Jesus' Passion/Our Passion

Jesus’ Passion/Our Passion according to Mark

We call this narrative of the events leading up to and including his crucifixion The Passion. The standard account goes that Jesus died for our sins. Mark offers no such assessment.  Marcus Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, says it is “Jesus’ passion for God” that gets him in trouble with Rome and with the Jerusalem Establishment which leads to his death on a Roman Cross. Borg appears to be in accord with Dorothy Day who is more explicit: “I don’t think of the Passion as the Crucifixion. I think of His whole life as “the Passion.” I don’t mean to become a theologian now; I have never been good at theology. My mind isn’t abstract enough. But when I think of Jesus I think of someone who was constantly passionate; I think of all His experiences as part of His passion: the stories He told, the miracles He performed, the sermons He delivered, the suffering He endured, the death He experienced. His whole life was a Passion - the energy, the love, the attention He gave to so many people, to friends and enemies alike.”

The texts [Mark 14:1-15:47] suggest that Mark would agree with Day and Borg. As Dorothy Day makes clear, the account in Mark from beginning to end portrays a Jesus who is hard at work while he is alive to address what might best be thought to be “our sins”: hunger, social isolation due to a variety of causes, unfair taxation, rampant indebtedness causing a greater gap between social classes due to increased taxation by Rome, some national leadership acting as “clients” for Rome against the common man and woman, and an overall lack of living out of the heart of the Sinai Covenant which he sums up as Love of God and Love of Neighbor. This last understood not as romantic or even filial love, but rather a commitment to meet the needs of others, to do something helpful for others, all others, especially those without resources such as widows, orphans and resident aliens. Jesus frequently accepts all others regardless of ritual purity into the life of the community of God’s people - something he calls The Kingdom of God.

Consider that on the way to Jerusalem Jesus cursed a fig tree that had no fruit despite it not being “the season to bear fruit! The next day it withered - perhaps as a sign that the Jerusalem leadership, in collusion with Rome, was no longer working on behalf of all the people. Coupled with his scene at the Temple , not as an action against the sellers in the outer courtyard who performed necessary duties for those who come to offer sacrifices, but again like the fig tree, a prophetic outburst declaring those elements of the  governing structure in collusion with Rome out of touch with covenantal love for God and neighbor, all the while. So it is that Mark portrays the Jerusalem leadership looking for any excuse to arrest Jesus, but not publicly since upon his entrance to the city he had the support of so many pilgrims who had either followed him there for the Passover, or had heard of his actions once there. More importantly, this leadership was under pressure from the governor Pilate to keep the peace during the Passover Festival. The man from Galilee, already home to several revolts, could cause such a problem.

So, they grab him at night in a garden, put up some stooge witnesses who perjure themselves, and finally make-up a blasphemy charge for his answering, “I am” when asked if he was the Son of the Blessed One. “I am” is God’s reply to Moses when asked for his name. Mocking him on the way,  they present him to Pilate. But now Mark portrays that the charges are changed to pretending to be King of the Jews, leader of an insurrection against the Empire, since Pilate cares nothing about blasphemy. Never mind Jesus ordered his followers to put down their weapons.  Never mind that such a pretender would properly be King of Israel, since King of the Jews was reserved for local client rulers like the Herod family on the Roman payroll. Pilate toys with Jesus, asking sarcastically, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies with just as much sarcasm, “You say that I am!” This would be true since Pilate would be the one to supervise Herod as King of the Jews. Pilate then cleverly, and cruelly, manipulates the crowd suggesting he could release Jesus the King of the Jews, or a rebel-murderer named Jesus Barabbas - Bar-abbas is Hebrew for “Son of the Father,” the name by which Jesus calls his God and father, abba. Despite the fact that there is no recorded historical instance of Pilate or any Roman client releasing a prisoner on the Passover, especially not a rebel and a murderer.

Pilate’s soldiers mock the presumed pretender king just as the Jerusalem crowd had done. Jesus abused to the point of weakness cannot carry his own cross piece, as was the custom, so Simon of Cyrene is pressed into service, Simon Peter having already denied even knowing Jesus three times had fled the scene. Note the irony, one Simon, a stranger at that, replaces the Simon who had followed Jesus from the beginning and would one day be the leader of the emerging church in Jerusalem - demonstrating that our God is indeed a God of second chances! Mark uses only five spare words to describe the crucifixion itself: “And the soldiers crucified Jesus…”

Like Simon Peter, the disciples are nowhere to be seen. Instead some women who had been traveling with Jesus and the disciples from Galilee to Jerusalem were at the crucifixion: among them Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Younger, and Salome. Peter, James and John who had been with him on the mountain of Transfiguration are not there. In the place of James and John who had asked to sit at his right and left hand in the Kingdom were two more rebel-bandits also crucified, one on his right and one on his left. More irony indeed.

Once Jesus breathes his last, a mile away the curtain in the Temple guarding the Holy of Holies is torn in two - Mark uses the same word as when the Heavens were torn apart at Jesus’ baptism and a voice proclaims, “You are my Son, my Beloved.” There’s no reason not to think, however, that one of the Roman Centurions agrees, but rather continues the mockery of his comrades: Truly this man was God’s Son! Yeah, right! The torn curtain in the Temple may indicate grief and mourning. Or, reveals just who Jesus is. Or, the Temple and Jerusalem leadership’s collusion with Rome is revealed once and for all.

In the absence of Peter, James and John, the two Marys and Salome watch as Joseph of Arimathea takes the body to be buried. Joseph who, according to Mark, was on the council that handed Jesus over to Pilate, wraps him in a linen cloth (the same left in the Garden by the mysterious young man who fled naked into the night?), forgoing the traditional bathing and anointing rituals associated with burial customs. Joseph places him in a cave-tomb and rolls a rock over the entrance. He does this so as not to allow a corpse to render the coming Sabbath polluted, unclean, not out of solidarity with the Jesus movement. After all, Jesus’ death is just one among too many millions of Jewish deaths at the hands of Rome, and by Christians from the Crusades to the Holocaust and beyond. We must also remember that when Christians tell this story year after year that Christian preachers have used Holy Week texts to call upon Christians to harass and even kill Jews - I have known Jews in America in my lifetime who have had to run for their lives during Holy Week.

Perhaps we ought to tell this story, suggests Richard Swanson [Provoking the Gospel of Mark, p. 158], so that our eyes are lifted “to see the faces of other victims of Empire.” As we hear Jesus’ cry on the cross perhaps we can hear the death songs of American Indians who were slaughtered and driven from their ancestral lands; or, the deaths of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the martyrs of El Salvador; the killing fields of Pol Pot, Rawanda, East Timor, Myanmar; or, those left devastated in Haiti and Puerto Rico; not to mention the increasing number of Americans living below the poverty line, and the countless victims of mass shootings and terror attacks; all of whom it can be said of Jesus, “He was numbered among them.”

After all, a faithful reading and listening to this narrative as presented by Mark is meant to inspire us to stand in solidarity with Jesus and all those among whom he is numbered. As Dorothy Day put it, “His whole life was a Passion - the energy, the love, the attention He gave to so many people, to friends and enemies alike.” Perhaps his passion will become our passion as once again we listen to this narrative.