Curtis A. Bronzan

The religious community I serve is journeying through the gospel of Mark. As such, each week I read more of Ched Myers’ epic Binding the Strong Man to help prepare. This quote made me think of recent healthcare debates (my italics):

In introducing the structure of the first major narrative section of the Gospel, I noted it’s concentric composition. At the center lies the main campaign narrative, which, through a series of specific episodes, articulates the character of Jesus’ messianic ministry. This campaign precludes any distinction between Jesus’ mission to heal the sick and his mission to confront the powers, for the one always leads to the other. The main aim of this discourse is to subvert the social construction of reality by the dominant order, its legitimating ideologies and practices.

It’s fitting that my next to last post in this series arrives on this, Maundy Thursday.

In his book Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, David Toole questions, “[g]iven the hegemony of a particular order and a particular rational discourse, how can it be that the madman or the poet can effectively contest anything?” (Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, 163) As we come upon our final section of examining Jesus’ subversion of the Temple cult, we are better prepared to offer an answer.

Both Jesus’ community and teachings reveal his efforts to subvert the first century Temple system, though it is his symbolic actions that most profoundly call attention to the degree in which Jesus was seeking to offer a replacement for the religious establishment. While popular understanding rightly recognizes these events as fulfillment to prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures, we must not gloss over the significance of these actions in light of first century Jewish culture. We ought to also question the use of the term “prophecy” as it is commonly understood. In so doing, we would in all likelihood become convinced that these prophetic acts did not occur by mere chance, but indeed, were specifically planned and brought about as fulfillments of the Hebrew Scriptures.

N.T. Wright has argued that Jesus’ prophetic actions are akin to someone burning the flag in contemporary Western culture, and, “if someone burns the flag, something must be done.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 369) Thus, it is these actions alongside his teaching and community building which provide a reason for which Jesus is crucified by the religious and political authorities. In turn, then, we will address two pivotal symbolic actions central to the life and mission of Jesus: his baptism and the Passover meal.

Each of the three synoptic Gospels includes John’s baptism of Jesus, found at the outset of his public ministry. Notice Mark’s account:

And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River… At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1.4-5, 9-11)

Even careful readings of the text can miss the truly subversive element found in John’s baptism, which included not only religious but political significance. While ceremonial washings had long been a part of Israel’s history, John’s baptism in the Jordan River offered a clear alternative to the Temple cult. Horsley and Silberman note:

John saw his mission to call the people out into the wilderness of purification and renewal, out to the Jordan across which they had entered the land that God had promised them in the first place, to renew their Covenant with Him. In the course of their daily lives, in an era of increasing economic tensions and apprehensions about the future, they had lost sight of the only way they could survive: a return to the observance of the Covenant that God had made with their forefathers at Sinai. And they would seal their renewed commitment to the laws and traditions of Israel with a single act of immersion – not the ice-cold baths of ascetic hermits or the repeated lustrations of sectarian acolytes – but a one-time public acknowledgement of a new life-long commitment, administered in the flowing waters of the Jordan by John “the Baptizer” himself. (The Message and the Kingdom, 33)

Wright puts it simply: “Anybody offering water-baptism for the forgiveness of sins was saying: you can have, here and now, what you would normally get through the Temple cult.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 160)

This simple action, then, was charged with deep religious as well as political significance, hearkening God’s people to remember His promise of “a land flowing with milk and honey,” (Exodus 3.8) the covenant to which they must recommit themselves. Pledging themselves in this way was seen by first century authorities as an act of subversion – if not outright revolution – as it offered the opportunity for God’s people to be reconciled to Him without so much as a reference to the Temple and it’s regulations.

Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River reveals his fervent conviction that God was at work through John’s ministry in a new and special way, conversely revealing that, in Jesus’ eyes, He was not at work in the priestly system. This is only heightened by reference to John’s priestly lineage. And as if Jesus’ baptism by John was not enough, all four of the Gospels reveal Jesus as the obvious and necessary succession to John’s ministry. This occurs not only in John’s spoken affirmation of Jesus, but also the linkage between John’s imprisonment and the beginning of Jesus’ public career.

Notice it’s prominence in Matthew’s account: “When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee… From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’” (Matthew 3.12,17) John Howard Yoder notes: “John’s ministry had a pronounced political character, and to some extent Jesus took up his succession (note the time linkage in Matt. 3:12).” (The Politics of Jesus, 23) Thus, from the outset of Jesus’ ministry, he was a marked man, following in the footsteps of his predecessor, who similarly gave his life as a result of his prophetic pronouncements.

The final meal Jesus ate with his disciples continues many of the subversive elements we have seen inherent in John’s baptism and continued ministry of Jesus. While we have previously noted the significance of Jesus’ open commensality, his reappropriation of the Passover meal heightens his ongoing radical counter-Temple movement. Following his prophetic Temple-action, Mark notes,

[w]hile they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. “I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.” (Mark 14.22-25)

Again, a simple reading of this text only lays the groundwork for understanding this deeply seditious account. At the outset of the pericope, Mark is careful to note that it was “[o]n the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb,” (Mark 14.12) that this symbolic action took place, which sets Jesus’ last meal in the context of the Passover; YHWH’s liberation of His people from the hand of Pharaoh. As Scot McKnight argues, here “Jesus ‘storifies’ his own death by setting that death in the context of Passover and exodus.” (A Community Called Atonement, 83) He goes on, explaining, “the event was fraught with political implications for Roman rulers as Israel thought of what God might again do for Israel. Of all the high holidays in Israel, Passover threatened the pax Romana and the stability of the land of Israel.” (A Community Called Atonement, 85)

In “storifying” his own death, then, Jesus is not only presenting himself as the Passover sacrifice through which God is seeking to restore His chosen people, but also revealing that God is doing this outside of – even in opposition to – the Temple cult, who are ultimately responsible for his crucifixion. Furthermore, if God is indeed restoring His people through the actions of Jesus, not only the religious authorities are in jeopardy, but the political ones as well.

In the upper room, then, we see Jesus’ counter-Temple movement reach its culmination. Prior to the crucifixion he may very well have known was looming before him, Jesus clearly communicates in the Passover meal that he “intended his death to accomplish that which would normally be accomplished in and through the Temple itself.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 604) Furthermore, from the perspective of Jesus’ previous ministry, it has been argued, “Jesus’ kingdom agenda, with the love of YHWH and of neighbor at its heart, suggested that the sacrificial system was to be made redundant. This both confirms the meaning of the Temple-action and hints at the meaning of the supper-action.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 567) Indeed, these symbolic actions of Jesus clearly communicate the degree to which Jesus sought to subvert the Temple’s authority, replacing it with his own movement.

Just as many have missed the subversive element in Jesus’ teaching, many have missed his emphasis on community. In some cases, of course, this is a result of reading into the Gospel accounts our own cultural presuppositions. At other times, however, it is the result of poor theology. Adolf von Harnack, in an 1899 lecture, may have been guilty of both:

Anyone who wants to know what the kingdom of God and the coming of this kingdom mean in Jesus’ preaching must read and meditate on the parables. There he will learn what the kingdom is all about. The kingdom of God comes by coming to individuals, making entrance into their souls, and being grasped by them.

This reading, as well as countless others, addresses Jesus’ Kingdom inaugurating mission in individualist Western eyes in light of the Christian church, thus failing to incorporate Jesus’ Jewishness; that he was, as we saw above, offering covenant renewal to God’s chosen people, Israel. In discussing whether Jesus came to start a church, Gerhard Lohfink rightly corrects Harnack’s individualist presupposition, that “[a]fter a history of more than a millennium, the people of God could neither be founded nor established, but only gathered and restored.” (Jesus and Community, 71)

This was done, of course, by Jesus’ reaching out to individuals for the purpose of the larger community. Interestingly, however, Jesus did not offer this covenant renewal on his own, but gathered the Kingdom community from within a discipleship community. The Gospels assert that Jesus called disciples – a subversive, upside-down practice of its own – which included those from completely divergent political backgrounds. Lohfink states,

The Twelve must have been an odd mixture – from Matthew the tax collector (Matt. 10:3) to Simon the Zealot (Luke 6:15). Including both a tax collector and a Zealot in a single group united the most opposed forces that existed anywhere in Israel at the time, for the tax collectors collaborated with the Romans, while the Zealots emphatically rejected the Roman occupation as incompatible with the reign of God. (Jesus and Community, 11)

These disciples were, of course, meant to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Common understanding of these disciples often misses the reality that the twelve were appointed from among the crowds who were already following Jesus. Note, in particular, Mark’s account: “Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve – designating them apostles – that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” (Mark 3.13-15)

Commenting on this passage, Lohfink notes, “At that time, Mark intends to say, Jesus instituted twelve of the disciples as the Twelve.” (Jesus and Community, 9) These twelve, as well as the many others who were incorporated into the Jesus community, were to join Jesus in proclaiming and enacting his kingdom. This was, thus, a “learning community”;

[t]hey must learn all that he teaches them so that they can proclaim it. They must receive the power that only the can give so that they can challenge the powers of the world in the name of the Sovereign Jesus… Thus they learned the how of Jesus’ mission as they learned the what and the why of good news. (The Incarnation and the Church’s Witness, 5)

Thus, this community learned from Jesus’ subversive teaching addressed above and continued his kingdom-centered mission, often outside of the institutions of first century Jewish faith. Scot McKnight thus notes,

[w]e are similarly bound to think that this society will spread justice in this world. Nothing could be clearer from the prophetic denunciations of Jesus against the leaders (Matt. 23), Peter’s revolutionary, insubordinate response to the Jerusalem officials (Acts 4-5) and his summons of the Asia Minor parishes to live the gospel responsibly, and Stephen’s prophetic explanation of what God was doing through Jesus (Acts 7:51-8:3) – and what else could be said about the apostle Paul’s relentless preaching of the gospel to Gentiles? Jesus and his many followers created an alternative society, but not simply in a sectarian sense. Instead, they took their message of the kingdom of God, the ecclesial body, into the public square as both proclamation and performance.” (A Community Called Atonement, 131)

The appointing of twelve disciples seems, at first blush, to be anything but subversive in light of the Hebrew Scriptures. This fails to take into account, however, the perspective of the first century Temple cult, which Jesus sought to challenge by said renewed covenant community. Horsley and Silberman note,

Jesus sought to turn the People of Israel away from that Herodian vision toward the tradition of an independent Israel, and it is significant, in this connection, that the gospel traditions stress “twelve” as the number of the core group of disciples, with Jesus proclaiming that his twelve closest followers were commissioned with establishing justice for all the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:29-30). (The Message and the Kingdom, 63)

The twelve, then, as devoted members of Jesus’ community were meant to function as the bearers of this new society committed to justice for Israel. While it is common to separate their communal activities from symbolic destruction of the Temple, they go hand in hand, as N.T. Wright asserts, “Jesus’ action in the Temple was a symbolic destruction… these words and this action followed with a close logic from the rest of Jesus’ agenda, the programme enacted in healings and meal-sharings.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 61) Horsley and Silberman likewise note, “Jesus’ healings and exorcisms were, in fact, merely part of a larger program.” (The Message and the Kingdom, 52) It is to these healings and meal sharings that we now turn our attention, in seeking to examine Jesus’ community building activity.

In recent history, the church has examined and defended Jesus’ healings and exorcisms in light of an Enlightenment dualism instead of a first-century Jewish worldview. Lohfink, therefore, is right to link Jesus’ healings with his eschatological preaching: “[s]ince the eschatological horizon of Jesus’ activity has reentered consciousness, it has been clear that Jesus’ miracles of healing must be seen in connection with his preaching of the kingdom of God.” (Jesus and Community, 12) A example of this inherent connection is found in the opening verses of the Gospel of Mark:

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!’
‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly. ‘Come out of him!’ The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. (Mark 1.21-26)

Notice not only Jesus’ authoritative teaching – which is unlike “the teachers of the law” – but the authority by which he casts out the evil spirit, as well as the implicit connection between the two. Commenting upon this episode, Ched Myers asserts that at the very outset of his ministry, “Jesus’ practice – specifically his healing, exorcism, and solidarity with the socially outcast – brings him into conflict with the authorities.” (Binding the Strong Man, 140)

As Jesus journeys toward Jerusalem, to borrow Luke’s literal and metaphorical reminder, this tension is heightened. In another healing event, Jesus “forgives” a paralytic in full view of the scribes. (Mark 2.1-12, Matthew 9.1-8, and Luke 5.17-26) Again, Ched Myers offers a helpful examination:

In choosing to introduce the language of the debt code, Jesus is elaborating the symbolics of hierarchy. The man’s lack of bodily wholeness would have been attributed to either his own sin, or, if a birth defect, inherited sin; he was thus denied full status in the body politic of Israel. Jesus summarily releases him from all debt – hence restoring his social wholeness and thus his personhood, which in turn is equated with the restoration of physical wholeness… The scribes are incensed, and for good reason. Their complaint that none but God can remit debt is not a defense of the sovereignty of Yahweh, but of their own social power. As Torah interpreters and co-stewards of the symbolic order, they control determinations of indebtedness. (Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 155) Note also Horsley and Silberman: “In many cases, the painful symptoms of illness were subject to cure through personal atonement, a prayer of supplication to God, or the contribution of a free-will offering to the Temple in Jerusalem.” (The Message and the Kingdom, 48)

Thus, it was not only Jesus’ later symbolic temple action that pronounced judgment upon the first century religious system, but his continual healing ministry of bringing wholeness back to the broken both bodily and socially.

Another element to Jesus’ community building was his practice of table fellowship, which, like it’s corollary, healing, “became seen as a further way in which the kingdom was actually being inaugurated.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 149) Unlike contemporary Western culture, where mealtimes are at best occasions for individuals to eat together, in first century Jewish culture meals were consumed within the context of the extended family, alongside others from their own social class. S.S. Bartchy notes,

[a]nyone who challenged these rankings and boundaries would be judged to have acted dishonorably, a serious charge in cultures based on the values of honor and shame. Transgressing these customs consistently would make a person an enemy of social stability. (Table Fellowship: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 796)

This is, of course, exactly what Jesus did in proclaiming and enacting the Kingdom of God.

The Gospel of Mark provides an interesting example of these eating habits. After calling a tax collector as a disciple – another subversive action – Jesus is immediately pictured as having dinner in his home:

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the ‘sinners’ and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2.15-17)

Ched Myers asserts that

Jesus’ concluding maxim in 2:17 unmasks the Pharisaic duplicity: for all their rhetoric about extending holiness to all of Israel, their practice betrays their commitment to rigid social boundaries between the “righteous” and the “sinner.” This boundary Jesus flatly rejects, and his mission is specifically aimed at transgressing it. (Binding the Strong Man, 159)

We see Jesus’ eating practices, then, in a very similar light to his healing mission: to restore the outcast as a part of the covenant people. As in his teaching, these community buiding activities were done outside of the Temple system, with blatant disregard for its requirements. N.T. Wright concludes,

What Jesus was offering, in other words, was not a different religious system. It was a new world order, the end of Israel’s long desolation, the truth and final ‘forgiveness of sins’, the inauguration of the kingdom of god. This, I suggest, was what was implied when Jesus announced ‘forgiveness of sins’ to particular people. The effect was the same as his eating with ‘sinners’: he was celebrating the coming of the kingdom, and those who shared this celebration with him were benefiting from this great ‘forgiveness of sins’. There is, in fact, no tension, no play-off, between the personal and the corporate at this point. (Jesus and the Victory of God, 272) Toole puts it this way: “Jesus thus made possible a new community that refused to be founded upon the exclusion of the other.” (Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, 246)

I picked up Ched Myers’ volume Binding the Strong Man at the Fuller Bookstore today, in preparation for an upcoming sermon series on the Gospel of Mark at the religious community I serve. I’m really looking forward to journeying through Mark – the earliest account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth – and am hoping we can go slowly, taking the entire year to do it.

Myers’ book has been on my wish list for a while, so being able to read it along with fellow companions at the church will be an added bonus for me – and hopefully for those I get to journey with as well. Check out the conclusion to his preface:

It is my hope that this commentary might stimulate further work along similar lines, in Mark or in other biblical texts. But above all it is offered, as the Gospel itself is, to discipleship communities, however discouraged and weary, as part of our ongoing search for renewed direction and hope in our struggle to follow the way of Jesus in difficult times. A true reading of Mark compels us to come to terms afresh with our faith and most certainly our lack of faith (Mk 9:24). I pray that this study might help Mark to speak, and the reader to have “ears to hear,” the good news that promises yet to overthrow the structures of domination in our world.