Seeing Jesus in Galilee

All of us live East of Eden and in third millennium Galilees. The rawness of life East of Eden has been manifest in my life—World War II and the Holocaust, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the brothers Kennedy, the long and drawn out Missouri Synod struggle that led to the necessity of Seminex, played out against the background of Vietnam and the unraveling of the Nixon presidency, 9/11, and the destruction of a jerry-built New Orleans and the incredible slowness of governmental response to human suffering there. Someone once said that if it were not for the water outside, the stench inside Noah's ark would have been unbearable. Thus always, East of Eden.

The Gospel of Mark heads toward its end with these words: "Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." Jesus' ministry had been carried on largely in Galilee. There were the fulfillments, the paradoxes, and the mysteries of the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. There in Galilee—in all the places that you and I have lived—is still experienced the breaking in of the kingdom, rebirth, healing and feeding, catching sight of Jesus, just as he told us. Ahead of us in the 2005-2006 church year, where Jesus has already gone ahead, in the year of Mark, in our sermons, in the transformed lives of our members, in peace-making, in justice-making, in forgiving, and in witnessing we will see again, sometimes almost as if for the very first time, the good news. As one of our writers puts it: The crucifixion of Christ is the place one looks in order to glimpse what can be seen of the God who remains hidden from us in the stuff of this earth and the unceasing nonsense that goes on around us. There are no resurrection appearances in Mark. Only an invitation to head off toward Galilee.

Audrey West points out that Jesus' revelation of the reign of God in Mark is characterized by incongruity, mystery, and surprise. Six mysteries point to the nature of Jesus' identity in Mark: the mystery of baptism, the mystery of teaching, the mystery of power, the mystery of suffering, the mystery of boundaries, and the mystery of absence. The verbal links between baptism and crucifixion remind Mark's hearers that baptism into God's reign is a baptism into death. We too are called to die to the world's ways. In Christ, according to Mark, the people of God have a strong ally in the cosmic battle against everything that separates us from God and from one another. Do we help others lay claim to the power that comes from the reign of God, or do we help them relinquish their power that comes from the world's rule? A prime mystery: Jesus alleviates suffering, but must himself suffer and die. Death on the cross is the result, not the purpose, of Jesus' ministry. Jesus' ministry shatters boundaries and creates frightening new borders of inclusion. In Mark the good news is that Jesus is "ahead of you," in the life that the followers are called to embrace. There you will see him! The messenger at the tomb tells us how to preach: fearlessly, with eyes wide open, with a direction (Go!), and with a responsibility to tell.

Frederick Niedner asks: What, if anything, could we say that Jesus' death accomplished or changed if all we had for clues came from Mark? A ransom for many? Blood poured out for many? A guide for living in hostile or perilous circumstances? Much scholarly discussion of Mark has concluded that Christology, not soteriology, is the major concern of this gospel. The centurion in Mark's account of the crucifixion is the first human being unaided by demons to discern and declare Jesus' identity as son of God. Jesus's identity becomes clear not through all the wonders he did in Galilee, but through his dying. The death of Jesus cures blindness, and the cross serves as the "place" for finding life in losing it. In the final baptism with which he is baptized (1:9-11; 10:38-40) and in the cup that he himself drinks new in the kingdom of God ( 10:38-40 and 14:24-25), Jesus goes to the cross, where God's reign and God's glory appear. The crucifixion of Christ is the place one looks in order to glimpse what can be seen of the God who remains hidden from us in the stuff of this earth and the unceasing nonsense that goes on around us. Daily, we learn through such dying, the heavens are rent for us, and there hangs the Holy One—the ruler, messiah, and beloved, with all us bandits crucified on every side.

Barbara Reid, O. P., offers interpretive moves for preachers to tell the story of the Passion in Mark in ways that liberate, and that help believing communities conform their lives authentically to the crucified and risen Christ. The passion of Jesus is interpreted by her against the backdrop of the challenges and suffering of Christian women in Chiapas, Mexico. Many of them had accepted the suffering they endured from their husbands, fathers, and others as their way of carrying the cross. Abusers and victims sometimes derive theological approbation for unjust patterns of domination from the account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. But in the passion story Mark situates Jesus' suffering and death within God's saving will for fullness of life for all. The cross does not refer to suffering in general, but to the suffering that is the direct consequence of proclaiming good news to the poor and living in fidelity to the vision of the reign of God. Self-denial is an invitation to resist putting one's energies toward self-aggrandizement. The silence of Jesus at his trial can reinforce the passive submission of abused persons, or it can inspire silent protest of injustice, a very effective tool to confront oppression. For many women in Chiapas the cross no longer signifies abuse to which they must silently submit; now they understand it to mean the struggles and hardships they endure in order to learn and proclaim the gospel. The story of Mary Magdalene who left her home to follow Jesus all the way to the cross and tomb gives courage to contemporary women to do similarly extraordinary things for the sake of God's mission.

Raymond Pickett shows that Mark's resurrection narrative refers the hearers of the Gospel back to Galilee, the place where the power of the Creator to heal, liberate, feed, teach, and restore was manifested in the ministry of Jesus. It is useful to remember that the Gospel of Mark was written to be performed dramatically in its entirety even though our worship practices divide it up into bite-sized chunks. The prologue to Mark announces that the hope of God's victorious reign expressed in Isaiah will be realized through the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark is a study in the difference between the power of the Spirit manifested through Jesus and the temporal authority exercised by those who are opposed to God's purposes. The repeated passion predictions provide an occasion for Jesus to clarify the values and practices of followers who would devote themselves to the "way of the Lord." In denouncing the practice of exercising power over others, Jesus emphasized that the "first," or most honored, among his followers must be "slave of all." Hearers of the passion are confronted with an epiphany of injustice, humiliation, abuse, and violent death. Hearers are exhorted in Mark to live as faithful followers of the "way of the Lord" exemplified by Jesus in his ministry and the passion. The primary aim of the resurrection narrative is not to convey information, but to impel those who hear the story to become faithful followers of Jesus and to meet Jesus in " Galilee," where they will exercise the same divine power Jesus did by serving and bearing witness.

Javier R. Alanis discusses the significance of the image of God for people who live "in the middle" (nepantla), the borderland between Mexico and the United States, where one experiences all sorts of disorientation. The concept of the image of God is crucial for faculty and students at the Lutheran Seminary Program of the Southwest and the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest, both in Austin, where Alanis teaches. After reviewing appreciatively what has been said about the image of God by a number of theologians (Westermann, Hefner, and Westhelle) he focuses especially on the work of Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, who speaks of the kin-dom of God (we are all kin to each other when we struggle for a more just and equitable community), and of Virgil Elizondo, who describes Jesus as mestizo (a mixed-blood peasant of Galilee), who became the nothing of the world so that all might know that no one human being is inferior to others. To disregard, despise, or exploit anyone created in the image of God is an offense against the Creator. For Hispanic Lutherans the nature of the Word made flesh in the life of a mestizo and homeless Jew mirrors their own self-understanding in many ways. In serving their neighbors with acts of justice the seminary communities in Austin embody the image of God in the world. Their relationships of care and concern for others are modeled on the life and praxis of Jesus the mestizo Jew of neplanta.

One of the the persons who provided a road map to Galilee for many of us was Herbert T. Mayer. Herb edited the first issue of this journal and then handed it on to me. A professor of New Testament and church history and long-time editor of the Concordia Theological Monthly, Herb wanted to devote his time and energy to C.O.M.E. (Congregations Organizing for Mission Endeavors, Inc.), a congregational renewal program he had founded that insisted that good and deep Christ-centered theology was the only sure way to renewal. On September 13, at eighty-three, Herb entered Christ's nearer presence in the heavenly Galilee. There he will see Jesus face to face, just as he told us.


Ralph W. Klein
Editor

Note: Survivors of Herbert T. Mayer include his wife of 54 years, Arline; two daughters, Tedra Britton of Cherokee Village, Ark., and Virginia Pfrimmer of Lewisville, N.C.; a son, Thomas Mayer of Moline, Ill.; and four grandchildren.

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