Douglas Williams Blog, Mark, Theology

Mark 3:7-35: A lake, a mountain, and a home

Jesus TeachesIn Mark 3:7-35, Jesus goes to a lake, a mountain, and an unidentified home. In all of these places, Jesus will be surrounded by people. At the lake crowds are pressing in so that Jesus must retreat to a boat before he is crushed. At the house, Mark tells us that the crowds were so thick and troublesome, Jesus and his disciples were unable to eat. In between, he takes a hike up a mountain.

After the Pharisees begin to plot with the Herodians over how they might end Jesus’ life, Mark has Jesus retreating with his disciples to  the lake, the Sea of Galilee. Jesus tries to withdraw, but the people draw near. Mark is keen to tell us that all kinds of people, from “Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon”, came to see Jesus. Everyone wants to see this man for themselves. I tend to think about Jesus being surrounded by a nice orderly crowd, but, based on Jesus’ request for a boat, it seems this crowd was anything but serene. Those with diseases are pressing to be near him and those with unclean spirits see Jesus, they fall down in front of him and identify him as the Son of God. Jesus tells them to be quiet.

Jesus then goes to a mountainside, and Mark tells us that Jesus calls to him those he wanted, which I think contrasts nicely with the crowds gathering to see him. Jesus then appoints twelve to be those who are sent out to accomplish two things: 1) preach and 2) to drive out demons on the authority and based on the commission from Jesus. The location of a mountain always brings to my mind the giving of the Law to Moses, who ascends, receives the message from God, and brings it back to the people. Jesus does something different here. He calls those he is empowering to the mountain, sending them out to be heralds of God as king and the kingdom of heaven as the dominant socio-political force in the world.

In the third act of this section, Jesus goes into an unidentified house. This time the commotion was so great that Jesus and his disciples weren’t even able to sit and enjoy a meal together. Two accusations are leveled at Jesus. The first comes from his family, “He is out of his mind!”. The second comes from the teachers who had come down from Jerusalem to protest, ““He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” Jesus will deal first with the teachers of the law and then his family.

To the teachers of the law, Jesus makes it clear that a divided kingdom will never stand. If Jesus is possessed, how is he able to drive out demons from those who are possessed with a demon. Why would Satan allow such a thing to happen? You can’t rob a strong man’s house without first tying him up and them taking what he has. The lesson here is that Jesus has bound Satan and is able to rob him of those whom he has possessed.

Jesus takes his rhetoric one step further. Instead of simply refuting the teachers of the law and moving on, he offers a harsh judgement against them and their particular brand of self-righteousness. If the religious leaders are the ones saying Jesus has an impure spirit, they are failing to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. This is the ‘eternal sin’ Jesus mentions.  There’s endless speculation over this, but I think it’s the failure to recognize the work of God’s spirit – attributing the work of God to the work of Satan.

In verse 31, Jesus’ mother and brothers make an appearance so that he might deal with the accusation they brought against him, that he was out of his right mind. They ask to see Jesus by sending someone in to visit with him. I wonder why Jesus’ family didn’t go into see him themselves. Were there too many people? Did they not want to associate with the rowdy people who were clamoring to see Jesus? Were they afraid for their own safety? The spokesperson tells Jesus that his family is looking for him. I think this is an odd way of phrasing this because other people had been looking for Jesus and had obviously found him. Why wouldn’t his family enter the house and look for him themselves? Jesus rhetorically asks, “Who are my mother and brothers?” He answers it by claiming that those who draw near to him and do the God’s will is his brother and mother.

People, crowds of people, bookend these three scenes. There’s a mix of swarming crowds gathering around Jesus and his disciples who are sent to the swarming crowds. In a culture that was heavily organized by societal hierarchies and peppered with the importance of family, Jesus does something radical here when he appeals to the crowds. He accepts them (he doesn’t even know them) and claims that those who do his will are his closest relatives (which means he gives a back seat to his closest relatives).

Roman emperors knew the power of the populous masses and sought to control them with a variety of tactics. The Roman writer Juvenal passes along the policy of Emperor Augustus whereby the Plebians would be appeased with ‘bread and circuses’. In other words, you’ve got to give the people what they want, food and entertainment, or they’ll revolt against you. The gladiator battles and hippodrome races where a major aspect to this policy. Jesus isn’t simply appeasing the crowds. He’s meeting their needs at a deeper, more intimate level. This isn’t appeasement. It’s fulfillment.

For Mark, King Jesus has fully assumed control of his kingdom. He has brought good news and peace (1:1), had a royal servant prepare his path (1:2-4), received divine recognition as a Son of God (1:11), communicated his platform (1:15), gathered his inner council (1:16-20), battled against the warring powers (1:23-26), initiated his welfare policy (1:32-34), debated other religious-political leaders (Mark 2), trained his inner council to act on his behalf (3:13-19), received adulation from crowds (3:7-12), and settled the question about the inheritance of his crown (3:34-35).

 

Douglas Williams Blog, Mark, Theology

Mark 2:23-3:6: Kingdom Disputes

00001516In the same way that Mark 2:13-22 includes two questions, the first one asked about Jesus and the second one asked about Jesus’ disciples, this section, Mark 2:19-3:6, includes two questions. The first is directed towards Jesus about his disciples, and the second where Jesus asks a question no one is willing to answer.

In the first Sabbath scene, Jesus is asked about a practice in which his disciples are engaging: picking heads of grain from the fields. This practice of gleaning can be found in three passages from the Old Testament, Leviticus 19:9-10, Leviticus 23:22, and Deuteronomy 24:19-22. This practice is also described in the story of Ruth 2 as a kind of social welfare for Ruth and Naomi.

Of course, the Pharisees know these passages from Leviticus and they know about Ruth and Naomi. Their problem is not that the disciples are eating from the fields, but that they are eating from the fields on the Sabbath. So, when Jesus is asked about their practice, he doesn’t refer back to Leviticus, Deuteronomy, or Ruth, but he references a story from 1 Samuel 21 where David, on the run from Saul, stops and requests from the priest the consecrated bread for himself and his companions.

Perhaps what Jesus is implying here is that if David, while on his way to becoming king over Israel, makes an exception to the rule (Leviticus 22:10) when it comes to eating the consecrated bread, so to Jesus, who is a Son of David, the King of Kings, has the right to challenge restrictions on picking grain on the Sabbath. Perhaps the analogy is that in the same way David has some discretion in pursuit of his kingship, so too Jesus has discretion as he assumes his kingdom. After all, it is the king who makes and enforces the rules.  In essence, what he says to the Pharisees is that they believe David had the right to make an amendment to ceremonial regulations, so why wouldn’t the Son of God have those same rights.

Mark then deftly connects this story of the disciples picking grains with their hands on the sabbath to man before Jesus on the sabbath with a withered hand – unable to pick grain or do much other work to support himself. To have a deformity like this would mean not only that the man is unable to work, but probably couldn’t even engage in the social welfare described above that was intended to protect him.

It’s into this second sabbath story that Jesus asks his question: “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” We’ve seen several questions flying around in the gospel of Mark so far, even several questions from Jesus. This is the first time, though, that Mark tells us that everyone remained silent as a response to Jesus’ question. Mark portrays Jesus’ emotion, his anger and astonishment at their indifference. The question is answered by Jesus asking the man to stretch out his restored hand. From here the Pharisees partner with the Herodians, a reference to those who would count themselves as supporters of Herod Antipas, to plot how they might destroy this usurper to the throne.

I think what Mark is setting up for us in these passages is the battle between the kingship and Kingdom of God against the kingship and kingdom of the Pharisees and the Herodians. Jesus, quite naturally, comes into conflict with the kingdoms of the Pharisees and the Herodians. Mark’s inclusion of Jesus’ reference to King David as he was assuming the throne should place into our minds notions of Jesus as King and assuming a very different kind of throne. For the reader, the differences between these kingdoms are beginning to come into focus.

Douglas Williams Blog, Mark, Theology

Mark 2:18-22: Jesus is questioned about f(e)asting

It’s now Jesus’ turn to be asked a question. In 2:16 it’s the pharisees question Jesus’ disciples about why he’s eating with tax collectors and sinners. In 2:18 they, potentially generic people, ask Jesus why his disciples fail to fast. When compared with the previous questioning, it appears that Mark is having a bit of fun with us as the disciples are questioned about Jesus’ actions and Jesus is questioned about the disciples’ action. In fact, if you go back to the healing of the paralyzed man in 2:1-12, there are questions floating about, directed at no one in particular, that Jesus answers. So, there is a movement from 1) questions directed at no one, 2) a question directed at Jesus’ disciples, and then 3) a question directed at Jesus. Jesus tries to clear the air by pointing out that the guest of honor is in town and you wouldn’t hold a fast when you were supposed to have a feast. The time for fasting will come, but the time now is to feast. Jesus even answers their question with a question, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridge groom is with them, can they?”

The fasting that the disciples of John and the Pharisees are asking about is the kind of legalese fasting required by Jews, fasting twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Perhaps this fasting is an attempt to follow an extra-biblical command in order to bring about the new Kingdom of the Messiah. In other words, it was by fasting, by pulling away from sinners, that the Kingdom would be inaugurated. What Jesus declares with his emphasis on fasting is the very thing he decrees in Mark 1:14, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.” The Kingdom does not come through fasting, but, it’s in the act of feasting with those at the margins that God’s Kingdom is celebrated.

Jesus then puts two comparisons in front of us, one about old and new cloth and one about old and new wineskins. His overall point in using these illustrations is that no one would ever think about putting something new on something old. You don’t put new cloth on old cloth to repair a tear because it would end up making the tear worse. You don’t put new wine into old wineskins because they’ll burst the wineskins, ruining the wine and the wineskins. What do we make of this?

I think staying with the original question posed to Jesus about his disciples is important for understanding Jesus’ use of these illustrations. Even in Matthew and Luke’s accounts of this encounter, while there are a few variants, the question posed to Jesus about fasting is attached to the reference of old and new. Perhaps these examples are an indication that, yes, God was doing something new and wondrous in their midst. That, yes, the inauguration of God’s Kingdom is filled with feasting in anticipation of the final feast we’ll share with the Messiah. Yet, there’s also an element about who’s fit to be entrusted with this Kingdom message. Jesus is stinging in his indictment that it’s not John’s disciples, or the Pharisees, because their religion has made them unfit t0 be vessels of God’s Kingdom. The old would have to be made new again.

Instead, it’s those untainted by religion, those unsullied from years of thinking they have it right, who are entrusted to be God’s heralds. It’s those who are still flexible enough to handle the new cloth and the new wine. If we take Jesus at his word, the Kingdom message would have been ruined, along with John’s disciples and the Pharisees, if they had been entrusted with his message. It becomes all too clear why Jesus chose those with no formal education and no background in temple life to be his closest disciples.

Jesus is questioning the old versus the new, the flexibility of those he’s calling to handle his Kingdom message, and taking on the impossibility of legalese religion to bring about God’s Kingdom. Jesus teaches us that rigidity and a position of exclusion from those God is reaching out to has no place in God’s Kingdom.