Do you have a question?

Harry Cook is working on a book entitled Inquirers in Conversation: Critical Thinking & Evolving Belief.
 
The book will include questions that have been posed in classes and seminars he has led over the years. The questions will be responded to as they were when first presented, i.e. as serious inquiries not seeking pat answers but as openings to further exploration.

If  you wish to submit such a question for discussion in the book, you may do so to [email protected]. Deadline for submission: August 31.
 
FINDINGS II
Proper 9- B - July 5, 2009
Mark 6: 1-13
(Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2d Corinthians 12: 2-10)



Harry T. Cook
By Harry T. Cook
6/29/09



RUBRIC

It will be helpful to remember that the first of the literature constituting the canonical gospels is the work of an author who called himself "Mark" -- though some of the sayings attributed to Jesus that appear variously and in various forms in documents known as "Matthew," "Luke" and "Thomas" clearly predate Mark as well as Matthew and Luke.

Mark's telling of "the story" seems to have been occasioned by the culmination, if not quite the end, of the Jewish-Roman war in the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E., and the massacre of the Jewish hold-outs at Masada three years later.

Therefore, everything we will encounter in Mark for the next five months will have as its somewhat hidden background those dramatic events.

Mark wrote for the emerging movement I call "Jesus Judaism" to distinguish it from what would become rabbinic-synagogue Judaism, both movements having been shaken by the fall of the Temple and other events connected with the Roman impatience with mid- to late-First Century C.E. Jews.

So as we consider Mark's narrative in 6: 1-13 (first about Jesus trying to teach in his hometown and, second, sending his disciples out in pairs with the odd mandate to take no supplies but to rely on the kindness of strangers for sustenance) we will gain a better understanding if we remember that, although the gospel writers used names and places associated with the memories of a past era, those names and places probably were part of the actual times in which the texts were written - which is why I have off and on over the years taught a highly successful course called "The Gospels as Church History."

Also important to note: synagogues, especially as buildings, did not exist as such in the first third of the First Century C.E. In any event, the word means "assembly" just as the Greek word for "church" (ekklesia) means "the called out ones."


WORKSHOP

Now back from "the other side," Jesus, Mark says, then travels to his "hometown," meaning, perhaps Nazareth, though at 2:2 we saw that he was "at home" in Capernaum -- about 20 air miles NNE of Nazareth. Jesus is there, Mark says, to teach in the synagogue on the Sabbath. We are left to wonder at the content of the teaching (didaskein). That he did any teaching at all was important to report because it suggests that the synagogue (or some synagogues) became the breeding ground for Jesus Judaism. It is clear that, as Mark reported, "many who heard him were astonished, saying 'Where did this man get all this?'" All what, we would like to know.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that the content of Jesus' teaching might have had to do with a new look at Torah and the traditions that had grown up around it. Already Jesus has called the Sabbath tradition into question (2:23-28 and again at 3:26). In that latter instance, Mark says Jesus had sufficiently provoked the party of Pharisees that they took counsel with the Herodians as to how they together might destroy (the Greek here is "apolesōsin" -- utterly undo) him. So the text would indicate that in the synagogue teaching referenced at 6:1-ff, a similar demythologizing and liberalizing of oppressive tradition went on. Mark with his description of the congregation's reaction suggests that Jesus was sensational, if not wholly successful. (Many a preacher will resonate with that!)

However, being challenged by the speaker's clarity of purpose is not always a guarantee the audience will end up appreciating what it heard. Hence does the synagogue's astonishment quickly turn into resentment: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" (6:3) A note: "carpenter" is a usual but necessarily helpful translation of τέκτων ("tekton"). The term can mean anything from "a highly skilled artisan" to "a common laborer."

That might make the question at 6:3 read like this: "How would this handyman get to know all this Torah stuff, and where does he get off with interpreting it so wildly? He's not a graduate of a great university. He looks just as down-at-the-heels as we do, so who is this guy anyway?" It's true, then, that one can't go home again.

Mark's Jesus appears to have shrugged his shoulders in a knowing way, quoting what must have been a well known proverb to the effect that "One who speaks for God (that's what 'prophet' means) is not without honor except in his hometown and among his family and friends." Some friends.

The bottom line is that those of the synagogue ended up, as the text says, "eskandalizonto," meaning that they found him and his words material for scandal. That turns out to be more than a reaction, Mark says. It is causative: it caused Jesus not be able to do useful work there.

Mark depicts Jesus as shaking the dust of that place from his feet and going on to other venues to teach. At this point he deputizes his followers to go deal with other "unclean spirits" (akathartōn). This latter word was used in the horticultural culture of antiquity to refer to dead vines requiring pruning. Maybe the "unclean spirits" were dronish, unproductive hangers-on unmoved by the new word.

The instructions given the new recruits are odd: they are to take nothing to sustain them on the way except a walking staff (which Matthew and Luke's versions forbid, perhaps because it might suggest a posture of authority or self-reliance). They are to go as supplicants, not as brash evangelists. They are to stay with those to whom they go. In doing so, the text implies, they will impart a healing or wholeness to all involved because living together also implies equality.

Ezekiel gives the exegete of the gospel passage a little bump with the prophet's dramatization of his perceived call: "[Yahweh] said to me 'Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel . . . who have rebelled against me . . ." It will be clear if one reads on that Ezekiel did not anticipate the kind of success Mark expected of those sent out by Jesus if only because Ezekiel goes to preach instead of to listen.

Paul in the assigned reading from 2nd Corinthians touches on the idea of weakness being a strength just as the gospel passage suggests that pooled vulnerability (see below) can be common strength.


HOMILETIC COMMENTARY

At least two good homiletic opportunities lay waiting within these thirteen verses:

The first deals with the new or innovative teaching Mark believed or wanted to believe Jesus brought to public attention -- a teaching having to do with ethics rather than doctrine, having to do with behavior rather than abstract belief. It is not unreasonable to think that the ethical principles represented in the maxims about turning the other cheek, walking the second mile, giving up shirt as well as coat, loving enemy and forgiving whenever necessary were what Mark thought those of the hometown synagogue heard.

Those ethical principles were and are counter-cultural. They imply passive resistance, liberality of sharing, attendance to the needs of the poor and reaching out to real and perceived adversaries. No one who seriously wanted to be elected President of the United States would advocate such a platform. That leaves its teaching and implementation to those who claim identification with the party of Jesus known loosely as Christianity. Aspiring Christians (which are the only kind that exist) must both do and advocate the doing of that gospel, and expect to be challenged, dismissed and diminished by popular reaction.

The second homiletic possibility arises in vv. 7-13 with the commissioning of surrogates to deal with the "unclean spirits." How the surrogates are to go -- with no provisions -- and what they are to do when they get where they are going, which is to invite themselves in, tells plenty about what Mark thought the "unclean spirits" were.

They were those skewed, anti-egalitarian values that place one set of people above another and, in so doing, inhibit the process of healing and wholeness. Casting oneself on the kindness of strangers and being willing to receive it when it is offered confers a goodness upon all concerned.

For one thing, it is fairly difficult to make an enemy out of someone under whose roof you have been invited to sleep, and who feel secure enough to sleep in the same house with you. All parties in such a house have made themselves vulnerable to the others.

Imagine a world in which vulnerability turns out to be a gift.





� Copyright 2009, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

Lecture Schedule

The Thursday Forum
Birmingham Unitarian Church
38651 Woodward Ave. (at Lone Pine)
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
Admission: $10/students free


Summer University: 10 a.m. Thursdays
July 16: Eco-Wisdom: Saving Earth From Us
July 23: Knowing v. Believing: A Brief For Reason
July 30: News Round-up: What's Happening?
Speaker
: Harry Cook






WHAT DO YOU THINK?

I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me: [email protected].



ARCHIVES NOW AVAILABLE
To read previously published essays and sermons, click  on the link below.





Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Add your name to our mailing list
For Email Marketing you can trust