Mark 1:14-15
The Good News of the Messiah and the Coming Kingdom
Mark uses John's arrest to introduce the public ministry of Jesus. We know Jesus will also be arrested. Brian Stoffregen1 notes that both John and Jesus warn would be disciples they may face the same end. (See Mark 13:9, 11)
Mark 1:14-15 Jesus begins his work
14 Now after John was arrested (παραδοθῆναι), Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news [gospel] of God, [Other ancient authorities read of the kingdom] 15and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; [Or is at hand] repent, and believe in the good news.’ [Or gospel]
1. These are the first words of Jesus in the Gospel. In the literature of the time this signifies that they are the defining words of his purpose. This statement in Mark 1:15 is what Jesus is about, above all else. Hamerton-Kelly2 called it a "programmatic introduction." Mark (in contrast to John) presents this as the time when John the Baptist's ministry is finished. It is also the significant time (kairos) where God's plan is being fulfilled and the time of Satan's power is at an end.
2. There is no escaping politics in our proclamation of the gospel. John is arrested (handed over) by Herod Antipas at the very beginning, Jesus will be under attack by political forces from the very beginning. Any notion that his persecution was only "religious" but not "political" is forced onto the text. He comes when John is removed and is preaching a similar message: repent.
Added to this, Jesus is proclaiming a kingdom. (See Point 4 below) The kingdom of God means not the kingdom of Caesar. To say we believe in this good news (see the commentary on Mark 1:1), is to say we trust ourselves to, and to give ourselves to, this kingdom and not the kingdom of Caesar. And to repent, is to turn around, to live differently. Jesus' message is politically subversive at its heart.
The working out of this text in our own life is full of intricacy and compromise but, at base, as a Christian, I am not firstly a citizen of Australia. My primary calling is to be a follower of Christ, which will inevitably mean standing against the spirit of the nation in which I live. The opening chapter of Mark, read honestly, repudiates the climate in which I grew up, where it was just assumed that Christians would vote Liberal or Country Party, for example.
We see in these two verses how much the language we use, and the translations we make, influence what we hear. The NRSV says John was arrested. But the Greek word paradothēnai comes from paradidomi which has a strong sense of being handed over or given over. Later, when Jesus is betrayed, it will be paradidomi which is used (cf 14:44, 15:15). So, when the soldiers come for John and take him away, which is what we imagine when we hear the word arrest, the Greek text has the clear sense that he is handed over! This tells us a deep truth about human culture: we hand scapegoats over to the crowd. We fall in line with the crowd so it is not us who will be chosen, but someone else who is handed over. People who are handed over are abandoned by the rest of us to the systems of violence which structure our culture. They become the ritual scapegoat of the moment.
We might think that because the police arrest someone, that this is no longer the crowd of us in action. But, in fact, the police are the invisible hand of the crowd. Police are established to maintain the status quo, which is built upon exclusion. To be clear, this has nothing to do with any police corruption. All police, like the rest of us are part of a juridical system where
subjects are invariably produced through certain exclusionary practices that do not “show” once the juridical structure of politics has been established. In other words, the political construction of the subject proceeds with certain legitimating and exclusionary aims, and these political operations are effectively concealed and naturalized by a political analysis that takes juridical structures as their foundation.3
Not only is the scapegoat hidden, but so is the whole mechanism of the scapegoating process. Scapgoating works because in the casting out, or handing over, there is a
startling effect upon the crowd or mob because, in the act ... all the rivals are suddenly united in cooperation. It leads to what feels like a miraculous peace. Politicians (and others) weaponise this effect today: they foster unity by identifying for us an individual or group to blame for our problems, e.g., refugees or "dole bludgers." They choose a scapegoat. 3a
Anyone watching a politician who is competent in this will notice how appeals are made to the law, for example, which hides the action of the crowd. (We do this with respect to refugees even though it is specifically not illegal to be an asylum seeker.) This rhetoric is part of making sure the scapegoating process does not "show." Girard claimed
we create myths to justify "the originary sacrifice" of our tribe or community, "to cover over the victim, to blame the victim so thoroughly that no one is in doubt about the victim’s guilt and deserved punishment. 3b
The two small children, Kopika and Tharnicaa, and their parents, who in 2019 were imprisoned alone on Christmas Island are a stark contemporary illustration of this. At 1.4 million dollars3c a year, these children were not merely arrested. Mark would say they were handed over to the current manipulators of the crowd; not Caesar this time, and not the Priests, but another form of empire called the Commonwealth Government. We allowed this to happen. Indeed, the nation has acceded to allowing the use of small, imprisoned children as an object lesson to the bogey of people smugglers, not to stop people smugglers, but so that we may have a designated enemy/scapegoat and can feel safe and united. In the ritualised scapegoating of this family, Border Force is not a government agency. It is the agent of the crowd.
The word politics comes from the word polis, or city. Politics is the organised life of the city. The sensibility which flows through Mark suggests that politics is the city; that is, the crowd, in action. Later in Mark we will see where the authorities are not able to manipulate the crowd. They need to give into it; Herod will murder John "out of regard for his oaths and for the guests." At the time of writing (2019) there is a flurry of protest about the Biloela family. Will the government blink4 , will they give into the crowd, which for a moment is learning some decency? If we follow Jesus and speak love and compassion to the crowd, we are inextricably political.
To withdraw from the political means that we do not go out to the wilderness with him. Instead, we seek to hide in a safe place in the city—preferably in the leafy green suburbs. Which means we will forever be enslaved to following the crowd in an effort to remain safe.
This is the first showing of a major theme in Mark where, in the end, we are the crowd. [These links are not yet live=> See especially Themes in Mark, Point 4 The Crowd, 1:40-45 The Crowd Arrives, Point 5, and 2:1-12 Going into a Town, Point 6]
3. Theologically, the message of this passage is that John is the end of the era. John ends, then Jesus comes... The time is fulfilled; now is the time; we are left in no doubt that Jesus is beginning something new. 5
4. What does kingdom of God mean for us?
In a democratic world, we do not talk about reigns any more than we talk about kingdoms. But we do talk a whole lot about "culture"! So I suggest: "The time is fulfilled, and the culture of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."
Saying this, Paul Nuechterlein asks,
What does it mean to distinguish God's culture from human cultures? What does it mean to be "called out" (Gr: ekklesia, "church") of conventional human culture and to begin to be disciples of the one who brings God's culture near to us? Why is this such good news? 6
I say elsewhere that
A culture demands allegiance. A culture is a matrix of understandings which we use to function in the world. It can become god-like. It enmeshes us. It can determine us. Where we are unconscious of our culture, it does determine us; we think it is real.
To enter into the culture of God is to step out of and to stop following the culture of Australia, or wherever it is we live. The ability to talk about the culture of God is provided for us by a language/culture which is inimical to God.
I learn from Judith Butler that
Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of “women,” the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structures of power through which emancipation is sought.
But just as gender is performative, so is culture: Culture changes us. To enter into a new culture is an act of empathy, even when we are still strongly affected by the culture we seek to leave. It is to understand reality from the perspective of other people. It is to understand in the literal sense: to stand under. Entering a culture means to be changed. This is one of the reasons it is so important to do faith, and act faithfully rather than denaturing faith into a matter of intellectual assent. Faith changes and creates us.7
In this commentary I will tend to speak of the culture of God (or the culture of the kingdom of God), and of the culture of empire, but it is important to see that the culture of God is not formed in contrast to empire. If the culture of God were merely a reaction to empire it would be circumscribed by it. It would be like all other oppositional identities and politics; that is, at least partly formed by that which it opposes. This is why "cancel culture," correctly alive to the injustices of society, can appear in its behaviour very similar to the fundamentalist social conservatism which it opposes. The two, in rivalry with each other, form each other despite themselves. The culture of God, God's way of being, is, as James Alison would say, in rivalry with no one. Modelling ourselves upon this lifts us out of the culture of empire, and transcends the way of being of empire, rather than our being formed by competition against empire.
Theologians often speak of "the now but not yet" of the culture of God. This reflects Jesus' statement that the kingdom is "at hand," or has "come near." Modelling ourselves upon Jesus will indeed free us from aspects of the culture of empire, but we remain enmeshed in empire. The rivalry and violence of any church community is testament to this. We are so formed and enculturated by empire that it is difficult to imagine that a gradual change in us will be ever enough to complete our creation. As Wink said, "We are incapable of becoming human by ourselves. We scarcely know what humanness is. 8 The caution of "now but not yet," and the hope of a final coming of the Son of Man each reflect the understanding that the culture of God and the culture of empire are radically different. The idea that empire will gradually learn to become the Kingdom of God/culture of God is foreign to Jesus and Mark. Empire is a culture which we begin to leave; it is a idea which is its own god.
5. Galilee: In 1:4-8 John, Point 6, I noted Hamerton-Kelly's intuition that the real contrast in Mark is not between Galilee and Jerusalem but that "the real contrast is between the wilderness, which is the place of the scapegoat, and the temple, which is the place of the scapegoaters." 9 Yet Galilee is the place of announcement that the culture of God is at hand. There is opposition to Jesus in Galilee, just as there is in Jerusalem. Despite this, Galilee has "overwhelmingly positive connotations" and is not named as Galilee during the times of opposition there. Marcus notes five of its twelve appearances are in the first chapter, so it is "especially associated with the beginning of Jesus' ministry, and this helps illuminate its usage in 14:28 and 16:7, where it occurs in a promise of a new beginning for Jesus' ministry after the resurrection." 10 The resolution of this tension seems to me to be in the movement which Hamerton-Kelly himself notes; the "journey that begins by going into the wilderness and continues by way of the scapegoat, in and out of towns, synagogues, houses, and temple, and finally out to Golgotha and onto Galilee, following him who goes before." This is a life lived in Galilee, "an outsider in the eyes of all the world's Jerusalems. It is to be formed by, and have our centre somewhere else." (cf 1:9:-11 Jesus is baptised, Point 1.)
Andrea Prior (Dec 2023)
Footnotes
1. Brian Stoffregen http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark1x14.htm (Back)
2. Hamerton-Kelly The Gospel and the Sacred, (Fortress Press 1994) pp73 (Back)
3. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, pp3 (Back)
3a. Prior: https://www.onemansweb.org/theology/intro.html (Back)
3b. Prior: https://www.onemansweb.org/theology/intro.html (Back)
3c. Based on figures released to a Senate Estimates committee. (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jan/07/keeping-biloela-family-locked-up-on-christmas-island-cost-australia-14m-last-year) (Back)
4. This is the language used by Minister Cash, which betrays the violence of the whole affair. (https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/biloela-family-unaware-of-option-to-resettle-in-nz-or-us-20210609-p57zj3.html) (Back)
5. https://www.onemansweb.org/act-now-mark-1-14-20.html, edited (Back)
6. Paul Nuechterlein http://girardianlectionary.net/year_b/epiphany3b.htm (Back)
7. Butler's quotation is in Gender Trouble, pp4. For a brief outline on performativity see https://www.openculture.com/2018/02/judith-butler-on-gender-performativity.html. The quotation on allegiance to culture is taken from https://www.onemansweb.org/jesus-begins-the-journey-mark-1-14-20-jonah.html , edited (Back)
8. Walter Wink, Just Jesus: My Struggle to Become Human pp102 (Back)
9. Hamerton-Kelly pp60-61(Back)
10. Marcus Joel, Mark 1-7, and Mark 8-16, (The Anchor Yale Bible) pp171(Back)
