Embracing the Way of Jesus

"I believe; help my unbelief!" - Mark 9:24

Mark began the first half of his gospel with a prologue heralding "the way" (1:3) and brought it to a close with a question addressed to the disciples and the reader: "Do you not yet understand?" (8:21). He now opens the second half again "on the way" (8:27), with yet another query: "Who do you say that I am?" (8:29a). Upon our answer hangs the character of Christian witness in the world.

Do we really know who Jesus is and what he is about? In its long tradition of theological dogmatics, the church, like Peter, has answered assuredly: Jesus is the Christ (8:29b). It is something of a shock, then, to discover that in Mark's story this "correct" answer issues not in commendation (compare Matthew 16:17-19) but rather a confessional "crisis" (8:30-33). The crisis leads to Jesus' second call (see 1:16-20) to discipleship: the invitation to take up the cross (8:34f.).

This episode represents the midpoint of Mark's story; it is the narrative and ideological fulcrum upon which the gospel as a whole balances. Its point: If we wish to know and follow Jesus, theological orthodoxy is not sufficient. We must embrace Jesus' way.

And what is this way? The cross was in Mark's day neither religious icon nor metaphor for personal anguish or humility. It had only one meaning: that terrible form of capital punishment reserved by imperial Rome for political dissenters. Thus discipleship is revealed as a vocation of nonviolent resistance to the powers.

This way is further broadened and deepened in Jesus' ensuing teaching. It also entails solidarity with the "least" in society (9:35), equality and compassion within the family and community (10:15), economic justice and sharing (10:29), and service rather than domination (10:42-44). But the tragedy is that this vocation all too often falls upon "deaf ears" among Jesus' disciples.

What we might call the second prologue regenerates the discipleship narrative in a new direction; the way through the wilderness (1:2) now becomes the way leading toward the final showdown in Jerusalem (10:32). This section of the gospel is structured around three portents, in which Jesus speaks of his impending arrest, trial, and execution by the authorities (8:31; 9:31; 10:32-34). After each portent Mark immediately indicates that the disciples have rejected Jesus' way (8:32.; 9:33.; 10:35-39). This in turn issues in new teachings, whose themes are stated as rhetorical antitheses (save life-lose life, first-last, greatest-least).

The triple cycle lends the character of catechism to this section and illustrates clearly the essential relationship between content and form in Marcan narrative. We see that this is a "school of the road," for even as it unfolds, the community is involved in the long march from the far north of Palestine to the outskirts of Jerusalem.

The catechism is framed by two stories of blind men receiving sight, in Bethsaida (8:22-26) and Jericho (10:46-52), and in these stories Mark's strategy of healing as symbolic action takes on a new dimension. As we saw, by the close of the first half of the gospel, the crisis of the disciples' "hardheartedness" (6:52; 8:17) had taken center stage.

Their "faculties of perception" (eyes to see, ears to hear) had failed to comprehend the symbolics of Jesus (8:18-20). It is no accident then that the second half opens with their arrival at Bethsaida (the destination which the second boat journey had failed to reach, see 6:45-53). There a blind man is given sight.

Throughout this middle section of his story, even as the disciples' "blindness and deafness" crisis deepens, Mark is careful to weave a counterdiscourse of hope in Jesus' final four healings: the healing of a deaf man with a speech impediment (7:31-37); the healing of a blind man at Bethsaida (8:22-26); the exorcism of an unclean spirit (9:14-29); and the healing of blind Bartimaeus (10:46-52). These episodes give the reader hope despite the deteriorating story line of misunderstanding in the catechism, because Jesus can "make the deaf hear and the dumb speak" (7:37), help the blind to "see clearly" (8:27), and restore the "dead" to life (9:26), so that discipleship is possible (10:52).

THE SECOND HALF OF Mark's gospel opens with a bold transformation of the great Hebrew tradition of Yahweh's self-revelation to Moses from a declaration ("I am," Exodus 3:7-14) into a question ("Who do you say I am?" 8:27, 29). The issue of Jesus' identity has been lingering in the background of the story (4:41; 6:3), but now Jesus suddenly turns to address it directly.

Public perception recognizes Jesus as a popular prophet (8:28), threatening enough to the ruling elite (see the report to Herod in 6:14-16). But when the disciples are asked for their own opinion, Peter hails Jesus as Messiah, introducing this politically loaded term for the first time (8:29). Messiah is the royal figure who will restore the political fortunes of Israel; the triumphal revolution, Peter is saying, is at hand.

We, having the foreknowledge of Mark's title (1:1), approve of his identification; perhaps his "blindness" has been healed! But to our chagrin, Peter is immediately silenced by Jesus (8:30)—just as were the demons who tried to "name" Jesus earlier (see 1:25; 3:12)! Then, with the phrase "Jesus began to teach them that it was necessary that the Son of Man must suffer," the story departs in a radically new direction (8:31).

Jesus' portents have traditionally been used on the one hand as proof of either his divine clairvoyance or a doctrine of predestination, or on the other dismissed as "later theological interpretation" added to the story. All this misses Mark's point: "Necessity" refers to the conviction that the vocation of Messianic justice will inevitably clash with the powers.

At key points in the second half of the gospel, Mark appeals to what we might call the "script of prophetic radicalism," ("as it is written," see 14:21, 27). What befell John the Baptist can only be expected to befall Jesus (9:12), and the same destiny awaits faithful disciples (see 10:39; 13:9-13). This "script" is clearly articulated in Jesus' later parable of the tenants (12:1-11).

The portents also do not use the term Messiah, overhauling its content by identifying it with the third person "Son of Man." Within Mark's story this persona has been established as the one who challenges the authority of the dominant ideological system of debt and Sabbath (2:10, 28). But the title is taken from the apocalyptic vision of Daniel 7, which provides the key to understanding Jesus' second call to discipleship, as we will see.

Peter will have no part of Jesus' Messianic revisionism. The "confessional crisis" is thus articulated in an escalating series of sharp rebukes, ending in Jesus' sobering "counternaming" of Peter (8:32). According to Peter's orthodoxy, to "be on God's side" means the guarantee of success and power. But this directly contradicts the prophetic "script" and is the very logic by which the Messianic vocation is subverted.

Jesus has spoken the word of the cross "openly" (8:32b); in Peter's resistance to it, the sower parable is enacted: "These are the ones along the way where the word is sown; when they hear it, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word from them" (4:15). Jesus thus issues his second call to discipleship, now given specifically political content: It means to "deny one's self and take up one's cross" (8:34).

THE CROSS WAS A COMMON SIGHT in the revolutionary Palestine of Mark's time; in this recruiting call, the disciple is invited to reckon with the consequences facing those who dare challenge the hegemony of imperial Rome. The semantics of "self-denial" take us not into the sphere of private asceticism, but of public political trial. As the story itself will show, whether or not one must "take up the cross" depends upon what one stands for in the courtroom. This is the true site of confession.

In the implied context of juridical interrogation, to deny one's self is to admit political alignment with Jesus, since the result is certain execution "for his sake and the gospel." This is not, however, to "lose" but to truly "save" life (8:35). Conversely, to deny Jesus is to forfeit true life and purpose. In economic terms, saving one's skin at the cost of apostasy is a "bad investment"; literally, a "return" of the "whole world" would not represent a "profit" but rather a "dead loss" (8:36).

The Son of Man
Jesus closes this little homily by invoking a different vision of judgment (8:38). Traditional exegesis has interpreted this verse in terms of the Second Coming: "Bear the cross and wear the crown." But the "Son of Man" is a specific reference to the "heavenly courtroom" vision of Daniel 7. Written two centuries earlier during the persecutions by the Hellenistic tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes IV, the book of Daniel was a manifesto of Jewish resistance. Its stories of heroic fidelity which defied death encouraged beleaguered Jews whom the state was trying to coerce into apostasy by employing the threat of capital punishment (Daniel 3-6).

Daniel 7 switches to apocalyptic narrative to make the same point. This employs a "vision" which reinterprets events by bifurcating reality. On the one hand, the prophet "sees" (Daniel 7:2) oppressive rulers ("beasts") who appear to be prevailing in the historical moment in their struggle for hegemony (Daniel 7:2-8, 19, 23) and persecution of the Jews (7:21, 25). But what is really happening is Yahweh's judgment upon the beasts (7:9-12, 22, 26), with true hegemony being handed over to the faithful (7:14, 18, 27). At the center of the vision stands Yahweh's "court of true justice" (7:9), adjudicated by the "Son of Man" (7:13).

Mark adopts this bifocal perspective of apocalyptic vision; there is not one courtroom in which the believer stands, but two. To be acquitted before the powers is to be "ashamed" in the Son of Man's court, and vice versa. Thus Mark presents Daniel's Son of Man simultaneously as defendant (8:31) and prosecutor (8:38).

This "courtroom discourse" appears again later in Mark 13:9, and its drama is enacted in the trial of Jesus himself. Peter will "deny" Jesus to avoid prosecution (14:67), while Judas will "sell out" for a small profit (14:11) but at the cost of his very life (14:21). Jesus alone will "confess the Son of Man" before the authorities (14:62; 15:2) and so "take up his cross" (15:25).

Transfiguration as Apocalypse
Apocalyptic faith gives not only meaning but power to the suffering that is a consequence of "true confession." Jesus' promise in 9:1 that "this generation" will "see the kingdom come in power" cannot (according to the logic of 8:11) refer to a heavenly spectacle of divine retribution. Rather, it refers to the ultimate apocalyptic moment of the cross. Apocalyptic vision gives us "eyes to see" the significance of Jesus' death at the end of the story. At the very moment the powers appear to have triumphed, Jesus' nonviolent power topples their rule of domination once and for all (compare 13:24-27 with 15:33-38).

This is confirmed by the transfiguration vision which ensues (9:2-8). Just as Daniel's first vision was later confirmed by a man in glorified clothing (Daniel 10:5), so too the disciples behold Jesus in shining white clothes, the apocalyptic symbol of martyrdom (see Revelation 3:5, 18; 4:4; 6:11; 7:9,13). The setting (Mark 9:2) is also meant to call to mind the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:15); here the martyr-Jesus is sanctioned by the law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah).

Peter for a second time misunderstands the discourse of suffering for that of triumphalism (9:5). He is again contradicted, this time by the divine voice itself, who in former times had spoken to Moses (Exodus 33:18f.) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:11f.). But here the revelation from the cloud simply repeats the testimony of the "apocalyptic moment" of the first prologue. As the mission of the "stronger one" was legitimated at baptism (1:7-11), so the way of the cross is endorsed here: "Listen to him" (9:7).

The disciples are mystified (9:10), and Mark closes his circle of argument begun in 8:28 by returning to the prophetic "script" (9:11-13). Orthodoxy believes that Elijah must first return to guarantee blessing instead of judgment (see Malachi 4:6); Jesus replies that both the "Son of Man"and "Elijah" will inevitably share the same political destiny, which is the true way to liberation.

"This is my beloved Son. Listen to him" (9:7). But the disciples seem to be as "deaf as they are "blind"! No wonder that the next episode involves a father's plea on behalf of a different "son" who is oppressed by a "deaf and dumb spirit" (9:17, 25). The disciples, who have been given exorcism authority (3:15; 6:7), are not "strong enough" to cast out this spirit (9:14-18, 28). The disciples are the true subjects of this story: the poignant cry of the father articulates their own struggle: "I believe; help my unbelief!" (9:24).

This demon represents the "power" of unbelief that renders us unable and unwilling to hear and proclaim the way of the cross. As the section on apostasy will show (9:42), torment by "fire and water" (9:22) symbolizes the anguish of those who try to save their lives by denying Jesus.

To exorcise this demon truly involves "dying and rising" (9:261; see 5:41). But the focus of the episode is not the cure but the impotence: "Why could we not cast it out?" (9:28). Here Jesus for the first time exhorts the disciples to prayer (9:29).

For Mark, the power of unbelief can only be combated with prayer, which is connected to the power of belief (11:23) and to Abba, or Father, for whom "all things are possible" (14:36). To pray is to resist the despair by which the powers rule, in our hearts and in the world—the despair that tells us that genuine personal and political transformation is impossible. And have we not been socialized into impotence "since childhood" (9:21)? Against the deep sleep of hopelessness, prayer summons the "strength to stay awake" (14:37). If we have not faced the shadows within us, we cannot possibly follow Jesus' way, as the disciples will all too soon discover (14:41).

Being Transformed by the Way
BUT THE WAY OF THE CROSS is not solely a via negativa of nonviolent resistance to the powers. It is also the constructive practice of justice and service in every sphere of life. The Messianic revolution is not about seizing power in order to impose a new social order from the top down; it seeks to transform relationships in building the new world from the bottom up. Thus it begins with the "least." Jesus recognizes the structures of domination in personal and social as well as political existence; his way can be denied just as easily in interpersonal relationships (9:37-41) as in the courtroom.

The second cycle is the longest of the three (9:30-10:31) and exhibits certain similarities to catechetical traditions concerning internal family and community life found elsewhere in the New Testament (see Colossians 3:12-4:6). We find here teaching concerning children (Mark 9:36f.; 10:13-16), parents (10:2-12), group boundaries (9:38-41), community discipline (9:42-50), and community economics (10:17-31).

The cycle begins with the second portent (9:30-32), which is followed by Jesus' expose of more blindness. The disciples are caught in an internal power struggle on the way (9:33)! This sets the stage for another round of teaching, in which the "save life or lose life" theme is restated in terms of the daily exercise of social power (9:35).

These antitheses are not offered as mystical paradoxes but as concrete illustrations of what it means to subvert the dominant relations of power in the world. Jesus begins with his primary object lesson, the child, whom he twice brings into the center of our attention (9:36; 10:13). Few commentators take this lesson seriously, offering quaint and idealizing homilies on the child as symbol of "innocence and trust." On the contrary, the child represents powerlessness, the "least of the least" in the social order of antiquity, without status or rights.

Jesus is unequivocal: We cannot "receive" him, the one he represents (9:37), or the kingdom itself (10:15) unless and until we "receive" the child. What is meant by this remarkable challenge?

I would suggest the key lies in understanding the child as the archetypical victim of the primal site of domination, the family. Contemporary psychology, for example, increasingly recognizes that the "family system" can be a structure of oppression. Children are completely dependent and thus utterly vulnerable to adult power, not only overt abuse but more often subtle forms of manipulation and control. In fact, philosopher-psychotherapist Alice Miller has recently argued that the taproot of social violence lies in the patterns of domination in child-rearing and pedagogy.

Children who are misunderstood, beaten, intimidated, or humiliated are not only unable to defend themselves, they have no other choice but to introject their profound sense of betrayal. But when they become adults, they unconsciously discharge this store of anger upon those around them who are weaker—the prime candidates being their own children.

Miller concludes that we cannot hope to break the spiral of violence in the world until we address the intergenerational reproduction of domination in the most basic social unit. It is for this reason that Jesus predicates the possibility of realizing the new order of the kingdom upon acceptance of the humanity and integrity of the child.

If we cannot project our compulsion for power upon the weak, the next logical target is to channel it into resentment toward "outsiders." In 9:38-41 the theme of acceptance is further extended: The Christian community is not to be exclusivist and has no "corner" on the practice of justice and compassion. The practice of liberation must be welcomed wherever it occurs; those "not against us are for us" (9:40). Jesus understands the relationship between the power of monopoly and the monopoly of power.

The struggle between belief and unbelief runs through the heart of the church, and Mark reserves his hardest words for those who "scandalize" the "little ones" (9:42), another allusion to the sower parable (4:17). Again, water and fire (9:43-48) symbolize the torment of apostasy (see Isaiah 66:24).

Mark seems to be combining Paul's metaphor of the community as "body" (see "hand, eye, foot" in 1 Corinthians 12:14-26) with Paul's principle of not causing the "weaker member" to stumble (see Romans 14). Above all, community solidarity must be preserved; salt bespeaks of the need to close the "wounds" in the body (9:49-50) and also represents the covenant (Numbers 18:19). The vocation of peacemaking and reconciliation must begin within the household of faith (9:50). Mark next turns to another kind of internal rift, the problem of divorce (10:1-12).

TO CLOSE THE SECOND CYCLE, Mark narrates the only discipleship rejection story in the gospel (10:17-30). The structure of the episode reveals its central concern: rich man's question about eternal life (10:17); rich man cannot leave possessions and follow (10:22); Jesus' teaching, disciples' reaction (10:23-27); disciples have left possessions and followed (10:28); and answer to eternal life question given to them (10:30). Here the first-last antithesis (10:31) is being further defined in terms of economic class and privilege.

The action begins with the man flattering Jesus ("Good teacher"), hoping for a return compliment, which Jesus flatly refuses (10:17-18). It seems odd that Jesus' response simply quotes from the Decalogue (10:19). A closer reading reveals, however, that he has added a command not found there: "Do not defraud," a term which elsewhere refers to economic exploitation (see Deuteronomy 24:14). Jesus does not directly dispute the man's improbable contention that he has indeed "kept the whole law" (10:20). Rather he decides to reveal the truth with the demand that he sell his assets and give them to the poor (10:21).

The man's piety collapses—he was not prepared to make such a drastic change— and he walks away dejected. Mark explains why matter-of-factly: "for he had much property" (10:22). In the class structure of Palestine, the great landowners systematically defrauded the poor; the man was not "blameless" at all, and repentance meant concrete restitution and justice. Mark wishes the reader to know that this story means exactly what it says and therefore has Jesus drive the point home by repeating twice how difficult it is for the affluent to enter into the kingdom, to the double astonishment of the disciples (10:23-26).

Mark's joke about the camel and needle (10:25) has of course been twisted by commentators anxious to avoid its sting, the most infamous attempt being the medieval assertion that there was a small gate in Jerusalem through which camels could only enter "on their knees"! In fact, the image was intended to denote an impossibility; Mark's dry sarcasm is better reflected in Frederick Buechner's contemporary paraphrase that it is harder for wealthy North Americans to enter the kingdom "than for Nelson Rockefeller to get through the night deposit slot of the First National City Bank"!

The disciples' consternation ("Who then can be saved?" 10:26) is a reflection of the dominant ideology of their time, not unlike that prevailing in American piety, which dictated that wealth was a sure sign of God's favor. Jesus turns this notion on its head, teaching that the rich can only be saved by redistributing their fraudulent wealth. He then points to the "possible impossibility" of a genuinely new social order based upon economic justice (10:27), which Peter rightly understands to be predicated upon the practice of "economic repentance" (10:28).

Jesus concludes by pointing to the model of economic sharing in which the discipleship community has been tutored (10:29). The "hundredfold yield" of the gathered assets of the new "family" represents the realization of the "harvest" promised in the sower parable (4:20)—not in the hereafter but "in this time." This new economic model, a community of production and consumption, re-enacts the miracle of multiplication through sharing, first narrated in the earlier wilderness feedings.

With characteristic realism Mark adds that this practice of economic sharing will invite "persecutions." This has certainly been experienced by those in our time who have struggled against the economic grain of affluent America—even if the struggles arise more from the internalized demons of capitalist culture than from official opposition. But it is to those trying to respond to the vision of economic justice that the promise of "eternal life" is made.

THE THIRD AND LAST CYCLE yet again begins "on the way," at last revealed as the way to Jerusalem (10:32). The final portent is the most specific in its anticipation of the Passion drama: The Son of Man will be "delivered" by his community to the Sanhedrin, then to the Roman authorities, and then, after torture and ridicule, to death (10:33). And again Jesus promises that "after three days he will rise," the meaning of which remains a mystery to the disciples (9:10). Do they yet comprehend the way? The final episode of the catechism demonstrates that they do not, as Mark's caricature turns bleak.

As did Peter (8:32; 9:5) and John (9:38), James now joins in the rejection of Jesus' way (10:35); Mark has implicated the whole inner circle! They still look forward to a Messianic coup and aspire to first and second Cabinet positions in the new regime (10:37; see Psalm 110:1). Since he has just taught them about the renunciation of power, we can feel Jesus' exasperation. In characteristic fashion, he turns the question back on them: Can they embrace his "baptism" and "cup" (10:38)? Within the symbolics of the story, these refer to the way of the cross, and Mark cannot resist sarcasm. No problem, answer the Zebedee boys.

In the Messianic order, Jesus explains wearily, leadership is not established executively; it arises only from an apprenticeship of the way of the cross (10:39). Mark's caustic tone peaks in Jesus' teaching: "You know how it is among the so-called ruling class, they practice domination, the tyranny of the great ones. Oh, but this is not so among you!" (10:42). Which is to say that the disciples truly do not know what they are about (10:38).

Jesus' programmatic rejection of "politics as usual" concludes with a last antithesis (10:43). The way to greatness is servanthood, and from the beginning of Mark's gospel (1:31) to its end (15:41), only women are described as demonstrating this quality. In a patriarchal system, it may be that only women are fit to exercise leadership! And to be first is to be a "slave," a final allusion to the prophetic "script" (12:2, 4). This way is embodied by the "Son of Man," who will give his life to "redeem" the faithful slave (10:45).

The catechism is summarized by the final healing episode, which takes place in the outskirts of Jerusalem "on the way" (10:46). The rich man walked away from the call to discipleship because he was possessed by his possessions. In contrast Bartimaeus, the poor beggar, takes the initiative (10:47) and readily abandons what little he has (casting away his cloak which was spread out for alms, 10:50). In contrast to the disciples, the blind man requests only his "vision" (10:51) and with this faith, "follows Jesus on the way" (10:52). The first have become last and the last first.

Jesus' catechism of the cross dramatically reveals the two kinds of power that are in conflict in our hearts, our families, our communities, and our world. His way stipulates that the primal structures of domination can only be overthrown by the practice of personal and political nonviolence, from the "crib" to the "courtroom." This way contradicts all our orthodox notions of social and economic security, and it has been profoundly difficult to accept by his followers in the story and throughout Christian history.

But the logic of domination has been played out, and in our world we face its ultimatums. As residents of an imperial culture that routinely imposes crosses upon the poor, it is time we "take up our own cross," learn to pray, solicit Jesus for vision, and practice the way of nonviolence.

Ched Myers' most recent book was Binding the Strong Man when this article first appeared.