One Man's Web
My partner and I once visited a synagogue and its adjacent museum. One of the synagogue members began to take us through the synagogue itself, reasonably assuming we knew little or nothing of the Biblical traditions. So, I said, "It might help if we owned up to being Uniting Church ministers. We actually know some of these stories!" She looked at us, considering. "Well! A clergy couple! I've heard about such things, but I've never seen one." We had a great time.
Later, our guide introduced us to the museum, and left us to work our way through. Something began to bother me, and eventually I was able to articulate it to my partner: Everything in the wonderful, terrible, story of Israel being told in the museum was cast so that Israel saw itself as the victim.
It took longer for me to realise why I found this quite so discomforting. I knew that characterising ourselves for too long as "the victim"—even if we are a victim—is unhealthy for all sorts of reasons, but my response was not an intellectual judgement. It was something visceral. Eventually, I realised my deeper self was telling me. "This is you! You play the victim...." Read on >>>>
This is a (very) draft extract from my slowly developing book on Mark, as I ruminate on the implications of his words. This extract deals with Mark 1:16-20, which is the calling of the first four disciples. My understanding of the New Testament use of irony to subvert religious and cultural norms is dependent upon the work of James Alison, and if I can find a single quotation that neatly sums up his work on this subject, I'll post it here.
Passing by...
Jesus does not walk down the beach, but passes by (paragōn para). For anyone immersed in the Old Testament this echoes God passing by Elijah on Mt Carmel, (1 Kings 19:11) so that there is a hint of theophany in Mark's saying Jesus passes by. In the same chapter of 1 Kings, in verse 19, Elijah passed by Elisha and calls him to follow. Clearly, Jesus is not being shown to be Elijah; that is John's role. Instead, the allusions are about Jesus having power and authority to call people to follow him. And in the drama of the text, Jesus is "immediately" on the move. This new basileia/culture is about journeying. There is a connection between this first call to discipleship in our current text and the moment when Jesus intends to pass by the disciples in Mark 6:47. Without the cultural reference point, or echo,1 of I Kings 19 we will miss a Markan hint which Matthew 14:22-33 makes explicit: Walking on the sea, passing by, Jesus calls Matthew's Peter out of the boat. Mark asks of us, "Will you follow him?"
The call to war?
Also present in the calling of the disciples is another cultural echo for Mark's contemporaries, that of the charismatic military leader calling for Israelites to follow them into holy war... Read on >>>>
In my Bible there's a heading above this week's RCL reading which says, "The Death of John the Baptist." But that heading isn't in Mark's Gospel. Mark doesn't call it that. In fact, in the early manuscripts of Mark there are not even spaces between the words, much less paragraph headings!! (Codex Alexandrinus – end of chapter 6:27-54)
This is actually important, because that heading The Death of John the Baptist, which some twentieth century editor inserted into my Bible affects the way we interpret the story. It might even direct us away from some of what Mark is trying to tell us about Jesus. Was Mark's main purpose with this story really to tell us about John's death? And... wouldn't we be more accurate to call it The Murder of John the Baptist?
In Mark's world they put "headings" into the text by the way they arranged stories. One way to do this was to put particular stories alongside each other. So, we have today's reading starting at what we now call Chapter 6:14—and those verse numbers were not in Mark either, and then, straight after today's reading, beginning at Chapter 6 verse 30 there is another story. Those two stories are meant to be read together, and if we were to give them a heading, we might call today's reading Herod's Feast, because Mark contrasts it with what follows, which we could call Jesus' Feast. Read on >>>>
From the text: As endemic as the hate, shame, and desire to flee has been in my life, an unavoidable observation for me is the paradox that these things have increased in their intensity during fifteen years which have been a period of intense learning and personal growth. This to the point that I needed to retire early for the simple reason, at base, that I was utterly exhausted. I cannot remember not being tired. To make this clear: as I have learned what was unconsciously driving me, and gained some freedom from that; as I have been given the ability to be a gentler, less judgemental and abusive person; as I have learned some wisdom; and even as I have been astonished at my relief from anger and self-hatred for much of the time, some variation of that hatred seems to have condensed into a well of pain and grief which is deeper than ever. I am not able adequately to express the contradiction of that, even to myself... Read on >>>>