Daughter of Voice
Think for a moment, perhaps a quiet moment walking in the
woods, or watching a sunrise or sunset on the beach at the ocean, or even in
the midst of work or some other activity, that out of nowhere you have the
sense of hearing a voice but there is no one there. And for whatever reason you
have the sense that you have received divine communication. God is close enough
to speak and be heard. Suddenly, it seems there is a thinness between the
realms of God and humans.
In the Abrahamic religions, such a voice was known as a bat
qol (or bat ḳōl ;Hebrew: בַּת קוֹל, literally "daughter of
voice"). “The Daughter of Voice.” What a lovely way to describe this sense
of divine presence! In Mark 9:2-9, we are almost at the mid-point of Mark’s narrative
of the Good News, three of the disciples, Peter, James and John, hear a bat
qol as they are overshadowed by a cloud on top of a mountain where they
have witnessed Jesus, robed in “dazzling white, such as no one on earth could
bleach them,” while speaking to Moses and the prophet Elijah. Two figures who
left this world with no account of where they went.
This is the second appearance of the bat qol, the
“daughter of voice,” in Mark. In the very beginning of the gospel, Jesus of
Nazareth comes up out of the water having been baptized by a man named John,
recognizably attired as the prophet Elijah in animal skins. Jesus, and only
Jesus, hears a voice from the parted heavens, a bat qol, proclaim, “You
are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus spends the next 40
days pondering just what this means.
Now, after time spent healing, feeding and helping people of
all stations of life, Elijah himself actually appears with the now-dazzling
Jesus, along with Moses who was last seen on a mountain top with God showing
him “the land of which I swore to Abraham” [Deut 34:4]. After this he is
whisked out of the narrative and buried in “the land of Moab…but no one knows
his burial place to this day.” [Deut 34:6]. Moses, who used to meet with the Lord
God YHWH on top of Mt Sinai, shrouded in a cloud, to receive Commandments and even
to argue with God.
Once again, a cloud shrouds a mountaintop, and the bat
qol returns to announce, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” This
time, the voice is heard by others: Peter, James and John. Just before this, in
Chapter 8, Jesus had asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And
then asked the central question of this gospel, “Who do you say that I am?”
Up to this point in the Mark’s story, only demons have immediately
recognized just who Jesus is. Whereas the disciples always are portrayed like
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid asking one another, “Who is this guy?”
Indeed, in chapter eight they say some think he is Elijah. This now has been
settled: he is not. They suggest he may be Jeremiah or another of the prophets,
but the bat qol dispels that answer: He is the Son of Voice from the
cloud. And yet, as the gospel unfolds, the disciples continue to appear baffled
as to who he really is to the very end.
First, the bat qol speaks only to Jesus at the outset
of the gospel, then to the three disciples on the mountaintop in the middle of
the gospel. Finally, an echo of the bat qol shows up one final time, near
the end of the story. Mark tells us the voice of God speaks through, of all
people, a gentile Roman Centurion at the foot of the cross: “Now when the
centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he
said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son!’” [Mark 15:39] Anyone listening to an oral
recitation of this story will recognize this outsider echoes the Divine voice,
the Daughter of Voice, first heard by Jesus at his baptism, and again atop the
mountain!
While I was in seminary, one New Testament final exam
question was: Mark - a masterpiece or a mess? I argued a masterpiece, in
part based on how the gospel is structured. The opening scene of Mark’s story,
Jesus’s baptism, we hear the bat qol announces, “You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased.” Mid-gospel the voice from the cloud reasserts that
Jesus is the Son of God to the three disciples present at this remarkable
mystical moment. Finally, at the foot of the cross a Centurion declares, “Truly,
this man was God’s son!” The last words of the bat qol.
But that is not the very end of the story. The next morning
after the crucifixion, three women go to the tomb to anoint his body. When they
get there, they find the stone rolled away, the tomb is empty, except for a
young man in a white robe who tells them Jesus has risen and they are to tell
the disciples that he is going before them to Galilee where you will see him. “So,
they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them;
and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” [Mark 16:8] End of
story. There are no accounts of people encountering the risen Christ in the
Gospel of Mark. No account of what happens in Galilee. Just an empty tomb, some
frightened women, and the promise that they will see him again. The Centurion
gets the last word. The story has no end. Mark opens his story: “The beginning
of the Good News of Jesus Christ the son of God. It continues to this day.
Brilliant, I wrote. The listener to the story is left to decide
for his or herself who Jesus is. Just as Jesus asks the disciples, who always
serve as stand-ins for us and all who would follow Jesus. The two instances of the bat qol and
its echo through the Centurion at the foot of the cross are three pillars upon
which Mark’s story of Jesus stands. And in a literary tour de force, Mark’s
story leaves us with nothing but an empty tomb, three frightened women, the echo
of the bat qol from a gentile enemy hanging in the air, and the promise
that the story has just begun. The thinness has been dissolved. Storyteller Mark
leaves it so that each of us must one day answer the central question of this
story of Good News for ourselves: Who do you say that I am?
This episode we call The Transfiguration is quite possibly
the most mystical moment in the three gospels: Mark, Matthew and Luke. The
appearances of the bat qol tells the listener that the story of Jesus is
about the closeness, not the remoteness, of God. The thinness of the divide
between human and divine has been revealed to four humans, three disciples and
a Centurion, not just to Jesus, suggesting that the bat qol is now available
everywhere at all times to everyone. The closeness of the divine is available
for all to sense and to hear in everyday human life, just as it is disclosed in
the sacraments of the church. We will sometimes find ourselves with Jesus on
the mountaintop, but most days we are with him in the valleys, at home, at
work, at the super market, by the ocean, in a forest, wherever the sound of the
bat qol lingers in the air.
Whatever we feel at any particular moment, whatever life
confronts us with, we are truly never far from the One who is the source of life,
light, promise and hope. This is the heart of the story Mark calls “The beginning
of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” A young man from Nazareth
dissolves even the thinness so there is no longer any barrier between human and
divine. The bat qol, the “daughter of voice,” still speaks. It says, He
is here. In our hearing. Here, now, and forever. Amen. It is truth. It is so.
No comments:
Post a Comment