Readings Between the Lines

When we celebrate Palm Sunday this month, we will read Mark’s Passion Narrative. The Passion and Resurrection Narratives bring Mark’s story of Jesus to its climax and drives home the point Mark wants to make about Jesus’ identity.
A significant task for Mark is to explain the apparent anomaly that Jesus, whom he identifies as Messiah and Son of God (1:1) ends up crucified. For Mark, Jesus’ crucifixion and death are the point at which human understanding of both his destiny and identity finally becomes possible. In Mark’s story the greatest challenge human characters face is to come to an understanding of Jesus’ identity. Demons readily perceive him to be, e.g., “the Holy One of God” (1:24) or “Son of the Most High God” (5:7). Human characters, however, for the most part perceive him to be a great healer and proclaimer of God’s word (1:27-28), but do not perceive the deeper aspect of his identity (4:41; 6:2-3, 52, 8:14-21). A breakthrough occurs at 8:29, when Peter, speaking for the group of apostles, identifies Jesus as the Messiah, whereupon Jesus enjoins silence upon them. When Jesus responds to Peter’s confession with a prediction of his passion and declaration that his followers must also take up their crosses, Peter is confused. His subsequent attempt to prevent Jesus from heading toward his passion and death earns him a rebuke from Jesus (8:32-33). The reader is surprised here! Why should Jesus suffer and die if he is the Messiah? And why should Peter be rebuked for trying to rescue his master? In addition, beginning with Jesus’ declaration that the sins of a paralyzed man are forgiven (2:5), he finds himself in conflict throughout Mark’s story with the Jewish religious leaders. If Jesus is who Mark says he is, why should the religious leadership of Judea seek his demise? Mark answers these questions with his Passion Narrative.

As Mark’s dramatic presentation of Jesus’ passion begins (14:1) he characterizes the religious leaders’ plot to arrest Jesus as devious, and thus contrary to God’s ways. In order to see how Mark resolves the questions and conflicts in his story through the narration of Jesus’ suffering and death, the reader must recall certain elements of the earlier story.

As mentioned above, Jesus predicts his passion, not once, but three times within the course of the story (8:31; 9:30-32; 10:32-34). Even as he predicts what will happen to him outside of the Passion Narrative, he also does so within it. At the Last Supper he predicts that one of the Twelve will betray him, all will abandon him and Peter will deny him (14:17-21, 26-31). These predictions demonstrate Jesus’ control of the events, rather than being a passive victim. Jesus is accomplishing a divine purpose by throwing himself headlong into his passion.

After the third passion prediction, Jesus corrects James’ and John’s ambition regarding esteem in the kingdom Jesus is establishing. He tells the disciples they must seek to be servants, even as he did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (10:45). The verse just quoted is key to how Mark brings forth Jesus’ identity through the narration of this passion. Jesus is the righteous sufferer depicted in Psalm 22 and he fills the bill of the suffering servant of Isaiah 52:13-53:12. By heading into his passion and death, Jesus is effecting the fulfillment of Scripture.

Also, while the religious authorities seek Jesus’ death out of malice, they are ironically playing right in to the divine plan which Jesus is carrying out. This fact is evident especially in Jesus’ reinterpretation of the Passover meal. With his pronouncement to the disciples gathered at table with him that the Passover bread is his body and the cup of blessing is his “blood-of-the-covenant which will be shed for many” (14:22-24), Jesus declares himself to be the one in whom the covenant is newly and definitively established. He sacrifices his body and blood for the salvation of “the many” (as opposed to the few).

As I mentioned earlier, the unveiling of Jesus’ true identity is key to the main point Mark is trying to make to his intended reader. The question of Jesus’ identity comes to a dramatic climax at 14:61-62. When the high priest asks Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” he echoes the narrator’s assertion in the very first verse of the Gospel, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. The ultimate question of Jesus’ identity is now ironically brought to the fore by the high priest as he interrogates Jesus. In reply, Jesus affirms, “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” Jesus’ “I am” here is more than an affirmative reply to the high priest. He is invoking the divine name (see Exodus 3:14). When Mark identifies Jesus as Messiah and Son of God at the very beginning of the Gospel, the intended reader would have had a conventional understanding of that truth, but not the understanding Mark wants to convey. Jesus establishes his identity as God’s Anointed One and his divine Sonship (which was reiterated at his baptism, 1:11 and in the transfiguration scene 9:7) by suffering and dying and achieving salvation for the mass of humanity. Just as Jesus’ “Messianic Secret” is exposed, the assembly of chief priests, elders and scribes declare him deserving of death, and thereby ironically and unknowingly play right into God’s plan! The climax comes when the centurion at the foot of the cross, at the moment Jesus dies, identifies him as “The Son of God” (15:39). Interestingly, the first human character in the Gospel, other than Jesus himself, to state Jesus’ identity correctly is a Gentile centurion, a character with whom Mark’s Gentile readers can identify.

By suffering, Jesus not only took the consequences of our sins onto himself, rather, he turned the experience of suffering into an instrument of salvation, and thereby deprived both suffering and death of the power to destroy us. We still experience suffering and tribulation in our lives, but united to Jesus in his suffering, we share the victory over death with him. And that victory is confirmed when the divine messenger at Jesus’ tomb says to the women on Easter Sunday morning, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here” (16:6).

Reflection Questions
● What practical implications does your belief in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God have in your life?

● In a world which promotes dominance and power, how do we understand Mark’s implication that being a suffering servant enables us to share in Jesus’ victory?

● Mark depicts Jesus as not being overwhelmed by the treachery and suffering he faces. How can we prevent the tribulation we experience in life from overwhelming us?