Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2008, Page 33

Anglican theologian Austin Farrer said,5 the Gospel of Mark is itself that
resurrection appearance of Jesus which its conclusion seems to lack but
toward which the whole book points.
But if this reading of the Gospel of Mark is correct — if such an image
of the then current church of the Gospel writer is so woven into its text
— then the book also has significant things to say about the leadership of
that church. We have already implied several of these things: The leadership
can get and has gotten matters quite wrong. The message of the gospel,
the gospel that fills the book, the gospel that openly reveals the identity
and presence of the Crucified one, is entrusted nonetheless to these lead-
ers. The humility of that entrustment makes up part of the theology of
the cross: these frail leaders are all we have. But there is more. The lead-
ers themselves, in the manner of their leadership, need to be called and to
continually call themselves to correspond to that paradoxical gospel. For
one thing, they are not to be like the scribes. For another, they are not to
be like the rulers of the nations. The most available, symbolically powerful
leadership models — the learned religious leaders of the Jews and the great
men of the Greeks, the model of professionally interpreting authoritative
texts and the model of powerfully organizing human affairs — are simply
inadequate.
According to the narrative, Jesus himself speaks in an authority unlike the
scribes (1:22; cf. 1:27). Whatever that authority means,6 in Mark it must
not include the things presented as characteristic of the scribes: thinking
or saying that the forgiveness of sins is blasphemy (2:6), wishing to exclude
sinners from the community’s meal (2:16), insisting on purity regulations
(7:1 ffi), or turning religion into a public show and an uncriticized despoil-
ing of the poor (12:38-40). This may be excessively hard on people who
were actually Jewish scribes during Jesus’ lifetime and may demonstrate the
prejudices of one ancient Christian community. It is more likely, however
— and more interesting! — that the community of the Second Gospel is
5 Austin Farrer, The Glass ofVision (Westminster: Dacre, 1948), 145.
6 The Gospel of Matthew uses the idea of astounding teaching, with authority unlike the scribes, as
a summary of what has been encountered in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7:28-29).
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