January 29, 2014: Mark Chapter 3

The Gospel According to Mark Chapter 3

Originally posted Monday, February 11, 2008

General Comment: As with all writers in the New Testament, Mark sees two worlds at war with each other. From his Gentile perspective, Rome and the Roman Empire are part of the Kingdom or Reign of Satan, the Prince of the Air. Mark's community is part of the Kingdom or Reign of God. As we see in this chapter there are others who are part of the Kingdom of evil. We encounter them among those who condemn Jesus' act of forgiving the sins of a paralytic; for eating with Tax collectors and sinners; for healing a man's withered arm on the Sabbath; and for allowing his disciples to pick heads of grain on the Sabbath.  In each case, Jesus' adversaries demonstrate how far removed they are from the God of mercy, compassion and justice and how little they understand the God revealed in Jesus, the God who always demands such good works, no matter what day of the week it is. 

Mark Chapter 3:1-6 Man With A Withered Hand  [MT 12:9-14]

 In both Matthew and Mark it is obvious that the Pharisees are intent on finding Jesus committing some infraction of the Sabbath law. In Matthew they directly ask Jesus if is lawful to cure (heal) on the Sabbath, where in Mark they are watching Jesus to see how he will react to the presence of the man with a withered hand. Curing a person who was not in danger of dying any time soon was considered to be work. This would be against the Sabbath Law and technically would be punishable by death. Rabbinical writings on the Sabbath practices indicate, however, that efforts were to be made to give a much lighter punishment unless the violation involved something much more egregious, such as blasphemy.

In Mark, the man is sitting on a bench and Jesus tells him to "stand up in the middle [of the room]." He asks the Pharisees a legal question as to the appropriateness of doing good and restoring a life, or doing evil and destroying it. They know the answer but they remain silent. They cannot reasonably argue with Jesus' interpretation of Sabbath Law that healing does, in fact restore a life that would otherwise be so marginalized because of the man's useless hand. His life would be as good as destroyed by the abject poverty in which he has  been and would continue to live. A healing would, therefore be "good." The Pharisees are humiliated in front of the congregation by Jesus' and his superior application of the Law.

The Pharisees have gathered around Jesus and the man standing in the middle of the Synagogue. Mark writes that Jesus looked around - at all of them, with anger and was "deeply grieved" at their  hardness of heart. Here there is an interesting analogy between the Pharisees and Egypt's Pharaoh (the archetypical enemy of Israel) whose hardness of heart was both God's doing and Pharaoh's free will. Jesus is angry with the Pharisees' sinful hardness of heart which prevents them from feeling compassion or acting mercifully; but he also feels grief for them because they are so afflicted that it is as if they can will nothing else.

Not only has Jesus humiliated the Pharisees, he now totally obliterates their expectation that Jesus is about to break the law by healing the man. Read carefully Jesus' next action and consider that work requires the use of one's hands. Jesus does not touch the man! He tells him to stretch out his hand and the healing occurs coincident with his doing so. Jesus has not done any work on the Sabbath.

The Pharisees are livid. They storm out of the Synagogue and conspire with the Herodians to find a way to destroy Jesus. We should note that in Jesus' time the Herodians (part of the offspring of Herod the Great of MT 2:1-12) would have had no relationship at all with the Pharisees. Herod and his immediate offspring were considered to be half-breed Jews and generally despised by the ritually sensitive Pharisees. On the other hand, this may serve as an object lesson. The Pharisees may have been willing to ignore their own values by consorting with the detested Herodians to be rid of a common enemy.  "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Mark Chapter 3:7-12 The Multitude

There is no exact use of this passage as a whole in Matthew. He has most of the verses scattered in several places. We are used to reading about the crowds that gather wherever Jesus goes, his healing of many, and here again Jesus' "stern warning" that the demons that recognize him and shout out his divine name are not to make him known.

Mark 3:13-19 The Appointment of the Twelve  [MT 10:1-15]

Note in verse 13 that Jesus goes up "the" mountain and not "a" mountain. The definite article draws attention to early Christian parallels between Moses and Jesus as the new Moses. Moses goes up Mount Sinai with a number of Priests and Elders (leaders) to establish the twelve tribes of Israel (Exod. 24:1-4). Jesus goes up the mountain with a number of disciples and out of a larger group chooses The Twelve. The disciple list is the same as in Matthew, the only difference being that Matthew has corrected the placement of Andrew as the brother of Simon Peter.

Many good manuscripts do not have the phrase, "...whom he also named apostles..." and it is most likely not in the original. The office of Apostle is associated with the later developing church. In any case the chosen disciples are commissioned to be with him, to be sent out to proclaim the message (the Good News that the Reign of God is at hand) and to have authority over demons. Matthew has added a well developed Mission statement for the disciples as a prelude to sending them out to the towns and villages.

Mark Chapter 3:19b-30  Beel'zebul or God [MT 12:22-32]

Matthew has no parallel for the brief introductory verses 19b-22. For Mark they serve as an introduction to a larger section on whose power is at play in the casting out of demons, a passage also in Matthew.

Jesus has come down the mountain after appointing and commissioning the twelve and returned home to Capernaum. The crowds were so oppressive no one has been able to "eat bread." Jesus' family "went out" to seize him" apparently because they received reports about the large crowds creating something of an uproar of confusion as people sought Jesus' healing. This scene was somehow attributed to Jesus having become insane, an affliction considered to be caused by demon possession (see John 10:20). It would be the family's responsibility to quickly take charge of any family member who was "standing outside himself" in order to avoid the shame that might come to them. Matthew has omitted this part of the passage to avoid creating any negative impressions of the family or Jesus. In Mark's situation, Christians were often called mad or insane because of their refusal to honor the Emperor as divine, or to worship at pagan temples.

Beel'zebul does not appear in Scripture as a synonym for Satan. The closest to it is in 1 Kings 1:3, Baal'zebub (lord of the flies), the Canaanite god of Ekron. There are other variations of Beel'zebul found in the Book of Jubilees and elsewhere linked to demons.

Note Jesus' first word in verse 28. "Truly." The Hebrew translated into Greek is "Amen." In the Old Testament and other Jewish writings Amen always follows what has been said, as a means of confirmation of it's truthfulness. The word is uniquely used by Jesus in the beginning of what he says which speaks to Jesus' sense of his own extraordinary authority to speak for God in matters related to God's coming Reign. At times Jesus will use the double "Amen, Amen." It is a fault of modern translations that a less revealing word as "truly" is used in its place.

Matthew has used much of Mark's report of Jesus' response to the Scribes' accusatory claim that it is because of this demon that Jesus is empowered to cast out demons. It is an illogical conclusion torn to shreds by Jesus reasoned response. Mark's parenthetical addition in verse 30 identifies the root of the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit specifically within the Scribe's assigning Jesus' power to Satan. In Mark's view it is this egregious rejection of God's own saving work, the beginning of the Reign of God in the new age to come, that is unforgivably credited to Beel'zebul, the Prince of Demons rather than to Jesus. The Scribes who see the demonic in Jesus are themselves part of Satan's Kingdom, unable to see God at work before their very eyes. No matter what Jesus does or says, they cannot "see" God's hand in any of it.

On occasion someone might wonder if one has committed the unforgivable sin. I would suggest that the very concern of that possibility is itself the clearest proof that one has not. For Mark, the Scribes cannot imagine that they could be wrong.

Mark Chapter 3:31-35 Jesus' True Family [MT 12:46-50]

Although it is not significantly part of this passage, it is of interest to many that Jesus was the first born child of a large family, with four brothers (James, Joseph, Judas and Simon and at least two sisters). James, his oldest brother, will become the leader of the earliest church community with its base being in Jerusalem. Two of his brothers will be arrested by the Roman authorities but released when they were deemed of little importance. His father, Joseph is mentioned by others but only in reference to identifying Jesus as his son. The evidence of the New Testament that Joseph had died before Jesus began his ministry is widely accepted. 

Jesus' family (mother, four brothers and two sisters) that "went out to restrain him" have arrived and are at the door asking for him. After being told of their presence and wish to see him, Jesus responds by speaking of those who are gathered in a circle around him. That his family has come to restrain him means they believe he is "beside himself," insane. It is not by accident or without a deeper meaning of the words that Mark writes that his biological family  was "standing outside." Because they thought he was insane, they are standing outside of the new family Jesus has created, a family made up of those who have heard, believed and are doing the will of God. However, it would be an "over interpretation" if we concluded that Jesus rejected his own family, for we will read in a later chapter of his visit to his home in Nazareth.

In the early church it was common for members to call each other brother and sister. This usage derives from this passage. In the persecution that Mark's community faced, one's true family often was the church because the biological family may have rejected children or even parents that became Christians. We still use the terms in the modern church, but with little emphasis on the application of the words to real life, a significant fault of modern Christianity including the United Methodist Church. What would a congregation and Sunday classes look like were we to see those sitting around us as our brothers and sisters? How many persons are removed from the roles of churches simply because they "disappear?" If any of us were to suddenly stop coming to worship or class, would we actually be missed? Jesus', in his parable of the one lost sheep expresses the joy of heaven itself when that sheep is found. If God can so rejoice, can we not?