By
Alexander Carpenter
A Commentary on the Sabbath
School Lesson for April 2–8, 2005
Terri Schaivo has
died, but that hasn’t kept the American protectors of life
from parading through the media to save us from our crematorium
shelves.
This week, the Adult Sabbath
School Bible Study Guide calls Jesus the "Amazing Miracle
Worker." And Mark 1:21—2:17 proves it. The six quick
vignettes in this passage show that religion and medicine
have mixed in similar and controversial ways before. Jesus
heals a paralytic; a "leper"; the demon possessed
and variously ill; Peter’s mother-in-law; and a very publicly
unclean, spiritually gripped man in church.
All of this is more than
most of our bourgeois, ex-urban selves can take. Really, all
this would strike most of us as a little unseemly in our local
communities, not to mention church.
The scribes were bothered,
too. Mark quotes them: Why does this man speak thus?
Who can forgive sins but God alone?
Sounds like some people
around Easter asking, "Who can take life but God?"
Why are the leaders worried? As any good cultural critic
will point out, just follow the power. Perhaps because their
status comes from the perception of their relationship to
God. By pointing out that only God can determine who can forgive
sin or end life, they are really just trying to shore up their
own small potency. That potency is based not on knowledge,
but mere position.
Mark mentions a few of
the faithful who see through those leaders. "And they
were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one
who had authority, and not as the scribes" (Mark 1:22).
That must have been like me when I hear a good sermon but
it’s not by a pastor.
Mark is the earliest
narrative account of Jesus. It was probably written around
66–70 C.E. The passage this week shows sensitivity about
how Jesus should be presented. Mark has Jesus not permitting
the demons to speak because they knew him. Luke says Jesus
wouldn’t do so because they knew he was the Messiah.
Reading the books in
toto one can feel some editorializing. Mark wants to make
sure the readers get the point that Jesus was here incognito.
If people didn’t understand it at the time, it was because
Jesus was working hard to keep his identity hidden.
This is a Jesus whose authority
impresses others but fails to grab his own disciples. It’s
the devils—not Christ’s close disciples—who know
him as the Christ. Sure, this is a simplistic lesson, but
perhaps those who appear closest to religion don’t have proper
perspective.
The scribes and
priests in Mark exhibit the same smug, elitist ignorance that
argues today that only God can take life. Again, it’s the
politically dominant religious leaders who peer into the face
of change and express their Christian radio fear. So they
try to legislate a "culture of life," which in reality
is a culture of stasis.
If you got pregnant, live
with it. Have pain so severe as to choose death? No!
If you are born gay, you can’t have sex. Why? Because
we are too afraid to read more, learn more, think more. These
are talented and scientific minds like Doctor Frist who can
diagnose through a heavily edited video. Take note of the
amazing and purposeful Rick Warren, who says that someone
in a permanent vegetative state cannot smile as Terri did.
Talk about overreaching!
Where does Scripture say that pastors and politicians can
tell medical professionals how to work?
As Nietzsche writes in
The Genealogy of Morals: "As we all know, priests
are the most evil enemies to have.…Because they are the
most impotent. It is their impotence which makes their hate
so violent and sinister, so cerebral and poisonous."
The scribes who see Jesus
at work are more of the same: small-minded leaders threatened
by the new. They see Jesus healing someone, and all they can
say is "Oh no, that wasn’t my idea, where does he get
the authority." Just like the BBC "Office"
boss, David Brent, their power is all they’ve got.
America’s right-wing "priests"
want to teach America a lesson for changing so quickly over
the last forty years. Thank you white bourgeois oligarchs
for wasting America with your slow acquiescence to the mixture
of money and power with American religion. Thank you James
Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Chuck Colson for guilt-loaded attempts
to bring back an America where homosexuals, women, and the
racially-mixed know their place.
One thing Mark teaches
me is that Jesus was so strong in a moral sense that he didn’t
need to rely on the explicit revelation of religion to do
good in his world. When I look at the cacophony of modern
religious voices I wonder if they are in harmony with the
subversive nature of the messianic ministry. It appears that
religious authorities deserve most to have their place questioned.
To speak and manage on
behalf of an absolute, modern religious leaders often end
up arguing that the meek, loving Jesus has it all wrong—just
like the Grand Inquisitor argued. However, maybe the "priests"
and scribes will actually embrace Jesus in the end.
G. K. Chesterson once called America "a
nation with the soul of a church." I fear that soul may
soon spoil if mixed too much with this rabid and grandstanding
"culture of life."
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