Tuesday 03 April 2012

Background

We are in Holy Week, in the days just before Jesus' trial andexecution, and the narrative highlights a number of conflicts withthe authorities. The atmosphere around Jesus is one where hisenemies are looking for evidence to indict him to the Romangovernor as a troublemaker and someone who is inciting the crowd tosedition. So the questions that are fired at Jesus are not abouttruth-seeking but entrapment. The immediate context is that Jesushas just been involved with a major disturbance of the peace in thetemple compound (Mark 11:15-18).

One of the characteristics of Jesus that Mark is alwayshighlighting is his compelling sense of authority. He was clearly acharismatic speaker and the crowds seemed to feel that somethingunusual and important was going to happen around Jesus (Mark11:9). So the question kept arising, about where he got hisauthority to speak or act as he did. No doubt his enemies wanted tosee him condemn himself out of his own mouth by making dangerouspolitical claims that the Romans could not ignore.

Jesus was a highly-skilled debater and very often countered aquestion with another, equally crafty one. He asked where theauthority of John the Baptist came from. John, with whom Jesus isclosely linked in the Gospels, preached repentance and (like Jesus)did a great deal of speaking truth to power. And he was imprisonedand then executed for doing so. The chief priests and scribes arecaught out by Jesus' question because however they answer they willput themselves in the wrong with an increasingly restivecrowd.

The effect of Jesus' answer on the reader of Mark's Gospel is toremind us that Jesus saw himself as heading a movement that beganwith John the Baptist but culminates in himself. It also pointsforward to the inevitable outcome of Jesus' own arrest and trial,which he has been predicting since the start of his journey toJerusalem (Mark 8:31-32; 9:30-32; 10:32-34).

To Ponder

How do you feel about it when someone in publiclife refuses to answer the question that has been asked? What sortof questions need a straight answer, and which is it right todeflect?

What are the straight questions to which youwould like straight answers? And from whom?