Paying Attention To The Sky

A page, found in the sands of Egypt, from a Coptic version of the gospel of Mark, in the Perkins School of Theology collection.

THERE IS NO STORY better known to Western people than the narrative of Christ’s passion and death. Whether we believe it or not, whether or not it plays a role in shaping our religious lives, this story is in our blood and our bones. Ernest Hemingway once related a story about a cabin boy on one of his boats who was reading a book with rapt attention. Hemingway asked the young man what he was studying so carefully, and he responded, “the Gospel of Mark.” “Well, why,” he continued, “are you so wrapped up in it?” And the boy said, “I’m dying to see how it ends!”

The anecdote is funny, of course, because it’s so anomalous: who, in the Western world, doesn’t know how that most familiar of stories ends? But this very familiarity can block our appreciation of the dynamics of the passion narrative. Once this best known of all stories gets under way, it can swim effortlessly through our minds, unfolding without really being noticed, What I wish to do therefore is to defamiliarize the account a bit by drawing your attention to three odd details in Mark’s version of the passion, each one of which, precisely in its quirkiness, sheds light on the meaning of the text.

ON MARK’S TELLING, THE PASSION NARRATIVE COMMENCES with the account of a woman who performs an extravagant act: “While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.” This gesture wasting something as expensive as an entire jar of perfume — is sniffed at by the bystanders, who complain that, at the very least, the nard could have been sold and the money given to the poor. But Jesus is having none of it: “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me.” Why does Mark use this tale to preface his telling of the passion? Why does he allow the odor of this woman’s perfume to waft, as it were, over the whole of the story?

It is because, I believe, this extravagant gesture shows the meaning of what Jesus is about to do: the absolutely radical giving away of self. There is nothing calculating, careful, or conservative about the woman’s action; she offers everything, breaking open the jar as a symbol of the breaking open of her heart in love. Giving voice to the austere rationalism of the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant spoke of “religion within the limits of reason alone”; but as Paul Tillich commented, authentic religion, ultimate concern, can never be hemmed in by reason alone. Flowing from the deepest place in the heart, religion resists the strictures set for it by a fussily moralizing reason (on full display in those who complain about the woman’s extravagance). At the climax of his life, Jesus will give himself away totally, lavishly, unreasonably — and this is why the woman’s beautiful gesture is a sort of overture to the opera that will follow.

A SECOND PECULIAR DETAIL in Mark’s account concerns the Last Supper and its immediate aftermath. Jesus has gathered with his intimate friends on the night before his death, He knows that the next day he shall be tortured and publicly executed. In the course of the supper, Jesus identifies himself so radically with the Passover bread and wine that they are now properly called his body and his blood, Like broken bread, the Lord says, his body will be given away in love; and like spilled wine, his blood will he poured out on behalf of many.

The sadness and portentousness in that room must have been unbearable, much like the mood in the prison cell where a condemned man sits with his family while he awaits his execution. How does this terrible gathering come to a close? They sing! “After singing songs of praise, they walked out to the Mount of Olives.” Can you imagine a condemned criminal blithely singing on the eve of his execution? Wouldn’t there he something odd, even macabre, about such a display? But Jesus knows and his church knows with him that this joyful outburst, precisely at that awful time, is altogether appropriate.

This is not to deny for a moment the terror of that night nor the seriousness of what will follow the next day; but it is to acknowledge that an act of total love is the passage to fullness of life. Therefore, as you give your life away, sing! Every Mass is a remembrance of that somber night: during the Eucharistic prayer, we explicitly recall what Jesus did “the night before he died.” But immediately after the consecration, as Christ in his sacrificial death becomes really present to us, we sing an acclamation of praise. The strange juxtaposition of terror and exuberant joy mimics the dynamics of the Last Supper.

A THIRD PECULIARITY OF MARK’S VERSION OF THE PASSION is the curious appearance of a naked man in the Garden of Gethsemane, In the confusion following the betrayal and arrest of Jesus, as the disciples flee their master, an unnamed youth finds himself in an awkward predicament:

“A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing hut a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, hut he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.” Scholars suggest that, like a Renaissance painter who places contemporary figures anachronistically into a depiction of a biblical scene, Mark is symbolically situating all of us in the Garden of Gethsemane in the figure of this man running off into the night.

The principal clue to his symbolic identity is in the simple description “follower of Jesus,” which makes him evocative of all disciples of the Lord from that day to the present. Another clue is his manner of dress. The Greek term here is sindona, which designates the kind of garment worn in the early church by the newly baptized.

The point is this: following Jesus, being a baptized member of his church, is a dangerous business. Participating in Jesus’ kingdom puts you, necessarily, in harm’s way, for Jesus’ way of ordering things is massively opposed to the world’s way of doing so. The shame of this young man — running away from the Lord at the moment of crisis — is the shame of all of us fearful disciples of Jesus who, more often than not, leave behind, in the hands of our enemies, our baptismal identity. The naked young man, escaping into the night, therefore poses a question:

What do we do at the moment of truth?

This mysterious figure makes a comeback before the Gospel of Mark closes, and in his return all of us sinners can find hope. On the morning of the resurrection, the Marys come to the tomb, carrying their spices and fretting about the massive stone covering the mouth of the grave. They find the stone rolled away and, upon entering the sepulcher, they see “a young man dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side.” The words used for “young man” and “white robe” are the same that Mark used to describe the disciple in the Gethsemane scene.

This confident figure announces the resurrection to the startled women. “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.” Exegetes suggest that this angelic presence in the empty tomb of Jesus is evocative of all of us disciples of Jesus at our best. Wearing once more our white baptismal garments, which we had abandoned during times of persecution, we announce to the world the good news that the crucified one is alive, Having recovered our courage, our voice, and our identity, we function as angels (the word angelos simply means messenger) of the resurrection.

An alabaster jar broken open and the smell of perfume filling the house; a songburst on the eve of execution; a humiliated man now become an angel. Three peculiar Markan lenses for reading the greatest story ever told.

Emphasis is mine, the writing is from Fr. Robert Barron in his excellent book of scriptural interpretations titled The Word on Fire. You can find it and more at Fr. Barron’s website wordonfire.org.