SCM Studyguide: Christian Mission. Stephen Spencer

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      3. Jesus calls a band of helpers – the disciples – to live, work and assist him in proclaiming the kingdom of God (Mark 1.16–20; see also 3.14). He is not undertaking this ministry on his own but in a dedicated community of men (and women, according to Luke) who share the burden and support each other (as well as have their disagreements). Furthermore he calls both the kind of fisherman who do not have boats and must cast their nets, and the wealthier kind who not only have boats but hired servants as well. He even calls an outcast tax collector (2.14). It is clear from these invitations that a shared or collaborative type of ministry is to be fundamental to the whole enterprise.

      4. Jesus goes to where people are, where they live, work and gather for worship in their synagogues (1.21, 38–9). He does not wait for them to come to him. He becomes immersed in their life, speaking their language, and talking to them at the time of the week, on the Sabbath, when they will give him a hearing. The fact that they do give him a hearing shows that he has gained their respect as one of their own with the right to address their community. He even follows the custom of requiring a cleansed leper to go to the priest for verification (1.44). This shows the principle of identification with the community and that his ministry was locally rooted or incarnational.

      5. The proclamation of the kingdom involves not just preaching and teaching, but surprising and powerful signs as well, in this case the exorcism of a possessed man in the synagogue at Capernaum (1.21–8). Words are combined with unexpected actions to show that the reign of God is breaking into people’s lives. So the proclamation of the kingdom is through signs that help to effect what they are pointing to. In different language it can be said that his proclamation is sacramental, where a sacrament is defined as an ‘effective sign’ (as in Article 25 of the Articles of Religion in the The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, for example).

      6. But who initiates the powerful signs? It is important to note that Jesus does not approach the possessed man but the other way round (1.23): Jesus is almost forced to release him from the possession. So this powerful and saving sign is not planned or sought out by Jesus – it just seems to happen when another comes to him with their need. This happens time after time during the Galilean mission: it is the principle of surprise. While his own imperative is to get around as many villages as possible with the message about the kingdom of God (1.38–9), unexpected and wonderful things start to happen within this mission, which he then accepts and works with.

      7. At many points Jesus seeks to stop news of the spectacular aspect of his work spreading beyond his followers. He tells those he heals not to publicize the great healings but to keep quiet (1.25, 34, 44). He openly proclaims the kingdom but also tries to suppress the spread of news about the miraculous ways that that arrival is taking place. This shows a principle of secrecy about the spectacular at work in his mission. The interpretation of this feature of his ministry has been debated extensively among scholars and it is not possible here to open up that debate again: only to note that there is a determined attempt by Jesus to keep the focus of his mission on the proclamation of the kingdom rather than on the mighty acts taking place through him.

      8. The releasing from possession is not the only sign that takes place. These verses show that all manner of different kinds of healing and release take place through Jesus: the cure of a fever, healing of ‘various diseases’, making a leper clean, raising a paralytic to his feet (e.g. Mark 1.29–34). Jesus seems to respond to different needs in different kinds of ways, bringing whatever type of healing is most appropriate. His is a multiple or varied kind of ministry which addresses many kinds of physical and mental need. It is, in other words, all-inclusive: every kind of ailment from every kind of person is included within its scope. This is confirmed in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus, referring to his own ministry, tells John’s disciples to ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them’ (Matt. 11.4–5). (Bosch especially emphasizes the all-inclusive nature of Jesus’ mission: see Bosch 1991, pp. 28–9.)

      9. One further dimension of Jesus’ mission in Mark 1 comes to the fore in his healing of the possessed man (and later in the Gospel in his conflict with the Pharisees). It is a political agenda of challenging and seeking to re-form the corporate relationships of the Jewish community. Ched Myers has drawn attention to the way Mark’s Gospel highlights this:

      The demon in the synagogue becomes the representative of the scribal establishment, whose ‘authority’ undergirds the dominant Jewish social order. Exorcism represents an act of confrontation in the war of myths in which Jesus asserts his alternative authority. Only this interpretation can explain why exorcism is at issue in the scribal counterattack upon Jesus later in 3.22ff. (Myers 1988, p. 143)

      John Dominic Crossan has also drawn attention to this political dimension, especially laying emphasis on the ways Jesus was a social revolutionary (see Powell 1999, ch. 5, and references there). Similarly, N. T. Wright points to the political dimension of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees. As a party within Judaism the Pharisees were working to an agenda of maintaining the separation and distinctiveness of the Jewish nation from the pagan races that surrounded them in Palestine. Through upholding Sabbath codes and purity laws around meals they sought to maintain clear boundaries and avoid gradual assimilation into the pagan gentile world. But for Jesus these practices had become

      a symptom of the problem rather than part of the solution. The kingdom of the one true god was at last coming into being, and it would be characterized not by defensiveness, but by Israel’s being the light of the world; not by the angry zeal which would pay the Gentiles back in their own coin . . . but by turning the other cheek and going the second mile . . . the clash between Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries must be seen in terms of alternative political agendas generated by alternative eschatological beliefs and expectations. Jesus was announcing the kingdom in a way which did not reinforce, but rather called into question, the agenda of revolutionary zeal which dominated the horizon of, especially, the dominant group within Pharisaism. (Wright 1996, pp. 389–90)

      Jesus’ politics, then, was to be one of changing the way Israel related to the nations around it. He was seeking to transform those relationships from differentiation and exclusion to openness and integration, so that the truth of the dawning kingdom would become more and more widely known. Jesus was ‘offering an alternative construal of Israel’s destiny and god-given vocation, an alternative way of telling Israel’s true story, and an alternative to the piety which expressed itself in nationalistic symbols’ (Wright 1996, p. 390).

      Three players

      Mark’s overview of Jesus’ mission in his first chapter therefore shows an unfolding drama with three main players. The first player is the society in which Jesus’ ministry takes place. This is the Jewish society of Galilee, from which Jesus comes and to which he addresses his ministry. He does not seek to remove himself from this society, like the Essene sect at Qumran, but seeks to change the consciousness of everyone within it. And because the whole society is addressed, the marginalized and excluded are especially included. The inclusiveness of his ministry will later be symbolized by his choosing of twelve disciples, representing the twelve tribes of Israel and signifying that what he was bringing was for everyone within his society.

      The second player is the kingdom of God, the incoming divine reign that is going to change everything. The full arrival of this kingdom is still awaited, but there are instances of its saving transformation already appearing among the needy and repentant. Its arrival has begun and this provides a powerful sense of urgency to what Jesus is doing.

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