The Week of November 23, 2008

(Mark 13) As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" 2 Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?" 5 Then Jesus began to say to them, "Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, 'I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. 9 "As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. 10 And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. 11 When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. 12 Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; 13 and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 14 "But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; 15 the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; 16 the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. 17 Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! 18 Pray that it may not be in winter. 19 For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be. 20 And if the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he has cut short those days. 21 And if anyone says to you at that time, 'Look! Here is the Messiah!' or 'Look! There he is!'--do not believe it. 22 False messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. 23 But be alert; I have already told you everything. 24 "But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. 27 Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. 28 "From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. 31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 32 "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35 Therefore, keep awake--for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36 or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."


COMMENTARY TO READ AND QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Mark 13:24-37

Resources

1. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp. 35-40. (Hamerton-Kelly's commentary on Mark, written from the perspective of Girardian "mimetic theory" will be a constant over the next year.) H-K begins his commentary on Mark's gospel at chapter 11, the confrontation with the institutions of the Sacred centered around the Temple in Jerusalem. Ch. 13 brings Jesus' teachings regarding these institutions to a climax as he predicts their collapse. It is a mixture of general apocalyptic language about judgment day with more specific references to the fall of Jerusalem and the Jewish-Roman War. H-K lays this out nicely. Most notable, I think, is his closing paragraph (p. 40):

It is remarkable that among all the apocalyptic imagery of this discourse there is not one claim, that the tribulations to befall humanity in the messianic apocalyptic history and the ultimate eschaton are expressions of the vengeance of God. Rather, the suffering is to be caused by wars, frauds, charlatans, natural catastrophes, misunderstandings and persecutions. These are the sadly predictable human failings that cause human misery without any divine intervention. In fact, the one clear reference to divine intervention has God shortening the tribulation for the sake of his elect. There is, therefore, a significant omission of the divine vengeance from a traditional apocalyptically styled passage, and that confirms our thesis that the generative energy of the Gospel is the opposite of the Sacred. Even though traditional imagery is used, the traditional content has been modified so as to remove the idea of the divine wrath and vengeance. The wrath is the suffering we inflict on ourselves and each other within the order of the GMSM. [Note: H-K's "GMSM" is an acronym he uses for: Generative Mimetic Scapegoating Mechanism.]
2. Another excellent commentary on Mark -- which is not written specifically from the perspective of mimetic theory but is compatible with it because of its sensitivity to the victim -- is Ched Myers' Binding the Strong Man (Orbis Books, 1988). He uses a blend of Narrative Criticism and Sociological Criticism; and it was written over a period of years of doing bible studies among the poor of Latin and South America.
Structurally, he notes that there are only two 'sermons' of substantial length in Mark: ch. 4 & 13. And each features a keyword: "Listen!" in ch. 4 and "Watch!" in ch. 13. This comes from Mark's prominent usage of the quote from Isaiah 6 regarding people who have ears but cannot hear and eyes but cannot see. Disciples are called to hear in the opening chapters, to listen to the preaching and teaching of Good News, climaxed by the healing of a deaf person in ch. 7. Ch. 8 begins the move toward the cross in which disciples are called to watch and see. The famous section in 8-10 that contains three passion predictions is flanked by two healings of blind men. The sermon in ch. 13 brings this to a climax under the keyword "Watch!" In the next chapter, the narrative will find Jesus specifically asking his disciples to watch with him in the Garden of Gethsemane -- and, of course, they fall asleep. But the linking of this call-word is significant: in watching for the traditional signs of Judgment Day (ch. 13) the disciples only need to watch the signs of the next several days (chs. 14-16). What they are about to witness will be the revealing of the Son of Man.

3. René Girard. In the first book in which Girard wrote about the Judeo-Christian scriptures, Things Hidden, he immediately took up the Christian theme of Apocalypse, represented in a text such as Mark 13. Most notable are Girard's segments on Apocalypse in Things Hidden. There is a section entitled "Apocalypse and Parable" (pp. 185-190; excerpt) and "Science and Apocalypse" (pp. 253-262), the latter segment preceded by a lead-in to discussing Apocalypse called "The Sacrificial Reading and History" (pp. 249-253). I highly recommend reading these. For more on Girard and a Girardian perspective on Christian Apocalypse see the opening comments for St. Michael and All Angels Day.

4. Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, has a section entitled "Apocalypse" at the outset of his book, pp. 14-16. It has to do with the very title of his book:

The word "apocalypse" means "unveiling." What, then, is veiled, the unveiling of which can have apocalyptic consequences? The answer is: violence. Veiled violence is violence whose religious or historical justifications still provide it with an aura of respectability and give it a moral and religious monopoly over any "unofficial" violence whose claim to "official" status it preempts. Unveiled violence is apocalyptic violence precisely because, once shorn of its religious and historical justifications, it cannot sufficiently distinguish itself from the counter-violence it opposes. Without benefit of religious and cultural privilege, violence simply does what unveiled violence always does: it incites more violence. In such situations, the scope of violence grows while the ability of its perpetrators to reclaim that religious and moral privilege diminishes. The reciprocities of violence and counter-violence threaten to spin completely out of control.
5. James Alison. Mark 13 is a primary text for reflecting on our experience of September 11, 2001, in the essay "Contemplation in a world of violence: Girard, Merton, Tolle" (link to web version), a talk prepared for a day retreat with Sebastian Moore, organized by the Thomas Merton Society, held at Downside Abbey, Bath, November 3, 2001. This is my favorite piece on that terrible day and its aftermath. It was later edited and published by The Other Side, May-June 2002, pages 16-19, 38), under the title "Looking Elsewhere." Finally, it was published in Alison's book On Being Liked, as ch. 1.
6. Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation; Mark 13 is cited on pages 62, 90, and 186. On pages 62-62, for example, Schwager gives a nice summary of a Girardian perspective on Christian apocalyptic:

Besides the judgment sayings and the pronouncements of woe, the problematic of violence is found especially in the so-called apocalyptic texts. Since J. Weiss and A. Schweitzer, many have seen in them impressive evidence that Jesus was trapped in very time-bound and unrealistic ideas. Thus they thought it necessary to demythologize his sayings in this vein from the higher standpoint of modern knowledge and to reinterpret them. But are the apocalyptic texts in fact so mythological? They speak of a shaking of the forces of heaven and a coming of the Son of Man on the clouds (Mark 13:24-27 and parallels). Apart from these brief but ultimately austere words, there are only descriptions of things that happen on this earth. There is talk of leading astray and poverty, of wars, rebellions, and famine, of strife in families and above all of persecutions (Mark 13:3-20 and parallels). (1)
Does the content of this part of the apocalyptic texts, which, compared with the description of the (cosmic) end-events, is much more comprehensive and also clearly distinguished from those in the Gospels, (2) not largely coincide with what has continually happened in the history of Israel? Do the apocalyptic texts contain in essentials anything different from a description of those forces which -- in contrast to the new community in the kingdom of God -- actually dominate history? If it has often been thought that the apocalyptic speeches would betray a mythological worldview, one can also turn this suspicion around and ask those who judge in this way whether they are not continuing to hold on to marginal elements and losing sight of the crucial utterances. Does not the way in which apocalyptic texts have been treated over the last decades, which have been full of war and other forms of violence, betray something of that exegesis which Jesus criticized in the saying about the tombs of the prophets?

Even if post-Easter influences are to be assumed in the description of the end-time, what emerges is absolutely no justification for ascribing everything to the theology of the early community. The essential elements fit coherently into the situation of rejection and the judgment sayings of Jesus. They make clear the important opposition between the laws of the world (see Matt. 20:25) and of God's kingdom, and they highlight, in agreement with the prophetic proclamation, the situation of judgment upon the world. Without this very realistic view of history, the call to decision and the message of judgment risk being too quickly spiritualized and thus finally dissipated.

Schwager's citation of Mark 13 on page 90 is in the context of showing how the disciples failed Jesus, when he had explicitly warned them to "Watch!" He writes:
From the viewpoint of the message proclaimed by Jesus, the behavior of his own disciples took on a particular significance, since the kingdom of God had found its first realization in their gathering. Consequently, whether this beginning was genuine must be seen in them; whether it proved itself even in the face of great resistance showed that the coming God of Jesus had completely won their hearts and wills. But at the critical moment this proof was not forthcoming and in fact the opposite occurred. According to Mark, Jesus ended the great judgment speeches with the challenge "Watch!" (Mark 13:37), and shortly afterward the Gospel reports how the disciples were the very opposite of wakeful and instead they slept, while their master prayed alone to God in his anxiety and his need (Mark 14:32-42). The threefold warning of Jesus and the threefold sleeping of the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane depict graphically how the disciples failed fundamentally in their task. Even if the narration of Jesus' struggle with death is shaped by later linguistic formulation, it should nevertheless give a clear picture of how the disciples, even before the arrest of their master, failed at the decisive moment.
7. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God. Wright's interpretation of the Gospels' apocalyptic, with Mark 13 being a centerpiece, is at the heart of his presentation of the Historical Jesus. He maintains that Schweitzer was basically right about Jesus being a Jewish apocalyptic prophet of the First Century, but his history around what exactly that means needs updating. Jewish prophets would never predict the end of the world in a literal sense of Creation being destroyed with the righteous being whisked away to heaven (the popular Christian view). The Hebrew prophets, Jesus among them, used 'end of the world' language to prophecy 'earth shattering' events that would take place if there wasn't repentance. Schweitzer misunderstood Jesus to be prophesying an imminent end of the world -- a prophecy that proved to be mistaken. Wright understands Jesus to be prophecying what Mark 13 literally prophesies at the outset: the world shattering destruction of the centerpiece of Jewish religion, the Temple. Absent repentance by a significant portion of Jesus' fellow Jews, Jesus' prophecy proved correct in 70 A.D. More generally, according to Wright, Jesus' apocalyptic message found a more dangerous enemy behind Rome's power, namely, the Satan, and so his victory on the cross and on easter morning would be directed against the Satan, not against any group of people deemed to be one's enemies. So Jesus prophetically called his fellow Jews not to trust in armed rebellion against powers of flesh and blood; such misguided faith only ends in terrible destruction -- the kind of cataclysm prophesied in Mark 13.
I am attracted to Wright's approach as complimetary to mimetic theory. The weakness in Wright's book about Jesus, in my opinion, is an inadequate understanding of the Satan -- which is precisely a strong point of mimetic theory, witness Girard's own book I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Read Jesus and the Victory of God and I See Satan Fall Like Lightning together and I think one has a compelling picture of the Historical Jesus.

Reflections and Questions

1. "for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn...." It is often pointed out (e.g., in Alison's "Contemplation..." above) that this line references the events which are about to take place: Jesus hands himself over at the Last Supper in the evening; he is handed over by Judas at midnight, by Peter at cockcrow, and to the Romans in the morning.

2. Gil Bailie has found the reference to the cock crowing to be especially meaningful for disciples. It is our call to penitence. It is also the work of the Paraclete, progressively in the world, to make it increasingly difficult to carry out sacred violence without the cock crowing on us, producing a "moral hangover" in the morning.

The chief illustration of this for Bailie is Shakespeare's Hamlet, one that underscores the metaphor of the cock crowing. Shakespeare understood what kept Hamlet from being able to make his revenge on Claudius, the king, even if Hamlet didn't understand himself. Hamlet's best chance to kill the king is in Act III, scene 3 -- except he is kneeling and praying in the chapel for repentance! Hamlet again talks himself out of it:

Now might I do it pat, now 'a is praying!
And now I’ll do 't. And so 'a goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng'd? That would be scann'd.
A villain kills my father, and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven. (III, 3, 76-81)
Hamlet thinks he can't do it because he will send the king to heaven. Shakespeare knows, however, that it is the message of the church -- forgiveness instead of vengeance -- which prevents Hamlet. Shakespeare provides a blatant contrast to Hamlet in the figure of Laertes, who has no such trouble when Hamlet mistakenly kills his father. Claudius is egging on Laertes to that revenge, getting him to say what lengths he would go to, to avenge his father. Laertes responds, "To cut his throat i' th' church" (IV, 3, 139).
But Shakespeare's biggest clue comes right in the beginning. The ghost of Hamlet's slain father is appearing during the night to call for vengeance on Claudius his slayer. But it disappears -- when? When the cock crows. Marcellus' speech provides a perfect Advent theme:

It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.... (I, 1, 173-177)
Bailie asks, 'What do you think the chances are that Shakespeare didn't have the Christian message in mind with the crowing of the cock? Zero.' During Advent we pray for that Christmas day to dawn when the Gospel of forgiveness will finally chase away all the ghosts of vengeance. We pray for the day of God's peace in Jesus Christ.
3. In 1999 it was timely to confront Y2K fears. The First Sunday of Advent is generally the highpoint of apocalyptic texts in the lectionary. Even though Y2K passed without incidence, it raised two kinds of fear that are ongoing.

One is a specific one created by the computer-related scare of failing microchips all over the planet. This actually fits the Girardian mode of apocalyptic since it would be a human-made one, brought on by our own short-sightedness and myopic focus on profits to the exclusion of safely anticipating this possible crisis. When Girard wrote Things Hidden (1978), the threat of nuclear war comprised the human-made threat of apocalyptic violence. This nuclear threat, quieted with the end of the Cold War, is now being revived in connection with terrorism. Or continuing to be aggressors against Muslim nations may be what Osama bin Laden wanted in the first place: a gradual escalation into World War III between Western and Muslim nations.

The other kind of Y2K fears were of the usual millennialist type: fears that a vengeful God will finally bring about the Day of the Lord. These fears might be tied in with the first type. And these are the kind that a Girardian understanding of the Gospel can help to allay. Alison's essay above uses Mark 13 to brilliantly address such fears.