Secrets are hard to keep.

It’s not that we aren’t trustworthy people. It’s just that when something’s hidden, we are just bursting to uncover it. It is such a relief to get a secret out into the open.

But secrets, because they are secret, aren’t well known. They get misunderstood. And they take on a life of their own.

When Mark wrote his gospel, he was doing something that by all accounts was altogether new. ‘Gospel’ as a genre of writing had never been done before. ‘Gospel’ as a word was well known – it accompanied the proclamation of Caesars’ victories; ‘good news’ to all, supposedly. But Mark’s way of writing was stirring something revolutionary. It was an act of defiance, a new gospel, a proclamation of the good news of Jesus the Christ.

I personally think that Mark’s Gospel is the most theologically revolutionary book of the whole Bible. Paul did some pretty incredible things with Jewish theology – we’ll read about those during the second half of the year. But in the wake of Paul’s death around 65 CE, this first gospel – with rumours of its origin in Peter – finds its way into Christian communities with a secret message. A secret bursting to be set free.

Biblical scholars have long been fascinated by the ‘secretive’ nature of Mark’s Gospel; that Jesus often tells people to be quiet when all they want to do is shout about who he is. In 1901 William Wrede wrote an influential book about Mark called The Messianic Secret. In it he argued that Mark added the quotes about Jesus’ secrecy to explain why he didn’t seem very Messiah-like in his lifetime; his time had not yet come. But that’s not the kind of secret I’m talking about. In fact, I think it’s precisely the way that Jesus is not very like a Messiah that holds the key to unlock Mark’s astonishing message.

Mark’s markers

I’ve found reading Mark a little dangerous. Because there are small features, like tree roots along a leaf-strewn path, which continually trip me up and send me crashing down, forced to scrabble through to see the real road I’m travelling. But I’ve come to see these as carefully placed markers, designed to alert us as readers to the reality that lies under the surface of Mark’s story.

The first of these is right at the start of the gospel. John baptises Jesus and heaven is torn open; ‘the Spirit’ descends on him like a dove, and a voice says ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased’ (1:11). Then, immediately, the Spirit sends him into the desert, where he is tempted by Satan (1:12). I am so familiar with that chain of events that I think I know it. But this is not Matthew or Luke. The clever battle with Satan is not outlined here. We simply have baptism and temptation, Spirit and Satan, together.

Then, still in chapter 1, Jesus drives out an evil spirit in Capernaum. As he does so, the demon screams out ‘I know who you are, the Holy One of God!’ Jesus silences the evil spirit immediately (vs.24–25). He also silences demons again in 3:11. Why? Mark says in v.34 that Jesus would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was. Does Jesus not want the demons to give the game away? Or were the demons liars? Demons haven’t gained their reputation from shouting the truth!

And then there’s the moment in chapter 4 when Jesus quotes Isaiah 6:9,10. He speaks in parables, he claims, so that people ‘may be ever hearing but never understanding, ever seeing but never perceiving, otherwise they may turn and be forgiven’! (Mark 4:12) Why would Jesus intend for people to be kept in darkness, to not understand, to not be forgiven? That does not make sense.

The puzzle of the empty tomb

Then there’s the ending. If you read Mark 16, your Bible should contain a footnote telling you that the most reliable versions of Mark’s Gospel don’t include vs.9–20. So let’s assume that Mark finished at v.8. Three women – powerless in Jewish society, whose testimony wouldn’t even count in a court of law – go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body. They arrive and the unnamed young man, who fled, naked and scared, in the Garden of Gethsemane (14:51–52) is sitting beside the empty tomb, reclothed in his white robe (16:5). Confidently he announces that Jesus has risen from the dead, and has gone ahead of his disciples into Galilee. ‘Trembling and bewildered’, the women flee and say nothing.

The end.

(crash) *picks himself up and curses the latest tree root*

What on earth?!

How is that in any way a reasonable way to end the account of Jesus? Mark has led us through an epic story, one that challenged the validity of the entire Jewish Temple system and its oppressive ruling class; one that eyeballed the arrogance of Rome and called people to allegiance to God instead. Then in a sudden nosedive, the awesome, inspiring Jesus, Messiah, is killed. Stumbling towards a bitter conclusion we read with only seconds of narrative remaining that he is risen and is waiting for us in Galilee, the revolutionary heartland where the story began. But what happened next? The only people to hear the news kept quiet. But somebody must have said something at some point or Mark couldn’t have written it down. Why has Mark stopped telling? What do we do now?!

You can really understand why somebody wanted to add a more satisfactory ending!

The confusing end to Mark makes me determined to sweep aside the leaves; as a reader I’ve tripped one too many times over strange writing. There’s something below the surface of my expectations which has to be uncovered; a secret that needs to break, an end to Mark that overcomes the fear. Because ‘whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open’ (4:22).

‘The Christ: whose son is he?’

There’s one other feature of Mark’s gospel that’s been undulating strangely beneath the surface. It’s the question of Jesus’ identity; is Jesus the ‘Son of God’, or the Son of Man, or the Son of David? In years gone by, scholars got very excited about figuring out the difference, believing that doing so would help unlock the riddle of Jesus’ divine/human nature. Eventually, however, they all gave up – rightly, because none of these titles say anything about whether Jesus was divine or not. What they do say, however, is what kind of Messiah Jesus was.

These three titles are the big names for the Messiah. And each carries with it a different meaning. The ‘Son of David’ was emphasised by those who believed the Messiah would come to restore the old Monarchy, banishing the Romans and reinstating the line of kings from Israel’s past. But in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is simply not interested in this idea. He deconstructs the name itself in 12:35–37, rejecting the idea that the Messiah would be a Son of David. This only serves to confirm what was hinted at only chapters before: that the only other character in Mark to name Jesus that way was a blind man who needed his sight restored (10:46–52).

The ‘Son of God’ is a more complex title. But I believe that there is evidence (drawing on the work of Yale scholar, Adela Yarbro Collins) that this was a messianic title emphasised by those who expected the violent overthrow of the Roman Empire in a cataclysmic word-ending showdown between the powers of light and the powers of darkness. Theirs was a violent God; the warrior Yahweh of the Old Testament, celebrated by a movement that worshipped in apocalyptic terms, waiting for the destruction of their enemies. The title ‘Son of God’ doesn’t appear much in Mark’s gospel, but when it does it is significant. The very first verse introduces Jesus as the Son of God for starters. But then the five other references fall into two camps. In 3:11 Mark says that whenever evil spirits saw Jesus they would cry ‘You are the Son of God’ and Jesus would silence them. This happens again with the ‘Legion’ of demons (a reference to the demonic oppression of Rome) in 5:6–8. The other three occasions, by contrast, are perhaps the most powerfully iconic moments of the story. At Jesus baptism a voice from heaven – which the reader assumes to be God – affirms Jesus as his son (1:11). At the Transfiguration the billowing clouds evoke memories of Yahweh at Mt Sinai, and a voice calls Jesus his son. (9:7). Then, thirdly, at the crucifixion a centurion remarks ‘surely this man was the Son of God’ (15:39). Does that make it a good title for Jesus, or a bad one? It’s a bit strange to find the demonic and the divine in such definite agreement.

Apocalypse then

Thirdly, there’s the ‘Son of Man’. This is by far Jesus’ preferred way of describing himself. But there’s a genre of writing that we need to known a little bit about, before we can really understand that title. It’s called apocalyptic, and it’s important in Jewish tradition. An ‘apocalypse’ is not a world-ending event, like we have come to understand it. It is a revelation, an unveiling. Apocalyptic writing tried to unmask the powers that controlled the world, and how God would control, subvert and ultimately destroy them, in the course of his work.

Mark borrows some of the themes of this genre in the way he tells his story. Once again, we’re generally too familiar with the gospel account to notice. But, to his first readers, the style would have been instantly recognisable.

There are three moments where Jesus’ sayings are direct references to apocalyptic writing – the same writing, quoted three times. The first is in Mark 8:38, where Jesus is speaking just days before his transfiguration. The second is in Mark 13, where Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple. The third is Jesus’ confrontation with the Sanhedrin (Mark 14:62). In each of these places, Jesus speaks of the ‘coming of the Son of Man’. He’s evoking imagery from Daniel 7; strange ‘beasts’ have fought and conquered each other, and finally the ‘Ancient of Days’ takes his throne and the last beast is destroyed (the different beasts referring to the empires that had come and gone since the time of Daniel). Then, says Daniel:

"In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” (Dan 7:13–14)

So we’re reading Mark, and we’re hit with a vision of an awesome Jesus, coming to administer the end of the Roman empire on the clouds of heaven, and to establish his kingdom on the earth.

Isn’t God great?

The Son of God or the Son of Man: which is Jesus, and does it matter? Both messianic titles bear an apocalyptic tint and both herald an end to Roman oppression. The thing is, when Jesus breaks convention and addresses God as ‘Father’, of whom he is the ‘son’ takes on a new importance.

Let me paint a picture here, based on these various tricksy tree roots. The Spirit that descended on Jesus at his baptism leads him to Satan. The demons – famous for their lies – want to associate Jesus with God. And Jesus’ whole ministry is about making some secret known – a secret that could overturn everything; a secret that nobody seems able to see.

So let’s look a little harder.

The passage in Isaiah from which Jesus quotes in Mark 4 is well known as the place where Isaiah receives his commission from Yahweh. The vision of Israel’s almighty God is breathtaking; the train of Yahweh’s robe fills the entire Temple, as seraphs – fearsome beasts of the heavenly court – sing ‘Holy’ to the Lord till the very foundation shake and smoke pours through the ancient space. As Isaiah meekly offers his service to Yahweh, the Lord’s voice comes back to offer the words that Jesus’ quotes: ever seeing never perceiving, always hearing but never understanding. ‘For how long?’ Isaiah groans, clearly distressed by this futile mission. ‘Till the cities lie ruined’, replies Yahweh, ‘and the Lord has sent everyone away, and the land is utterly forsaken’ (6:11–12).

Imagine you are a Galilean revolutionary living around 70 C.E. and the Roman’s are destroying Jewish infrastructure. The future seems bleak. But Mark’s Gospel tells you it’s ok. This is all part of God’s plan. Jesus was like a new Isaiah – speaking in parables as God withheld understanding; predicting judgement till God’s people have been humbled by a foreign empire. Soon, however, Jesus will come on the clouds to oversee the destruction of this empire and the establishment of the Kingdom of God. What a glorious Messiah and an awesome God!

The problem, of course, is that in the very next chapter after Jesus confronts the Temple rulers with these heroic words, he’s hanging on Pilate’s cross, dead.

So much for a Messiah who can defeat the Romans; so much for the kingdom of God!

Blasphemy?

Questions abound in the wake of Jesus’ death: questions about his mission, and questions about his God. For when Jesus was hung out to die, heaven held silent, leaving only a centurion to speak. It’s the climax of a whole raft of uncomfortable moments, starting with his baptism and unnerving onward from there.

For anyone reading Isaiah has to ask what kind of God deliberately blinds people to his message so that he has justification for destroying their society.

When we look back on Jesus’ baptism, we were surprised by its almost analogous link with temptation; between the voice from the heaven and Satan. And if we fast-forward to the transfiguration with Moses and Elijah, we find we have just come from a scene where Jesus rebuked Peter as ‘Satan’ for suggesting he wouldn’t have to die. Moses and Elijah are the two towering pillars of Jewish faith who never died! According to tradition they were just taken up into heaven. The association of Jesus with these two giants of Israel is negative, not positive here. So why is the voice from the clouds a wonderful moment of affirmation? Isn’t it a shuddering false-start to the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds that Jesus claimed would be seen by those with him, just six days before? (9:1-2)

We saw already that there was a bizarre agreement between the demonic and the ‘divine’ over the use of Son of God as a title for Jesus. The one exception to this is the centurion in 15:39. But at the excorcism in Geresa, Mark has already linked the Roman army with demonic occupation (5:1–20). Doesn’t the centurion’s voice count amongst the lying demons? And doesn’t Yahweh’s too? Don’t they all speak this lie with one voice? They call Jesus the Son of God, when in fact he is no such thing. No Son of Yahweh anyway.

Blasphemy?

I believe that for Mark, the denial of this idea is blasphemy.

The oppressors’ God

We don’t use the name Yahweh now. Yet the Old Testament is full of his presence. So it might seem like a denial of the Bible, of Christian tradition, of everything we understand about Jesus to say that Yahweh was an evil personality within the world of the New Testament.

But I think this is because we might be jumping to a few conclusions about how religion, theology and scriptures work in a society.

It wasn’t that long ago that Christians in the UK used the Bible to justify the slave trade. It was even more recently that Christians in the US used the bible to justify racial segregation. And in South Africa those doctrines are still engrained in the soul of the church’s living memory. Does that mean that God wants us to separate and oppress people on the basis of their ethnicity? Is that what the Bible tells us to do?

The simple answer is no. That’s why Christians have also been at the forefront of campaigns to rid all these societies of these oppressive evils.

But the complex answer is both no and yes. Take Ezra, for example. After he discovers cross-national marriage amongst the Jews he forces families to break up and sends the non-Israelite wives away, effectively widowed (Ezra 10). Joshua leads an ethnic cleansing on behalf of Israel at Yahweh’s command (Josh 10:40). Zechariah ends his prophetic vision with a dream of future Canaanite exclusion (14:21). There is ample argument in the Old Testament for a rigorous, ethnically ‘pure’, violently enforced, religious society. Just as there are counter-themes which confront that idea.

Anyone writing against the ills of UK or US or South African oppression would be justified in rejecting the God that lay behind that evil, just as many in the West have done. The question, however, would be whether God can be redeemed; is the idea of God so intertwined with his callous history to be unworthy of repair? Or can ‘God’ recover from this PR nightmare?

I believe that all the evidence points to a New Testament world in which an understanding of Yahweh had become poisoned by the strains of Old Testament tradition which portrayed Yahweh as a fearsome, violent God, full of vengeance and dispassionate judgement. Even those who worshipped a more gracious version of Israel’s God celebrated the power of his sovereignty in crushing rebellious nations underfoot. The ‘Son of God’ as a title was tied up with visions of this divine oppression, celebrations of Yahweh’s warrior wrath accompanying its use. No wonder Mark, champion of the oppressed and nemesis of Jewish-Roman oppression, lifts his sights to the brooding storm clouds overhead and exposes the pseudo-God they hide.

Mark, as I read him, rejects Yahweh. Matthew, on the other hand, attempts to redeem him. That is the difference between the two gospels. Which of the writers succeeds and which fails is a powerful consideration for our contemporary theology.

The Father of the Son of Man

If Yahweh is just a pretender to the throne of the divine, who then is the true God of Mark’s Gospel? To answer this we return, once again, to the deafening silence of Yahweh. Because when we revisit the Messiah on the cross, a new apocalypse (revelation) dawns. The Son of Man is exposed here, amidst clouds that plunge the land into darkness. Echoes of Daniel 7 ring again; the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, led into the presence of the Ancient of Days, by the tearing of the Temple curtain. For Mark’s first readers, the destruction of the Temple by Rome – that apocalyptic moment that would define their generation – was only an echo of the truly defining revelation (apocalypse) of God himself as a man on a cross. Yahweh is nowhere to be heard, as heaven this time stays silent. Yet the ancient one, with a guttural groan from the depths of time, heaves under the weight of suffering. Jesus death is not the failure of the Son of Man; it is his glory. For here, on this Roman cross, the Father of the Son of Man is revealed. A God on the side of humankind. God, no longer LORD, but God as human. This is indeed blasphemy, according to the religious rulers – the kind that could get you killed. But for people living in oppression it is the saving gospel of Jesus. The announcement in the face of Caesar’s domination and Jerusalem’s destruction is that God is among the oppressed, never to be counted amongst the oppressors.

Mark’s Jesus is a revolutionary, just like Matthew’s. And Mark’s Jesus, just like Matthew’s, gets into trouble with the Jewish authorities and then the Romans, and ends up being executed. Because Mark’s Jesus is a political and religious dissident who believes that a new world is within reach, just beyond the suffocating shroud of the present system. Unlike Matthew, however, Mark’s Jesus won’t stop at critiquing religious and political systems; his revolutionary vision overthrows the throne of God himself and declares its incumbent a fake. The Yahweh of Israel’s history has bred only domination. But the God and Father of this Jesus, Messiah, suffers with sacrificial love. In his scarred hands lies healing hope. In his footsteps walk disciples of courage; those who will take up their cross on behalf of the oppressed and die to the world and its violence.

‘How can Satan drive out Satan?’ asks Jesus (3:23). How can oppression overcome oppression? How can violence defeat and silence violence? The strong man must be bound before he can be robbed (3:27). The cycle must be broken, before there can be change.

The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is to equate God with Satan (3:28–30); to claim God loves to work in the same way as the demons’ prince. The blasphemy Mark exposes is the equating of God with the violent and vengeful Yahweh. The blasphemy we risk today is to make our ‘God’ in similar vein.

The big secret

Somehow the secret broke.

It always does.

The women said nothing, out of fear. But you cannot keep a good secret down. It always breaks. The bizarre ending to Mark is the beginning of a new journey, for those women, for Peter, for the disciples, and for us.

The secret is the grain of light in the darkness that gets into your eye and irritates. The secret prises open the possibilities and lets the reader wonder at what might be. The secret of the revelation of a new God busts open the shutters onto a fresh vision for humanity. Peace, love, hope, compassion; these are the hallmarks of the kingdom of this God. With the risen Jesus ahead of us in Galilee, the rumour of a revolution rings again. This one could overturn the world, and recreate it with deep and divine justice.