Beginning of the Good News — Mark 10

In his book Less Is More, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel insists on using the term “climate breakdown” rather than “climate change”. He does so because this is what he believes is happening — a breakdown of multiple, interconnected systems with capitalism as the root cause. Capitalism has colonialised us and in turn we Christians have colonised the Bible by separating the interconnection of God, creation and humanity. We need to change the way we see the world and our place in it.

We are in a time of fragmentation — of “climate breakdown” — and of capitalism so rampant and all-pervasive that it alienates us from one another and our planet. Jewish Jesus lived in Roman occupied Palestine, and experienced an interconnected world where God, creation and humanity were as one.

During October four passages from Mark 10 are proclaimed in the liturgy. I shall explore Jesus’s radical teachings in the chapter which is set in three “beginnings” in the central section of Mark’s Gospel.

“Beginning”

Mark’s Gospel uses the Old Testament as its framework and substructure and inserts Jesus, son of God, in his humanity into the three interconnected relationships with God, people and Earth. In the first sentence Mark connects Jesus to three beginnings. First, the opening word of the Gospel is the noun “beginning” (arche) which evokes the Genesis creation story. Then the whakapapa of Jesus connects him to creation, to God and to humanity: “Beginning of the good news of Jesus the Christ [the anointed one], the Son of God” (Mk 1:1).

Central Section

Mark 10 is part of the central section which focuses on the formation of the disciples (Mk 8:22-10:52). The description of what it means to follow Jesus is set in the context of a journey, with much tripping around in different landscapes.

The journey begins in the seafront town of Bethsaida after the healing of a man who is blind. Peter declares Jesus is the Messiah as they are “on the way” to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Six days later, Jesus is transfigured on a mountain. Then they “went on from there and passed through Galilee” to the lake-side town of Capernaum. And they continue through Judea and beyond the Jordan to Jericho where this section ends with the healing of Bartimaeus who was blind (Mk 10:46-52).

“From the Beginning of Creation”

In Mark 10:6, “beginning” occurs again, this time “from the beginning of creation”. We are ushered into Jesus’s radical teachings on poverty, powerlessness and childlikeness. As a new creation through the death-resurrection of Jesus, we are called “to receive the kingdom of God as a little child”.

Childlikeness is an attitude of being in relationship which enables us to recognise Jesus’s teachings “from the beginning of creation” as revealing God’s loving destiny for human persons. In five areas of ordinary life, Jesus teaches the disciples about returning to the way of original simplicity to enable us to follow him “on the way”.

First Teaching

Jesus talks about the unity between man and woman that was “from the beginning of creation” as the norm for human relationships (Mk10:2-9). In biblical thought, flesh is the whole human as present in the visible world. Often this discussion on divorce is dealt with apart from the whole of this gospel and its context of Mark 10 which focuses on how to “receive the kingdom of God as a little child”.

Second Teaching

Previously Jesus embraced and placed a child in middle of the twelve saying: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Mk 9:36). He seems to be teaching the disciples the value of powerlessness. Yet again, Jesus holds up children as models ofdetachment:“whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it" (Mark 10:15). The disciples try to turn the children away. Jesus holds these little ones up as ideal members of the reign of God.

Third Teaching

In a dialogue set up between Jesus and a rich man, the disciples are taught that they must divest themselves of possessions and learn to trust totally in God’s Providence (Mark 10:17-30). The difficulty here is not possessions but attachment to what we own which is spiritually perilous. This essentially good man who kept the commandments and whom Jesus loved shies away from the ideal that demands so much. The man goes away.

Fourth Teaching

The failure of the disciples to grasp these teachings is shown in parallel incidents that focus on first Peter (Mk 10:35-45) and then James and John (Mk 10:35-45). First, Jesus assures the disciples that “for God all things are possible.” This way of living demands total dependence on God. The words that pass between Jesus and Peter show how little Peter has understood. Peter balks at Jesus’s demands, focusing instead on what he has done already: “We have left everything and followed you.”

Second, James and John ask: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Jesus replies “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant [diakoneo] … For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve [diakonein]” (Mk 10:44-45). The irony of the disciples’ dimness is highlighted by placing these incidents either side of Jesus’s third and most explicit prediction of his suffering and death (Mk 10:33-34).

Fifth Teaching

Bartimaeus, the beggar was blind. Out of his powerlessness and poverty, he is ready and able to become a disciple of Jesus. His story is the reverse of the rich man who was not able to become a disciple because of his possessions. Bartimaeus cries out. Jesus instructs the disciples to call him. Then “throwing off his cloak” which symbolises his few possessions, “he sprang up” when told to “rise up”. This word “rise up” [egeiro] describes Jesus’s resurrection (see Tui Motu, Sept 2024, pp.22-23). “Immediately, he regained his sight and followed him on the way” (Mk 10:52).

Bartimaeus affirms the potential of every human person to follow Jesus’s way “from the beginning of creation.” This way of poverty, powerlessness and childlikeness is explained by Jesus in his radical teachings on trust in God.

Between these two stories of the recovery of physical sight, Jesus speaks three times of his rejection, suffering and death-resurrection. The disciples stumble around blind. They do not get what Jesus is teaching them.

In this Gospel the three beginnings give hope. At what looks like the end are images of the new day and the return to Galilee, the place of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus and, subsequently, that of the disciples. They are commissioned, as we are, to: "Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15).

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 297 October 2024: 24-25