True to our native land, p.32
True to Our Native Land, page 32
14:1–11, An Unnamed Woman Anoints Jesus’s Head for Burial
It is time for the Passover feasts, a time when Palestinian and diasporic Jews commemorate the release of their ancestors from Egypt. Not all are celebrating, according to Mark. “The chief priests and the scribes” are plotting the death of Jesus because of the disturbance in the temple area. But the feast—and the crowds it attracts—deter their desires, that is, until Judas’s visit!
Between the Jewish leaders’ scheme and Judas’s consultation with them, Mark sandwiches the depiction of the anointing of Jesus’s head. Compared to Simon, in whose house they dine, this woman is known only by what she possesses, an alabaster box of expensive ointment. She arrives with no name. Culturally, the public appearance of this woman without an accompanying male figure could be potentially shameful. But her presence at the dinner apparently does not shame Jesus or others, who are dining with the former (we presume!) leper. Her valuable possessions are her identification. The use of her gifts become her memorial (cf. 12:41–44)!58
In light of Jesus’s earlier conversation with the “rich man,” his statement about poverty should not be interpreted as an excuse not to do good for those who have less. But rendering assistance to the poor should not be an excuse not to do good to Jesus either. In other words, to fail to provide some comfort for the “neighbor” while using resources for “the poor” is also a failure to live out one’s religious responsibilities (cf. Deut 15:11).
While this unnamed female stranger commits this faithful act, Judas—Jesus’s own disciple—commits the most faithless act of the story. No clear rationale is given. Many suggest finances as the cause as in Matthew’s Gospel. If correct, this would be a powerful point of comparison between the woman guest, who considers no expense too great to sacrifice, and a disciple, who cherishes the payoff. One of the “forerunner(s) for womanist biblical interpretation,” Virginia Broughton described this woman’s act as an act of supreme love and discovered in the anointer an excellent example of God’s calling of women ministers.59
14:12–25, The Final Meal with the Disciples
In Christian tradition, this final meal (i.e., “The Lord’s Supper,” “The Eucharist,” “Communion”), which Jesus shares with his disciples, is the most significant one in a story filled with meals. At this meal, Jesus predicts the act of treachery. Readers are more informed of Judas’s recent schemes than are the disciples. Jesus also provides a mystical interpretation of the “bread” and the “wine,” relating them to his body and blood, respectively. Using the word for “covenant” (diathēkē) only once in the entire Gospel, Mark’s Jesus suggests an extension of the traditional Jewish (i.e., Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic) covenants. Jesus’s final word ties his futuristic eschatology, prominent in chap. 13, to this eucharistic meal.
14:26–31 Prediction of the Disciples’ Desertion
After the meal ends, they sing a hymn. Citing Zechariah 13:7, Jesus acknowledges the presence of death. But he also predicts a miraculous reunion with his disciples (14:28).
“Take My Hand, Precious Lord”
“When my way grows drear,
Precious Lord, linger near,
When my life is almost gone,
Hear my cry, hear my call,
Hold my hand lest I fall.
Take my hand, Precious Lord,
Lead me home.”
The great African American hymnist Thomas A. Dorsey, the “Father of Gospel Music,” wrote this classic hymn in 1932, when his wife, Nettie, died after giving birth to their son.
—“Precious Lord (Take My Hand)” by Thomas A. Dorsey © 1938 Unichappell Music Inc. (Renewed). International Copyright Reserved. Used by Permission.
14:32–52, Gethsemane and Arrest
The uniqueness of Gethsemane ought not to be overlooked. All Gospel authors, except John, include this agonizing scene. Their Jesus, like the one African Americans epitomize, understands the psychological turmoil of expected physical suffering and its aftermath. Mark portrays Jesus’s personal struggle before a privileged group of disciples: Peter, James, and John (cf. 9:2–8). Only the folks who witness the transfiguration, that mystical alteration of reality, might be able to handle the darkest moments of Jesus’s anguish. Instead, their exhaustion from following Jesus has taken its toll. Indeed, even Jesus’s prayer, as Arna Bontemps poetically describes, receives nothing but silence in reply:
I stretched full-length upon the grass and there
I said your name but silence answered me.60
The plot of the temple leadership accomplishes its objective through the active role of Judas, “one of the twelve.” Judas leads a “crowd with swords and clubs” to Gethsemane and betrays his “Rabbi” with a kiss. Oh, the irony. Up until this point, the crowd tends to be faithful followers of Jesus. Judas, however, alters their view.
Unlike the other Gospels, Mark’s Jesus completely ignores the disciple’s violent reaction. Jesus reacts, however, to the apprehenders. Their weapons puzzle him since he has never shown himself to be a violent person. (In light of the disciples’ own arms, the weapons of the temple police seem justified.) Jesus resigns himself to the necessity of scriptural fulfillment. Finally, Mark includes one more “disciple,” an unnamed “young man,” who symbolically represents the departure of all disciples, leaving Jesus in isolation at the mercy of his adversaries.
14:53–71, The “Trials” of Jesus and Peter
The opening scene shows Mark’s narrative skills again (14:53–54), as he intersperses the trial of Jesus with the “trial” of Peter. Peter’s prominence within the second Gospel is evident in this passage.
The trial of Jesus begins in front of the Sanhedrin, a group of priests (some Pharisaic and some Sadducean), scribes, and elders whose primary task in the first century is to adjudicate the affairs of the priests surrounding the temple practices. They are the powerbrokers, the Jewish elite. Yet they are unable to locate proper witnesses against Jesus. As Mark stresses, “false witnesses” continue to come forward.
Finally, guards take Jesus to the high priest, who requests Jesus’s response to the false charges. Jesus remains silent. The high priest then asks directly whether Jesus is the Messiah. Only in Mark’s narrative is Jesus’s response explicit: “I am.” It is the clearest Jesus has spoken about his identity. “Tearing his clothes,” the priest’s reaction is a sign of alarm and sorrow. Blasphemy is the charge (cf. 2:1–11). Before the high priest, Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah, an expected eschatological figure.
Jesus’s trial ends with physical abuse despite the false charges, while Peter’s “trial” ends with emotional shame because of his response to the valid charges of his association with the Galilean. Mark’s readers are also on trial as they try to determine whether their following of this Galilean has brought them into conflict with the ruling elite of their day.
15:1–15, Trial before Pilate
Either the Sanhedrin, which has condemned Jesus to death (14:64), does not have the authority to carry out the sentence, or, more likely, their trumped-up charges are insufficient accusations for a death sentence. So they lead Jesus to Pilate, the Roman governor and highest ranking Roman official in the territory.
The initial meeting between Jesus and Pilate is a brief “trial” surrounding one primary issue: whether Jesus claims to be “king.” On the one hand, Jesus does not deny Pilate’s assessment; on the other hand, Pilate fails to find the claim worthy of death. From Pilate’s perspective, in the Markan account, Jesus’s death sentence is due to tension with the priests (i.e., their “jealousy,” 15:10). It is a struggle between religious figures. At first, Mark’s Pilate looks like a sympathetic Roman governor.
Then the politically charged atmosphere forces Pilate’s hand. Rather than reserving crucifixion for Barabbas, a state criminal, Pilate—pressured by the crowds and the priests—requests it for Jesus. Crucifixion is a political death reserved for state criminals and the enslaved, particularly those charged with insurrection. Someone—the priests, the crowd, Pilate, or Mark—appears to understand the title of “king” as one worthy of political death! It may be surprising for those who view Jesus as apolitical. Jesus accepts the political title. The religious significance of Jesus’s death comes later in the chapter in Mark. Here, the outcome is political to the core! The one whose initial message is “the reign of God is near” is now condemned for the title “king.”
15:21, Simon of Cyrene
Mark 15:21 has caught the attention of numerous African American scholars. Cyrene was a city in North Africa, and the presence of its inhabitants in the story provides evidence of the African presence in the second Gospel. While much scholarly attention has focused on origins, a recent issue of contention is whether Simon’s action of carrying the cross is a true action of discipleship (so Brian K. Blount) or not (so Boykin Sanders).61 Can one be “forced” into discipleship action?
The text does not support the prejudice that Simon’s “Africanness” is the reason the Romans chose him for this task. In fact, the scholarly debate continues whether there was “color prejudice” in the first-century Greco-Roman world.62 It would be appealing to suggest that a favorable attitude toward Africans is why the Roman soldiers sought this trustworthy candidate to assist at this point. But the text cannot corroborate this interpretation.
Instead, the passage provides crucial information for this character: the names of his sons, Alexander and Rufus. It is striking information in light of so many unnamed minor (but more significant) characters in the Gospel of Mark. Also, it is an aside, which suggests that the author is sharing information pertinent to the audience: “It was Simon the father of Alexander and Rufus [whom all of you know].” The children of the African Jewish cross-bearer apparently become Christ-followers and are well-known to the community to whom the author writes. If not present themselves, they probably have family members—daughters and sons—in Mark’s audience.
However we decide on Simon’s “cross carrying” activity, two things are certain. First, his action, despite the ambiguity of its coercion, establishes a lineage of African Christ-followers for the movement. Second, the Roman compulsion of Simon to carry this cross is more evidence of the powerful encroachment of Roman extension into all (socioreligious, psychodynamic, and economic) affairs of the Palestinian judicial system.
15:22–32, Reactions to Jesus’s Public Crucifixion
The political rationale for a Roman public crucifixion is to forestall any future criminal activity against the state. Part of the maintenance of the pax Romana is the policy of public humiliation of renegades. These public acts of persecution dishonor the punished individual and bring shame upon the individual’s family and community.
Furthermore, the political nature of this death is evident throughout this section, from the inscription (“king”) to the final ironic derision from fellow sufferers. These two “bandits”—real opponents to the state—join their voices with the leadership of the Jewish socioreligious establishment and those “who passed by” (15:29) because of their united expectation that the true Messiah would be a political figure who could “rescue” (sodzo) himself and, in turn “save” (sodzo) all others. Mark’s Christ-following readers would catch the irony.
15:33–41, Jesus’s Death and Its Theological and Political Effect
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Finally, at 15:34, Mark most poignantly describes Jesus’s final cry. Although bystanders misunderstand his Aramaic, Jesus speaks the words of Psalms 22:1, an individual lament of isolation and abandonment. In the psalm, the lamenter wonders about God’s absence in the middle of a conflict while recalling the faithfulness of God in previous struggles. Mark’s analogy is an attempt to describe Jesus’s final emotional and psychological torment, in addition to his physical suffering.63 The enslaved African American had no problem grasping this type of abandonment. As Shawn Copeland’s study shows, “the enslaved Africans sang because they saw on the rugged wooden planks One who had endured what was their daily portion. The cross was treasured because it enthroned the One who went all the way with them and for them.”64
There is more. The earliest story about Jesus’s mission depicts three crucial events surrounding his final earthly breath.65 First, the tearing of the veil symbolizes a new age in which the holy place would no longer be divided from the most holy place. Whether hope (for all nations) or judgment (against Israel) is the foremost meaning of this act is uncertain from the narrative. Both may be intended.
Second, the confession of the Roman centurion displays the first human confession about Jesus as Son of God in Mark’s narrative. While the sincerity of the centurion’s words is less clear in Greek than in English translations, readers of Mark’s Gospel will generally find here a fitting summary of Mark’s story. With the veil torn, a non-Jew can “see” and confess precisely who Jesus is. It seems, however, rather unfortunate that, as Cain Hope Felder rightly describes Mark’s ideological slant, “the immediate significance of this New Testament tendency—to focus on Rome instead of Jerusalem—is that the darker races outside the Roman orbit, by modern standards, seem circumstantially marginalized by New Testament authors.”66 Such “hope,” while intended for all, becomes more and more exclusive (i.e., reserved for Western, more Europeanized persons), and Mark’s portrayal is not excused from the charge.
Finally, the presence of the women disciples concludes the hopeful events following Jesus’s final breath. These women—some named, most unnamed—provide examples of faithful, committed disciples from the beginning of Jesus’s mission in Galilee. Unlike Jesus’s chosen twelve male disciples, these women witness the death and will later witness the burial and the empty tomb, serving as Markan models of gender inclusivity in the early Jesus movement.
15:42–47, The Burial of Jesus
Jewish tradition stipulates proper burials for its adherents (cf. Deut 21:22–23), but state criminals rarely receive such. The oddity of this burial is that an apparent stranger, Joseph—not one of Jesus’s close followers—secures the body for burial, further suggesting Jesus’s isolation at the end of his life. In later Gospel tradition, Joseph becomes a “disciple of Jesus” (cf. Matt 27:57; John 19:38), one more suited for the task at hand. Reading only Mark’s account leaves readers with a number of unanswered questions, especially why “a member of the council” (assuming the same “council” that condemned Jesus in 14:64) would feel compelled to complete this pious act. Furthermore, the act is rushed since proper burial ointments are apparently not used, which makes the women’s return on the following day necessary. Perhaps, it is Joseph’s anticipation of God’s reign that attracted him to Jesus. If so, this member of the condemning council, anticipating the “kingdom,” may have regretted his earlier sentiments and returned to restore a sense of honor to the occasion.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
16:1–8, When the End Is Only the Beginning
The faithful women—Mary Magdalene,67 Mary, James’s mother, and Salome—witness Jesus’s death and burial. Now, they arrive to prepare the body with appropriate ointments. Such ointments would assist the gradual decomposition of the body and reduce the stench of the decay. One year after burial, family members would retrieve the bones of the deceased for final security.
The women are less concerned with how they might find Jesus’s body than how they will manage the “very large” stone at the tomb’s entrance. To their surprise, the stone had been rolled away. Their amazement is increased when an angelic looking “young man” speaks to them. Mark’s humanlike figure, dressed in an angelic “white robe,” reminds readers of an earlier “young man” who escaped during Jesus’s arrest (cf. 14:50–51). Mark’s use of mysterious figures highlights the extraordinary nature surrounding these significant scenes.
As the women observe, the tomb is empty. Instead, the enigmatic “young man” speaks the final words of hope of the entire Gospel story: “He has been raised. . . . go, tell his disciples.” The final words of the Gospel of Mark are words of regathering, reunion, and hope.
So the women depart and proclaim all that is told to them. Right? Not at all! Instead, their fear overwhelms their speech, and the story ends with a final note of inaction, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
This is Mark the storyteller at work. He writes for Christ-followers who know part of the story. They already know that someone, one of these women, had to tell someone else. If not, then they themselves would have never heard. They would not have gathered together, and Mark would not be writing this account. Mark’s ending, however, provides his readers, and all subsequent readers, with a challenge. He does not provide a “happy ending.” As descendants of the enslaved, we, too, understand how some stories do not “end” with simplistic conclusions, as if things “were happy ever after.” As David Goatley’s studies of the spirituals show, “They normally end with Jesus dying, dead, or buried. There are selections that focus on the crucifixion and end in the resurrection, but they are rare. This does not suggest that the slaves were resigned to accept their lives in slavery without protest. Instead the songs indicate the intimacy and intensity with which the slaves related to the agony of the crucified Jesus.”68 How apropos to the one Gospel that does not, in its original edition, include a resurrection account! The greatest story ever told is also the most startling, that is, that Jesus, brutally beaten, crucified, and put to death, was not found in his tomb. So what will any reader of this account do with this story? How will any “hearer” of this message, having also “heard” the song of the enslaved, react to the “end” of the story? Since Jesus has died under the decisions of the primary political and religious authorities of his day, what will Mark’s readers do with the story of his ongoing life and spirit among them, so as to oppose the sociopolitical powers that dehumanize folk?
