By
P. Richard Choi
A Commentary
on the Sabbath School Lesson for May 14–20, 2005
The events covered by the lesson this week (10:32–11:25)
are best described as a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a spiritual
journey to meet with God, not only upon arrival at a sacred
destination but also on the way. As Jesus approaches Jerusalem
and nears the Passover feast, he has several encounters with
God in the form of events and conversations that yield surprising
revelations about the character of the redemption about to
unfold.
Mistaken Request. In Mark 10:33 and 45,
Jesus announces that he intends to suffer and die in Jerusalem.
Yet the request from James and John in 10:35–36—that
they be allowed to sit at Jesus’ right and left hands
in glory—gives a clear indication that Jesus’ disciples
did not grasp the true meaning of the announcement. Apparently,
Jesus and his disciples were operating with two different
paradigms of glory.
In Jesus’ paradigm, suffering played a
major role. His most dramatic and glorious encounter with
God was going to take place through his own torture and crucifixion.
The Cross—the ultimate symbol of brokenness and suffering—was
the place of God’s most glorious self-revelation and
redemption. By contrast, the disciples’ paradigm was
one of earthly prosperity and power that excluded suffering.
They simply could not equate wasting away on a godforsaken
cross with triumph and glory.
Blindness. Not all suffering, however,
is automatically God’s self-revelation. Nor is every
pleasure and enjoyment automatically sinful. Recognizing God
in an event requires revelation.
The story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus
(10:46–52), placed immediately after the request of John
and James, illustrates this point. Like Bartimaeus, the disciples
of Jesus are blind, unable to discern the mighty act of God
in Jesus’ journey toward the Cross. The source of this
spiritual blindness was their theological error that automatically
equated suffering with a curse of God.
The Cross was the opposite of all that people
generally knew about God. In the Roman world, the cross represented
weakness, defeat, suffering, shame, and foolishness, which
were not epithets used by Jews to describe God. God is eternal,
powerful, glorious, and most deserving of honor and wisdom.
The removal of blindness represents the correction of this
lopsided theology, which still prevents us from recognizing
God’s presence in our lives today.
Triumphant Entry. Although Jesus was
going to suffer and die, he wanted to make sure that his disciples
understood that the events about to transpire in Jerusalem
would lead to his enthronement. They were not a sign of failure
but the beginning of his rule. Yet Jesus was also trying to
correct their concept of power.
Jesus’ kingship would not consist of power
over territory, wealth, human subjects, and property. The
power of Christ’s rule is its ability to restore humans
to the image of God, which no conventional exercise of power
can achieve. The crowd that shouted "Hosanna!"
was, however, attracted to power, beauty, and pleasure, and
repulsed by weakness, ugliness, and pain—qualities that
describe the Cross. As a result, the crowd quickly dissipated
when Jesus was arrested and executed on a cross.
The church still faces a similar problem today.
The triumphal entry is a warning for the church not to become
a community for which earthly power is more important than
redemption. The power that Jesus presages with the triumphant
entry is the power to change lives. Those in need of salvation
are sinful, suffering ones. To bring salvation to these, one
must expose oneself to their suffering in some way.
Purification. The purification laws of
the Old Testament controled one’s ability to access the
Temple by changing one’s status. The Jews of Jesus’
time viewed ritual impurity roughly the same way we view germs
today. Each form of contamination affected one’s state
of purity, and one’s social status changed according
to the degree of contamination.
For example, the most virulent source of contamination
was contact with a corpse. The menstrual and birth laws regulated
other forms of contamination that restricted women’s
activity and access to the Temple. There were three basic
ways of restoring purity when contamination occurred—exclusion
until sunset, washing with water, or blood sacrifice—depending
on the level of contamination. There were other forms of contamination,
like leprosy, for which a total exclusion was the only recourse
possible until a healing took place.
For Jesus, purity was an inner state rather
than an external one. In Mark 7:1–23, Jesus explains
that contamination does not occur through external contact
with impure foodstuffs or by ingesting them. Rather, impurity
is incurred only through the impure inner desires. Jesus was
redefining impurity as a moral problem. This is the reason
Jesus cleansed the Temple by driving out money changers and
vendors from there. Not the ritually impure, but greed and
materialism were contaminating the Temple.
Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is a symbolic
act of judgment that seeks to cleanse it of its moral contamination
and to restore it to its original state of holiness.
Judgment and Mercy. Jesus’ cursing
of a fig tree outside of Jerusalem (Mark 11:12–14, 20–26)
is clearly an acted-out parable of judgment. Occurring between
Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the cleansing
of the Temple, the event links the two visits to the Temple
together and signals its doom. In addition, the description
of the tree as having leaves but no fruit echoes Jesus’
numerous parables of judgment that promise destruction to
any trees that do not bear desired fruit. But in Mark, the
final word is faith and mercy, not judgment.
When the disciples wonder at the meaning of
the withered tree, Jesus tells them, "Have faith in God"
(Mark 11:22). Then he tells them that they can move a mountain
if they have faith, and he urges them to forgive (v. 25).
These sayings reveal that the only effective response to the
judgment about to occur through his death and resurrection
is faith and forgiveness. Only those who have faith and forgive
others can understand the true meaning of the Cross and escape
the judgment.
Conclusion. The final events of Jesus’
pilgrimage bring to light the character of the redemption
and the revelation about to take place (10:45). The foolish
request of James and John reveals the nature of our blindness
and sinfulness. The healing of blind Bartimaeus and the cleansing
of the Temple reveal that our redemption consists of the restoration
of sight and the purification of inner, moral impurities.
And the destruction of the fig tree reveals that we benefit
from the redemption provided by Jesus by having faith in him
and by exercising generosity toward one another.
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