2nd SUNDAY OF LENT (B)

Then Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus. 

 Mk 9:2-10

v. 2. After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them.

High mountain:

Speculation about the identity of the mountain is quite idle. Very possibly St Mark himself had no ideas on the subject. For him the significance of this trait in the story will have lain in the fact that a mountain top was traditionally the setting for theophanies and supernatural revelations. Cf. Ex 24 and 34, 1 Kgs 18:20,  19:8. 11; Mt 28:16ff.; Acts 1:12; Mark 13:3ff.; Mt 5:1,  etc. Cf. 2 Pet. 1:18 where it is called “the holy mountain”.

v. 3. And his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.

Such as no fuller on earth could bleach them:

A touch meant to put beyond question the wholly supernatural, divinely originated character of what happened.

v. 5. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

It is good that we are here:

It may mean:

• “…because it give us the opportunity of serving you and your heavenly visitors.” 
• Or “…because it is an experience we should like to prolong!”

 v. 7. Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; then from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.”

The general meaning is: the voice declares Jesus to be the messianic Son of God.

In this context “beloved” (agapetos) is equivalent to “chosen” or “elect” (eklektos). “The Elect One” is known from contemporary Jewish literature to have been a common title for the Messiah.

  

FURTHER ELABORATION

In the preceding section the disciples have formally declared that Jesus is the Messiah, and in return have received teaching about the way this Son of man-Messiah is to accomplish his work so unexpected as to cause bewilderment and grave doubts in their minds. But now –

(a) the truth of their declaration is confirmed, for Jesus appears in a glory which can only be messianic (v. 3), and

(b) Jesus' teaching that he must suffer is shown to be fully in accordance with the will of God by a voice from God himself which designates him as the one whose teaching God wants all men to accept (v. 7).

It is noteworthy that in St Mark's version of it 'the whole event, from first to last, takes place solely for the sake of the three disciples. "He was transfigured before them"; "there appeared unto them Elijah with Moses"; "there came a cloud overshadowing them"; "this is my only Son; hear him"; "and suddenly, looking round about, they saw no one any more, save Jesus only with themselves".

The opening statement (v. 2), after six days, is a precise note of time so unparalleled in St Mark's account of the ministry that he must have included it because it seemed to him specially significant, probably as binding this and the preceding episode together in a single complex, one part of which must be interpreted in the light of the other. 

But there is some evidence that this was traditionally the length of time required for preparation and self-purification before a close approach to God (cf. Ex 24:16).

Also unexplained is the precise sense of transfigured (v. 2) (metamorphothe). The literal meaning is 'to be transformed' , or 'to change one's form', and in the light of v. 3, the idea seems to be that Jesus temporarily exchanged the normal human form that he bore during his earthly life for that glorious form he was believed to possess after his exaltation to heaven, and which believers also hoped to be clothed with after his second coming. Cf. carefully Phil 3:21; 1 Cor 15:43.49.  51-53; and 2 Cor 3:18 where the same Greek word is used. We have to bear in mind that at the time ‘glory' was' conceived as actual shining ethereal substance ... the sort of body generally supposed to belong to heavenly beings and indeed to be the vesture of God Himself. 

The idea that in the final state the glorification of the form would extend to clothes was quite a common one at the time. Cf. Rv 4:4; 7:9; and 3:5, etc.  

It would therefore seem that what was granted to the three disciples was a glimpse of Jesus in that final state of Lordship and glory to which he would eventually be exalted.

It was widely believed by Jews of Our Lord's time that various prominent figures of Old Testament history would appear at the end of this world and play a part in the events leading up to it. Cf. Mt 8:11 and Lk 13:28ff. From the time of the writing of Malachi 4:5f Elijah's is the name most frequently mentioned in this connection, and it is perhaps for this reason that Mark puts his name first. 

In the last days false prophets were expected to appear, and so Moses and Elijah will have been seen as the two great representatives of the Law and Prophets who, by their presence with Jesus as he comes, testify to him as the true Christ. We have in fact an expression, in concrete historical terms of the early Christian conviction that the Law and the Prophets testified to Christ. Cf. Mt 5:17; Lk 24:27. 44; 16:29. 31.

But then, lest there should be any danger of Christ's being misunderstood as simply one among the others - a further prophet of the old order - the voice in v. 7 clearly singles him out as the prophet of the last days whom Moses had foretold as superseding himself. (Cf. Dt 18:15. 18-19) 

But Jesus is more than that - he is actually God's own Son - indeed his only Son, the one to whom alone now men should give ear. The voice which makes this pronouncement is described as coming out of the cloud which had overshadowed the scene, and for St Mark this will have meant that it was the voice of God himself; for, in the later Jewish writings, the cloud was par excellence the vehicle of God's “shekinah” (The Hebrew word to denote the ‘presence’ or ‘dwelling’ of God in any place, normally accompanied by a glorious outward manifestation.) and the medium in and through which he manifested himself (This idea runs all through the Exodus story - cf. Ex 16:10; Nm 14:10; and Ex 19:9. 16; 24:15ff. Also Ez 14ff.)

In view of their beliefs about the past, it was natural for the Jews to include a cloud-manifestation of God in their expectation of the end, and for evidence that they did. The early Christians certainly thought that it was in this way that Christ would appear at his final corning (Luke 21:27;  Mark 13:26; 14:62; Mt 24:30; 26:64; Rv 1:7, etc.) and even that it was in, or on, clouds that they themselves would be taken up to meet him and ascend with him to heaven (1 Thess. 4:17). All this suggests that what the three disciples were understood to have seen was the final corning of Christ in the glory of his Father; and in that case there is close connection between the story and the verses immediately preceding (8:38-9:1). Did St Mark perhaps see the incident as at least a partial fulfillment of the promise made in 9:1?

The words of Peter may simply express a desire on his part to prolong the blessedness of the experience when in fact it was God's will for Christ and the disciples that they should return into the world and enter upon the path of suffering. Certainly the last verse - always an important verse in any pericope - underlines the essentially temporary character of the episode, stressing as it does the completeness and abruptness with which the conditions of the transfiguration pass. The cloud and the two heavenly figures disappear, and Jesus stands among the disciples once more a man among men. But probably once again St Mark saw a rather more precise meaning.

In contemporary Judaism the day of salvation was often pictured as a day when God would once more pitch his tent with his people as he had  done during me forty years in the wilderness. (The English words tent, tabernacle, and booth are simply variant translations for the same Greek word skene.) The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles itself had acquired an eschatological significance, not only looking back to the tent-dwelling of the wilderness days (Lv 23:42f.) but also forward to the new age when God would again 'tabernacle' with his people, and members of all nations would gather in Jerusalem to 'tabernacle' there and worship God together (Zech. 14:16-19).

The Christians too made large use of the image of tent-dwelling in their thought about the new age. Cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-4; Rv 21:1-3 (literally 'the tent of God is with men ') and 7:15. This being so, St Mark may well have understood Peter's words eschatologically - as an offer to build the sort of dwellings God and Christ were expected to share with men in the age to come. In that case what Peter was overlooking was that this scene was not the parousia, but only its foreshadowing. Before the end, there remained much to be done and much to be suffered both by Jesus and by his disciples. That suffering is not to be bypassed or evaded, as Peter here seems to think (cf. his attitude to the prediction of suffering in the previous episode).

1 SUNDAY OF LENT (B)

The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.

Mk 1: 12-15

vv. 12-13. At once the Spirit drove him out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.

We now learn that not only was Jesus endowed with messianic Spirit. He had been led by it into a trial of strength with the prince of evil. The background lies in the current belief that the Messiah was the divine agent for the overthrow of Satan and all his powers, and that therefore a tremendous battle, or trial of strength, between him and Satan would form an integral element in the last days. 

The Greek word “peirazein” is much wider than the English word "tempt” and can include 'testing' or 'trying' of any sort.  Probably here it includes moral temptation (!?), but only as part of the wider 'trial of strength' the Messiah was expected to have with the Devil.

In this passage the great eschatological battle is joined. The details are meant to suggest that Jesus was victorious but this stage of the battle, though decisive, was not the final one. The struggle would continue in the various activities of Jesus during his ministry, and indeed in the lives and sufferings of the early Christians as well. At least part of the point of telling the story here was to help the reader to see the true character of Jesus' subsequent ministry - and of the life of the early Church - as the carrying on, and completing, of a decisive battle with the powers of evil successfully begun before even the ministry opened.

The wilderness:

Itwas traditionally the haunt of evil spirits, and Satan is the chief of the evil powers opposed to the will of God and the establishment of his kingdom. It should be noted that the 'trial' is represented as lasting for the whole forty days and that there is no reference to fasting or hunger. On the contrary; the 'ministry' of the angels, which is represented as continuous,' probably consisted in keeping Jesus supplied with food, just as angels fed Elijah in 1 Kgs 19.

The wild beasts:

They may be mentioned to emphasize the loneliness and awfulness of the desert (cf.  Is 34:11 for how the presence of 'doleful creatures' was felt to heighten the desolation of the wilderness). 

More probably they are thought of as subject and friendly to Our Lord, and the passage should be understood against the background of the common Jewish idea that the beasts are subject to the righteous man and do him no harm (cf. the story of Adam, and also Job 5:22), and also that when Messiah comes, all animals will once again be tame and live in harmony (cf. Is 11:6ff., Hos 2:18). 

In Ps 91:11-13 dominion over the wild beasts is coupled with the promise of service 'by angels, and St Mark probably means that by his victory over Satan Jesus has reversed Adam's defeat and begun the process of restoring paradise.

For the exegesis of vv. 14 and 15 please go to 3^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The messianic herald has appeared. The Messiah himself has been designated and has entered secretly on the first stage of his final battle with the powers of evil. It remains only for him to declare himself publicly and to rally men round him as sharers in the kingdom and in the remaining stages of his battle with evil. All that is the subject of the Gospel proper, which accordingly begins with Jesus publicly declaring himself (vv. 14-15). But he could not do that till the work of the forerunner had been completed, and so it is significant that v. 14 begins with a notice of the conclusion of John's work. John was 'handed over', i.e. to imprisonment or death.  Mark reserves the details till Chapter 6. The point for the moment is that the forerunner's work was finished and the hour had come for the Messiah’s work to begin.

In vv. 14-15 Jesus publicly proclaims himself, and these verses are extremely important because they seem to be intended by St Mark as a sort of manifesto which sums up the substance and essential meaning of the whole public ministry. “Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news from God” - in the light of Is 40:9; 52:7; 61:1 etc., everyone knew what that meant, the good news that the time of waiting was over and God's sovereign rule had arrived. The reader knows the grounds on which this proclamation is based, though Jesus does not include them in his public pronouncement - indeed it will be noticed that he says nothing about any personal messianic agent, still less does he identify himself as that person. In view of the programmatic character of these verses, this is significant, and we are here introduced to a fact of the utmost importance about Mark's Gospel.

According to St Mark, although the public ministry of Jesus was quite unmistakably the in breaking of the kingdom of God, Jesus did not seek public recognition as the messianic bringer of the kingdom. On the contrary he silenced such recognition when it was forthcoming and took careful steps to hide his identity (messianic secret).

Meanwhile notice that, while Jesus' hearers are not told or challenged at all about his identity, they are openly challenged to decision in respect of the kingdom. The precise nature of the decision demanded will be made clear as the Gospel proceeds. Here it is stated summarily in words taken, like the other words in these two verses, from the Christian terminology of St Mark's own day.

It may seem strange that the Evangelist should have Jesus solemnly proclaim his ministry in the technical terminology of later Christianity. But that, despite the opinion of some scholars, appears to be what St Mark has done. In explanation it may be pointed out that what St Mark is here doing is to summarize in his own words the substance of the many discourses with which Jesus must have opened his ministry. By using the terminology of the later Christian mission he no doubt seeks to show that the 'Gospel of God' preached in that mission, and the response of repentance and faith demanded to it, were in essence identical with the proclamation and demand of Jesus himself.

7TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth… 

Mk 2:1-12

v. 1. When Jesus returned to Capernauma after some days, it became known that he was at home.

After some days:

There is clearly a pronounced break between this verse and 1:45. There Jesus, having left Capernaum, was unable to enter cities openly. Now he is back in Capernaum once more.

v. 2. Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them, not even around the door, and he preached the word to them.

He preached the word to them.

A well-known expression in the early Church for preaching the good news, the gospel (1:4 and Acts 11:19; 4:29, 31; 8:25; and 15:36). Once again the content of Jesus' word is not more closely specified.

v. 4. Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd, they opened up the roof above him. After they had broken through, they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying.

No doubt they got on to the roof by the outside staircase such as Palestinian houses often had. It is just possible that the Greek words translated removed the roof are a mistranslation of an Aramaic phrase which really meant “they brought him up to the roof”. If so, the picturesque detail about making an opening may be an addition inspired by the false rendering of the Aramaic original. More probably the reference is to making a hole in the wattle and daub of which a Palestinian roof would have been built. (Wattle and daub is a composite building material used for making walls, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw.) Mark's expression (lit. 'unroofed the roof') suggests that he was thinking rather of the tiled roof customary at Rome.

Mat:

The correct rendering of the original; it was the poor man's bed and could fairly easily be carried, which helps to explain v. 12a.

v. 5. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”

Faith:

Notice it is the friends' faith as well as the man's own that Jesus takes into account.

Child:

Or “son”. A term of endearment.

v. 7. Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?

Here the sole ground of opposition to Jesus by the scribes was his claiming for himself what they rightly regarded as the sole prerogative of God.

v. 10. But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth…

Son of Man:

(i) Mark certainly understood the phrase here in its full messianic sense.

(ii) He, therefore, did not share the modern theory that Jesus only used the expression in its messianic sense after Caesarea Philippi.

On earth:

The scribes were fully persuaded of God's ability and willingness to forgive, but for them forgiveness must await the future judgment. It was distinctive of Christianity that it proclaimed the possibility of forgiveness as a present reality here 'on earth '.

v. 12. He rose, picked up his mat at once, and went away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.”

The man's action and the reaction of the onlookers demonstrate the reality and completeness of the cure. There are some close parallels in contemporary pagan stories of healing. E.g. Lucian, Philopseudes II: 'Midas himself, taking up the bed on which he had been lying, went off into the country.'

6th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)

Moved with pity, he [Jesus]stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”

Mk 1:40-45

v. 41. Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”

Touched him:

To touch a leper would have seemed at the time an un-thinkable action; even if it did not actually violate the Law, it brought ceremonial defilement, quite apart from the loathsome appearance of leprosy. Montefiore writes: 'Here we begin to catch a new note in the ministry of Jesus: his intense compassion for the outcast, the sufferer, who, by his sin, or by his suffering, which was too often regarded as the result of sin, had put himself outside respectable Jewish society, who found himself rejected and despised by man and believed himself rejected and despised by God. Here was a new and lofty note, a new and exquisite manifestation of the very pity and love which the prophets had demanded.'

v. 44. Then he said to him, “See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”

For the procedure involved see Lev. 14.

 Further Discussion

This story clearly circulated at one time as an isolated unit of tradition without any note of time or place.  Presumably, therefore, St Mark's motive for placing it here was theological. He may have intended it as a sort of final appendix to a typical day of Jesus, showing that Christ's power was able to deal even with leprosy - a claim which, would certainly have seemed something of a climax to the contemporary reader. For leprosy, besides being a loathsome and disfiguring disease, involved ritual uncleanness and complete segregation from the community and religious life of Israel.

The Law could do nothing for the leper. It could only protect the rest of the community against him. Moreover it is probably significant that according to the rabbis, the healing of leprosy was 'as difficult as the raising of the dead'. What, therefore, the Old Testament religion - the Law - could not do was done readily by Jesus. Cf. Mt 11:5ff and Lk 7:22ff for the view that the cleansing of leprosy was an expected sign of the Messiah's arrival.

The text, when studied in detail, presents several problems, some of them concealed in the English translation.

(a) It is uncertain whether the words “and kneeling” (v. 40) are original; but probably they are, and, if so, stress is laid on the emotional urgency of the leper's approach.

(b) Instead of “moved with pity” (v. 41) we should almost certainly read, with many MSS (MSS stands for “manuscripts”) , “moved with anger”. Why? Because in v.43 the words “sternly charged” implies indignant displeasure, or at least a wave of great emotion. Moreover, the word translated as “dismissed” really means “drove out”. It is often used in connection with the exorcism of demons (cf. 1:12).

(c) The last words of v. 44 mean literally: 'for a testimony to them'. It is unclear as to testimony to whom about what.

(d) V. 45 reads “The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.” The New American Bible assumes that the one who went away was the healed leper and what he began to publicize was the healing. The Greek, however, could equally mean: “And he [i.e. Jesus ] went out and preached [the gospel] constantly and spread abroad the word [of God] so that he could no longer .. .' In some ways this would be the more natural interpretation of the Greek.

A great deal of discussion has not so far produced any generally agreed solution of these difficulties. Perhaps the most likely solution is that the story in its present form arose out of a conflation at some stage of two accounts of the incident told from rather different points of view.

• According to one account Jesus was moved to pity by the leper's appeal, healed him by a touch and a word, and bound him to secrecy, as in so many other healing stories in the Gospel.

• According to the other account, Jesus' reaction was one of indignation against the leprous spirit which had produced the agonized urgency of the man's appeal. In this state of extreme emotion he 'drove out' the spirit and bade the man carry out the prescribed procedure for having himself declared clean and readmitted to the community.

In the present conflate form of the story Jesus' strong emotion and his action, originally directed towards the leprous spirit, have come to be applied to the man, and the command to silence has been rather awkwardly combined with the instruction: go, show yourself to the priest (v. 44).

Be that as it may, St Mark's understanding of the story as he gives it is likely to have been:

(a) That the anger of Jesus arose from his opposition to the combined forces of disease, death, sin, and Satan.

(b) That Jesus wished, as usual, to conceal his identity.

(c) That the command to carry out the requirements of the Law showed Jesus as fully obedient to this.

(d) That the leper, through his action in having himself officially declared clean (v. 44b), would bear witness to all and sundry that there was a power among them capable of healing leprosy, a task, as we have seen, reputed to be as difficult as raising the dead.