Failure and Loneliness Mark’s Gospel for 2006 Michael Trainor

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Struggle, aloneness, alienation, unhappiness, betrayal, racism, political suspicion, xenophobia and atheism…..All have been used by social commentators to analyse what has happened in Australia in recent years. Bible scholars have also used these descriptors for Mark’s Gospel. Similar concerns seem to preoccupy the evangelist and are reflected in the Gospel’s story of Jesus. As we think about the year ahead and the liturgical proclamation of Mark’s Gospel in 2006 (liturgical year B) links can be made between ourselves and the audience addressed by Mark.

Background to Mark

Mark’s Gospel (‘Mk’) was written by a Greco-Roman disciple of Jesus around the year 70 CE. We do not know the name of the Gospel’s author (the conventional titles of the Gospels only begin to appear in the late second and early third centuries). We do know that Mk was so important that it became the basis for two other Gospels (Matthew and Luke).

Mk is the shortest of the four Gospels, a mere sixteen chapters long, but it communicates the faith of first century Christians who sought to follow Jesus in a world and culture very different from the one in which Jesus and his first disciples lived. Mk’s is an urban Gospel, intended for Christians living in a Roman city (and perhaps even Rome itself) some two generations after the Galilean ministry of Jesus of Nazareth in the 30s CE. Between the time of the Jewish Jesus and the Greek writing of Mk’s Gospel a number of important developments occurred.

The story of Jesus was preached by his disciples, first in Israel and then gradually into the wider Greek world. As the story moved into a different culture the message of Jesus’ proclamation of God’s presence was adapted to address more relevantly a non-Jewish, Roman audience. Households of believers formed; they celebrated Eucharist, listened to the story of Jesus, and pondered the meaning of his words and deeds for their situation. The first preachers adapted the story so that these Greco-Roman householders might appreciate Jesus’ message better and make it relevant to the situations in which they now lived. It is in this context, with this dynamic, and on the death of its founding preacher, that the first Gospel, what we call “the Gospel according to Mark,” came into being.

Mk’s audience and its Roman setting

A careful reading of Mk suggests the kind of audience the evangelist sought to address. It is perhaps best to think of this audience as a gathering of households made up of Roman families (father, mother, children, and slaves) and representing a social and economic urban mix. These households would have struggled with the same day-to-day concerns that afflicted other households: health and hygiene, use of wealth, relations with political authorities, internal cohesion amongst themselves, and relationships with other people, especially foreigners.

A particular difficulty surfaced in Mk’s households. This came from their commitment to Jesus and faith in his God, whom they called “Abba” as Jesus had. They were constantly under suspicion by political authorities who suspected their loyalty to the Emperor and the Roman polytheistic religious system. This suspicion came to a head around the same time when the Gospel was being penned. Emperor Nero wanted to architecturally refurbish Rome. He burnt the city and pinned the blame for the conflagration on the followers of the Christ. These were Mk’s householders, if Rome is the setting for the Gospel. They would have been treated with contempt and hostility. Some experienced martyrdom and, if there is any truth in the description of these events by the Roman historian Tacitus, some Christians betrayed others to the Roman civil authorities.

This background is important. It helps us to hear Mk’s Gospel with a particular sensitivity. Mk’s political and cultural context is reflected in the Gospel narrative and played out through the evangelist’s characterisation of Jesus and his disciples. We frequently hear the Gospel stories from a religious point of view. We also need to hear them against this political, social and cultural background.

Mk’s Central Concerns: Who is God? What is a disciple?

To be a follower of Jesus in the late first century in a place like Rome would have been painful, difficult and lonely. It is understandable that the Gospel writer wanted to address those issues. Out of the many theological motifs that surface in the Gospel two are most important: theodicy and discipleship. In a world of tragedy and pain, who is God and how is one to be an authentic disciple? These two concerns, theodicy and authentic discipleship, have preoccupied Jesus’ followers ever since. They remain the concerns of Australian Christians today.

In the Gospel the importance of theodicy, of the nature of God, is revealed in Jesus. He is the one who proclaims “Good News” that God is present to humanity and seeks to liberate human beings and the whole of creation. God seeks to draw creation into divine communion. Jesus’ words and healing deeds throughout Mk reveal this central preoccupation. Nothing—suffering, betrayal, disease, or even death itself—will frustrate God’s loving plan. Mk’s disciples are portrayed as foils to what the evangelist considers authentic discipleship. They are obtuse, blind, fail to understand Jesus’ message, and are tempted to power and status. Towards the end of the Gospel they desert Jesus in the garden and leave him to face his accusers and executioners alone.

The Problem of the Absent God

This image, of the solitary Jesus, highlights one of the most powerful images which permeates Mk’s narrative. Aloneness and desertion are human constants with which every disciple needs to wrestle. Mk’s Jesus exemplifies its effect and articulates the tragedy of this experience and how it impinges on theodicy. Who is God in the midst of suffering and ultimate aloneness, in the encounter with death? Here we come to an important theological issue which Mk’s narrative powerfully addresses. This is the problem of the absent God. For Mk’s householders, how can God be present in what they are enduring? How can Good News be proclaimed in this context? These questions are startlingly and enigmatically addressed in the Gospel’s climax: Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The evangelist’s portrait of the Gospel’s characters reveals what is going on in Mk’s community and what they are encouraged to do. The disciples, for example, reveal the issues confronting Christian householders in Rome. Jesus is also the evangelist’s central figure proclaiming the authentic way of living in difficult times. Throughout the liturgical year, worshippers who engage the Gospel of Mark will be invited to see their own struggles and concerns reflected in the disciples. They will be encouraged to meditate upon Mk’s Jesus in order to live as faithful disciples today.

Mark’s Gospel in the Liturgical Year

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The selections for liturgical year B follow the outline of Mk: the Gospel begins in the place of solitude, the desert, and ends in the place of ultimate abandonment, the tomb. Between these two theological spaces, the rest of Mk’s narrative unfolds as Jesus invites his disciples to form community. In the first Sundays of the year after Christmas up to Lent (Jan-Feb) we read Mk 1-2, the opening of Jesus’ public ministry, his healing ministry and the calling of the first of his disciples. The ministry continues in the readings after Easter when we return to the Ordinary Time reading of the Gospel of Mark in July, with Mk 5. Apart from the enigmatic substitution of Markan readings by John’s Gospel (from July 30 to August 27, when we mainly read from Jn 6), the Sunday selections generally continue Mk’s storyline.

Jesus’ death (Mk 14-15) and resurrection (Mk 16:1-8)

There are two Gospel readings which deserve particular attention. These are the climax of Mk’s narrative—the story of Jesus’ death (Mk 14-15) and resurrection (Mk 16:1-8). These stories are at the heart of Holy Week, the foremost week in the liturgical year, on Passion Sunday and Easter. While space does not permit a thorough study of these stories, their central truths can be highlighted and celebrated in the richness of the celebrations of Holy Week.

The proclamation of Mk’s passion invites us into a profound meditation on the meaning of suffering and death. Jesus is abandoned in the garden by those closest to him. This anticipates and prepares us for the ultimate moment when Jesus even senses God’s abandonment of him. Jesus’ abandonment is emphasized in the death scream: “My God, my God! Why have you abandoned me?” (Mk 15:34) This is the heartrending cry of all who feel the silence of a seemingly absent God in moments of ultimate suffering. Failure and loneliness are the tragic hallmark of Mark’s dying Jesus. He is a failed, abandoned and abused figure, crying out to his God who seems silent and uncaring. Mark’s poignant theology here upends conventional interpretations that seem to emphasise victimization, joy in the midst of suffering and spiritual identity with the suffering Jesus.

The careful reader of Mark’s final story, the resurrection (Mk 16:1-8), notes a thematic consistency between Jesus’ death and resurrection. In the Easter story, the women come to the tomb in the early morning to anoint Jesus’ body. After discovering that the entrance of the tomb is already opened for them, they enter to encounter a heavenly attired young man. The young man’s words are a summary of Mark’s theology of resurrection and Easter. The centrepiece of this proclamation is: “He has been raised, he is not here. Behold the place where they laid him.” (Mk 16:6) Mark links the Easter event to the place of absence. The women are told to contemplate (“Behold”) this place. They are encouraged to meditate on the actual experience of divine absence and solitude symbolically represented by the tomb, the place of the dead. In other words, for both Mk’s audience and contemporary disciples who experience a sense of loneliness, failure, even divine silence, God’s power to resurrect is mysteriously found here. Failure not success provides the ground for the disciples’ experience of resurrection. For Mk, failure, absence and silence draw the disciple back to God. God is the ground of resurrection.

That this Markan theology was misunderstood almost universally is demonstrated by the way the Gospel’s concluding verse (Mk 16:8) has been silenced over the centuries. In Mk’s final verse the women run from the tomb and remain silent about the message with which they have been entrusted by the young man. It is a perplexing conclusion and Mk intends Gospel readers to ponder it and try and work it out. The present lectionary compilers have silenced this ending. This verse is left out of the Easter proclamation. So the final words that ring out are the hopeful words of the young man: “But go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going to Galilee. There you shall meet him” (Mk 16:7). Other interpreters, not long after Mk finished the Gospel, added other endings (which have become part of the Gospel). These seek to do something similar. They presume a victorious and triumphant Easter proclamation, more along the lines of the Gospels of Luke or Matthew. Easter thus becomes a success story. But only a success story.

Conclusion

Our context in Australia is not the same as that of the Gospel of Mark. For us, Christianity is taken as the dominant religion; political scrutiny of religious practice that besieged Mk’s households is absent. However, there are clear lines of comparison which link us to Mk’s original Gospel audience. Many today feel disillusioned by life, excluded from meaningful community, disenchanted by the Church. Some find it difficult to recognize how to be a true disciple in the midst of suffering, loneliness and isolation. They know God’s silence, even absence, in what is happening around and within them. Mark’s Gospel legitimises all these experiences; they are not antithetical to authentic discipleship.

To return to where we began, Mark’s Gospel is written to late first century struggling Roman Christian householders. Some even considered themselves as failed disciples (much like Mk’s disciples) who knew the absence of God (like Mk’s dying Jesus). The Gospel of Mark and its proclamation to Australian Christians in 2006 can offer surprising hope in a world where many know failure and loneliness.

Fr Michael Trainor lectures at the Adelaide College of Divinity, Brooklyn Park, South Australia which is the School of Theology of Flinders University. He is the author of several books including, Voices from Luke, Jesus in Luke's Gospel, and the Quest for Home. His interests lie in the areas of biblical education, adult biblical literacy, first-century culture and archaeology in their relation to the formation of earliest Christian communities and their writings.