Theological Journal – April 8: Toward the 8th Day: A Journey through Holy Week (Wednesday)

Women Rising in the Gospel (If Not Always in the Church)

Mid-Week in Holy Week we meet another Markan “sandwich.” This time, however, the two stories are related not as mutually interpreting each other but rather by contrast. A contrast between the uniformly poor performance and negative presentation of Jesus’ male disciples in Mark and his corresponding and contrasting positive presentation of his female followers. The “sandwich” looks like this:

Incident A¹               The Need for a Traitor (14:1-2)

Incident B            The Unnamed Woman  (14:3-9)

Incident A²               The Appearance of a Traitor (14:10-11)

 

The Need for a Traitor (14:1-2)

The Jewish leaders fear the crowds who are predominantly in favor of Jesus (11:18). This fear prevents them from apprehending Jesus in public by day. Thus they need a “mole” who will know and lead them to where Jesus is at night alone with his disciples to take him under the cover of darkness. What Josephus said about John the Baptist was equally true of Jesus: “When others too joined the crowds about him, because they were aroused to the highest degree by his sermons, Herod became alarmed. Eloquence that had so great an effect on mankind might lead to some form of sedition, for it looked as if they would be guided by John in everything that they did” (Jewish Antiquities 18.116–19).

Jesus’ disciples, though trying to follow him, show little more comprehension of and inclination to practice what Jesus teaches than do the religious leaders and, ultimately, Judas the traitor. Two features make this unmissably clear.

-The “Way” section of Mark’s story, where teaching on discipleship is clustered, is prefaced, as we have seen, by two stories of Jesus healing blind men (8:22-27; 10:46-52).

-And within this section this section we find Jesus’ three predictions of his suffering, death, and resurrection, each of which follows the pattern of him stating the prediction, the disciples misunderstanding, and Jesus issuing a correction (8:1-9:1; 9:31-37; 10:33-45).  

The Unnamed Woman (14:3-9)

Why does this woman’s extravagant gift of ointment merit her the praise of: “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (14:9)? Borg and Crossan answer:

“She alone, of all those who heard Jesus’s three prophecies of his death and resurrection, believed him and drew the obvious conclusion. Since (not if) you are going to die and rise, I must anoint you now beforehand, because I will never have a chance to do it afterward. She is, for Mark, the first believer. She is, for us, the first Christian. And she believed from the word of Jesus before any discovery of an empty tomb” (Borg, The Last Week: 1620-1624).

She is, as well, a dramatic portrayal of the kind of follower Jesus sought the disciples to become and they fiercely resisted, the model of child, servant, and slave. In this she is perfect foil to Judas!

Judas’ Motive

Interestingly, other gospel writers and later readers have provided Judas with a variety of motives for his heinous deed. Greed, disappointment that Jesus was not the kind of revolutionary Judas hoped he would be, the devil made him do it, and more. There may be some truth in all of that but Mark does not offer any motive or reason for his betrayal. He simply leaves it in the mystery of his relationship with Jesus. Since we do not know (reading only Mark), we are left to ponder the mystery of our own relation to him on this most solemn and weighty of weeks.