Mark 9:30 – 49 Discipleship of the Son of Man (2)

The pattern established in the first prediction cycle – passion prediction, misunderstanding by the disciples and teaching on discipleship – is continued with some stylistic variations: the shortest prediction and a second block of misunderstanding and teaching. As the middle of three cycles of this pattern, we would expect it would be the most important of the three, but that may be a matter of taste.

Mark 9:30 –31 Second Passion Prediction

Jesus will be “handed over” into human hands. The Baptist was “handed over” (1:14) and increasing reference to this quasi-technical term (actually, “theological terms”) will be noted, especially in chapters 14 & 15. We anticipate a fate comparable to that of the Baptist.

Mark 9:32 –34 Misunderstanding

They “did not understand” because they still saw “men as trees, walking” or because they understood enough to know they did not want to understand it any more (Malbon, 63), or because Mark wants us to see that they were actually regressing and ask why they could be so dense (Donahue, 284). They had been arguing over who was the greatest in their group, like boys in the playground!

Mark 9:35 – 37 Instruction on Discipleship

Jesus responds by picturing the new nature of greatness within his followers. The one who is the greatest is the servant of all. We remember that Jesus will say that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve”(10:45) Here he presents the “poster child” of the kingdom. The child does no represent a romantic ideal of innocence: the child is the one who is completely powerless, with less status that a slave. In exemplifying God being for the powerless, Jesus uses the language of agency: “the agent is as the one who sent him”. Jesus is the agent/apostle of God.

Mark 9:38 More Misunderstanding

Why John by himself? Who is the strange exorcist? Is the “following us” referring to Jesus and his disciples or just to the disciples? Was this exorcist doing what the disciples could not do (9:28-29)? Did they forbid him or prevent him, as they will prevent children from coming to Jesus (10:14)? Oh, the questions that come up here!

Mark 9:39 – 49 More Instruction on Discipleship

Jesus puts forward a minimalist entry requirement: if you are not against us (Jesus identifying himself with the exorcist who is working in his name), you are for us (so too, Lk 9:50). We are probably more familiar with the opposite form of this saying: he who is not for me is against me (e.g. Matt. 12:30, Lk. 11:23) (I remember reading a small, but significant, piece written by Bishop JAT Robinson in the early 60s where he develops a case for the minimalist approach, based on the use of Greek prepositions in the Gospels. I have never since been able to lay my hands on this article. Oh, the frustration)

Strangely, we then have a number of sayings (vv. 42-48) that seem to argue in the opposite direction – how difficult it is to be a follower of Jesus and what extreme measures are justified to overcome the obstacles that come in our way. Why does mark put them here?

And then there are the two sayings about salt!

Mark 10:1 – 31 He turns the world upside down

Mark 10:2 – 12 Teaching about Divorce

As with the model of the child, so too with the practice of marriage and divorce, we need to rid ourselves of 21st Century assumptions. Marriage was not the romantic joining together of two individuals but more the economic and political joining together of two families. The marriage “symbolized the fusion of the honor of both families involved’ (Malina, 240). Marriage was a contact arranged between two groups of men and concluded with the bringing of the wife into the husband’s household. The wife was effectively a stranger in this household until she had delivered a son. The wife appears to be little more than a chattel that is moved from one household to another, the payment that seals the contract.

“Adultery means to dishonor a male by having sexual relations with his wife.” (Malina, 241) Since women cannot embody gender honor, a woman cannot dishonor another woman by have sexual relations with her wife. “Nor can a married man dishonor his wife by having sexual relations with some other female.”(Malina, 241)

Divorce was not forbidden. Initially, it was initiated solely by the husband. (Within early Judaism, women come to be able to initiate a Git, a bill of divorce.) Issues involved are the loss of honor in one or other household and the leaving of the wife out in the cold; she had been disembedded from her paternal household by her marriage and now cannot go back.

Mark’s Jesus sees the fusion of the two families as so fundamental that it is supported by the second creation story (Gen. 2:24). The effect of splitting up this family union is a sin against God’s creation: they are one flesh. However, divorce is allowed as a concession to human hardness of heart. Mark’s Jesus stops short of remarriage.

Mark’s Jesus is ahead of his time in seeing remarriage as an affront to the honor of the first wife: “commits adultery against her”. In addition, it reflects the movement towards allowing women the right to initiate divorce and initiate dishonor; “if she divorces her husband ..” In appealing to the heart of marriage in the creation story, Mark’s Jesus is able to turn reality on its head by saying that in marriage it is the husband that leaves his mother and father and cleaves to his wife, whereas in reality it is the other way around – the wife is disembodied from her family and is re-embodied within her husband’s family. At every point, Jesus is turning everything about marriage around and tipping it upside down. Elizabeth Malbon sees the restricting of divorce by Jesus as an attempt to protect the partner most hurt by divorce in that society – women (Malbon, 67)

Mark 10:13 – 16 Teaching about Children

As we have already noted when commenting on 9:36-37, placing the powerless child at the centre of the kingdom of God (“to such as these … the Kingdom of God belongs”), Jesus challenges the social status quo.

Mark 10:17 – 31 Teaching about Wealth

“Good teacher” is seen by us as a compliment but in a limited good society, it is a sign of aggression (“you are rising above your station in life”). Such a challenge must be warded off (“Why do you call me good …God alone.”).

In addition, in a limited good society, like this one was, for one person to be rich others had to be poor. The good things in life were in limited supply and so to be rich was to be a thief or the son of a thief and to take advantage of others. “To be rich is, by definition, to be greedy.”(Malina, 244) [The modern counter claim seems to be: “I got rich through my own hard work, no one else contributed to this.”]

What more can you give a rich man? Reaching the end of a conventional check list, Jesus whirls like Lt Colombo at the door and says “One thing more!” He offers him two possibilities that are impossibilities for this young man – to sell the family home and land and to turn away from his first family and join the new family of Jesus, putting himself under the patronage of God (Malina, 244)

To be rich is to be blessed by God, or so it is said. If the rich can’t enter the kingdom, then who can? If the pastor can’t get rich at the expense of his flock, then …?

The section ends with a reaffirmation of the client status of the new family of Jesus that has God as its Patron and the paradox of the topsy-turvy world of the kingdom: “the first will be last, and the last will be first.”