Endless Worrying of Ideology

The next section we encounter, as we move backward in Mark, is a collection of disputes Jesus has with various authorities.  The commentators, of course, describe Jesus as the master of these arguments, and the commentators will draw out more and more esoteric reasonings of the exact way in which Jesus is supposed to have laid out his arguments.  This is silly.  Jesus' arguments here were meant to respond to moments, and in addition they were meant to respond within the experience-fields of his immediate hearers--people who had little time in their short lives to contemplate the niceties of theology or moral philosophy.

This begins with Jesus--embarking on what appears to be a single day of disputation in the temple--being asked the source of his authority.  Confronted by "the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders," they ask him, "By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?"  As a condition for answering them, Jesus dares the clerics to inform him, "The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me."

Jesus' challenge goes directly to the matter, as I mentioned above, of the audience to these disputes.  Being disinclined to allow that John's baptism was "From heaven" (thereby vindicating Jesus at once), the priests, scribes, and elders are equally loathe to say that John's baptism was "of men"--because "they feared the people."  The constrained context of the public disputation deprives us, unfortunately, of the nuances that such questions can exhibit in extended discourse.

We will never know what turns there could have been to the authorities' reasonings by which it might be stated that the dichotomy of "from heaven, or of men" is ultimately inadequate.  It would be as well that Christians be constrained to say whether this or that Pauline epistle is "from heaven, or of Paul."  Certainly the strains of Christian radio blare thousands upon thousands of hours of opining about how it might best be stated that those epistles were from heaven and Paul both.  The point here is that Christian holdings-forth about biblical authority usually occupy only extended preachings to the congregations, or perhaps extended disputations among academics.

At the street level, in Christian preaching the Bible is either the Word of God or it is not ("not" being given the worst of it.)  We can expect little other from the account we receive of the dispute over Jesus' authority as ratified in the ministry of John the Baptist--John's source of authority was of necessity reduced to an either/or proposition.  This reduction, however, was imposed in the account of the dispute between Jesus and the clerics by the audience in attendance.  Elsewhere, Jesus' teachings contain nuances more than equal to the musings of commentators through the ages.  One need merely consider the intriguing puzzle Jesus presents to the effect that forgiveness--that is, in the profound type of implication--is bestowed both by God and by humans.

We next encounter what is called "The Parable of the Wicked Tenants," or some such.  What is really alarming here, however, is the tendency of some commentators to say that the parable "concerns the Jewish nation," as though the leased vineyard was the Promise of God, and not the people of the Promise.  For it is really (and unmistakably) the nation of Israel that is the vineyard, and the wicked tenants ("husbandmen") are the leaders of Israel, not the people.  It is only the leadership of the nation, after having reneged on the produce of the vineyard and after having "shamefully handled" the collectors of the "lord of the vineyard," who might in any imagining have stood to claim the place of the heir of the lord.

Additionally, the parable passage itself tells us that Jesus' target is the Jewish authorities, who "knew that he had spoken the parable against them."  These priests and scribes and elders have to stand there and take it, much as they would like to have Jesus arrested, and they are restrained, as the text has it, for fear of the audience--"the people."

The ensuing three episodes display the continuing theme of this post: Jesus' arguments here were meant to respond to moments, and in addition they were meant to respond within the experience-fields of his immediate hearers.  The Pharisees and Herodians ask Jesus about the legitimacy of paying taxes, and he demonstrates their "hypocrisy" by doing nothing more than recalling for his interrogators (and the crowds) how the very business of the Judaean economy presumed an accommodation for the overarching interests of the Roman overlords--interests infused in the lives of great and small, in the purses of great and small, and in the transactions of great and small--whether the paying of taxes was the issue of any moment or not.

Asked about the status of marriage after the deaths of all involved, Jesus invokes nothing more than the power of God--which can be taken to resolve any quandary--and the scriptures (at least the elementary scriptures of Creation, which describe marriage as a remediation of the man's state, not as an ideal) such that it is apparent that marriage will have no institutional place in the afterlife.  And as far as the afterlife itself, Jesus invokes the foundational truth that nothing (and no person) that has ever been embraced by the mind of God could ever cease to exist.

Asked by a scribe, "Which is the first commandment of all?"--invoking, of course, the implicit and undemonstrated presumption that there would be such a "first commandment"--Jesus responds with a quick series of scriptural references that describe the oneness and singularity of God, the need for loving God, and the need for loving "thy neighbor as thyself" (this last reference, from Leviticus, being followed by "I am the LORD" in that text.)  The scribe in his presumption gets not the single answer for which he asked, but rather he (with the audience) gets a short course in the necessity of love--a course so simple in its real-life application that Jesus shows no intention to elaborate.  Responding positively to the scribe's declaration that such display of love "is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices," Jesus says merely, "Thou are not far from the Kingdom of God."

Meanwhile, it must be noted that these disputations and discourses are presented as though they were available to the crowd.  Jesus presents here the puzzle, as he "taught in the temple," of the logically self-defeating notion that a son of David could be the lord of David: "For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool."  Jesus does not resolve the puzzle, either for us, or for "the common people," who "heard him gladly."

Then Jesus tells the people to beware the scribes, "which love to go in long clothing" and to be treated with deference, and also to reckon that service to God is not measured by how much one gives, but by how much one has left.  All of these disputations and discourses presume the attendance of the common people, and all of them refer to the experiential and the referential--the attempted focus of this blog--rather than to conceptualizations of existence viewed as it were from above.  Jesus invites the people to understand what they can as viewed through their daily lives, and he invites them to the freedom to reckon that there is much that they will not understand--and not to fear--and not to be caught up in the endless worrying of ideology.

The End That is Not in Mark

The section of Mark that precedes that of the previous post is usually called the "eschatological discourse" or some such.  It has close parallels in the other two synoptics, and--as might be expected--the other two add elements.  I contend that the true version resides chiefly in Mark, and that the unwarranted additions in Matthew and Luke detract from the account.

The account starts with the exchange between Jesus and his disciples about the temple buildings, and with the questions the disciples ask about the future after Jesus says the temple will be destroyed.  Mark has the disciples ask, "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?" (13:4, KJV).  Matthew has the disciples ask as well for "the sign of thy coming"--which as an addition to the account is but the starting-point of its manifest manipulation by the gospel writers.

Then Jesus tells the disciples to ignore both claims of the Christ's return, and also news of "wars and rumours of wars" and earthquakes and "famines and troubles."  This is to be accompanied by the persecution of the faithful.

Then Jesus says, "And the gospel must first be published among all nations."  This directive--which seems to fly in the face of the notion that "this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done," and that not even Jesus knows the day and hour of the end--leaves little to be gleaned other than the idea that the spreading of the gospel is a command important in that it be followed, not that it be accomplished.  That the commands of God in general have been published in the essential nature of the world is a definite Biblical teaching, making the spread of Jesus' particular teachings (to say nothing of the larger Christian "gospel") an addition to the very basics of faith.  Nonetheless, Matthew insists, "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come."

So Matthew has the disciples ask specifically about the return of Jesus, and Matthew frames the propagation of the gospel as something to be accomplished before the end comes.  Matthew is erecting the framework of the End Times scheme that has captured the attentions of the churches, while Mark is simply telling the disciples what experiences to expect.  Moreover, in Mark those experiences are to be those of normal life buffeted and at last dissolved by the crush of events--the disciples are not expected to lead their lives endlessly rehearsing their testimonies as narrations of their lives and as recapitulations of their spiritual progresses.  The disciples' lives unfolding before them as discoveries of truth upon truth is all they need bring to the fearsome moments of being expected to provide their defenses.

And then will come that fearsome moment that is the harbinger of the end.  Luke has that moment as, "And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies," which betrays both the time of Luke/Acts writing, and its agenda of the role of the chosen being lost to the Jews.  Mark and Matthew, on the other hand, tie the end to the "abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet."  Mark has this horror "standing where it ought not," while Matthew has it "stand in the holy place"--a rather more definite location, though one might wonder whether Mark's generalized idea of location might better describe an "abomination" that ought not to exist anywhere.

At the appearance of the "abomination" Mark instructs the faithful, "And let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house: And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment.  But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!  And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter."  Matthew adds that the "flight" would be preferable "neither on the sabbath day," though Jesus' concern for sabbath necessities would seem to obviate that concern.

The important thing here is the undeniable realization that Jesus is not describing a concrete situation.  The notion that a householder would suddenly "see the abomination of desolation . . . standing where it ought not" from his housetop or field is ridiculous if the "abomination" is held to be some statue raised up in a (presumably) reconstituted temple.  Even the strained notion of a person on a roof or in a field being hailed into action by a fleeing co-religionist is untenable, given Jesus' disdain for "rumours"--undoubtedly some time--however brief--of sober investigation would be in order.  Obviously Jesus is giving an evocative illustration.

The idea of the "abomination of desolation" is best understood as a warning of the deteriorating condition of the world, a condition that would require our constant attentions, not our stashed-away resolve to give up our ease and comfort "when the end comes."  Yet the denominations have preferred to hold to the idea that the End Time is some plottable sequence (though they are haunted by Jesus' insistence that no one knows the day or the hour) and the denomination do this by holding without warrant to ostensibly concrete elements of Jesus' eschatology.  The passage quoted above about the proper response to the appearance of the "abomination" is preceded in Mark by "let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains"--though of course those on Pacific atolls or in the midst of the Eurasian steppes would have no such recourse.  (Nor indeed today, with the advent of infra-red capable, missile-carrying drones, would there be much safety in the Judaean mountains.)

What is inescapable in Mark (more so plainly than in the other gospels) is the fact that Jesus is not presenting an eschatology, but rather a non-eschatology.  We are not capable of plotting out the time of the end; we are not to know the time of the end; we are not to know that we can fulfill Jesus' directives before the time of the end; we are to expect nothing but persecution and tribulation--both ebbing and flowing, yet increasing overall--until the time of the end; we are not to rehearse our speeches against the crises that portend the end; and--as a final warning--we are told to continue in purposeful activity until swept away in the great spasm of Creation at the end.

"Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.  And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch." (Mark 13:35-37).

Mark and the Days Before the Arrest

The pre-Arrest part of Mark (as I have defined it, that is, commencing after the "Eschatological Discourse") is the two-day period that starts with the chief priests and scribes discussing how to get rid of Jesus under color of the law.  This is followed by the brief episode of Jesus being anointed by "a woman" (in Mark's typical terse phrasing) with expensive "spikenard" (in the KJV's inimitable phrasing.)  This latter episode, culminating in Jesus asserting that the woman is preparing him for his burial, could scarcely have been placed elsewhere in the gospel.

Notable about the discussion of the chief priests and scribes is their desire not to have Jesus' arrest occur at a time of festivity--far too little attention is paid to this point, and far too rarely is it noted that they were frustrated in their hopes, with Jesus' recorded arrest occurring at precisely the wrong time.  Jerusalem was crowded and apt to be restless throughout any of the time-frames in which the gospels recount Jesus' demise.

And so it seems (as related after the anointing episode) that the chief priests were presented unexpectedly with Judas' offer, and that they accepted the offer of betrayal as a fortunate happenstance--no matter how unfortunate for them might be the timing.  For Judas, on the other hand, the festivities of those days might have been the opportune cover under which to make his escape--if we might entertain the notion that what really motivated Judas was to avoid legal peril, not to make money.  In this Gospel of Mark, it should be noted, it is the chief priests who are described as mentioning money, and then only after Judas has approached them about betraying Jesus.

Absent the contributions of the other gospels, the notion of Judas offering his betrayal as a way for him to stay out of trouble would be far more likely.  Only elsewhere in the gospels does Judas ask for a price for betraying Jesus, and we are confronted there with the unlikely assertion that the authorities would have handed over money up front.  And as for the supposed amount, the "thirty pieces of silver" held to be the evocative and tragic "price of a slave?"  One might ask, was Judas going to escape to a far land and set himself up with a new life on that pittance?

The notion of "thirty pieces of silver" as a tempting price for Jesus--incomprehensible in the gospels other than as a device to show a prophecy fulfilled--has long haunted the literal-minded.  The 1978 Ryrie Study Bible KJV wails plaintively about the "thirty pieces of silver" that "this sum represented approximately five weeks' wages.  It could have amounted to much more."  Redoubling the notion of greed as a motive, the Gospel of John goes so far as to describe Judas as a thieving treasurer of the common purse.  Of course, if that were the case, Jesus as Judas' master would have been responsible for his underling's conduct, and one would assume that Judas, as anyone else, would be as deserving of the stepwise confrontations of progressive discipline that Jesus prescribes for malefactors.  What is more, thirty pieces of silver would not have taken all that long to filch from the purse, for as long as Judas could work that scheme.  The whole notion of betrayal for money seems ludicrous, and the Gospel of Mark spares little time for it.

Following Judas' communication with the chief priests is a recounting of the preparations for Jesus' Passover, a Passover that Jesus celebrates with "the twelve."  "The twelve" are described as an intact entity by Mark, right up until Judas (presumably with time for maneuverings while Jesus is praying in the garden) is referred to again as one of "the twelve" when he comes with a crowd "with swords and staves" (so much for a discreet apprehension.)  At this point the disciples all abandon Jesus, culminating in Peter betraying Jesus--"betrayal" being a word we would not hesitate to use of Peter if we were not forced to see it as the property of Judas.

What matters, on the evening before the Arrest, is the fact that a propensity for betrayal is intrinsic to all of the twelve.  Only an appreciation of this reality can make understandable the otherwise horrid business of "Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with me shall betray me."  In the larger sense, ALL of those who ate with Jesus betrayed him, and each of them (and us) have ever and always been deserving of such soul-plumbing scrutiny.  Even if Judas (somewhat like Jesus' family) had wanted in the immediate context merely for Jesus to be restrained for his own good ("take him, and lead him away safely"), an element of betrayal would always present itself.

"One of you which eateth with me shall betray me" has echoes of Psalm 41:9, "Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me."  As often in the scriptures, the aspects of experiential existence take precedence over the particulars of time, place, or person.  This is important to remember as we discuss now the one remaining aspect of the pre-Arrest narration in Mark: what is often called The Institution of the Lord's Supper, or the like.

Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and passed it around.  That was all a matter of course.  Then he referred to the bread as his body.  Jesus took wine, gave thanks for it, and handed it around.  That was all a matter of course.  Then he referred to the wine as his blood.  This is the same Jesus who, earlier in Mark, said, "Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him . . . ?" and "That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man."  The reverse must be seen of the beneficial.

The substance of the bread and wine as "food for thought" is the most logical implication, Mark's gospel being seen as a whole.  The "new covenant" to which Jesus refers must overarch and subsume all aspects of existence, and if we attempt truly to address ourselves to our participation in that covenant, then we must never count ourselves as truly separate from the sensations of wondering about ourselves as betrayers of Jesus.  Neither can we imagine that we can ever truly understand or merit the "kingdom of God" in which Jesus now tells us he will once again drink wine--as though "wine" or "bread" was ever what any of this was about.

Moreover (if the conceits of the denominations through the intervening centuries are to be applied), any notion of Jesus instituting the Eucharist must include in the first particular instance the instituting minister--Jesus himself--knowingly extending the bread and wine to the unworthy, to the unsorted twelve.  Perhaps that ought to be food for thought.

What is probably more important to consider is the sparse nature of the Gospel of Mark itself.  Mark is understood usually to have been the first of the gospels, and it would be unsurprising to find it the least obscure or complicated--such obscurity or complications it now seems to have being from the fact that it is usually seen in light of the other gospels.  Perhaps it would be well to consider--had Mark been later than, and understood to stand independently from, the other gospels--whether it would been seen properly to strip from them all manner of accretion.

The Arresting Passage of Mark

I have tried to examine the gospels in light of the limited experience-fields of humans as individuals.  We are born and exist within frames of reference, and we act upon--and are acted upon by--our environments.  In short, our lives are referential and interactional.  Referential, in that we are thrust into surroundings with which we must reckon, even in the most rudimentary understandings of infants.  Interactional, in that our actualizations must rely on interplay with our environments.

Our lives, both in total and in fragments (from decades-long phases to instants of processed experience) can be understood as arcs, which I have understood in our commonplace notions of beginning, middle, and end.  From this I have gotten this blog's theme of "Roused, Readied, Reaped."  Insofar as there is generalized commonality in human experience, it is worth considering whether or not the structure itself of experience ("referential" and "interactional") is more important to understanding of existence than is a framework of dimensions (time, place, sequence of occurrence or placement, and the like.)

Moreover, if experience-type is what characterizes existence, then the display of experience-type is what would be expected in any recounting of events, in preference to particulars of individuals.  This phenomenon is replete in the scriptures, in which an experience will be described with little or no concern for logically-defensible constraint of experiences within the bounds of concrete entities.  I will try to show (as a beginning endeavor) how this mode of analysis makes accessible the Gospel of Mark, and I will start (instead of at the beginning) at a crucial juncture in the book.

"And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.  And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered" (14:26-27, KJV).  Conventionally, this is understood as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, but the bar of such a pronouncement is set very low.  It would be as defensible to claim that Jesus was simply using an evocative figure of speech.  (Incidentally, this reference from Zechariah 13--if such it is--shares an embarrassing characteristic with the "By the rivers of Babylon" Psalm 137: ostensibly righteous violence against the innocent young.)

What is more, the overall passage from Zechariah does not pass without a reference to "the house of David" and "the inhabitants of Jerusalem" rendered by the New Jerusalem Bible as "I shall say, 'He is my people,' and he will say, 'Yahweh is my God!'"  It is small wonder that the messiah has often been taken by Jewish commentators to be a personification of a conceptualized Israel.  "Experience" as a phenomenon throughout the Bible is treated as such an overriding element of existence as to challenge every notion of dimension.  It is in such a light that Mark needs to be examined.

And so we have, "And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives."  This is the prelude to the Arrest and all that follows.  This is when Jesus tells a protesting Peter that "thou shalt deny me thrice"--a rather interesting prediction, in that there would seem scarcely to be conceptual room for Peter to rally himself otherwise without defying the woeful determination of God.  Nonetheless, Peter and all the others declare that they will not deny Jesus.  In common parlance, it would be reckoned that the matter is not settled, and it would be reckoned that yet enough give-and-take existed between Jesus and his disciples so that his disciples might wholesomely strive to "make a liar out of" Jesus.

Jesus then goes and prays three times to be relieved of his burden of suffering.  What Jesus is praying for is an impossibility, and yet it would be an impossibility for him not to pray so--this is all honesty, and yet it can be recognized that honesty in conception relies not on pure logic.  What we must remember is that an entire universe of experience is entailed in Jesus' agonized almost-understanding of his plight.  (And this is not meant as an impiety, when the very text of Mark has Jesus declare that he himself as the Son knows not all that is known by the Father.)

It would be odd indeed if the same phenomenon of almost-understanding was not seen in the challenges presented to the disciples.  They are told that they will abandon Jesus, and yet it is implicit in their relationship to Jesus that they will not do so (and we do well to remember that the punishment for them aligning themselves straightforwardly with Jesus before the authorities would be to suffer a version of his fate.)  It would be scarcely reasonable to imagine that the disciples (that is, Peter, James, and John in this given moment) would know what to pray for.  Would it not be reasonable, given time and space to consider the matter, to say that the disciples should have prayed along with Jesus for his deliverance?  And yet Peter is shown in Mark's gospel being upbraided most severely for attempting to dissuade Jesus in his fatal mission.

In the garden, Jesus tells the disciples to pray (as the NJB has it) "not to be put to the test," and yet is it not implicit in their attempt to stand by Jesus that they would be put to the test?  After all, they are told by Jesus in chapter 10 that "Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized."  The disciples are doomed to failure, and Peter's failure is just the most dramatic (unless we count the failure of Judas, though it might well be said that all the disciples "betrayed" Jesus.)

The failure of the disciples is sealed in the narrative by Jesus saying woefully, "Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come" and one cannot wonder if the same woeful tone is not implicit in his chosen non-specific statement, "he that betrayeth me is at hand."  For no real necessity, the next verse tells us that Judas is "one of the twelve," and he is called thereafter, "he that betrayeth him."  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mark's gospel has none of the notion, presented belatedly in John, that Peter drew a sword and cut off anyone's ear.  The disciples were thoroughly defeated men the moment Jesus walked out of their sight in the garden.

If it be reckoned that there is a "gospel story" to be told, then certainly from the moment of the Arrest onward, the Gospel of Mark is a masterwork of brevity.  (Even the ending of the gospel that is almost universally thought an addition is relatively sparse.)  What matters for us here is the set-up in Mark for the ending.  Mark presents concepts and the human experience-types that attend those concepts.  Even the brief set of passages we have covered have dealt with petitioning and testing and betrayal as aspects of human experience, not as labels associated with particular characters.  The post-Arrest parts of the gospel can be dealt with in short order.

What will take more doing, however, is tracing backward from the Arrest to the beginning of Mark.  If that seems an odd route to take, I would submit that almost all of the treatments of Mark in lay experience are essentially backward, in that they make this (presumably) first of the gospels subject to concepts and conventions that are drawn from the others.  We must try to take that apart.