues within the stage directions and script!  The Zechariah 9:9 framing makes it clear that Jesus is not about to start a military uprising.  He is not about to enter the city and fight for the temple state.  Jesus will go on quite explicitly to deny that this is his programme.  He is not the Son of David (12: 35ff) and the temple will, in fact, be destroyed, rather than becoming the centre of a new monarchy (13: 1-8).  The kingdom of God is not the same thing as the kingdom of David!

Secondly, the anticlimax of 11:11 deconstructs the sense that Jerusalem is the centre of Jesus’ intentions.  He doesn’t come to restore Jerusalem but to challenge the powers centred there.  He enters the city, as though to check out the battle gound.  Then he retires to Bethany before the campaign begins in earnest.  Although it is tantalisingly unclear as to who exactly Jesus is and what his programme is, one thing is clear: the people on the periphery are closer to the answer than the people who ought to know best – the religious leaders and people of Jerusalem.

 

5.         Reading ahead

All the elements of the forthcoming climax to the story are in place.  Jesus has arrived at Jerusalem for the final showdown.  The city is the place where it will happen.  Jesus will carry things out according to his programme.  The temple is right at the centre of the deadly conflict that is about to ensue.  Yet, like any good storyteller, Mark's denouement is going to surprise us all.  No one can possibly guess just how those various elements are going to combine.

Jesus is the Messiah and he is a king.  It is not popular expectation – or even the Jewish scriptures – that will define these terms, however, but the way of the cross.  Jesus is a revolutionary and a rebel.  He is a liberator.  Once again, it is the way of the cross that will define these terms.  He is a rebel because the proclamation of the Good News challenges the political and religious powers of his day.  In that sense, he stands firmly with the rural peasants and against the urban elite.  The religious purity system that shuts the poorest out is contrary to the character of the very God it supposes it worships.  Like all false gods, it will be swept away.  Rome proclaimed that Caesar is king and god.  It, too, will be swept away – as will all powers ranged against the kingdom of God.

Ironically, unthinkably and unimaginably, the means by which God will accomplish this is through the very solution that the authorities employ to solve the “problem” of this upstart who stands at the gates and challenges their authority: the way of the cross.  God isn’t as limited and parochial as to aim only at the restoration of the Davidic temple state: he’s got the whole world in his sights!

 

Amen.

 

00:14 Posted in Mark , Psalms , Zechariah | Permalink | Comments (4) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study

Monday, 06 March 2006

Lent 2 Year B

Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16      NRSV text
Romans 4: 13-25                NRSV text
Mark 8: 31-38                     NRSV text

 

Mark brings us to the midpoint of his narrative at a key moment in the structure of his gospel.  It is a deeply significant transition point.  The key is not in this week’s passage, but in the immediately preceding pericope.  The narrative, like Jesus, changes direction.  From a series of “journeys” in the Galilee with narrative sites of sea, boat and wilderness, centred upon his home in Capernaum, Jesus begins a new journey.  It is a journey from the margins of Palestine to its centre.  Starting in the far north of Mark’s narrative “world” (Caesarea Philippi), he slowly winds his way south, back down through Galilee (making one last stop at Capernaum, 9:33) and on into Judea (10:1).  Yet it is not until the third cycle of the book that Mark reveals the destination: Jerusalem (10:32). 

Why bother with geography?  The answer is because Mark doesn’t just give us an outline of Jesus’ missionary itinerary!  Mark’s gospel is a story about discipleship – about following Jesus.  Like Luke, he uses the artificial narrative construction of a journey.  Places and journeys are important because they indicate direction and purpose.  The first half of the story is set around the Galilee – on the margins.  Here we find an eager receptiveness to Jesus and his message (albeit with opposition, but this comes from the “outside” – particularly from Jerusalem and the Temple).  Now Jesus is changing direction and focus.  He is beginning a new journey whose destination is Jerusalem.  The journey towards Jerusalem is the narrative symbol for the new emphasis – the way of the cross.  In 8:27b Mark tells us that they were “on the way” (en te hodo) – the way to Jerusalem and the way of the cross.

The phrase introduces an “edge” to the narrative.  This narrative journey will disclose increasingly who Jesus is (the one who must suffer) and intensifying conflict and direct confrontation with the powers ranged against him.  Yet the focus is on the disciples.  How will they react to “the way”?  Will they understand?  Will they “see” and “hear” what Jesus is telling them?  Most importantly, will they follow, or will the way of the cross prove (literally) a step too far?

There is a clear narrative pattern to “the way”.  It occurs again in 9:31 and 10: 32-34, and in each case – as here – the pattern is repeated: Jesus tells the disciples that “the way” is the way of suffering and death; the disciples resist this; Jesus then teaches them further about discipleship and what it means to follow him.

That is why the change of direction results immediately in Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?”  This is not only the midpoint of the story, but also the narrative fulcrum around which the whole gospel pivots.  Who do you believe Jesus is?  Which Jesus will you follow – the Jesus who travels the way of the cross, or the glorious, triumphant Jesus the disciples desperately want him to be?  Or will it be a Jesus of your own making?

 

If you want to become my followers …

Peter’s confession – “You are the Messiah” – is followed immediately by the first of the passion predictions.  “It is necessary (dei) for the Son of Man to undergo great suffering … etc”, says Jesus.  The stress here is on the inevitability of what will happen.  Jesus is not talking here about predestination.  This is not a story about Jesus following a divine “script”, in which he, the Romans and the Jewish authorities are actors whose lines are already mapped out for them.  It is a divine script only on the sense that the message of God’s kingdom must provoke the opposition of the powers – those whose final ability to coerce and maintain privilege resides in their power to kill.  Jesus is saying, “I want you to have your eyes wide open.  This is not about a messianic gravy train for which you have special seats!  This is going to end in blood and tears – mine and yours (if you choose to take this particular ride)”.

This is not what the disciples want to hear!  Peter’s immediate reaction is to rebuke Jesus.  He’s saying, in effect, “Listen, Jesus, when I said ‘Messiah’, this is not what I meant!  Being the Messiah has nothing to do with failure, suffering and death!  It’s about being the king – about success and power and sovereignty.  So let’s have no more of this talk about suffering and death.  Stick with us, Jesus – we’ll show you the way!”

Now it’s Jesus’ turn to rebuke Peter.  And he could not be more shockingly harsh.  “Get behind me, Satan!”  We’re immediately back in the wilderness of temptation, where Jesus has wrestled with Satan and the wild beasts.  Although Mark does not detail the temptations, it is clear from this exchange that their substance has always been the same: to abandon the way of the kingdom that is good news for the poor and bad news for the powerful, and follow another “way” – a way that will bring glory to Jesus and one which the powers can absorb, contain and control.  That this alternative exercised the strongest pull on Jesus, and had to be resisted with every ounce of his strength, becomes clear in the Gethsemane narrative. 

Mark makes one thing absolutely clear in his gospel: Jesus has a deep, abiding horror of the way of the cross.  There is a dangerous tendency in Christian theology and spirituality to think that it was somehow less horrific than it really was.  After all (the reasoning goes), if Jesus was divine, well, it must have been a lot easier for him than for us mere human beings!  Mark tells us the opposite.  Jesus’ relationship to his Father was not a comfort to him as far as the cross was concerned.  It made things worse.  It threatened his whole sense of identity as Son.  That is why he pleads with his Father as a child in Gethsemane for another Way, and dies screaming in bewildered despair to the God he believed had abandoned him.

Nor was resurrection any comfort.  Although he tells the disciples “openly” and repeatedly that the Son of Man must suffer, die and on the third day rise again, there is no sense that Jesus drew sustenance from that.  In fact, the clear implication seems to be that Jesus did not himself understand quite what rising from the dead might mean – because if he did, he would not have experienced the cross as abandonment by God, but as a necessary step along the “way” to resurrection.

Jesus goes on to spell out what the way of the cross means for any would-be followers.  It requires three things: denying self, taking up the cross, and following.  There is no other way.  If the Lenten journey means anything, it means discovering what this entails – just as it did for the disciples.  It is not about giving something that we like up, or coping with a difficult situation at work, home or at church.  That is to spiritualise and trivialise Jesus’ call.  The gospel was written for a community that understood at first hand what persecution meant.  It meant being hauled up before the courts and, like Peter, being asked, “Aren’t you one of his disciples?”  The temptation is to deny Jesus in order to save our own lives.  Jesus tells the disciples, “If you confess me, you deny yourself – because you will be put to death for it!  And yet that is actually the way to find (save) your life!”

To “take up the cross” means literally that!  The journey Jesus has just begun is the journey of political confrontation.  Ched Meyers suggests that the phrase “Take up your cross!” was in all likelihood a recruitment slogan for revolutionary groups – effectively “suicide squads” who were being asked to risk almost certain capture and crucifixion.  There is nothing spiritualised or trivialised about Jesus’ call to discipleship here.  The message of the kingdom that he proclaims is necessarily the way of the cross because it is the promise and announcement and enactment of a new world order – God’s.

Note that this is a new call.  In 1:16ff Jesus calls the first disciples, saying simply, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people”.  In other words, there are people who want to hear Jesus’ message, and he invites them to follow and be part of spreading good news that is eagerly received.  Now the direction changes.  This is a new journey – a journey of confrontation.  It bears a deadly cost.  And as Jesus enters this new phase of his ministry, he does not say, “Follow me”, but warns the disciples about what is entailed and gives them the opportunity to back out .  Lent is about facing the seriousness of discipleship, and wrestling seriously with the question about whether or not we are “up for it”.

The disciples, of course, don’t back out.  Instead they decide to keep going – not to discover the way of the cross, not to deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow, but to manipulate Jesus!  They reckon that sheer weight of numbers (apart from anything else) and good sense will prevail: there is another way, and they will make sure Jesus follows their way – not vice versa!

 

Abraham – the example of faith (Genesis 17: 1-7/Romans 4: 13-25)

Romans 4 is Paul’s midrash on the Abraham story.  He reflects on the narrative in Genesis 17 when God promised Abraham descendants.  He does so in the context of defending himself against the charge by Jewish Christian opponents that his success among Gentiles is that he has made it too easy for them to become Christians, because he does not insist on them becoming Jews and obeying the Law.  His doctrine of justification by faith, rather than through covenantal faithfulness, is cheap grace. 

Not so, says Paul.  It has always been about faith!  And to make his point, he goes back to Abraham – Abraham, the towering figure who, in Judaism, was traditionally venerated for his mighty deeds and endurance when tested.  Paul offers a different reading about the significance of Abraham.  What is fundamental, he says, is that Abraham was the one to whom God made promises – promises which were unconditional and which Abraham believed.  Abraham believed God, says Paul – and that was reckoned to him as righteousness (4:3).

In other words, faith as response to the unconditional promises of God precedes covenant.  Grace precedes Law.  It is faith that lies at the heart of the response to God, rather than covenantal conditional obedience.  Furthermore, argues Paul, Abraham was to be the father of many nations – a promise Paul saw fulfilled in the universalising of the gospel message and the inclusion of the Gentiles.

Now, if faith, which justifies, precedes law-keeping, it also deconstructs what is meant by terms like “righteousness” and “justification”.  These terms belong in the context – the semantic range – of Law.  They are legal terms.  Paul’s opponents understand by “righteousness” a legal status, either achieved through covenantal faithfulness (“works of the Law”) or imputed by God to the unrighteous.  That is also how much Christian exegesis of this key Pauline term has proceeded.  But Paul is doing something very subtle here.  If free promise precedes Law, and faith is the appropriate response, then the “righteousness” of God must be something different from something akin to the legal system!  The New Testament scholar Ernst Kasemann argues that Paul understands “righteousness” in a new way – as “the triumphant saving faithfulness of God”.  This is what it has always meant if Abraham was “justified” by faith!  The “righteousness” of God is actually the Spirit-life – the saving Life – of God in Jesus Christ.

"This makes it possible for Paul to put both Jews and non-Jews on the same level. Ultimately what matters for both is this faith. In our passage he links it to belief that God can do what seems impossible. In Abraham's case it was about whether his aged wife could become pregnant. In the case of Gentiles it is whether people who are not part of Israel can be elevated to become God's people. In the case of Jesus it is whether a dead Jesus can be raised to life. In the case of creation it whether something can be created out of nothing. By linking all these together as he does in our passage Paul is making the claim that the basis of faith is the belief that God can do the seeming impossible. God the creator makes all these things possible. In relation to the issue at hand for Paul: God can elevate Gentiles to become the people of God - as long as they have this kind of faith. It is a way of speaking of God's love. God can love the seeming unlovable and love them back to life." (William Loader)

So much for Paul’s argument in Romans.  How are we to read this and the story of Abraham in the context of this week’s lectionary readings?  Firstly, we need to note that “faith in the God who can do impossible things” is not the same as saying, “I believe in miracles”!  Fundamentalists will insist that literal belief in miracles is essential for true faith.  That is not what Paul is arguing.  In each case, the “impossible” works of God are about bringing life where no life is possible!  In the case of Abraham and Sarah, this is emphasises by the fact that Abraham twice falls on his face – once in worship, and the second time in hysterical laughter at the ridiculousness of the promise (Genesis 17:3, 17)!  In other words, the promises, covenant and miracles are all linked to Yahweh’s passionate will to bring life and blessing.

We ought also to recognise the promise that is inherent in the call to discipleship.  We stand on the resurrection side of Easter.  Jesus, like Abraham, stood on the “not yet” side of God’s promises.  Abraham is a pioneer of faith for us because he believed God when he could neither see nor imagine how the promises might be fulfilled!  Jesus is the pioneer for our faith because he went through with the cross, without the comfort and assurance that God was with him!  Despite the horror and the terror, Jesus did not look for another Way.

And we ought to note that, just as for Jesus – his identity (being Son) would be defined by the way of the cross, so Abram and Sarai have their identities changed by God’s promises – and are given new names to symbolise this.  We, too, are encouraged to find our identities – our “lives” – in embracing the way of the cross.

As we stand poised on the first steps of the way of the cross this Lent, we are challenged to take Jesus on his terms, and to resist the determination and temptation to remake Jesus into what we want him to be – to plan another Way for him that we find acceptable and controllable and which does not put our identity on the line.  We are challenged to confront our own deep resistance to the way of the cross – and to the Jesus whom we profess to serve.  We are faced with the awful possibility that the Jesus whom we follow is none other than a Jesus of our own construction and our own choosing – one who is comfortable, and who blesses out hopes and endeavours, our projects and our prejudices.  This is the Jesus who follows after us – who has to deny who he is. 

The Jesus we meet in Lent is the Jesus who refuses any way other than the cross.  John 14 is John’s meditation upon these same events.  Thomas asks the right question, which the disciples fail to see in Mark’s account: “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  And Jesus replies, “I am the Way – and the Truth and the Life!” (john 14:6)

Amen.

15:56 Posted in Genesis , Mark , Romans , Year B | Permalink | Comments (3) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study

Tuesday, 28 February 2006

Lent 1 Year B

Genesis 9: 8-17      NRSV text
Psalm 25: 1-10       NRSV text
1 Peter 3: 18-22     NRSV text
Mark 1: 9-15           NRSV text

 

We’re back into the opening scenes of Mark’s gospel at the beginning of Lent: Jesus’ baptism, temptation and the beginning of his ministry in Galilee. You might like to go back and read the post on Jesus’ baptism (here) and the beginning of the ministry (here). But let’s look at today’s passages through Lenten eyes. There are some important points to note.

Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1: 9-1)
There is a deep ambiguity to water baptism in the account of Jesus’ baptism that isn’t there for the crowds coming to John to be baptised in the immediately preceding passage. For these people, baptism is straightforwardly about repentance and its primary symbolism is about washing. There is nothing threatening about the water.

Jesus is baptised for another reason, however. He doesn’t need to repent. His baptism marks the onset of his ministry – his mission – and is also confirmed in his sonship. In Mark’s gospel, the voice is for Jesus alone to hear, and it is not until the Transfiguration that the heavenly voice is heard by others. There is nothing cosy about being God’s Son, the Beloved, however. This is not a divine pat on the head and fond ruffling of the hair – the “soppy moment” in which the parent hugs the child and saying, “Oh, I do love you!” God reassures Jesus that he is the beloved Son because Jesus is going to have to hang on to that and draw strength from it. This is armour and weapons for the forthcoming struggle – that begins immediately with the temptation. The point (as Mark’s story tells us) is that to be Son means the cross. To be Jesus, with his mission, the affirmation of the heavenly voice is simultaneously the pronouncement of a sentence to suffering and death.

It is through Jesus’ death and resurrection that God is going to effect salvation. Christian baptism (as opposed to John’s baptism) is not only a symbol of being washed clean: it is a symbol of dying and rising (as Paul reminds us). The picture of the person going down into the water is a symbol of dying – of drowning – and resurrection to new life is symbolised by the rising up out of the water. Jesus hears the voice as he rises because Mark is trying to tell us that it functions as symbolic promise: there is resurrection for Jesus, but the cross is unavoidable. And it is because he goes through suffering and death that Jesus is the beloved Son.

The water, then, has less to do with washing than drowning. The picture that baptism in the context of Easter evokes is not the waters of purification but of the Flood. Peter picks this theme up in his letter. And here is the ambivalence of the water: the water saves (just as the 8 people in the ark were saved – 1 Peter 3: 20) but it also destroys. Salvation is resurrection – but only the dead can be resurrected!

There is another important association with the water. “Water” is symbolic of the primeval chaos out of which God “wrests” creation in the Genesis story. The Flood story is the story of the waters of chaos being let loose to destroy once again and to extinguish life. Jesus, in Mark’s gospel, is set in his mission for a conflict against the powers of darkness and death that threaten and destroy. They will finally overwhelm him. He will die drowning in despair. That is his destiny. Out of that despair will come resurrection and new beginning.

So Lent is the time for looking again at our baptism. Baptism commits us – as it did Jesus – to living in the shadow of the cross. If Christian faith and being God’s children guarantees anything, it guarantees suffering! And to the extent that we are able significantly to avoid suffering, we must ask questions about how faithfully we are actually following Jesus.

Jesus’ temptation (Mark 1: 12-13)
Like water, the wilderness has a deep ambivalence. It is the place of deliverance, where Yahweh takes the liberated Hebrew slaves and makes them into a people. It is traditionally the place where God is to be found. Moses discovers the burning bush in the wilderness. Abraham takes Isaac into the wilderness and Isaac is saved. It was the place where prophets went to commune with God and where refugees went for safety. It is the place where John is baptising – the Jordan wilderness near Jerusalem. And now Jesus is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness. A place where God is – but also a place of danger and horror. This is also where Satan and the wild beasts are to be faced.

 

Most hero stories begin with a lone, titanic struggle. The wilderness is Jesus’ proving ground. Note the immediacy: there is no time to enjoy the baptismal experience! It’s straight from the water to the wilderness, for an immediate confrontation with the Strong Man. This is the one who holds sway over the earth that Jesus has come to wrest from him and to establish as God’s kingdom. This is the one who holds people captive through illness, religious fanaticism and demon possession whom Jesus has come to liberate. And Satan is not alone: there are the wild beasts – important in the apocalyptic literature that Mark evokes so centrally. In the background, for Mark, lurks Daniel chapter 7, with the great trial of the earth’s kingdoms and the heavenly Son of Man. It is no accident that the earth’s kingdoms are symbolised by wild beasts. Jesus has come to take on the powers of Imperial Rome, too – one of the mythic wild beasts. And while Round One goes to Jesus, it is Satan and Rome who will have the final word.

 

Jesus’ ministry (Mark 1: 14-15)
It is against this background of struggle and death that we must understand Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom of God. This is good news! The world will not be left to its own devices, prisoners of the very structures that human beings have created and of powers far greater than they to whom they have handed the world on a plate. Jesus announces, “This is a kairos­ – the hour of God’s visitation! It is the climax of history! And this is its content: the kingdom of God!”

 

Jesus’ announcement functions on several levels. It is an announcement of victory – the earth is being liberated! At the same time, it is a declaration of war – the powers are being served notice! It is a promise – this earth will become the kingdom. It is a gift – this is something only God can achieve and will achieve it. And it is a task – this is what Jesus is committing himself to (and by extension, committing his disciples to also).

 

 

1 Peter 3: 18-22
Baptism, struggle and mission – the three are intertwined and belong inextricably together. Christian faith is no “holiday from reality”, despite the fact that much Christian preaching seems to offer congregations Jesus as “the ultimate buzz”. Being a child of God does not mean being protected from bad things – from suffering and hardship. And mission will not always be well received! These are things that Peter’s community is discovering in spades – and wishes they weren’t! They are suffering – and that suffering is really trying them. Some are holding on to faith by a fingernail. Suffering has that power. Prolonged suffering, especially, is a costly war of attrition – so costly that even winning it feels like losing.

And so Peter writes to encourage them. He reminds them that this is the sort of world that kills messiahs. That is what happened to Jesus. If people live like Jesus did, chances are they’ll die like he did. And while we might wish that God did things differently, the pattern of Jesus’ life, pictured in baptism not only as a once-for-all thing but as a daily pattern, reminds us of the truth that is as old as the Flood: you don’t get to escape the bad bits! Resurrection lies on the other side of death. Baptism and Christian faith is about participation in that dynamic of suffering, dying and rising.

 

Jesus, Peter reminds us, suffers for sins “once for all” (v18). He died as a result of his confrontation with “unrighteousness” in solidarity with its victims and those who are “unrighteous” according to the purity system. This is what makes his death a sacrifice rather than simply martyrdom – a sacrifice that brings life. His death is the entry point into resurrection. It is a once-for-all sacrifice because God has raised Jesus from the dead, never to die again. So, says Peter, if you’re suffering for doing right – if you’re suffering for living as Jesus did, involved in the struggle for the kingdom to take shape in the world – then you’re on the right track! You’re being faithful to your baptism.

 

Genesis 9: 8-17
Suffering. Death. Judgement. Divine wrath. These are not easy or pleasant things to consider. And re-reading the story of the Flood, I am struck forcibly by the awfulness of what the story contains. It is a story of Noah and his family – Noah’s faithfulness to Yahweh and Yahweh’s deliverance. But it is also a story of appalling death and destruction – the utter, inexorable eradication of all life on earth under the heaving waters – and at Yahweh’s hand! This is the reversal of the creation story. Yahweh is undoing what has been done – unmaking what has been made, and killing all that lives.

 

Here, again, is the dynamic of suffering, death and salvation. Yet it really “bites” in this narrative. The narrative of the rising water, cutting off life in 7:17ff is horrifyingly evocative.

 

The lectionary passage concerns the re-establishment of the love affair between Yahweh and the world. It is the covenant with Noah, his family and all of creation, with the rainbow as a sign. It is the salvation “bit”; the equivalent of resurrection. But do you notice how you’re left feeling, “It isn’t quite enough – not enough, at least, to blot out the awfulness of what has happened? The guarantee that it won’t happen again is hardly any comfort to the people and animals that have died! That is why it is intriguing that Peter speaks about Christ descending to the dead and proclaiming the good news to the people of Noah’s day. That is one of the things about suffering: it’s good when things change and suffering is stopped, but never enough. It’s always too late for some. And we want to protest! But the story here and the Old Testament remind us about two things:

 

1. We need to recognise the reality and depth of human resistance to God. That is seen in killing Jesus. What we call “sin” is not just the naughty things we do that make the tabloid headlines. Sin can be deadly and destructive. It has consequences. And it offends Yahweh.
2. Sin offends Yahweh, but also grieves Yahweh. Yahweh is Judge in the Old Testament, but also the great Lover and the one eager to forgive. So why this wholesale destruction in the Flood (the covenant with Noah notwithstanding?). Why doesn’t God simply forgive? Why all the complicated sacrificial stuff? The Bible confronts us with truths that are at times unpalatable. Judgement and cost: these are inextricable aspects of the story of God’s salvation. There is a deep seriousness to human wrong-doing – sin – that means that consequences cannot simply be bypassed. We can either turn away from them, or we can wrestle with them. God’s anger and judgement could be indicators of a divine, cosmic-sized ego that must be flattered and appeased. Certainly much preaching suggests that this is what God is like. Or they are indicators of God’s grief and refusal to be marginalised. God will not abandon us to the world we create for ourselves. God does not withdraw to a contamination-free zone and leave us to get on with it, but enters into the darkness, seriousness and consequences of human wrong-doing … in order to save.

 

Both Jewish theology of sacrifice and Christian theology of Easter have always, at their best and most insightful, recognised that it is ultimately God who bears the cost and consequences and loss that sin involves. The Flood is not so much a story of Yahweh’s obliteration of the earth and life as it about the loss Yahweh has to bear of the objects of divine love. Grief frequently manifests as anger – indeed, anger is part of the process of coping with bereavement. There is always loss involved because there is somehow a necessary connection between sin and death. If God is the God of Life, and sin is human refusal to live in communion with God, then sin involves the voluntary cutting off from the source of Life.

 

This is not a statement about some sort of heavenly legal system. The notion of divine Law can be misleading, because it suggests the context of a court room, with God as the heavenly Law-giver, divine police force and cosmic judge. Instead, we must learn to read the language of sin and salvation as statements about the deep and dark reality of life without God – of the refusal of Life and Love and Spirit. Salvation is not about some sort of forensic tidiness, but about God’s struggle for our liberation from the prison of darkness, despair and death which we have built for ourselves.

 

This is the story of Mark’s Jesus. And it is the story of the God whom Jesus called Father. That is why the story of salvation is the story of sacrifice – of the loss God suffers as the cost of salvation. Of course, there remains always the question of why God chooses to do it this way. We long for easier, less costly and less bloody ways of achieving the same end. We bridle at sacrifice. Yet the biblical story of salvation is this is the way of Love. It is part of the mystery of God that God is this kind of God and chooses to do it in this way.

 

Salvation changes God. It involves God in suffering and loss. It is a process – that is the biblical story. And the story of Jesus – particularly of Easter – is that his sacrificial death enables God to do things differently. The powers ranged against Jesus will have their day. They will be allowed to do their damnedest. But God will have the last word – the word of Resurrection. And because of that, Jesus’ death is not just one more sacrifice but the sacrifice, once and for all, as Peter reminds us. If there is no more need for sacrifice – if the consequences of sin have been dealt with once and for all – there remains no need or space for sacrifice – only the free forgiveness of God. This is our faith. The end of the Lenten road is resurrection and Life. This is the Good News.

 

Amen.

23:50 Posted in 1 Peter , Genesis , Mark , Psalms , Year B | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study, Reflections on the RCL, Lent 1 Year B, Mark 1: 9-15, 1 Peter 3: 18-22, Psalm 25: 1-10, Genesis 9: 8-17, baptism, temptation

Monday, 13 February 2006

Epiphany 7 Year B

Isaiah 43: 18-25                     NRSV text
Psalm 41                                 NRSV text
2 Corinthians 1: 18-22            NRSV text
Mark 2: 1-12                           NRSV text

 

“They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:22)

Jesus was definitely out to cause trouble, and can’t have been disappointed!  The healing of the paralytic belongs to the section that begins with the exorcism of the unclean spirit from the man in the synagogue at Capernaum, the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and the cleansing of the leper.  Mark hurries us from incident to incident, showing how, from the very first, Jesus’ ministry (significantly in the synagogues) provokes conflict with the scribes.  Mark flags the forthcoming clashes over Sabbath observance in the first healing.  In last week’s gospel text, Jesus usurps the priestly authority to declare lepers clean.  This week, he goes even further: he attacks their sole claim to forgive sin, and is declared a blasphemer (2:7).  This is the charge on which he will eventually be executed.  From the outset, in other words, the shadow of the cross hangs over all that Jesus is doing. 

This isn’t an attempt to read something clever or fanciful into the texts.  Jesus’ messianic ministry is a quite deliberate taking on of the powers of the day that imprison and exclude – in particular, the purity system.  He is wresting control of the levers of power from the power-holders, and they don’t like it one bit!  Mark goes to extraordinary lengths to tell us that to be the Messiah meant going to the cross.  But whereas Paul locates that necessity in the eternal plan of God for salvation, Mark tracks its necessity through Jesus’ ministry.  Given what Jesus was doing, and the powers ranged against him, one side or the other had to lose.  It was Jesus.  The awfulness of hi