Reflections on Mark's calling of the disciples and literary irony.
This is a (very) draft extract from my 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 war2 : see for example, Judges 3:28, 6:34, and 1 Samuel 11:6-7. In the Judges 6 and the Samuel 11 examples, this call is preceded by the coming of the Spirit upon the leader, which is exactly what has happened in Mark, where we have just read of Jesus' baptism. Later in the tradition, the same pattern is seen in 1 Maccabees 2:27-28.3 So Marcus can say that in his calling of the disciples
Jesus is being portrayed ... not only as prophet but also as a leader who demands from his followers the same sort of total dedication that the Jewish revolutionaries in the Markan environment demanded from their followers.4
How did this sound to those who had survived the Roman dahiya5 of CE70? In Acts 5:37, Gamaliel recalls Judas the Galilean "got people to follow him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered." And now, for Mark's people, it had happened on an unthinkable scale. Was Jesus calling them to even more horror?
How can Mark not be one more imperial ideology if he uses language which reminds us of Elijah,6 and which is also reminiscent of Holy War? The issue will be whether he really affirms these things or, in fact, subverts them.
It is here that we must begin to read the subtleties of Mark. Mark can only talk to people enmeshed in the culture of empire by using the words and categories of empire. Otherwise, he would be incomprehensible. But we have reservations about the language of kingdom, and even more about the language of holy war, even if his references to it are not noticed by many contemporary readers.7 How should we respond?
Does the apparently imperial language somehow subvert the culture of empire? Or, to ask the question in another way, can our careful, even repetitive reading of Mark, itself lead us to have reservations about a literal "surface" reading of his language?
An example of such subversion occurs in Matthew 25:31-46 in the parable of the sheep and the goats. I choose this example because of its clarity, and because in my pastoral experience many people see it so clearly. Matthew uses a story—Jesus told a story—with which everyone was familiar—they knew how this story went, and they knew their place in it; the good religious folks had told them.8 The parable is first of all "a sting operation," because in it, Jesus reverses the categories everyone "already knows" to be the sheep and goats. Then he goes further, and says that he will be found not among the religious insiders, but among those who are cast out:9 "When you did it to the least of these… you did it to me! …inherit the kingdom prepared for you…" But to those who are numbered among the goats he said, "You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." They go away into eternal punishment for in rejecting the outcasts, they rejected him. (See in particular, vv41, 46)
But surely this is the violence of empire as it seeks to insulate itself from the fear of death by creating outsiders, and placing death upon them!? So, on the surface, it would seem that at the same time as Jesus preaches radical inclusion, he creates another group of outsiders! But listen to the audience of such a story, who are all, like us, steeped in violence: Certainly, some will say, "Good, the goats deserve it!" But others will be horrified because the Gospel has done its work on them. In them, the story and its contradictions has somehow subverted the doctrines of empire. And there may be an intellectually sharp, but not yet wise, outraged young fellow who will abruptly challenge Matthew and cry out, "What you are really saying about the outcasts is that God doesn't judge people!" And Mark, if he were listening and thinking of his Chapter 4:1-20 might say, "Bingo! You've seen it! Now will you hear and see, or will your outrage (your learned way of thinking) be the bird of the air that snatches away the seed planted in you?"
We can read the words of Mark literally, as listeners untouched, and see a triumphant god-man who is a stronger10 and bigger imperial bully, who is fortunately on our side. Or… is Mark's language ironic11 , so that his words enable us see something else? As I have said to parishioners worried by Matthew 25, so I say here: The fact that the gospel discomforts us in this way; that is, that it seems a contradiction, is a sure sign that the Spirit has begun to enlighten us.
In a recent sermon on Esther, Nathan Nettleton says of old comedy shows
There are jokes that only work if the audience shares the unquestioned prejudices of the comedian, and so when the audience grows up and no longer finds sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, and colonialism funny, those jokes don't land any more. They evoke awkwardness or even horror instead.
The biblical book of Esther is an ancient sitcom, and when I read it again this past week, I was feeling that awkwardness and horror. Much of it is still very funny, but there's a twist at the end that has aged very badly.12
What Nathan points out in a very confronting and wise sermon is that when the Jews of the Persian Empire are given permission to defend themselves against the "archetypal" antisemitism that is whipped up by Hamen, they go far beyond self defence. Indeed, Esther, in a comedic fashion, presages the IDF doctrine of Dahiya which, in brief,
should target economic interests and the centers of civilian power that support [a militant] organization. The logic is to harm the civilian population so much that they will then turn against the militants, forcing the enemy to sue for peace.13
Leaving Nathan's sermon for a few paragraphs, we are seeing in real time the victims of the Holocaust perpetrating a holocaust of their own. The current death rate in Gaza is being logged by someone writing for Wikipedia:
On 17 September 2024, the [Gaza Health Ministry] published the names, gender and birth date of 34,344 individual Palestinians whose identities were confirmed. This reflects more than 80% of the casualties reported so far; of these, 60% were not men of fighting age. The GHM count does not include those who have died from "preventable disease, malnutrition and other consequences of the war". An analysis by the Gaza Health Projections Working Group predicted thousands of excess deaths from disease and birth complications. 14
On September 30 2024, Oxfam15 says
Conservative figures show that more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months. Data from 2004-2021 on direct conflict deaths from the Small Arms Survey, estimates that the highest number of women killed in a single year was over 2,600 in Iraq in 2016…
None of this excuses the murderous behaviour of Hamas for even one second. But neither does the behaviour of Hamas justify the actions of the state of Israel.
At the end of his sermon, Nathan said
If the dark underbelly of the book of Esther makes you cringe in horror like a badly dated Two Ronnies sketch, it's probably a sign that the Holy Spirit is at work in you, calling you to another way, the way of the cross, the way of Jesus. Trust the Spirit, and let's follow the crucified Jesus together, on into the wide open spaces of God's love.
What I wonder is this: Even before the example of Jesus, does Esther in its use of irony, on its own terms, already condemn dahiya? I'm not asking this as a charge against the state of Israel. Is it not the case that we, the church, too long and too often, have been blind to the irony of the scriptures, which read with insight would condemn our violence. How much did the church question the tactics of Bomber Harris, for example?16 How much did we speak out against the long war of attrition against First Nations people in Australia?
Not only have we not seen the symbolic nature of the Gospel texts and read them as literal accounts of Jesus' life. We have also failed to see the ironic nature of our scriptures.
(Andrea Prior, 26 October 2024)
______
1. I take a cultural reference point or echo to mean an allusion which is quite clear to people of the culture in which it is made, but may be oblique or even invisible to outsiders. For example, Australians say "Look out for the Noahs" or "Careful of the Joe Blakes," and both expressions are opaque to overseas visitors.
2. Marcus, pp183-4: See LXX Judges 3:28, (LXX κατάβητε ὀπίσω μου ) 6:34 (ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ ), and 1 Samuel 11:6-7 (ἐκπορευόμενος ὀπίσω ). The text in Mark 1 is δεῦτε ὀπίσω μου.
3. ἐξελθέτω ὀπίσω μου
4. Marcus, pp183-4:
5. See: https://imeu.org/article/the-dahiya-doctrine-and-israels-use-of-disproportionate-force
6. I say in John 1:4-8 - Wilderness, "There are differences between John and Jesus: The power wielded by Elijah is brutal; 2 Kings 1 has a high death toll, and John believed that the one who would follow him was more powerful again! Has John has understood the way of Jesus? He is presented to us only in the violent imagery of Elijah. "
7. They were likely so clear and obvious to his first listeners, that to say he alluded to them would imply a sense of veiling or hinting that was not there for them.
8. For more detail, see Prior, "Fathers, sons, sheep, and goats" https://www.onemansweb.org/fathers-sons-sheep-and-goats.html
9. The understanding of the time was that the sick, homeless, prisoners etc, were deservedly in this position because of their sin; so, they were ostracised. In some people's thinking, to help them was to go against God's will!
10. Cf Mark 3:27
11. Irony expresses meaning through the use of language that normally expresses the opposite.
12. Nettleton, N. http://southyarrabaptist.church/sermons/did-you-hear-the-one-about-the-sex-goddess-who-fought-anti-semitism/
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war
15. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-children-killed-gaza-israeli-military-any-other-recent-conflict
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive "to destroy Germany's industrial workforce and the morale of the German population, through bombing German cities and their civilian inhabitants."
Would you like to comment?
I have turned off the feedback module due to constant spamming. However, if you would like to comment, or discuss a post, you are welcome to email me using the link at the bottom of this page, and I may include your comments at the bottom of this article.