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Getting to know Jesus

in the Gospel of Saint Mark

Father David Neuhaus SJ

Introduction

This aim of this small booklet is to deepen our appreciation of the particular contribution
Saint Mark made to our knowledge of Jesus Christ. The booklet was written during the
year that the Church reads the Gospel of Saint Mark each Sunday (2018).

Who was Saint Mark?

According to tradition, Mark was a disciple of Saint Peter, referred to, in early Christian
tradition, as Peter’s interpreter. The 4th century Church historian Eusebius quoted an early
second century bishop by the name of Papias: “And the Presbyter used to say this: “Mark
became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all the he remembered, not indeed in
order, of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had he
followed him, but later on, as I said, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity
demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark
did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one
thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false
statements in them.” Another tradition holds that Mark is John Mark, mentioned in the Act
of the Apostles, who accompanied Paul and Barnabas for a time (cf. Acts 12:25). Indeed, in
Paul’s epistles, a companion named Mark is mentioned (cf. Philemon 24, Colossians 4:10,
2Timothy 4:11). The influence of Paul’s theology is very palpable in the writing of Mark.
Another tradition identifies Mark with the young man who fled away naked when Jesus
was arrested in Gethsemane. The suggestion is that Mark was motivated to write his Gospel
because during Jesus’s lifetime, the young man, like all the other disciples, abandoned him.

Mark was undoubtedly a Jew. He had an excellent knowledge of Jewish Scripture and
seemed to be familiar with Aramaic, the language of the Jews at the time, as he used it a
number of times in his Gospel (cf. 5:41, 15:34). It is not clear whether he knew Palestine as
his geography in the narrative was sometimes a little imprecise (cf. 7:31 travelling from
Tyre and Sidon to the Sea of Galilee through the Decapolis). However, Mark is both a
master storyteller and an accomplished theologian. He is the first to write a book he entitled
“Gospel” or perhaps more precisely, “the beginning of the Gospel”.

Mark was writing for a community of believers in Christ who wanted to know Christ’s
story. The book not only told that story but also sharpened the community’s sense of what
it meant to be believers and disciples of Christ. Mark seemed to be writing for a mixed
community of Jews and Gentiles. Tradition suggested that the community was the one that
Paul visited at the end of his life, in Rome. The book acknowledged the sufferings of a
community that was persecuted for its faith, a repeated theme in Jesus’s words, reaching a
peak in his eschatological discourse in Jerusalem (cf. 13:9-13). The community in Rome
experienced just such a persecution in the days of the Emperor Nero (64 AD).

When did Mark write this book? Most exegetes have suggested that Mark wrote around the
year 70 AD, perhaps a little earlier or a little later. This period witnessed the war between
Rome and the Jews in Palestine and the destruction of the Second Temple. It was a time
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that saw the Jewish people scattered, including the community of Jews who believed in
Jesus in Jerusalem. It was at this time, that it became essential to write down the story of
Jesus so that it could be transmitted outside of Jerusalem, despite the loss of the
administrative center of the early Church.

The only written sources that existed before the Gospel of Mark that spoke about Jesus
were the epistles of Saint Paul. Mark, strongly influenced by Paul, probably heard oral
reports about Jesus but his narrative also presented Jesus within the context of Mark’s firm
faith in “Jesus the Messiah and the Son of God” (Mark 1:1) and the theological convictions
that derived from this faith. For Mark, Jesus was healer, teacher and prophet and he was
also Messiah, Lord, Son of Man and Son of God. More than the other Gospel writers, Mark
did not shy away from presenting Jesus’s humanity without compromising his divinity.

Mark underlined the Kingdom of God that is coming. In his writing, the reader is pushed
ahead towards the climax of the narrative, Jesus’s crucifixion. In fact, some have pointed
out that all that precedes the crucifixion in Mark’s narrative was meant as a preface. At the
center of Mark’s Gospel is the question: “Who is Jesus?” (cf. Mark 8:27-29). However,
hand in hand with the revelation of Jesus’s identity, Jesus, in Mark’s Gospel, exhorted
those who identify him to remain silent and not tell others. This is a mysterious aspect of
Mark’s writing which has provoked much debate. Why must Jesus’s identity remain a
secret? Central to Mark’s concern was also the conditions to be a disciple of Christ, which
means carrying one’s cross with Jesus (cf. 8:34-38). True discipleship would involve
suffering, persecution and even martyrdom. It was within this context that the Good News
was revealed.

Most exegetes have believed that Mark’s Gospel was an important source for the writings
that came later, those of Matthew, Luke and John. It is always a fascinating exercise to
identify the texts derived from Mark’s Gospel in the writings of the other three Evangelists
and compare how they transformed what Mark had described so that it suited their own
unique vision of Jesus Christ. For centuries, the other three Evangelists received much
more attention than Mark, their books of the Gospel considered more theologically and
spiritually profound than the shorter and simpler Gospel of Mark. Today, exegetes are
realizing that the Gospel of Mark has a unique view of Jesus Christ that is no less
theologically and spiritually profound than the books that were written after his.

The book Mark wrote is an excellently composed narrative that has a clear structure. The
beginning, center and end of the narrative are punctuated with the voices that proclaim
Jesus’s identity (the heavenly voice at the baptism (1:11) and at the transfiguration (9:7)
and the centurion’s voice at the crucifixion (15:39). The structure that has served as the
organizational principle for this booklet is:
1:1-15 – Jesus introduced
1:16-39 – First heroic day
1:40-3:6 – Beginning of opposition to Jesus
3:7-4:34 – Kingdom of this world versus Kingdom of God
4:35-8:21 – Between Jews and Gentiles
8:22-10:52 – Going towards Jerusalem
11:1-13:37 – Ministry in Jerusalem
14:1-15:47 – Passion and death
16:1-8 – Empty tomb
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This booklet will follow the above structure.

1:1-15
Jesus introduced

The first verse of Mark’s Gospel might indeed serve as a title for his book: “The beginning
of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). From the outset, the reader
knows that Jesus is Messiah (Christ in Greek) and Son of God. Both these titles are derived
from the Old Testament. The word Messiah, meaning “anointed one”, referred to three
figures in the world of ancient Israel – priest (see Leviticus 4 which described the anointed
priest who sacrifices the sin offering), king (anointed leader of the people in the Historical
books) and prophet (who is anointed to bring good news, cf. Isaiah 61:1). It was in the
Book of Daniel (cf. chapter 9), that Messiah became a figure who would appear as Saviour
at the end of days. Son of God is a term that described the people of Israel (cf. Exodus
4:22, Hosea 11:1) or the king of Israel (cf. Psalm 2:7). In the Roman world, the world that
occupied ancient Palestine in the time of Jesus, “Son of God” was a title given to the
Roman emperor. Mark revealed that Jesus was both Messiah and Son of God right from the
very first verse but his narrative would challenge and even redefine what many expected
the Messiah and Son of God to be.

Mark called the book he was writing “Good News”. The term “Good News” was deeply
rooted in the language of the Old Testament. This term, originally meaning bearing good
news of victory after a battle, evoked, first and foremost, the tragic battles won by King
David. When King Saul and his sons Jonathan and Ishboshet were killed, the news was
brought to David as if it were “good news” and he was grief-stricken (cf. 1Samuel 31:9,
2Samuel 4:10-32). When David’s rebel son Absalom was finally vanquished, again the
news was brought to David as if it were “good news” and David mourned the beloved son
cut down in battle (2Samuel 18:10). It was in the book of Isaiah that the “good news” that
was proclaimed was truly good! The people exiled in Babylon, experienced a catastrophe
that meant death for the people and saw the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple.
However, God revealed His faithfulness in the proclamation of good news that the people
would go out from the tomb of Exile and return to rebuild Jerusalem and its Temple. This
was the context for the use of the word “good news” in Isaiah 40:9, 41:27, 52:7, 60:6 and
61:1. This good news was that God had not allowed death the last word but rather the
people, dead because of sin, was restored to new life in a return to Jerusalem.

Mark, however, did not call his book “Good News” but rather “the beginning of the Good
News”. This did not only refer to the beginning of the book but might in fact mean that the
entire book was just a beginning. The book told the story of Jesus but his story was just the
beginning because the reader was called to meditate the story of Jesus until the reader
became a true disciple, one who conforms to Christ’s image and likeness. Only when the
disciples of Jesus might be restored to the bosom of God, as His children, sons and
daughters created in His likeness, would the Gospel achieve its end.

Mark began his narrative with a very complex reference to the Scriptures of Israel.
Although this tapestry of sources was attributed to the Prophet Isaiah, in fact the text
weaves together a series of Scriptural expressions drawn from Malachi (3:1.24), from
Exodus (23:20) and from Genesis (1:2) as well as from Isaiah (40:1-11). This tapestry still
baffles exegetes. However, Mark seems to be telling the reader that whoever seeks to get to
know Jesus as Messiah and Son of God must carefully meditate the Scriptures contained in
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the Old Testament. It was in those texts that God prepared for the coming of the Messiah
and Son of God, teaching the readers of those Scriptures the language that was necessary in
order to understand who Jesus was when he came. Mark mentioned Isaiah’s name perhaps
because Isaiah was the one who taught Mark what “Good News” meant. In fact, the Fathers
of the Church sometimes referred to Isaiah as “a fifth Gospel” (an expression originating in
Saint Jerome’s dictum that Isaiah “was more evangelist than prophet” (Prologue to
Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah).

Isaiah 40:3 introduced “a voice” crying out. Within the context of the Book of Isaiah, this
voice was the one that announced that the people, who had been exiled and buried in
Babylon, was in fact to exit the tomb and pass through the wilderness, raised up to return to
Jerusalem and rebuild the Holy Temple. Mark used this same verse to identify John the
Baptist, whose task was to prepare for the coming of Jesus. Malachi 3:1 spoke of a
messenger and identified that messenger as Elijah the Prophet, who ascended into heaven
and who, according to ancient belief, would return to prepare the way of God, when he
came to reign over the earth (cf. Malachi 3:1.24). John’s description in Mark’s writing, his
physical appearance and behavior, matched the description of Elijah in the Old Testament
(cf. 1Kings 17:1-6 but especially 2Kings 1.8). It is important to note that John’s ministry,
on the banks of the Jordan, unfolded exactly where Elijah ascended into heaven. If Elijah
had then returned in the person of John, then the Day of the Lord’s coming was near.
John’s greatness was that he knew that the one who would come was greater than he was.

Jesus made his first appearance in Mark’s Gospel when he came to be baptized by John in
the Jordan. The baptism took place on the banks of the Jordan, the exact place where the
first Jesus, the Greek name of Joshua son of Nun, had succeeded Moses and from where
the first Jesus would lead the people into the land of promise that was to become the
Kingdom of God. In fact, the word “baptism” (in Hebrew and Greek) was used to describe
the dipping of the feet of Joshua and the people as they crossed the Jordan (cf. Joshua
3:15).

In the description of the baptism, Mark with his habitual simple narrative style, noted some
astonishing facts about Jesus. Mark noted that Jesus came from Nazareth. This town in
Galilee had never been mentioned in the Scriptures of Israel. Nazareth might even evoke
the “nothingness” out of which God created all things. Furthermore, Mark told that Jesus
came to John to be baptized. However, John’s baptism was for “repentance for the
forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4). Jesus had not sinned. Yet, Jesus came into the world to
seek out the sinners and therefore he was to be found among the sinners who flocked to
John. By seeking baptism at John’s hand, Jesus emptied himself of his divine status,
stooping to join the sinners. This self-emptying (in Greek “kenosis”) was powerfully
described in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians and would characterize Jesus throughout
Mark’s Gospel. Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the
likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient
unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). The first to describe the rite of
baptism in the life of the first Christians was Saint Paul, who explicitly linked baptism with
the going down into the waters of death (floodwaters) and rising out of the waters to new
life. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that
as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in
newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).
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As Jesus came up from the water, he heard the words that revealed his identity and
vocation: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). These words
echoed with various strands of Scripture – Psalm 2:7 (the coronation of the Davidic king
proclaimed Son of God), Genesis 22:2 (the beloved son of Abraham, Isaac, almost offered
up as sacrifice) and Isaiah 42:1 (the first of a series of texts that described a suffering
servant, humiliated by men and vindicated by God). The scene – the waters, the heavens,
the voice, the spirit – evoked creation in the Book of Genesis and indeed Jesus appeared as
a new Adam (cf. Romans 5:14). The voice that proclaimed his sonship called from heavens
that were “torn open” (Mark 1:10, sometimes wrongly translated as “opened”). This served
as a fulfilment of what Isaiah had wished for “O that you would tear open the heavens and
come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence -- as when fire kindles
brushwood and the fire causes water to boil -- to make your name known to your
adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!” (Isaiah 64:1-2). This is
the first of the two occasions on which Mark used the verb “tear”, here for the heavens and
at the end of his narrative for the Temple veil torn at the moment of Jesus’s death (Mark
15:39). Something new had burst into the world, tearing apart that which separated heavens
from earth, that which separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of creation.

The Spirit then led Jesus from the Jordan into the wilderness. In the Scriptures of Israel,
wilderness was contrary to fertile, inhabited land. Adam was driven from the Garden of
Eden into a wilderness, a place of “thorns and thistles” (Genesis 3:18). The children of
Israel, refusing to enter the land promised by God, flowing with milk and honey, because
they feared the giants who dwelt in the land, were condemned to wander for forty years in
the wilderness (cf. Numbers 13-14). The wilderness was contrasted with the land
throughout the Book of Deuteronomy (cf. particularly chapter 8), as a fearful place in
which there was no food, no water, no clothes, a place of serpents and scorpions. Jesus
came into this place full of the Spirit to confront humanity’s ancient foe, Satan, who had
been responsible for humanity’s exile in the wilderness of the world.

Indeed, the wilderness was a place of testing for ancient Israel. Mark evoked the forty days
that Jesus spent there, tempted by Satan, evoking the forty years of Israel’s stay in the
wilderness and the forty days of Moses’ intercession for the sinful people. However, Mark
gave no details about the confrontation between Jesus and Satan (cf. Matthew 4:1-11, Luke
4:1-13), simply but enigmatically concluding: “he was with the wild beasts; and the angels
ministered to him” (Mark 1:13). In the prophetic writings in the Old Testament, the
wilderness would be transformed into garden, fertile land, at the end of days, when God’s
people would be restored (cf. Isaiah 41:17-20, Hosea 2:15-23, Joel 2:3). Whereas Satan had
succeeded in tempting Adam and Israel, Satan failed in his attempt to seduce Jesus and so
the wilderness, place of hostility between man and animal, became a garden where Jesus
and wild beast dwelt in peace (like in the prophecies of old, cf. Isaiah 11:6-9, Hosea 2:18).
It is interesting to note that great saints in Christian tradition have also dwelt in peace with
wild beasts like Saint Gerasimos and Saint Francis.

Mark’s introduction to Jesus ended with the beginning of his mission. After John was
handed over, Jesus began to preach in John’s place, proclaiming: “the Kingdom of God is
at hand” (Mark 1:15). In addition to calling people to convert, Jesus also invited them “to
believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). Jesus’s mission was to show that the Kingdom had
come near in his own person and that man’s response to God’s initiative was to believe.

1:16-39
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First heroic day

From the Jordan and the wilderness, Jesus went to walk by the Sea of Galilee. The first part
of Jesus’s mission took place in the Galilee, far from the center of Jewish life in Jerusalem.
In Mark’s writing, the Sea of Galilee constituted a border between the land inhabited by the
Jews and the land inhabited by the Gentiles, on the other side of the Sea. Jesus, always
moving, looked and saw into the lives of those he encountered. Those he met in this place
were fishermen. This profession evoked Old Testament prophetic texts that spoke of
cataclysmic wars and suffering, a time when God’s judgment was visited on his people (cf.
Jeremiah 16:16, Amos 4:2). The prophet Habakkuk used the image of fishermen to
describe the invasion of Jerusalem and its ultimate destruction: “For you make men like the
fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a
hook, he drags them out with his net, he gathers them in his seine, so he rejoices and
exults. Therefore, he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his seine; for by them he
lives in luxury, and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net, and mercilessly
slaying nations forever?” (Habakkuk 1:14-17). Jesus turned this image from one of
destruction to one of salvation.

Like God in the Old Testament, in the stories of Abraham, Samuel and the prophets, Jesus
called and the fishermen, Simon and Andrew, James and John, responded and followed
Jesus without hesitation. In the immediacy of their response, they evoked the Israelites who
were called by Gideon to go into battle and responded without hesitation (Judges 6:34).
Like Gideon, Jesus too was clothed in the Spirit after his baptism, the only thing that can
explain the fishermen’s willingness to leave everything. Simon and Andrew left their nets
but James and John left their nets and their father too (Mark 1:16-20).

The first battles that Jesus waged were in Capernaum and took place on the Sabbath day.
The first Jesus, Joshua son of Nun, also waged his first great battle, the one in Jericho, on
the seventh day. Many of Jesus’s battles took place on the Sabbath as he attempted to
restore a broken humanity to the image and likeness of his Father. Jesus went into the
synagogue, astonishing the people with his authority in teaching them. This word
“authority” characterized Jesus and distinguished him from the others who were supposed
to lead the people. In the place of assembly, Jesus confronted the man possessed by an evil
spirit. His first act in his mission, after calling the first disciples, was to expel demons thus
showing not only his paramount authority but also his domination of the forces of evil in
the world. Jesus in Mark’s Gospel however surprised repeatedly when he insisted that the
demons, who knew exactly who he was, remain silent. Why were they prevented from
proclaiming who Jesus was? The answer to this enigma must be sought in the
consequences of the spreading of the rumor that Jesus was a powerful miracle worker. Did
the rumor lead to the conversion of many, bringing them into the embrace of God or did it
simply lead to the masses coming to Jesus in search of the miracles he performed? The
result of the miraculous healing of the possessed man was not only that Jesus entered his
life and the demon was chased out but also that the crowd in the synagogue was amazed all
the more at Jesus’s authority. They cried out “What is this? A new teaching!” (Mark 1:27).
The newness was not so much what he taught but who Jesus was.

The battle continued when Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon, his
disciple. There he continued to show his authority with acts of miraculous healing. First, he
raised up Simon’s feverish mother-in-law, who began to serve Jesus (like the angels after
the temptation). Then he cured the many sick and possessed brought to him that evening.
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The miracles of Jesus revealed who he was. They corresponded to an image of God coming
to reign on the Day of the Lord that is present in the prophetic writings in the Old
Testament: “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who
are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God. He will come and save you." Then the eyes of the blind shall
be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart,
and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy” (Isaiah 35:3-6).

At the end of a heroic day, Jesus had shown his might but Mark was well aware that it was
not power but weakness that made Jesus who he was. When faced with the opposition of
demons and disease, Jesus worked mighty miracles and emerged victorious, but when
faced with the opposition of men, he delivered himself into their hands, suffered and died.
This was at the center of Jesus’s kenosis, his self-emptying. Early, the next day, Jesus went
out to a wilderness place to pray. This time it was not Satan who came looking for him but
rather his disciples, who would prove to be a major obstacle to Jesus throughout his
mission. Often translated as simply “they went out in search of Jesus”, the verb in Greek
really means “they pursued him” as one might an animal or an enemy (cf. Psalm 7.5, 18:38,
31:6). The disciples from Capernaum did not want Jesus to leave their town and make
himself available to those outside of Capernaum. However, Jesus explained without
ambiguity: “Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also; for that is why I
came out” (Mark 1:38). Jesus had come to go out and not to stay in, to go out in ever-wider
circles until his word reached the ends of the earth.

1:40-3:6
Beginning of opposition to Jesus

Mark did not dwell on Jesus’s heroism for long as he sought to race on towards Jerusalem
and the unfolding of Jesus’s fate there. Trouble began when Jesus encountered a leper, who
came to him, crying out: “If you will, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40). Having seen
Jesus in Capernaum, the reader knows that Jesus could if he wanted because he has power
and authority to heal. Jesus, filled with compassion, stretched out his hand and contravened
the commandments of the Book of Leviticus (cf. Leviticus 13), touching the leper. Jesus
was motivated often by compassion, a powerful description in the Synoptic Gospels, a
description that Jesus was gripped in his belly with mercy for those suffering. The Synoptic
writers used this Greek word only for Jesus and for the figures in his parables. However,
instead of impurity surging from the leper to Jesus, wholeness poured from Jesus to the
leper. There are no surprises thus far in the narrative. Then, Jesus commanded the man to
tell no one but rather to follow the proscribed ritual for a healed leper. Instead, the man
went out and proclaimed what Jesus had done. It was in contravening Jesus’s explicit
command to remain silent that brought the new dramatic result: “Jesus could no longer
openly enter a town” (Mark 1:45). Anyone who might have thought that Jesus could do
anything because he was omnipotent, must be stunned here to discover that human
responses to Jesus could in fact render him powerless… Here already is the faint shadow of
the cross.

The five episodes that followed the healing of the leper no longer focused on the miracles
and the authority of Jesus, but rather underlined the responses of those who increasingly
opposed Jesus in his mission. Five times Jesus and his disciples were observed and the
hostility towards them mounted each time. The first episode involved the carrying of a
paralytic into Jesus’s presence. Jesus saw the faith of those who carried him, lowering him
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through the roof, and then forgave the sins of the paralytic. It is this that provoked the
scribes who were there. They asked a good question: “Why does this man speak thus? It is
blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7). However, they did not enter
into conversation with Jesus but rather murmured the question to themselves. Jesus then
cured the paralytic, clearly seeking to engage the scribes by telling them that he had
authority. This authority was the same authority that the Son of Man in the Book of Daniel,
the one who will come at the end of time, received from the One seated on the throne (cf.
Daniel 7:14). However, the scribes missed the opportunity. Their suspicion of blasphemy
here would turn into an accusation of blasphemy at Jesus’s trial in Jerusalem (cf. Mark
14:64).

In the next three episodes, the dynamic repeated itself. Each time, a question was asked but
those questioning never engaged with Jesus about who he was. They asked his disciples
about him or asked Jesus about his disciples and each time Jesus tried to draw them into
relationship with him so that they might recognize who he was. At the centre of all this,
Jesus referred to the newness that he represented, the newness of a Messianic age in which
the old regime must fade away: “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment;
if he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the wine will burst the skins, and
the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but new wine is for fresh skins” (Mark 2:21-22). The
tear in the cloth, the bursting of the wineskins… there is something in the old that could not
accommodate the new unless the old was torn or burst. Without the old, there could be no
new as the old provided the language, the categories and the concepts to grasp the new.
However, the old was resisting the new, refusing to make place for it and therefore it would
be torn or burst open so that the new could come forth.

The last of the five episodes brought the opposition to a peak. Back in the synagogue in
Capernaum on the Sabbath, where Jesus had been hero and all had been astounded by his
authority, he encountered a man with a withered hand. This time his foes were there and
remained stubbornly silent. They were scrutinizing his every act in order to condemn him.
Jesus pointed to their hardness of heart, evoking Pharaoh in the Exodus story, who
hardened his heart (cf. Exodus 7:13). However, they, unmoved, exited the synagogue after
the miraculous cure and “held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him”
(Mark 3:6). In fact, the ultimate fate of Jesus was already then present in their refusal to
engage with him.

3:7-4:34
Kingdom of this world versus Kingdom of God

The lines were clearly drawn between the Kingdom of God, proclaimed by Jesus as near,
and the Kingdom of this world, ruled by sin, darkness and death. Jesus had come to offer
those who encountered him the chance to pass into the Kingdom of God. The most
important task is to discern between these two kingdoms.

After the encounters with his opposition, Jesus withdrew to the Sea, where the multitudes
joined him. The throng on the seashore evoked the people gathered at the Sea, after the
Exodus from slavery, ready to cross to the other side. There, Jesus continued to heal and
expel demons, ordering them to be silent about who he was. Ascending a mountain, Jesus
then chose the twelve who would be his disciples. Like God in the Old Testament, Jesus
renamed three of them: Simon, who became Peter, and James and John, who became the
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“sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17). He also chose Judas, “who betrayed him” (Mark 3:19),
again underlining the opposition that came from the disciples themselves.

However, it was not just the religious leadership and the disciples who opposed Jesus, in
Mark’s Gospel Jesus’s own family stood in opposition to him. When they heard that people
were saying that Jesus had lost his mind (Mark 3:21, the Greek expression is “was standing
outside of himself”), they decided to get hold of him in order to stop him. When they
finally reached Capernaum, after another confrontation with the religious authorities, they
stood outside. Mark carefully chose his words. Just as they believed that he “was standing
outside” of himself, they now “stood outside” instead of going in to speak to Jesus. It is at
this point that Jesus pointed to those who were gathered around him and said: “"Who are
my mother and my brothers?" And looking around on those who sat about him, he said,
"Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and
sister, and mother"” (Mark 3:33-35). In the Gospel of Mark, family could be an obstacle to
the identity, call and mission of both Jesus and his disciples. This might indeed be a
reflection on the reality of persecution, when the family broke up because of the faith of
some of its members. Jesus himself predicted this in his final discourse in Jerusalem:
“brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise
against parents and have them put to death” (Mark 13:12).

Scribes arriving from Jerusalem, accused Jesus that he expelled demons by the power of
Beelzebul, a Hebrew name meaning the “master of this world”, another name for Satan (cf.
1Kings 8:13, Isaiah 63:15, Habakkuk 3:11). The parable that Jesus told them in response to
their accusation underlined the need for discernment in order not to confuse the Kingdom
of God with the Kingdom of Beelzebul. He pointed out to them that in their naming Jesus,
filled with the Holy Spirit, an agent of Beelzebul, they had cut themselves off from the
source of forgiveness, which Jesus had been sent to proclaim. By confusing the Kingdoms,
they had destined themselves for perdition in a Kingdom dominated by “the master of this
world” as they had cut themselves off from the possibility of forgiveness.

On the seashore, Jesus proceeded to teach the crowds his parables of the kingdom. In
Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had two major discourses: one in Galilee on the parables and the
other in Jerusalem on the last day. Both discourses focus on the Kingdom, the Kingdom
that is already here in Jesus but not yet manifest in the world and the Kingdom that would
come. The parables Jesus taught were the way to see with one’s ears and thus discern the
contours of the Kingdom that could not be seen with eyes of flesh and blood. “Hear O
Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4) defined the behaviour of Israel in the Old Testament and Jesus
began his discourse on the parables with that same command. Listening carefully allows
the word to penetrate the heart, opening eyes that can perceive the reality of God’s
Kingdom. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word “listen” is at the root of the word “obey”.

A parable is a short saying or story that compares a reality that is easily perceived (a sower,
a lamp, a mustard seed) to a reality that is hidden or mysterious. By carefully considering
that which is easy to grasp, that which is hidden might be revealed. Throughout the various
books of the Gospel, Jesus taught about forty-three parables and Mark pointed out that he
did not speak to the crowd “without a parable” (Mark 4:34). A parable was supposed to
wake up the hearer. The power of the parable was best captured in the story of King David,
sunk in the dark unconsciousness of the sin he committed in his adultery with Bathsheba,
his lies and the murder of her husband, Uriah. He woke up to the fullness of his sin by
means of the parable told to him by Nathan the Prophet (cf. 2Samuel 12:1-7). It is
 10

important to note that what led David into his sin was his eye (gazing on the beauty of
Bathsheba) and what restored him to relationship with God was his ear (that heard the
words of Nathan). Jesus’s parables were supposed to awaken his hearers from their
unconsciousness.

What is surprising was that the disciples did not seem to understand what Jesus was saying
in his first parable of the sower. They asked him to explain it to them. Jesus commented:
“To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but for those outside,
everything comes in parables; in order that 'they may indeed look, but not perceive, and
may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven”
(Mark 4:11-12). Jesus based his words upon similar expressions in the prophetic writings
(cf. particularly Isaiah 6:9-10). It would seem that these words imply that Jesus, like the
prophets before him, was sent to fail. People would not listen or understand the parables.
They would reject the Kingdom, which these parables had sought to reveal. Even the
disciples would have difficulty understanding and would impede Jesus’s way. Might it be
that the parables were so clear that they blinded those listening and trying to see?

The simple, day-to-day parables constituted a second pillar in Jesus’s teachings. Whereas
the miracles hinted at who Jesus was – his power and authority - the parables revealed the
reality of who he was. Although they spoke of simple things, seeds, grain, light, they
unveiled a Kingdom that was already there in Jesus but not yet manifest in the world. The
failure of the parable pointed towards the failure of Jesus, his death on the cross. Only
when he would die would those who believed see, as Jesus said in the Gospel of John:
“unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it
bears much fruit” (John 12:24). The failure of Jesus was an essential element in the
ultimate victory of God in Jesus’s resurrection. Pope Benedict XVI, in his masterpiece
Jesus of Nazareth, explained: “Prophets fail: Their message goes too much against general
opinion and the comfortable habits of life. It is only through failure that their word
becomes efficacious. This failure of the Prophets is an obscure question mark hanging over
the whole history of Israel and, in a certain way, it constantly recurs in the history of
humanity. Above all, it is also, again and again, the destiny of Jesus Christ. He ends up on
the Cross. But that very Cross is the source of great fruitfulness” (volume 1, p. 189).

4:35-8:21
Between Jews and Gentiles

“Let us go on” (Mk. 1:38) Jesus declared to his disciples. At the end of the discourse on the
parables, he took his disciples another step forward: “Let us go across to the other side”
(Mark 4:35). The great storm that raged was not only an external storm on the Sea. It was
also an internal storm: Jesus was taking his disciples over the Sea, to the land of Gentiles,
they who had not even wanted to leave Capernaum. Mark described the storm in the same
terms used in the Book of Jonah. Jonah too had not wanted to go over to the Gentiles in
Nineveh and had fled. God followed Jonah with a great storm that ultimately led to Jonah,
despite himself, to preach to the Ninevites. Mark, although describing Jesus like Jonah,
asleep in the hold of the boat during the storm, was drawing a parallel between Jonah and
Jesus’s reluctant disciples. After Jesus had calmed the Sea, he reproached his disciples for
their lack of faith. The disciples, like Jonah, were still unwilling to enter the plan of God.

Jesus embarked at this point on a mission that took him from Jews to Gentiles and back
again. He did signs for Jews and Gentiles, showing that he had come to preach God’s
 11

Kingdom to both with no distinction. This whole section in the Gospel of Mark was
structured around three signs by which Jesus showed his mastery of the Sea. At the
beginning, Jesus calmed the Sea (Mark 4:35-41), at the end, he taught on the Sea (8:13-21)
and in the middle, he walked on the Sea (8:13-21). As Jesus went back and forth on the
Sea, he showed his mastery of nature and his determination to bring Jews and Gentiles into
one body, the Church. Jesus healed both Jews and Gentiles (there are three healing stories
for Jews and three for Gentiles) and he miraculously fed both Jews (Mark 6:30-34) and
Gentiles (8:1-10). Strikingly, Jesus also found no rest, neither among Jews nor among
Gentiles.

Mark subtly noted the distress of the disciples, faced with the mission of Jesus among the
Gentiles. “They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And
when he had come out of the boat” (Mark 5:1-2). Jesus and his disciples arrived together…
but only Jesus got out of the boat. Mark was perhaps inviting the reader to imagine the
disciples cowering in the boat. Sure enough, on the “other side” a man possessed came
towards Jesus. Like with the Jews in Capernaum (cf. Mark 1:21-28), the first act of Jesus
among the Gentiles was to chase out demons. However, there was a difference, an entire
legion of demons possessed the Gentile demoniac and he dwelt in a cemetery, surrounded
by flocks of pigs, rather than in a synagogue. When Jesus had cured the man, at the
expense of the pigs who had drowned themselves in the Sea, he asked Jesus whether he
could go with him as a disciple. Jesus refused. Could he have brought a Gentile into the
midst of his Jewish disciples? But then he said an astonishing thing to the man,
unprecedented so far. “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done
for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19). This time Jesus did not order him
to remain silent but rather sent him to tell what had happened, missioning him as a first
apostle. Jesus would send his own disciples later on in the narrative. This man, Legion, was
sent because he was the first to recognize who Jesus was. Jesus ordered him to tell what the
Lord God had done for him and he went and “began to proclaim in the Decapolis how
much Jesus had done for him” (Mark 5:20). Legion recognized that Jesus was the Lord.
However, his compatriots sent Jesus away and he crossed the Sea to return to Jewish
territory.

In Jewish territory, Jesus continued his ministry of healing, curing the bleeding woman and
raising the daughter of Jairos from the dead. Both times, he explicitly cited the faith of
those who have facilitated the healings by believing in Jesus. “Your faith has made you
well” (Mark 5:34), he explained to the woman who had been bleeding. Jesus had already
contravened the commandments of purity by touching a leper, now, in this double
narrative, he touched the other two sources of impurity, blood and a corpse. However, as
expected his power reversed the expected outcome as the woman was healed and the girl
raised from the dead.

Miracles, however, did not bring about the longed for relationship with Jesus. Arriving for
the first time in Mark’ narrative in his hometown, Nazareth, the amazement at his deeds
fast became contempt for the man the townspeople knew only too well. Their contempt was
brazen as they referred to him as the “son of Mary” (Mark 6:3), unacceptable in a society in
which children were only called by the name of their father. In this context, Jesus referred
to himself as a prophet, who “is not without honour, except in his own country, and among
his own kin, and in his own house” (Mark 6:4). Jesus was amazed at their unbelief and
Mark then writes that “he could do no mighty work there” (Mark 6:5). The lack of faith of
 12

the townspeople had rendered Jesus powerless just as faith had made his acts efficacious in
the case of Jairos and the bleeding woman.

The moment had now come for Jesus to send his disciples as apostles into the world. His
own end was approaching fast and they needed to be ready. He had chosen them to partake
in his mission and soon they would have to carry out this mission without him. They
received from him the authority to expel demons but he also warned them to take nothing
for the way. They were to rely uniquely on their relationship with him. When they returned,
he invited them to take a time of rest, an important element throughout Scripture. God had
created the world in six days and on the seventh day, He rested, providing for the human
He had created in his image and likeness the unique way to imitate him, in rest. Jesus went
with his disciples across the Sea to a wilderness place, hoping there to rest with them in
prayer.

The crowds preceded Jesus to the destination and seized with compassion, he saw that
“they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). Jesus had come as the good
shepherd (described often in the Old Testament, see Psalm 23, Isaiah 40:11, Ezekiel 34:11-
16). However, the choice of words evoked the beginning of the mission of the first Jesus,
Joshua son of Nun. It was Moses who pleaded with God not to leave the sheep without a
shepherd on his death and so God instructed Moses to appoint Joshua to be that good
shepherd, who would lead the people in and out (cf. Numbers 27:15-23). In this wilderness
place, Jesus taught the people as Moses had. When it came time to eat, Jesus revealed again
that he was the Lord who took care of his people and provided food for them in the
wilderness. The disciples were still lagging behind, unable to comprehend who the man
they were following was. Later, Jesus repeated this sign in the presence of the Gentile
crowds too (cf. 8:1-10).

At the end of the meal with the crowds, Jesus sent his disciples away in the boat, telling
them to head for Bethsaida (Mark 6:45). In Mark’s geography, Bethsaida was in the land of
the Gentiles. The disciples aboard the boat struggled against a great wind but this time
Jesus came, walking across the water, to calm the storm and bring the disciples to safe land.
However, the strange thing was that on reaching shore, the boat was not in Bethsaida
(Gentile land) but rather in Gennaseret (in the land of the Jews). Again, the disciples
displayed that they were not yet ready to go where Jesus was leading them: a mission to the
Gentiles. In Gennaseret, Jesus again displayed his power and cured many.

The opposition to Jesus, made up of Pharisees and scribes, then came to Jesus and
criticized the practices of his disciples, who ate without performing the necessary religious
ablutions before the meal. Jesus took the opportunity to debate his opponents. In fact, Jesus
himself had seemingly contravened some of the important purity laws of the Jewish
religion, touching lepers, blood and corpses. He pointed out to the critics that what makes
unclean is what comes out of the person rather than what goes into the person. “For from
within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery,
coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil
things come from within, and they defile a man” (Mark 7:21-23).

It is important to note that the word repeated throughout the debate is “tradition”, derived
in Hebrew and Greek from the same word as “betrayal”. Handing down a tradition from
generation to generation can become an act of betrayal if the spirit is lost. This word is also
the word used for the act of “handing over” Jesus to those who will crucify him. John was
 13

“handed over” (Mark 1:14), Judas is the one who “handed over” Jesus (Mark 3:19) and
Jesus predicted that he would be handed over (9:31, 10:33). Jesus deliberately opposed the
Word of God to the “traditions” of men because too often the Word was manipulated by
tradition and betrayed what it was supposed to mean. Jesus echoed the prophets in this
angry condemnation of hypocrisy (cf. Isaiah 1:11-17, Hosea 6:6, Amos 8:21-27).

Once again, his disciples seemed to have missed the point and Jesus had to instruct them
forcefully so that at least they would understand. In this context, Jesus said: “Do you not
see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, since it enters, not his
heart but his stomach, and so passes on?" And he said, "What comes out of a man is what
defiles a man” (Mark 7:18-20). Mark then added a comment: “Thus he declared all foods
clean” (Mark 7:19). This would enable Jews and Gentiles within the early Church to share
table fellowship. The question of how to enable Jewish and Gentile believers to live
together was a central debate in the early Church as the Law of Moses insisted on a
separation between Jews and Gentiles (Sabbath, circumcision, dietary laws). However,
Jesus had come to break “down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the
law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in
place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through
the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end” (Eph. 2:14-16 cf. Acts 15, Galatians 2).

From there, Jesus went back to the territory of the Gentiles, this time to the area of Tyre
and Sidon, to encounter a Syro-Phoenician woman. Like with “Legion”, again the woman
astonishes the reader with a faith that not even the disciples seem to share. The area of her
residence evoked the area where Elijah encountered the widow and her son. Elijah too had
gone there when he discovered that there was very little faith in Israel (cf. 1Kings 17:9-24).
Jesus reacted harshly to the woman’s plea that he heal her daughter, saying: “it is not right
to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27). Jesus revealed in his
words what Paul would describe as a mission “to the Jew first and also to the Greek”
(Romans 1:16). According to Scripture, God called the Jewish people to be a “light to the
Gentiles”. God bestowed His gifts on this people so that it might indeed become such a
light, ultimately for the benefit of the Gentiles. However, throughout the history of
salvation, whenever Israel was plunged into darkness because of sin, God turned to
Gentiles whom He called to be lights to Israel. Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute (Joshua 2
and 6), Ruth (Ruth), the Moabite widow, Akhior, the Ammonite chieftain (Judith 6), the
people of Nineveh and their king (Jonah 3), all received a calling to bear witness to their
faith before an unbelieving Israel. Like her predecessors in the history of salvation, the
Syro-Phoenician not only bore witness to her faith that Jesus was Lord but also recognized
God’s election of Israel, the people from whom Jesus came.

A third and final healing for the Gentiles was the curing of the man who was deaf and
dumb in the area of the Decapolis. Throughout the Scriptures, the focus was on the
necessity to hear the Word of God and curing deafness was a necessary precondition. As
Isaiah had prophesied: “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book” (Isaiah 29:18).
Once again, Jesus ordered the man and those who had seen what had happened to remain
silent and tell no one about this miracle but the Gentiles were no more obedient than the
Jews had been and they spoke about what had happened. Nonetheless, Jesus went on to
multiply loaves for the Gentiles, just as he done for the Jews too (Mark 8:1-10), creating a
perfect symmetry between Jews and Gentiles in these chapters of the Gospel.
 14

One of the most piercing elements of Mark’s Gospel is Mark’s depiction of the disciples as
real obstacles to Jesus’s mission. There is much to learn here as readers meditate this book
and contemplate their own participation as Christians in the mission of Christ. The
Pharisees gathered around Jesus to provoke him but he withdrew quickly with his disciples
and, sitting on the Sea, rebuked them for their lack of faith. The disciples had been
distracted because they had forgotten to take food for the trip. Jesus now explicitly
underlined that his disciples were no different from those outside who had no faith. His
words recall the words he addressed to his opponents in earlier chapters: “Do you not yet
perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and
having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember?” (Mark 8:17-18). The Book of
Deuteronomy constantly reminds the people of God that sin often has its origins in
forgetting the graces of God already experienced. “You shall remember the Lord your God,
for it is he who gives you power to get wealth; that he may confirm his covenant which he
swore to your fathers, as at this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after
other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you this day that you shall
surely perish” (Deuteronomy 8:18-19). The disciples, who must become apostles,
proclaiming the Kingdom of God, must remember the Lord in every act so that it is always
the Lord acting through them that is present. The apostles must return always to the Lord to
renew their intimate relationship with him. Jesus, left alone amongst his disciples, calls out
to them: “Do you not yet understand” (Mark 8:21).

8:22-10:52
Going towards Jerusalem

Having set out for Bethsaida in chapter 6 (verse 45), Jesus only reached this town of
Gentiles (in Mark’s geography) in chapter 8 (verse 22). This new section begins with the
encounter with a blind man in Bethsaida (a Gentile) and this section will end with the
encounter with a blind man outside of Jericho. After the focus on hearing the Word, the
focus had moved to a focus on seeing. However, seeing in the Kingdom of God is not an
act that could be accomplished with eyes of flesh and blood. It was only in hearing the
Word that eyes of faith were opened that could see the Kingdom.

Mark composed this section as the epicenter of the Gospel and three times in this section
Jesus prophesied his passion, death and resurrection (8:31, 9:30-32, 10:32-34). An
important shift occurred here as Jesus no longer spoke in parables but rather spoke
“plainly” (Mark 8:32) about where he was heading. Jesus’s central proclamation, which
created a crisis of faith for his disciples, was that “the Son of Man must suffer many things”
(Mark 8:31). Undoubtedly, one of the most difficult elements to understand in Jesus’s story
was that he must suffer and die. What was this necessity? Mark composed a narrative that
was firmly established on Saint Paul’s theology of the crucified Christ. For Paul, it was
only when Christ was crucified and had died that the human person could fully contemplate
his or her profound need for God in order to be freed from sin. Only in contemplating
Christ crucified with eyes of flesh and blood, in realizing that he hung on the cross in the
place of the sinner contemplating him, that the sinner could awaken to his or her sinfulness
and turn to God for salvation. In turning to God in the travail of awakening to sinfulness,
the eyes of faith were opened and the believer could behold Christ risen from the dead. In
Christ’s death, God has vanquished sin and death and bestowed life eternal.

At the center of Mark’s Gospel, the reader explicitly encounters the cross and resurrection
in Jesus’s prophecies. Eyes of flesh and blood might see the passion and death, described in
 15

three different ways by Jesus. The first time Jesus spoke, the agents of Jesus’s suffering and
death were the elders, high priests and scribes (Mark 8:31). The second time, the agents of
Jesus’s passion and death were men, a term evoking the Roman authorities. The third time
Jesus spoke, he brought the Jews and Gentiles together, the agents were high priests and
scribes as well as the Romans, Israel and the nations, the universality of humanity. The
great variety of verbs Jesus used to describe his passion and death evoked the multiple
faces of evil – handed over, rejected, suffer, judged, mocked, spat upon, scourged, put to
death. Yet, each time, Jesus added with great simplicity: “after three days he would rise”
(Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:34). As opposed to the multiple faces of evil, the simplicity of God’s
victory was luminous.

Each of the three times that Jesus prophesied his death, the prophecy provoked a crisis
among his disciples. The first time, Jesus gathered his disciples in Caesarea of Philippi and
asked them: “Who do men say that I am?” (Mark 8:27). The disciples told Jesus that there
were those who thought he was John the Baptist, others Elijah and others a prophet. Then
Jesus asked them who they thought he was. This question was the central one in the
Gospel. Simon Peter responded: “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29). Simon Peter seemed to
have finally realized who Jesus was. However, as soon as Jesus explained that being the
Christ meant that he must suffer greatly Simon Peter rebuked Jesus, refusing to accept that
the one he had recognized as Messiah would have to suffer and die. Jesus called Simon
Peter “Satan” (Mark 8:33), revealing once again that his disciples were indeed a major
obstacle on his way.

The second time Jesus prophesied his fate the disciples were afraid, too afraid even to ask
him what he meant. The third time he spoke, as soon as he ended his words James and John
approached to ask for places of honor alongside Jesus in his Kingdom. Jesus confronted
them with the reality of discipleship, bearing witness even unto death, but the disciples
seemed more interested in positions of authority and prestige. Jesus was left alone yet
again. The entire section underlined Jesus’s approaching end the failure of the disciples,
evoking the weakness of the faithful in every generation. As opposed to these disciples,
Jesus pointed to children as a model of trusting discipleship and openness to the plan of
God: “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark
10:15).

Jesus’s teaching about discipleship was clear and unequivocal. “If any man would come
after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). This is the
first time that the word “cross” appeared in the Gospel of Mark and, importantly, it was not
the cross of Jesus but the cross of the disciple who has decided to follow Jesus that was
pointed to. Jesus explained that it was only by dying to one’s self that one could enter the
Kingdom, raised up with him to eternal life. When faced by the reality of his disciples’
competition for places of honor, Jesus insisted: “the Son of man also came not to be served
but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

However, in the midst of the focus on the cross, the fate of Jesus and the disciples, Jesus
gave his disciples a taste of the glory of the resurrection that would come in his
transfiguration. The account of Jesus’s transfiguration, the central narrative in Mark’s
Gospel, followed immediately the mention of the cross. Jesus ascended a high mountain,
taking with him the three disciples who he had singled out in the act of renaming, Peter,
formerly Simon, James and John, the sons of thunder, who had witnessed the resurrection
of Jairos’s daughter. This event took place “after six days” (Mark 9:2), a Sabbath,
 16

signifying the manifestation of Jesus as a new Adam, shining in the glory of God. The high
mountain evoked the mountain of God’s revelation, Sinai or Horeb, and Moses, giver of the
Law, and Elijah, father of the prophets, both having experienced God at Sinai/Horeb,
joined Jesus, bearing witness to his glory.

Saint Paul spoke about a transfiguration, but not that of Jesus but rather of the one who has
come to believe in him. In Romans, Paul wrote: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be
transfigured by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of
God-- what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Roman 12:2). In Second Corinthians, he
wrote: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected
in a mirror, are being transfigured into the same image from one degree of glory to
another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Jesus’s
transfiguration, coming after his pointing to the cross the disciple must carry, was a
foretaste of his resurrection and it manifested the fullness of the image and likeness of God
the Father in the Son. Mark described the event in terms derived from the vision of the Son
of Man in the Book of Daniel (7:9) and the coming of the Lord in the Book of Malachi
(3:2), both texts that had been used in earlier chapters to describe Jesus’s coming and his
authority.

Gazing upon the transfigured Jesus, Peter called Jesus “Rabbi”, often wrongly translated as
“rabbi”, a Jewish religious teacher. The title should be understood as the Aramaic for “my
Lord” (correctly rendered as such by both Matthew and Luke in their later writings).
However, Peter seemed to fall short again of understanding what was going on. “It is good
that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for
Elijah” (Mark 9:5). The same Peter, who had denied the sufferings and death Jesus had
foretold, now expressed a desire to stay on the mountain and contemplate Jesus’s glory. He
was slow to understand that there was no way to enter into Jesus’s eternal glory without
passing through the suffering and death that Jesus must accomplish in Jerusalem. The
vision vanished and where they eyes had failed to contemplate correctly, the ears were
addressed with words ringing out from heaven: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him”
(Mark 9:7). Saint Paul writes: “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes
by the preaching of Christ” (Romans 10:17). The disciples had to listen to Christ and obey
him, but their fear and weakness were constantly getting in the way.

Coming down from the high mountain, Jesus continued his way to Jerusalem. Towards the
end of the journey, Mark wrote, “And they came to Jericho; and as he was leaving Jericho
with his disciples” (Mark 10:46). Mark would have preferred not to mention Jericho,
embarrassed to have Jesus go there. This is a reminder about what Jericho meant in the Old
Testament. The first Jesus, Joshua, had conquered Jericho as he led the people into the
land. After Jericho had been totally destroyed, Joshua swore never to allow Jericho to be
rebuilt. Its ruins were to remain as a reminder of the fate of all who might live in rejection
of God’s Law (cf. Joshua 6:26). Mark was reminding his readers that Jericho existed only
because it had been rebuilt, contradicting the oath of Joshua. It was in the reign of Ahab,
most sinful among the kings of Israel, that Jericho had been re-established (cf. 1Kings
16:34).

As Jesus left Jericho, he encountered Bartimaeus, a blind beggar sitting by the roadside.
This blind beggar was the first in Mark’s Gospel to call Jesus “Son of David”, a Messianic
title that was used here in preparation for Jesus’s Messianic entry into Jerusalem, city of
David. Jesus asked the beggar what he wanted although everyone else was trying to get
 17

him to remain silent. In response to the beggar’s request, Jesus gave him his sight, saying
the same words he had said to the bleeding woman in Galilee, “Your faith has made you
well” (Mk. 10:52). The beggar, his sight restored followed Jesus to see him suffering and
dying in Jerusalem and the eyes opened by his faith would surely see him raised from the
dead. This was the last miracle of healing that Jesus performed in Mark’s Gospel. In
Jerusalem, a city where faith was greatly lacking, there were to be no miracles of healing at
all.

11:1-13:37
Ministry in Jerusalem

Jesus entered Jerusalem as royal Messiah, Son of David. Mark’s description of the entry is
framed by Old Testament texts about kings anointed, seated upon a donkey and taking up
their rule (Zechariah 9:9, Genesis 49:10-12, 1Samuel 9-10, 2Samuel 7:12-16, 1Kings 1:33-
34, 2Kings 9:13). Jesus took care to prepare his entry meticulously, just as he would the
preparations for the last supper he would eat with his disciples. The crowds welcomed
Jesus, waving branches, reminiscent of the Old Testament Feast of Tents (Tabernacles, cf.
Leviticus 23:40), the marking of the last harvest of the year which also signified a
Messianic end of times (cf. Zechariah 14). The crowd’s acclamation of Jesus: “Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (Mark 11:9) derived from Psalm 118, the
song of the people as they ascended to the Temple for the Feast of Tents. Peter had wanted
to build tents on the high mountain, the people welcomed Jesus as if it were the Feast of
Tents, but the fate of Jesus would transform the understanding of the Messianic King and
his cross would become the true tent under which the faithful would gather to gaze upon
the one they had pierced (cf. Zechariah 12:10).

Jesus went straight into the Temple. In Mark’s Gospel, this was the first time Jesus entered
Jerusalem and its Temple. However, strikingly, he offered no sacrifice but simply looked
around and went out. It was he, the one who had come to the Temple, who would be the
ultimate sacrifice. The next day he returned. Mark presented Jesus’s second visit to the
Temple within a narrative that began and ends with a fig tree. On his way, Jesus cursed a
fig tree that was without fruit. The curse seemed harsh as Mark underlines that it was not
the season for figs. However, when Jesus returned from the Temple, the disciples saw that
the curse had taken effect and the fig tree had withered away. The fig tree served as a
symbol for the Temple, condemned by Jesus as “a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17), a place
that was not bearing the fruit of repentance and grace it had been erected to yield. In the
Old Testament, figs were a sign of fertility (Deuteronomy 8:8), punishment (Jeremiah 8:13,
Hosea 2:14, Joel 1:12, Habakkuk 3:17) and restoration (Joel 2:22, Micha 2:4, Nahum 3:12,
Zechariah 3:10).

Jesus’s second visit to the Temple, framed by the narrative of the cursed fig tree, was
dramatic. Jesus came as a purifying messenger (angel), like the one described in the Book
of Malachi (3:1-3), cleansing the Temple of those who sought to make it a den of robbers.
Striking was Jesus’s citation of the verse “my house shall be called a house of prayer for
all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7) because this text speaks at length about the integration of all
people into the one people of God, even using the image of a withered tree. “Do not let the
foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and
do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs
who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I
will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and
 18

daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners
who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be
his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant--
these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their
burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be
called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts
of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered” (Isaiah 56:3-7). The
cleansing of the Temple was also preparation for the integration of the Gentiles into the
people of God.

The disciples, seeing the withered fig tree, again addressed Jesus as “Rabbi”. Once again,
this is best understood as “my Lord” as they were astonished at this act of mastery over
nature. What followed was the closest Mark comes to reporting the Lord’s Prayer (cf.
Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 10:2-4). After calling the disciples to have faith, a faith that can
move mountains, he said: “Whatever ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it
will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything you against
any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark
11:24-25).

On Jesus’s third and last visit to the Temple, he had five encounters that parallel the five
encounters in Galilee at the beginning of his public ministry. Most of these encounters were
hostile, illustrating the increasing opposition to Jesus. In the first three encounters, he
argued with representatives of the Jewish religious authorities. Chief priests, scribes and
elders demanded to know by what authority he had acted the day before, cleansing the
Temple. Pharisees and Herodians attempted to catch Jesus out with their question about
whether to pay taxes to the Romans. Sadducees then tried to argue with him about
resurrection. They all came away even more in opposition to Jesus. The fourth encounter
was with a single scribe. He asked Jesus which commandment was the most important.
Jesus’s answer showed that he did not come to teach something new, as he simply cited
from the Law of Moses. Jesus integrated two commandments that both commanded love –
love of God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love of neighbor (Leviticus 19:18). The scribe readily
accepted Jesus’s answer, affirming that love was more important than sacrifices in the
Temple, and Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34).
Although the religious authorities then withdrew and debated Jesus no more, a final
encounter took place between Jesus and the people during which he warned the people of
the hypocrisy of their religious leaders.

Jesus’s three visits revealed the Temple as a place of corruption and violence. However, the
last scene in the Temple revealed that this place could elicit a response of simple faith.
Jesus observed a destitute widow put two copper coins in the Temple treasury. He pointed
to her act of gratuitous devotion and said that she “out of her poverty has put in everything
she had, her whole living” (Mark 12:44). The widow appeared as an alter Christus in her
willingness to pour out her sustenance, her very life, for nothing in return, prefiguring
Christ’s own gratuitous sacrifice.

Jesus then left the Temple and, sitting on the Mount of Olives, presented his second great
teaching in the Gospel of Mark. In Galilee, he had taught about the Kingdom in terms of
parables and now, in Jerusalem, he taught about the Kingdom in terms of eschatology. In
the parables the Kingdom, not yet manifest, was rendered “already here”, perceptible to
those who had ears to see. In his eschatological teaching, Jesus presented the Kingdom as it
 19

would be to eyes that had heard. Jesus spoke a language well known from the prophets of
ancient Israel, especially in their descriptions of the coming of the Day of the Lord. The
common theme of the Day of the Lord unified the Twelve Prophets (from Hosea to
Malachi) in the last part of the Old Testament. At the very center of the discourse was the
prediction that the disciples would suffer persecution and would have to persevere (Mark
13:9-13). The suffering of the disciples, like the suffering of their Lord, was the logical
consequence that derives from the fact that the disciples (like the Lord) would need to go
against the current. In a world that lived in denial of the Word of God, the disciples could
not integrate and feel comfortable. Integration would mean betrayal with regard to the call
to be a disciple. If the disciples felt at home in a world in which violence, hatred, racism,
competition, materialism, lust and greed were part of the constitution, then they were no
longer disciples but had abandoned Jesus. Going against the current would logically bring
in its wake persecution and suffering. The world would not sit back and allow the disciples
to challenge it by living a life in harmony with the Word of God. Consolation was that if
the disciples remained faithful to Jesus, they would be strengthened by the Holy Spirit and
given the wisdom by which they would be able to stand watch and continue on their way
courageously.

The discourse promised the coming of the Son of Man, a term Jesus has used to describe
himself throughout the Gospel (cf. Daniel 7:13-14). Jesus insisted that the disciples could
not know when this would be, adding that not even the Son knew the precise time. Yet, at
the same time, Jesus insisted, “this generation will not pass away before all these things
take place” (Mk. 13:30, cf. also Mark 9:1). There seemed to be a contradiction in insisting
that it would take place in this generation and yet no one could know when it would take
place. The tension, inherent to an eschatological teaching, held together both the “already
here” and the “not yet”. Although the tension was unresolved, the final word was the most
important: “Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13:33).
Living in constant expectation rendered that which is “not yet” “already here”. The word
“watch”, used three times in the text here, would be used three times again in the narrative
of Gethsemane as Jesus pleaded with his disciples to “watch and pray that you may not
enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38).

14:1-15:47
Passion and death of Jesus

“It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief
priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him” (Mark
14:1). The time had come. Jesus had already told his disciples three times, openly and
clearly, what would happen to him in Jerusalem. Yet, were they waiting? In fact,
everything Mark wrote was simply a prologue to what was about to begin. Passover was an
important annual celebration of the exodus from Egypt. The angel of death had passed over
the homes of the Israelites, striking down the Egyptian firstborn. Ever since then, each
year, Jews remembered how God had liberated the Israelites from the darkness of slavery.

In between telling that the religious authorities sought to kill Jesus and informing the reader
that they had found a willing collaborator in Judas, Jesus’s disciple, Mark inserted the story
of the woman who anointed Jesus’s head with expensive ointment. In the Old Testament,
anointing could be for a priest (Exodus 30:22-33), a king (cf. 1Samuel 9:16-17), or a
prophet (Isaiah 61:1) but also for a lover as in the Song of Songs (3:6, 4:10, 5:1).
Defending her from those who criticized her because of the cost of the myrrh, Jesus again
 20

referred to his approaching death, “she has anointed my body beforehand for burying”
(Mark 14:8). Mark dramatically contrasted this loving act of reverence on the part of the
woman and Judas, a disciple, going off to betray Jesus.

When Passover approached, Jesus sent two disciples to prepare the place where Jesus
would celebrate the Passover meal with his disciples. At the supper, Jesus’s gift of his body
and blood was encased within his announcement that one disciple would betray him and
the announcement that the others would all abandon him. It was striking that when Jesus
announced that a disciple would betray him, “they began to be sorrowful, and to say to him
one after another, "Is it I?” (Mark14:19). They all sensed that they could have been the
betrayer, each one challenged to the extreme by Jesus and the demands of discipleship.
Again, Jesus was left alone and yet within this very context he offered his body and blood.

When Jesus took the bread and the wine, he was feeding his disciples in a new way.
Before, in the wilderness, he had multiplied the bread for the hungry multitudes but at the
Passover meal, he was feeding them with his very being, his flesh and his blood. “Take;
this is my body… This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mark
14:22-24). The words of institution contained in Pauls First Letter to the Corinthians
(1Corinthians 11:24-26) are only hinted at in Mark’s Gospel but the expressions used
conjure up the Old Testament background to this Eucharistic celebration. Jesus referred not
only to the Paschal celebration to commemorate the Exodus but also to the covenant
between God and the people of Israel, sealed in the blood of sacrifices, at Sinai. It was then
that the people said their definitive yes to God’s Word: “All that the Lord has spoken we
will do, and we will be obedient” (Exodus 24:7) and they were sprinkled with the blood of
the sacrifices. Likewise, Jesus evoked the promise of Jeremiah. “Behold, the days are
coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the
house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by
the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I
was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house
of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it
upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer
shall each man teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, `Know the Lord,' for they
shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive
their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

Mark underlined Jesus’s solitude again when, on their way to the Mount of Olives, Peter
insisted that he would never abandon Jesus. However, Jesus said to him that not only would
he too deny Jesus three times before the cock had crowed twice but that this abandoning of
Jesus was inserted into the plan of God, as foreseen by the prophets, citing Zechariah 13:7.
Jesus had come to the Mount of Olives to spend the night in prayer. His agonized prayer
was recited within the narrative that tells that the three disciples who accompanied him into
the heart of Gethsemane fell asleep despite Jesus’s plea to remain watchful. When Jesus
found Peter asleep, he addressed him as Simon, implying that Peter had abandoned him as
Judas had, reverting to a state of being before his call to be a disciple. However worse was
to come…The narrative reminded the reader that the one disciple who remained very much
awake was Judas, leading the soldiers to the place where Jesus was.

Mark’s description of Gethsemane was the most agonizingly human in comparison with the
other two Synoptic evangelists, Matthew and Luke, who seemed to soften their Markan
source. In Mark, Jesus was “greatly distressed and troubled… sorrowful even unto death…
 21

fell on the ground and prayed” (Mark 14:33-35). Jesus’s humanity shone through in his
agony as he cried: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me”
(Mark 14:36). Jesus’s Aramaic “Abba” recalled Saint Paul’s description of those who
through life in the Spirit are sons of God: “When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit
himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then
heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him” (Romans
8:15-17). After giving expression to his human anguish, Jesus turned to his Father as the
perfectly obedient Son, echoing Israel’s response to God at Sinai: “not what I will, but
what You (will)” (Mark 14:36). However, as his disciples slept on, Jesus was completely
alone.

Mark divided Jesus’s ultimate betrayal, his arrest, trial, passion and death, into a four-part
structure that focused on the implication of all of humanity in Jesus’s ultimate fate – Judas,
the Jews, Peter and the Romans. It was particularly noteworthy that alongside Jews and
Romans, the disciples shared in the responsibility for Jesus’s fate. All were guilty, all were
sinful, all were in need of Jesus’s salvation, as he had said: “Those who are well have no
need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners ”
(Mark 2:17). In this story, there were no innocents!

The drama began with Judas. Unlike his sleeping disciples, Judas was fully awake. Calling
Jesus “Rabbi” (my Lord), like Peter on the high mountain, Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss.
This parody of the Song of Songs, which began “o that you would kiss me with the kisses of
your mouth” (1:2), clearly implicates Jesus’s disciples in his fate. Judas, in Mark’s
narrative, is not an exception with regard to the other disciples, a rotten apple among good
apples, but rather representative of the disciples who have served as an obstacle to Jesus’s
mission throughout the narrative. Exegetes have often asked why did Mark have such a
negative impression of the disciples (an impression that Matthew and Luke would go to
great lengths to correct)? Might it be that Mark had witnessed too many of the faithful
abandon the faith in times of trials, especially when persecutions came their way? This fact
might be the background to the description of the breakdown of families in Jesus’s
eschatological discourse (cf. Mark 13:9-13). At the moment of Jesus’s arrest, all the
disciples abandoned him. Unique to Mark’s narrative was the description of a young man
clothed in “nothing but a linen cloth about his body; and they seized him, but he left the
linen cloth and ran away naked” (Mark 14:51-52). Christian tradition proposed that this
young man might have been Mark himself, writing his narrative later to make amends for
his own abandonment of Jesus. However, the Prophet Amos in his dramatic account of
Israel’s transgressions, ended his description of the Day of the Lord with the image of “he
who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day” (Amos 2:16).

Attention shifted from Judas to the Jewish authorities. Jesus was handed over and judged,
just as he had prophesied. Remaining silent before the false witness of his accusers (Mark
14:61), Jesus conformed to the image of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah’s image of the one
who bore the sins of many. “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his
mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is
dumb, so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). Finally, the high priest accused Jesus of
blasphemy, asking him: “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” (Mark 14:61). Jesus
replied: “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and
coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). Jesus’s answer evoked God’s own
identification of Himself to Moses at the burning bush. “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14) and
yet again, he referred to the eschatological figure of the Son of Man, who received
 22

authority from the One seated on the throne in the Prophet Daniel’s night vision (Daniel
7:13-14). Jesus was then spat upon and beaten, further conforming to the image of the
Suffering Servant: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we
esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed
him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:3-4).

Attention then shifted from the Jewish authorities to Peter, back to a disciple implicated
fully in Jesus’s fate. Peter, who had fallen asleep in Gethsemane and then abandoned Jesus,
had crept into the courtyard of the building where Jesus was held prisoner by the Jewish
authorities. Once identified as a disciple by those gathered there, Peter proceeded to fulfil
the words Jesus had said about him and denied him three times. However, on hearing the
crow of the cock, Peter awoke. As Peter bursts into tears, the cock’s crow served as a
second calling, an awakening to his true vocation as a disciple. Peter’s tears opened the
gates of repentance like David, awakened by Nathan’s parable. Tears opened the way not
only to ask forgiveness but also to ask for help because then sin was too heavy and the
sinner could not go on alone. The tears flowing from Peter’s eyes represented his
awakening to an unbearable situation, expressing deep remorse for the abyss that had
opened between him and the Lord. These tears were not an expression of despair but a gift
from the Lord. With renewed awareness of being a sinner, he could grasp the hand of the
Lord, stretched out always. Through the tears, Peter could see the Lord in his memory.
What distinguished Simon Peter from Judas Iscariot was not that one was a saint and the
other a sinner. The difference between the two of them was that Judas hanged himself,
despairing of the Lord’s mercy, locking himself into his sin, whilst in contrast, Simon Peter
burst into tears, recognizing that he was a sinner but loved by the Lord.

From Peter, penitent sinner, the focus turned to the Roman authorities, those who put Jesus
to death. Jesus was handed over to them on the last day, a day that contrasts dramatically
with the first heroic day in the Gospel. The Roman authorities mocked him, spat upon him,
scourged him and finally killed him. There is a deliberate parallel between Jesus’s passion
in the presence of the Jewish leaders and his passion in the presence of the Roman
authorities. Whereas the Jewish leadership accused him of being “Christ, son of the
Blessed” (Mark 14:61), the Roman authorities accused him of being “King of the Jews”
(Mark 15:2). Jesus was to be crucified, a judgment meted out for treason and rebellion.
Jesus remained silent in the face of Pilate’s perverse weakness and manipulations. Mark
did not hide Pilate’s full implication in Jesus’s fate: he had the power to save him and did
not. “Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas; and having
scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified” (Mark 15:15). Pilate released a criminal
instead of Jesus, curiously named Bar-Abbas – meaning son of a father. Jesus, further
mocked by Pilate’s soldiers, dressed up as a king, crowned with thorns, now awaited his
enthronement on the cross.

Jesus, abandoned by all, Jewish leadership, Roman authorities and his own disciples, was
led to his death. As a final parody, the Romans forced a man, Simon the Cyrene, to bear
Jesus’s cross. Had not Jesus said: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). However, Simon had not chosen to
follow Jesus but had been co-opted by the Romans to shoulder a heavy cross that Jesus,
who had been severely beaten, might not have had the strength to carry alone. Mark,
however, hinted at the identity of Simon by mentioning that he was “the father of
Alexander and Rufus” (Mark 15:21). In Paul’s greetings to the community in Rome to
 23

which he addressed his epistle, he greeted “Rufus, eminent in the Lord, also his mother and
mine” (Romans 16:13). Might that imply that Simon had indeed become a disciple,
shouldering Jesus’s cross, and then initiated into the community of Jesus’s followers,
founded a Christian family, his son Rufus and widow among the members of the Church in
Rome.

Jesus arrived at the place of the crucifixion. Here, the Psalms strongly influence Mark’s
writing as he described the abandoned, suffering just man. These poetic prayers from the
Old Testament, like Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, provided language to describe the agony of
Jesus during his crucifixion. “They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my
clothes” (Psalm 22:18). “Scorn of mankind… all who see me jeer at me, they toss their
heads and sneer” (Psalm 22:6-7). “He relied on the Lord, let the Lord save him” (Psalm
22:8). “When I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink” (Psalm 69:21). “Loudly I cry to
the Lord”(Psalm 3:4). “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1).
Crucified between two criminals, mocked by the religious leaders of Israel, Jesus died a
criminal’s death. Saint Paul sublimely described the ultimate kenosis – the self-emptying –
in theological terms. “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and
became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8). Mark composed
the narrative of this kenosis.

Many have been troubled by Jesus’s ultimate cry, recorded by Mark in the original
Aramaic, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). However,
throughout his narrative, Mark had insisted on Jesus’s humanity. The cry of despair drove
home that Jesus really did empty himself of his divinity, indeed experienced the depth of
human despair. However, many careful readers of Mark also pointed out that that cry of
despair led into Palm 22. The Psalm recorded the despair of the just man, persecuted by his
enemies, but ended in a cry of triumph. “I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst
of the congregation I will praise thee: You who fear the Lord, praise him! all you sons of
Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel! For he has not despised
or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has
heard, when he cried to him” (Psalm 22:22-24).

The darkness that covered the earth warned those willing to see that this was not the death
of some common criminal. Rather, signs, which accompany the Day of the Lord according
to the prophets (cf. Jeremiah 4:23, Joel 2:10-11, Amos 8:9, Zephaniah 1:15) accompanied
his death. The tear that must rip the old to make place for the new (according to Jesus’s
parable, cf. Mark 2:21-22), the tear that had ripped the heavens asunder when Jesus was
baptized (cf. Mark 1:10), now ripped the Temple veil from top to bottom (cf. Mark 15:38).
Heaven and earth became one domain with Jesus, Son of God, and now sacred and profane
were sanctified by the Messiah and Savior. At that moment, a voice was added to Jesus’s
cry, a proclamation that echoed the divine voice at the Jordan and on the high mountain. A
centurion, standing under the cross, looked up at a dead man and said, “Truly this man was
the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39). The centurion joined a chorus of unexpected voices in the
Gospel: not only Legion and the Syro-Phoenician woman, but also the women standing
under the cross. The men disciples had abandoned Jesus, but the women and this Gentile
had braved, watching him.
 24

Mark did not tell that usually the bodies of the crucified were not buried. According to
Roman custom, they were either left to rot on the cross or cast into the wilderness, either
way, they were eventually devoured by wild dogs and birds. However, another surprizing
voice makes itself heard after Jesus’s death, a Jewish voice to parallel the Gentile
centurion. Joseph of Arimathea, one of the Jewish leadership, petitioned to receive Jesus’s
body and prepared it for burial. The hasty burial, just as Sabbath was approaching, was
witnessed by the women disciples, who had witnessed Jesus’s death.

Jesus’s heroic mission began in a synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath and a last
Sabbath signalled a shameful end for those who could see only with eyes of the flesh. A
man had been put to death like a criminal and hastily buried,, almost completely
abandoned.

16:1-8
Empty tomb

“And when the Sabbath was past” (Mark 16:1). The story did not end with the burial. That
had always been the Good News in the Old Testament too: God had never allowed death to
have the last word. This had been particularly true when Jerusalem had been destroyed, the
Temple burnt and the people exiled in Babylon. It was then that the voice had cried out, “In
the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our
God” (Isaiah 40:3). God was at work, through King Cyrus of Persia, called the Lord’s
Messiah (Isaiah 45:1). God called out to abandoned Jerusalem: “Get you up to a high
mountain, O Zion, herald of Good News; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem,
herald of Good News, lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God! ”
(Isaiah 40:9).

A timeline delineates Mark’s Gospel: from “the beginning” (Mark 1:1) through “after six
days” (Mark 9:2) until “when the Sabbath was past” (Mark 16:1). The passing of the
Sabbath marked the first day of a new week, or perhaps the eighth day that concluded a
story. The courageous women disciples, who had witnessed both death and burial, decided
that they had to go to the tomb in order to anoint the body buried so hastily. Was this a
simple visit to mourn the loss of a beloved teacher or might there have been the faint hope
that drove the lover in the Song of Songs to search for her loved one and not surrender to
despair?

As they were wondering who might move aside the stone from the face of the tomb, they
looked up. The Greek word “look up” had been used to describe the action of the two blind
men, the man from Bethsaida (Mark 8:24) and Bartimaeus of Jericho (Mark 10:52), after
their eyes had been opened. It was then that these women saw that the stone had been
rolled back. Entering the tomb, they encountered a young man, who told them astonishing
news: “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he
is not here; see the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6). He had risen. These women
were then sent as apostles to bear Good News to the men disciples: “Go, tell his disciples
and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you ”
(Mark 16:7). The women were sent like many before them in the Gospel of Mark: the cured
leper (1:44), the cured paralytic (2:11), Legion, the cured demoniac (5:19), the cured
haemorrhaging woman (5:34), the Syro-Phoenician woman (7:29), the young rich man
(10:21), Bartimaeus of Jericho (10:52), the disciples preparing for Jesus’s entry into
Jerusalem (11:2) and those preparing for his last Passover meal (14:13).
 25

However, a last surprise was in store. “They went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling
and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were
afraid” (Mark 16:8). This is the last verse Mark wrote. A book called “the beginning of the
Good News” (Mark 1:1) ended with fear. Where was the Good News? Already in the
second century, scribes, perplexed by this sudden and unsatisfying ending to the Gospel
Mark wrote, decided to add verses to Mark’s narrative that they collected from the books
written by Matthew, Luke and John. The Gospel of Mark, in its canonical form, had to
include the apparition of the Risen Christ (Mark 16:9-20).

Yet, the big question remained unanswered. Why did Mark end with fear and silence? He
knew that the women had not ultimately remained silent as the Good News spread and he
had heard about it and had turned it into the narrative he composed. There is no doubt that
Mark believed that Jesus had risen from the dead, a resurrection so brilliantly described by
Saint Paul. Jesus had proclaimed at the epicentre of the Gospel Mark composed: “Truly, I
say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the
kingdom of God has come with power” (Mark 9:1). Then, he had given his disciples a
foretaste of his resurrection on the high mountain when he was transfigured. So why did
Mark choose to end his narrative in such an abrupt way?

Mark called the book he wrote “the beginning of the Gospel”. Indeed, it is now clearer why
this first reading was indeed just “a beginning”. The reader is sent back to the beginning.
Too many questions remain unanswered. The reader is invited to begin reading the book
again. During the second reading, the focus will no longer remain uniquely on Jesus but
rather on the ones called by Jesus, the disciples. The reader must discern that Jesus in
Mark’s Gospel is calling the reader to take up his or her cross and follow him. This is not a
story about a distant figure but rather an invitation. Jesus is calling each one to listen in
order to believe, hear in order to see, exchanging eyes of flesh and blood for eyes of faith.
Jesus Christ was only the beginning, the beginning of a fulfillment of God’s promises that
must be realized in the reader and the community of readers. These readers are called to
read the Gospel again, to enter into the mystery of the Kingdom and live it as an alter
Christus, another Christ, the image and likeness of the Father God. Jesus must not be
abandoned, left alone as he was in the beginning. The readers become disciples and must
accompany him to the end. Only then, the community of disciples can call out with one
resounding voice: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20), Maranatha!

It is appropriate to end this reading of the Gospel of Saint Mark with a short text from
Mark’s great teacher Saint Paul:

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you have received the spirit of sonship.
When we cry, "Abba! Father!"
it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit
that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ,
provided we suffer with him
in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
(Romans 8:14-17)