Sunday, 05 February 2006
Preaching the healing narratives in Mark's gospel
"Oh no! Not another bloomin' healing story!"
It’s easy to look at the healing stories in Mark’s gospel and begin to ask, “Another healing story! What on earth can I say about it this time?” Once we’ve said that Jesus was famous as a healer, and had some sort of debate on whether or not miracles occur (and if they did in Jesus’ time, can we expect them to do so today?), once we’ve explored healing and wholeness, picked up on some of the obvious points about the situations that Jesus deals with, and reassured members of the congregation suffering from intractable illnesses and disabilities that it is not a punishment from God or evidence of their lack of faith … then what? The next move is probably to concentrate on one or some of the other readings for the week, in the hope of having something to say that (a) we haven’t said within the past three weeks and (b) gives us enough material to fill the “sermon slot”!
Mark’s epiphany – the Messianic Secret
This is the season of Epiphany. The lectionary texts are set to explore the identity and significance of Jesus – to understand who he is and what God is doing through his ministry. Mark’s gospel is particularly appropriate for this season, because one of his dominant themes is the Messianic Secret. There is an irony running through the gospel: Jesus’ ministry is public. Everyone can see what he is doing, and hear his teaching. Yet the point that Mark emphasises time and time again is that very few people “get him”. They see and hear, yet fail to understand. The disciples are used as a narrative device. They are the “fall guys”, whose obtuseness is used to time and time again to reduce the readers to gleeful laughter: we can see clearly what is going on, yet those who are closest to Jesus are astonishingly blind!
Look at the healing of the blind man in Bethsaida, for example (8:22ff). The man sees everything clearly (v25) and as a result, Jesus instructs him to go home – straight home, mind! He isn’t even allowed to go into the village! Why? The narrative follows the structure of the Messianic Secret motif. Those who are healed “see clearly” that Jesus is the Messiah. And Jesus wants this kept a secret. He is the Messiah, but not like the one people are hoping for or expecting. This is why Mark moves immediately to Peter’s confession. Like the blind man, Peter appears to “see clearly”. “You are the Messiah”, he tells Jesus. Note that Jesus sternly orders the disciples to keep quiet about it. Then Mark immediately has the first passion prediction – and Peter reacts by protesting – to the point that Jesus calls him “Satan”!
What is happening here? In terms of the theme of sight and blindness, Peter has not “seen clearly”! He’s right about Jesus – Jesus is the Messiah – but Jesus will only accept the designation in the light of the cross. The first time that Jesus acknowledges the title is at his trial before the Sanhedrin (14:61-62). Peter’s inability to understand that “Messiah” means “suffering” is what constitutes his blindness.
The themes of blindness and seeing, deafness and hearing are even applied to the parables. The irony here is that parables are supposed to be easily accessible and therefore make deep truths clear. Yet in 4:10ff, Jesus makes the extraordinary claim that their purpose is actually to hide the “secret” of the kingdom of God! Mark’s Jesus is a teacher – but also an apocalyptic revealer of mysteries. There is a mystery which requires a “key” to unlock it. Hence Jesus’ oft-repeated phrase at the conclusion of the parable of the sower: “Let anyone with ears listen”.
The healing narratives and Mark’s Christology
Where does this get us with the question of how to preach the healing stories? The point I am trying to make here is that Mark gives us anything but a random selection of “snippets from the scrapbook” of Jesus’ ministry! His intention isn’t to say, “Jesus was a great healer … geddit? You want examples? Ok, let me give you some!” Nor is it his intention to write a potted biography of Jesus’ ministry: “Jesus went here and did this … then there and did that ..”
He isn’t Jesus’ diarist or biographer. His narrative material – the story of Jesus – is carefully worked to reveal who Jesus is so that we, too, might follow, and that our story becomes a gospel, shaped by and recognisably similar to the story of Jesus.
The healing narratives are part of Mark’s Christology, which I have written about here. Mark’s Jesus is the one who overcomes the Strong Man. Jesus alone is able to “plunder the house of the Strong Man” (see 3: 20-7) – to free the captives who are imprisoned by powers that hold them in their grip. Typically, these powers are political (Rome), the religious purity system (the temple, the scribes and the Pharisees), illness and possession.
The new messianic community: healing, restoration and conflict
Jesus’ ministry is about gathering into being a new community – a messianic community – which is a sign of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the world as it ought to be and will be under God. The message of the kingdom is the Good News that Jesus preaches (1:14). It has “come near” in Jesus and begins to take shape – takes on “ground space” – in the community of disciples and followers that Jesus gathers around him. This new community is an anticipation and sign of the kingdom of God.
Significantly, this happens on the margins. Jesus’ ministry takes place in Galilee, far away from Jerusalem. He is baptised in the vicinity of the city, but in the wilderness. This is the place of resistance to the Temple and the religious purity system centre there. The point is that the purity system breaks down community by exclusion. The focus of Jesus’ ministry is among the excluded.
We need therefore to be constantly alert several narrative-structural features of the healing narratives, in addition to the healings themselves:
- Jesus is a healer, not a curer. This is the “healing and wholeness” point. Jesus pays virtually no attention to the symptoms of illness, so crucial in medical diagnosis. He is not a super-doctor! He does not attempt to explain the causes of illness, either in medical or spiritual terms (eg as a result of sin).
- A fundamental feature of the healing narratives is the restoration of community. Peter’s mother-in-law is healed in order to participate in the Sabbath meal (with all the importance that attaches to table fellowship). Lepers are healed in order to be re-integrated into the community. The purity system excludes sick people from participation in communal life and blessing, and the healings that Mark records almost invariably entail the restoration of the healed person to the wider community.
- Unsurprisingly, the healings are therefore in effect (though not intention) a direct confrontation with the religious purity system. We need to be alert to the reaction of those who see healing as a threat. So, for example, the healing of the man with the withered hand (3:1-6) is set in terms of the conflict over Sabbath keeping (as is Peter’s mother-in-law, by implication). Healings are theologically significant and provide the context for many of the deadly conflicts over the Law between Jesus and the Pharisees. The account of a healing concludes with the Pharisees and the Herodians conspiring together to destroy Jesus (3:6).
- The healings are messianic actions. Not only are they the presence of the saving actions of God (the plundering of the Strong Man’s house) but they directly provoke the opposition of the religious authorities that results in Jesus’ suffering and death (which is what is to define his messiahship).
- They make sense of the “great reversal” of the kingdom. Jesus heals among the marginalised and outside the dominant religious system. The dominant system has no place for these people, so that the idea that God is at work through the Messiah among these is anathema to the leaders. This is part of the reason why “the first shall be last and the last first”. Grace is seen in God’s radical inclusion of the excluded. Those who are unable to accept this cut themselves off from Jesus, the new messianic community and the kingdom.
- Jesus did not see himself primarily in opposition to the religious system of his day, but as a prophetic, “purification” movement within Judaism. There is a dynamic tension in all the gospels over what would have happened had Jesus and his message been accepted. The passion predictions suggest that Jesus was fully aware that he had come to be rejected and that his death was inevitable. His weeping over Jerusalem suggests his hope that he would have been accepted and that the kingdom he inaugurated would come about. The healing stories reflect this tension. In the cleansing of the leper (1:40-5), Jesus urges the leper to go to the priest and go through the proper cleansing and restoration rituals. It is clear that Jesus wished to establish the new messianic community within Judaism, rather than in opposition to it. The healing narratives help to plot the movement of Jesus’ initial hope of acceptance, then through opposition to rejection and inevitable death. They help to emphasise the fact that Jesus died because of the life of the kingdom he lived, rather than only a result of the divine plan of salvation through suffering and death. They make his life, as well as his death and resurrection, significant for Christian discipleship.
Preaching the healing narratives = preaching Jesus
The healing narratives are absolute gifts for Epiphany, because they lead us continually to Christology (which is what Epiphany is all about). This is not to suggest that these incidents are only narrative constructs – another “parable” or excuse for preaching Jesus (thereby giving us plenty of material to fill the “sermon slot”!). The narratives reflect the realities of the situations they describe: his healings mean that Jesus is frequently mobbed, and has to retire. They drain him, so he has to withdraw and pray. The crowds become a logistical problem that has to be considered and dealt with. The stories mean that Jesus will be looked on as a miracle worker and the burden of his message and mission will be lost.
The point I want to make is that Mark has carefully selected and framed the narratives within the gospel as a whole, and we do well to keep a constant eye on how they “work” as part of the story he tells. They are not in the gospel as isolated fragments, but as part of a carefully-worked revelation of who Jesus is, what the gospel of the kingdom is all about, and as a summons to personal faith and discipleship. If we don’t keep that in mind, we will miss the point – and struggle to preach on “yet another bloomin’ healing story!” When we’re alert to what is happening within the whole gospel, however, we’ll find that each has its own special significance and emphasis – each discloses the startling new world of the Gospel!
21:16 Posted in Mark , the art of preaching , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study
Tuesday, 03 January 2006
Reading Mark's Gospel
Mark’s gospel is about Jesus. That may sound ridiculously obvious, yet his central point is that Jesus is anything except “obvious”. Jesus is a constant surprise and shock. Jesus confounds expectations and refuses to be domesticated. That was the experience of Jesus’ contemporaries – his disciples, hearers and opponents. This is central to Mark’s message. Jesus is the centre of constant controversy and conflict.
Jesus vs Rome
He is the epicentre of a conflict between the political and religious leaders of his day. His message of the kingdom of God is a deliberate and provocative refusal to accept the lordship of Rome. Mark’s opening title for Jesus is “Son of God” – politically explosive because this is how the Roman emperor was regarded. Jesus, not the emperor, is the Son of God, Mark tells us. Jesus, not the emperor, is divine and therefore worthy of worship. It is the kingdom of God which is to hold sway over all creation, not the Roman Empire. Mark even borrows the genre of his work – “gospel” – from Roman political discourse: Caesar Augustus’ birth was announced to the Roman world as “Good News”. Mark’s opening verse informs us that it is Jesus who is Good News, not the emperor!
Jesus is also the Son of Man. Mark reinterprets a Hebrew colloquialism for “a human being” – “a bloke” – in the apocalyptic terms of Daniel chapter seven. Jesus is the heavenly Son of Man of Daniel 7: 13-14, to whom God gives dominion over the whole world. The world belongs to Jesus, not to Rome. Jesus is to be served and worshipped as God – as divine. Significantly, the Danielic Son of Man is the one who triumphs over the wild beasts of Daniel’s vision – the political leaders of world empires.
In other words, the advent of Jesus is the entry of God into a cosmological conflict over the world. The political powers of empire are ranged against the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man. These are the powers that hold people in captivity. Jesus’ message and mission is a direct confrontation with these powers. It is a deadly confrontation, which the powers win. Jesus is crucified as a pretender to the Jewish throne. However, his death unleashes a new, ultimate power into the world: the power of resurrection.
Jesus vs the temple
His message of the kingdom of God and his own divine authority set Jesus on a collision course with the religious traditions and authority of his day. Mark presents Jesus as the culmination of all that Yahweh has being doing in the history of Israel. He is the fulfilment of the prophetic visions of the Old Testament – particularly of Isaiah. In Markan terms, the Hebrew Scriptures are quite genuinely and appropriately the Old Testament, or covenant. This is not to denigrate their importance but to highlight the unexpected and radical newness of what God does in Jesus. The Good News about Jesus demands that we rethink all that we thought we knew and understood about God up to that point.
The action in Mark’s gospel takes place on the margins, in the Galilee. Not only is there an emphasis on the obscurity of God’s acting in Jesus: the point is that it takes place away from Jerusalem and the temple. It was inconceivable to the religious authorities of Jesus’ day that the fulfilment of God’s purposes in history would not centre on the temple and Jerusalem restored to former political glory. It was inconceivable that the Messiah would not come to purify God’s Chosen People and re-establish the autonomy of the Jewish state. Mark’s point is that Jesus is not a Messiah in any of the established and expected categories, and that God’s intentions are not so narrowly defined.
Jesus will indeed gather a messianic community around him – a new Israel. Yet it is a community of nobodies and ne'er-do-wells. It is drawn from those whom the dominant religious tradition casts out and condemns, as they will Jesus. It is a community of radical inclusiveness whose sole qualification for inclusion is that they are needy and hear Jesus’ no-strings-attached invitation as the most glorious Good News. That invitation is exceedingly Bad News for the religious authorities.
It is not just a theological conflict. It is a power battle. The question of religious authority is a question about the power of the Holy Spirit. Who has it? Who exercises it? Who has the ability to break the stranglehold of the powers of sickness and demon possession that cripple human living? Jesus is not only a teacher, but also a healer and exorcist. It is the power of the Markan Jesus that so enrages the religious authorities that they attempt to explain its origin as demonic and put him to death. They cannot accept it as the working of the Holy Spirit because to do so would be to acknowledge their own spiritual powerlessness and therefore lack of authority.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem brings the conflict to a head. It is not the people who need cleansing, according to Jesus, but the temple and the religious system that has prostituted itself and cut itself off from God. The cleansing of the temple is not simply a prophetic criticism of a system that has become corrupt, but the eschatological judgment upon a religious system that has ranged itself against the kingdom. Jesus is the Messiah – the true Son of the Father – but a Messiah who has come to free the people from all that enslaves them … including the purity system.
Jesus vs the Strong Man
Behind all the incarnations of the political and religious powers that have governed throughout human history lies the power of Satan, the Strong Man. This is the power of chaos and darkness, destruction and death. It is the antithesis of the power of God – the power of Light and Life. It is the power that is ranged against human living and flourishing. It is all that is meant by building a world on resistance to God instead of wholehearted love of God, and on dominion over neighbour instead of love of neighbour as self. It is the power that is incarnated in sickness, demonic possession, oppression, idolatry, guilt and alienation.
Mark presents Jesus as the true king of the universe, but who enters a world held captive by a usurper. Jesus is Mark’s Aslan, coming to free Narnia from the power of the White Witch. Mark’s White Witch is Satan, the Strong Man, and his gospel is his version of the Great Battle between the two for control of the world. It is an eschatological battle – a battle in which the principal adversaries have had many, many skirmishes in the past, but must now face each other in final, deadly conflict. Jesus’ mission is the battle for the soul of the universe.
For all the elements of cosmic drama, we must not mistake the gospel for a mythical, other-worldly tale of heavenly battles between good and evil. The action takes place in our world. It is not the “heavens” which are under threat, but this world which is at stake. This is Good News for our world – the world of human beings, politics, economics, military might, poverty, starvation, oppression, disease, natural disaster and alienation. The powers – both of the demons and the Holy Spirit – are powers at work within human beings. We are not slaves or pawns of the gods. Mark’s Jesus confronts us with our everyday choices and priorities. Mark discloses in Jesus’ person, message and ministry the new world in which human beings love God with heart, soul, mind and strength, and neighbour as self. This world need not be as it is. It is not godforsaken and we are not abandoned to misery and death. Rather, this world is to be transformed. We are not offered an escape from earth to heaven, but instead challenged with possibility of heaven on earth – the world as the arena where God’s will is done.
Mark the dramatist
Mark’s gospel is a pot-boiler. The action is intense, fast-paced and concentrated. From the first, we are hurried from incident to incident. The gospel unfolds like scenes from a thriller, or high drama. For all Mark’s poor Greek, he is no slouch when it comes to literary drama. He chooses his words with care and precision. He works his material to take his readers on a high-octane roller coaster of a ride. To be drawn into the gospel is to be drawn into the heart of conflict. We cannot remain passive spectators. We are called on to take sides and recognise the hard, fundamental and life-searching issues that are at stake. It isn’t only football that is about things far more serious than life or death – it is Jesus, too!
22:30 Posted in Mark , the art of preaching , Year B | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: Bible Study, Reading Mark's gospel, lectionary Year B, Son of God, Son of Man, Daniel, cleansing of the temple, Mark as dramatist, The Strong Man
Tuesday, 30 August 2005
Dissonance and disturbance - journeying outside the comfort zone
Far too many sermons are boring. If a sermon is boring, it means that nothing important has been said – at least, nothing important enough to disturb, rattle, excite, irritate or inspire. The listeners go out exactly the same as they came in, except, perhaps, even further inoculated against transformation. It may not stop them coming to church – indeed, most committed churchgoers demonstrate admirable resilience, if not an unusually high boredom threshold – but they will be more deeply confirmed in their despair that there is no genuinely Good News to be heard. There is no Living Word, no meeting with God, no alternative to what the papers say or the television shows.
For the most part, preachers pass on their own experience of the text. If they have found nothing transformatory for themselves, they will pass that absence on. If they have been startled, excited, puzzled or renewed, they will pass that on, too. Note that I am not talking about obscure or fascinating textual facts. I am talking about the sense in which the biblical texts operate sacramentally to mediate an encounter with God. Encountering God is the purpose of reading the bible and preaching, and it is the presence or absence of such an encounter that the preacher passes on. Boring sermons mean almost inevitably that the preacher has had a God-free encounter with text – an experience which is faithfully passed on to the listeners.
One problem is the size of our comfort zone. Those of us who have lived long with and preached often on the biblical texts have become too familiar with them to hear the Word freshly. Our capacity for surprise and disturbance is drastically reduced. When we are too comfortable with God, we shut God out. We do that by domesticating God. God is enclosed in our box. It may be a very large box, but it is our box. And, as we preach over the years, we reach the sides of the boxes of our own construction and then we have nothing new to say. By “new”, I don’t mean “novel”. I mean fresh, disturbing, liberating and transforming. We discover that, by boxing God in, we shut God out, because, of course, God cannot be contained in our boxes
I operate a rule of thumb that says that I am going to be disturbed by the texts. This is particularly true of the gospels. I assume that the first word that I am going to hear is a word of opposition – a word that disturbs, shocks, offends or upsets me. In other words, I look actively to be jolted outside of my comfort zone; to be taken out of the familiar and into the alien territory of the world of the Gospel. It is alien because it is God-infused and I habitually experience the world as mediated to me by friends, family, society, the media – the collective experience, in other words, of making a world without God. I read to find the Jesus who I assume will be a stranger to me. That isn’t easy. But Jesus is strange and unexpected. He doesn’t behave as he ought. And so I read for dissonance and disturbance, precisely in order to create the necessary space in my comfortable familiarity for God to break in with a new word that is genuinely Gospel. Two reading strategies help.
The first is to assume that I (as part of the Christian Church) will find Jesus every bit as offensive and unchristian (in terms of conventional churchianity) as the Jewish religious leaders found Jesus to be. I operate on the assumption that Jesus will not automatically bless our endeavours, but would, if he were living and ministering today in Windermere, attend Church under sufferance, tearing himself away from his circle of friends and acquaintances among the local people I never meet or have anything to do with, but who are all on first-name terms with Jesus. I read the gospels and try to see the life of the Church as it would be reflected in Jesus’ eyes – eyes which see so much more of the rest of the world than my own church-induced myopia.
The second strategy is to try and explain the gospel passages to someone who knows nothing of the story or the bible. That is when passages suddenly become difficult, obscure, puzzling or downright offensive. That is when I discover the Jesus who is truly human, as opposed to the divine ghost I am in constant danger of constructing, albeit unconsciously.
So, for example, as I was preparing to preach on the Canaanite woman (Matt 15: 21ff), I noticed something startling. The incident – a conversation – follows immediately on the heels of Jesus’ declaration that it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles, not what goes in. What comes out shows what is in the heart. We are then presented with a conversation – words coming out of mouths. And it is Jesus who is defiled! What comes out of his mouth is rude, boorish, sexist, racist and prejudiced. It is what comes out of the Canaanite woman’s mouth that converts Jesus! Jesus is forced to confront his own inherited prejudices. His Jewish-centric world is shaken to its core. He is shown the new world of God’s grace – the grace that embraces the whole world. And so, in the very next pericope, Jesus looks at his Gentile audience who have not eaten for three days and has compassion on them (v32) in marked contrast to his reaction to the Canaanite woman.
Dissonance and disturbance create the space for God to break into our self-enclosed world. Some Christian traditions speak of preaching as “breaking open the Word”. A primary task of preaching is to allow the Word to break open our world – to make the crack through which the Light can begin to pour in.
11:15 Posted in the art of preaching | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this